Roger Mundell & Denise Stockley

Royal Roads University  

<dstockle@sfu.ca>

Royal Roads University (RRU) is a four year old University situated on a 640 acre historic site featuring beautiful grounds and a nineteenth century castle. The mission of the University is to deliver world-class applied and professional programs to Canadian and international adult learners.  RRU’s degree programs are designed for the mid-career professional and its graduate programs combine periods of on-campus instruction and semesters of distance education.  This delivery model (a) aligns with the needs of mid-career professionals, and (b) is dictated by the size of the physical buildings at RRU; currently only 250 learners can be accommodated on-campus at any one time.

At RRU’s Centre for Economic Development and Applied Research (CEDAR) we have developed tools that allow simultaneously for both knowledge-building, collaborative learning and for individual, self-paced learning in the same course.  This flexibility provides the opportunity for just in time and just enough information that creates the truly learner-centered environment. These tools are used in certain MBA courses, such as finance and e-commerce.

Course material is navigated in a variety of database-driven, learner-selected methods, depending upon individual preferences.   Each course module has a number of self-assessment questions which allows for individual prior learning assessment.  A learner may choose to answer these randomly generated questions before working through any of the material, or answer them for self-formative evaluation of the module content.  At the end of the series of questions, the learner is informed which areas of the module require study.  Learners returning later to the self-assessment questions are asked questions only on those areas incorrectly answered the first time.

Knowledge building learning opportunities incorporated into the courses enhance critical thinking and process skills, and include:

(a) residency,

(b) group jigsaw assignment,

(c) case-based reasoning,

(d) electronic forums, newsgroups and live chat

(e) real-world, just in time articles for on-line discussion,

(f)  instructor acting as a guide on the side and not a sage on the stage.

These opportunities provide for: (a) legitimate participation by allowing for immediate transferability to the workplace and (b) building a knowledge network that extends long beyond the end of the degree program. I am personally interested in exploring how the opportunities for computer-assisted self paced learning might be used to address multiple variables in addition to those of time and place, while still somehow incorporating the proven advantages of a learning community.