Literacy Online :
A Study on the Use of Web
Technology in Literacy

BY DANIEL LAROCQUE

In 1996-1997, the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) Section of the Ontario Ministry of Education and Training (MET) with the financial support of the National Literacy Secretariat (NLS), initiated a project on online literacy. The object of this venture was to evaluate the potential interest and value of having literacy activities delivered by way of an online environment. By the end of phase 1, an equivalent of 30 hours of activities in each official language had been created, designed, and integrated in an online environment. Phase 1 (also referred to as the pre-pilot) convinced LBS and NLS that literacy online was worth further investigation.

In the summer of 1998, phase 2 (or the pilot) of the project was launched. «Literacy Online / Alpharoute (phase 2)» combines two interrelated strands: 1) development and 2) research. The development strand tackles two main challenges: web-based innovation to allow a greater variety of activities and greater interaction online; open standards to facilitate portability to a number of environments and to support future content developers. Curriculum and Technical Teams are presently addressing these challenges. The research strand will focus on two questions: - at what stage of their reaming can literacy students begin to be independent in an online environment? - what supports do they need to do so?

A Research Team is presently working on defining these questions further and on elaborating a pertinent methodology. By the end of phase 2, there will be:

• a web site with an equivalence of 80 hours of activities and demonstrations (divided more or less equally among the first four levels of literacy as defined by MET ) in each official language;
• a navigation system technically and graphically designed for adult literacy
• a portfolio system which keeps track of each learner's progress (accessible to a distance mentor when such is the wish of the learner); a database system keeping track of learner activity (the anonymous data will be used to supplement the research);
• quantitative data on which activities were used most often and qualitative data on the «how and why» of learner interaction with the web site, its activities and its various support functions (from prompts to interaction with a distance mentor).

Learners from centers in Ontario, British-Columbia and Québec will participate in the research due to start in April 1999. Please note that both web sites will be closed during the implementation of phase 2 (and thus only accessible via a password). That being said, the results of the project should serve as a solid base for a future expansion of online literacy activities. Phase 2 is administered by AlphaPlus and developed by Réseau Interaction Network, Inc.

For more information, contact Daniel Larocque at danilaro@village.ca or Jane Larimer at jlarimer@alphaplus.ca

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