The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology’s Winter issue, (vol. 35, No. 1) was released in September, 2009.
This is now a fully open-access, peer-reviewed, online academic journal. The Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology is unique in the international field of educational technology in that manuscripts are accepted and published in either English or in French. Abstracts for each article are published in both of Canada’s two official languages. CJLT has both an English and a French editor.
Fourteen volumes of the now defunct Canadian Journal of Educational Communications [CJEC] have been added to the CJLT archive at www.cjlt.ca. The CJLT archive of CJEC back issues makes several years of past research newly available to graduate students, researchers and historians who are interested in educational technology research.
The first five papers in this edition have only one thing in common: four of them are by Canadian authors (the other is from Botswana). Of these five papers, the most interesting for me was:
McAnany, D. (2009) Monkeys on the Screen?: Multicultural Issues in Instructional Message Design Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, Vol 35, No. 1, pp.
This paper offers a review of the literature on cultural diversity and the challenges associated with designing for diverse learning styles and educational experiences. McAnany proposes a systematic three-fold approach to the creation and evaluation of multicultural instructional messages and materials: first, “Do no harm“; second, “Make the learning experience relevant“; and third, “Incorporate global concepts and images into instructional messages.” She gives two interesting examples of how to re-design for a culturally diverse audience. Not an earth-shattering paper, but useful for raising awareness of the issues in teaching culturally diverse students.
The last five papers do have a common theme, knowledge building, reviewed by special issue editors, Dr. Bill Egnatoff and Dr. Marlene Scardamalia. Most of the five papers are focused on knowledge building in school (k-12) contexts rather than higher education, but they do provide some useful guidelines for teachers on how to ‘scaffold’ and facilitate knowledge construction in online classes.
Dr. Tony Bates is the author of eleven books in the field of online learning and distance education. He has provided consulting services specializing in training in the planning and management of online learning and distance education, working with over 40 organizations in 25 countries. Tony is a Research Associate with Contact North | Contact Nord, Ontario’s Distance Education & Training Network.
