Miziwe Biik

Case Study: Culturally Enriched Exam Preparation

Project:
Online Courses to prepare adult learners for the GED Tests

SCORM Version:
1.2

Services Provided:
Funding Application, Strategic Planning, Instructional Design, Course Content Creation, Course Delivery

Products Used:
Thinking Cap LCMS, Thinking Cap LMS

Miziwe Biik is an aboriginal employment and training organization based in Toronto. Its special need was to provide its clients with the educational qualifications needed for employment. As many of these adult learners had had poor experiences in the school system it was decided that they would be best served by providing them with the learning resources they would need help them to pass the General Education Diploma Test through online courses.

The learning audience had other specific characteristics: learners would have, at best, a reading level of Grade 10; they would be greatly encouraged by the inclusion of aboriginal content wherever possible and by the use of humour.

As Miiziwe Biik wanted to make these online courses available to remote reserves, they had to be created for low bandwidth transmission, precluding the use of video.

SLA helped Miiziwe Biik apply for funding to the Office of Learning Technologies for a grant to cover the development of the courseware and provided monthly reports on the project’s progress for submission to the funder. The content was developed by SLA and some sub-contracted SMEs, including some native writers.

SLA undertook to research native content and ethnically appropriate images for inclusion in the content. Courses were developed in Reading, Writing, Social Studies, Math, and Science. They also provided timed practice in answering typical GED Test Questions and detailed advice on preparing for exams.

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