Sign on to Success
The OntarioLearn.com Consortium
About Us
You are teaching a course that is part of an innovative partnership between 24 Ontario Colleges who have partnered to develop and deliver on-line courses for adult part-time learners. The partnership allows members to select courses from the OntarioLearn.com course inventory that will complement their existing distance education offerings.
OntarioLearn.com has grown from its original 4 member colleges and 365 students in 1995 to 24 college partners with over 66,000 registrations in 1,300 courses.
This partnership approach has allowed member colleges to optimize resources, avoid duplication and increase the availability of on-line learning opportunities for their students.
The course inventory is comprised of only one course in a particular subject area. Some exceptions have been made for courses that are designed for a specific certification or may be in partnership with a professional or trade association. This practice removes potential competition amongst course offerings. It also requires that colleges who host these courses maintain the quality standards that have been established. College members must apply to have their course’s considered. Student evaluations and quality assurance checks ensure that the standards are applied.
Our Process- a Brief Summary
The consortium is governed by a Board of Directors, with each member college having one voting representative. The Board meets 2-3 times a year. The Board Chair is elected from the membership for a two year term.
Member Colleges also assign an OntarioLearn Coordinator from their staff to fulfill the operational requirements of the consortium process.
A college can be either a Registering College or a Host College
- The host college is the one who owns, and delivers the courses. They are responsible for hiring the instructor, for the course design, development, overall quality and ongoing maintenance.
- The registering college has identified a particular course that is available in our inventory as one that they do not offer themselves, and, instead of developing their own version, they choose to “pick up” the course through OntarioLearn.
- The registering college will advertise the course in their CE calendars as one of their own, they register the students for the course at their college.
- OntarioLearn.com manages the infrastructure and it operates as a virtual organization.
Meet the Team
There are 4 OntarioLearn staff members;
3 of whom are part-time.
Meet the team by clicking "Next" below
Al Brady, Executive Director is responsible for
implementing strategic direction, managing contracts
and recruiting/supervision of staff.
Heather Ryan is the full-time administrator and is responsible
for directing and managing the day-to-day operations, managing all
the e-systems and liaising with member college staff and the hosting firm.
Janis Miller is the Quality Assurance Specialist and
oversees course quality and improvement needs.
Carole Smith provides coordination support for Heather.
- There are 5 LMS platforms used by member colleges. Blackboard, Angel, Moodle, Desire2Learn and First Class.
- Embanet/Compass Inc. is our technical service provider.They provide you and your students with 24/7 technical support.
- Embanet maintains the infrastructure for all of the courses and they maintain the e-portal.
Quality and Continuous Improvement Practices
OntarioLearn’s quality standards are built on its members’ collective commitment to providing students with a positive learning environment that ensures their academic success and satisfaction.
A course review policy outlines the steps that are to be taken by the colleges and the consequences for non compliance. This policy is closely monitored by the executive committee of the Board. Essentially, if the changes are not made in a timely fashion that college risks having the course suspended or eventually removed from the OntarioLearn platform.
Course quality is measured using two assessment tools.
- The student feedback questionnaire measures the overall effectiveness of course content, instruction and students’ general perceptions of quality. Using a 4 point scale, all courses that receive an evaluation result of less than 3.0 in one or more of the three categories are brought forward for assessment. Low ratings can result in either a course review and/or an instructor review.
- The Course Standards Checklist, is used to conduct a course review. The checklist has been designed to work with all LMS systems used by OntarioLearn members. Also, all new courses are reviewed in the first semester of their offering through OntarioLearn platform.
The OL Standards Checklist is your “go to” document when you are creating a course to be delivered through OntarioLearn.com
The checklist standards evaluate the course’s overall design and usability features. The standards do not assess the quality of the lesson content. Content quality is the responsibility of the host college.
The checklist was updated in 2010 by a team of instructional designers from member colleges, who invested considerable time to review the standards and to provide “how to” examples that help explain what design features are expected to be present.
You will find references to the checklist requirements throughout the Module content in this site.
Using this tool up front will reduce if not eliminate the need to “re-work” the course in order to meet quality requirements.
OntarioLearn's checklist
Student Feedback Form
Towards the end of every semester we ask students to provide us with feedback about your course. Providing the feedback form is also one of the checklist standards requirements. (Student feedback form)
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