Ryerson University, The Chang School of Continuing Studies

Case Study: Hybrid Courses for Immigrants to Canada

Project:
Communication and Acculturation to the Canadian Workplace

SCORM Version:
n/a

Services Provided:
Instructional Design, Course Development, Content Creation

Products Used:
Ektron, Blackboard LMS

Some teams in the Chang School at Ryerson specialize in preparing immigrants for the Canadian workplace. These teams cover a wide variety of professions, ranging from midwifery and physiotherapy to accounting and IT. All these bridging programs have a common need for courses in acculturation and communication for the workplace. At first, many of these courses were being provided solely in the classroom. SLA was brought in to help develop some online components that would prepare, reinforce and complement the face-to-face delivery. The future aim is also to provide courses in a completely online format for pre-arrivals.

These online course components are currently being produced using Ektron and delivered on Blackboard. However, SLA has advised the desirability of SCORM compliance and the use of an authoring tool that would aid in the reusability of their course units and assets. This would also greatly speed up their development process.

SLA has suggested many devices to aid in the learning process online, such as reality-based scenarios that use video, audio. images and text as appropriate.

One identified need was for a way of providing learners with exposure to idiomatic phrases used in the Canadian workplace. SLA worked with Ryerson’s media specialists to produce “Around the Water Cooler,” which is a cartoon-based tool developed in Adobe Captivate.

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