BACKGROUNDER

FAMILY LITERACY EVENTS COMMITTEE (FLEC)

FLEC is a not-for-profit adult literacy organization located in Brandon, Manitoba. Its mandate is the promotion, outreach, and awareness of family and adult literacy, within the context of activity-based projects and activities that may fall outside the parameters of other literacy groups, or in partnership with these organizations. Project CONNECTIONS developed when close contact by FLEC's members with the Manitoba adult literacy community indicated that there was a need for a course regarding the theory and practice of adult learning. No such course was offered by the Manitoba office of Adult Literacy and Learning (ALL), and no finances were available to develop one in the near future. As such, FLEC took the decision to coordinate the development of the course. A proposal for a year-long project was developed and submitted to the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS) in the spring of 2002. Approval was granted by the NLS in July and the project commenced in September of the same year.

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PROJECT CONNECTIONS

The objective of the project was to develop and pilot a course on adult learning for delivery online and by correspondence. In the interests of sharing resources, FLEC and the Project Manager took the decision that the course would be made available to the wider adult literacy community in Canada, rather than just the province of Manitoba. As such, the course was placed online so that all who wanted to could access the material, in particular rural and Northern communities for which face-to-face training is difficult. In addition to easy and inexpensive access to this foundational material, the course was designed in a stand alone format in that no formal agency or body was available to deliver and/or administer it. However, in the interests of making learning more effective recommendations were included regarding options for building in interactivity, and alternate delivery formats.

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ADULT LEARNING: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE

The course is designed to be used by individual tutors in a self-paced, stand-alone format, or as supplemental material for a group endeavour such as a certification program or professional development seminar. Whatever the case, users are encouraged to adjust the course as required to suit their particular needs, as long as it is a "not-for-profit" manner.

A unique aspect of this course was the inclusion of a deliberation team in its development. The notion of a curriculum deliberation process was first proposed by Joseph Schwab in the 1970's and involves the rationalization of curricular material from multiple perspectives, namely "stakeholders" directly and/or indirectly involved in its use. This may include educators, academics, learners, administrators, representatives from the community, and so on. Meet the curriculum deliberation team here.

A preliminary or "bare bones" version of the course was developed by the Project Manager (PM). It was then reviewed and deliberated on by the team. Another unique aspect to this project was the fact while deliberation teams commonly meet face-to-face, the CONNECTIONS team deliberated online in a discussion forum. The final version of the course was uploaded to the National Adult Literacy Database in September 2003 after being piloted in the province of Manitoba in the spring and summer of 2003.

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