Judy Roberts & Associates / Associés Inc.

Current Projects

Need a workshop on designing for interaction in blended and/or distance education? Need rapid turnaround on some business or institutional planning for the use of the WWW? Winter 2005 demonstrated that we can meet those needs – and more! We completed two business planning contracts, offered a blended in-person and online workshop about interaction and distance education and continued to meet deadlines on two longer-term contracts with Campus Canada and the Newfoundland and Labrador Tele-oncology Program.

For CADE and AMTec (the Canadian Association for Distance Education/L’association canadienne de l’éducation à distance and the Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada), RAA recruited and managed a four-person team that analyzed strategic and tactical legal, financial and organizational issues involved in the creation of a new pan-Canadian organization responsive to the changed needs of the professions served by CADE and AMTec. Team members were Genevieve Gallant, Erin Keough and Arlene Zuckernick.

For McGraw-Hill Education – HPI Group in NYC, we completed, in association with Newport Bay Consulting Services Ltd., a targeted literature search about the US distance education market to meet the business needs of senior personnel responsible for product planning in higher education for the United States of America; deliverables consisted of regular telephone client briefings and a written report.

The objectives of our hybrid in-person and online workshop for the Canadian Defence Academy in Kingston Ontario included

Understanding key principles in designing resource-based courses that engage the learner’s active engagement and interaction with content, other learners and a tutor, and

Distinguishing among various types of interactive online learning activities including problem based learning, collaborative learner artifact construction, role playing, etc.

Held February 23-24 at Royal Military College (Kingston Ontario), the workshop included a combination of plenary presentations to invited guests and hands-on small group activities for 25 distance educators working in a variety of Canadian Forces organizations followed by a one-week online discussion. Judy Roberts, President of RAA, and Terry Anderson, Canada Research Chair in DE at Athabasca University collaborated on the process and would be delighted to discuss adapting it to your needs.

Recently Completed Projects

Campus Canada: RAA and Newport Bay Consulting Services (NBCS) designed and implemented an evaluation process that tested an online prototype E-Portfolio with end users who were diverse in terms of geographic location and the sector in which they worked.

Makerere University, Faculty of Medicine, Uganda: RAA and NBCS developed an evaluation framework and systems to monitor and evaluate the impact of a pilot telemedicine project (that included videoconferencing and ‘store and forward’ data transmission systems) on education programs and community-based health care.

Websites Worth Watching

Stay current with developments in our field by bookmarking the following sites:

http://www.cade-aced.ca , hosted by the Canadian Association for Distance Education
http://www.amtec.ca , for The Association for Media and Technology in Education in Canada
http://www.irrodl.org , the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, published by Athabasca University
http://www.odlaa.org , site of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, publisher of the Distance Education journal
http://www.usdla.org , home site of the United States Distance Learning Association

Team News

Our team members are always busy. Here are some highlights of their individual professional activities.

Judy is a co-author, along with NBCS colleagues Linda Schachter and Arlene Zuckernick and University of Victoria colleague Alan Pence, of an article about an innovative distance education project in Africa (see reference that follows). She is also working with Gila Kurtz, of Bar-El University in Israel, to revise the UMUC MDE course on technology in distance education and will teach UMUC’s course about web-based teaching and learning in virtual universities in summer 2005.

Schachter, L., Pence, A., Zuckernick, A., & Roberts, J. (In press). Distance learning in Africa: From brain drain to brain gain. In M. Beaudoin (Ed.), Perspectives on the future of higher education in the digital age. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Erin has been engaged by the Commonwealth of Learning as one of five international consultants who are providing strategic advice to the COL planning team on the direction of the three-year plan for 2006-2009.

Jane recently co-edited a book in Oldenburg University’s ASF series on distance education (see http://www.uni-oldenburg.de/zef/mde/series/. The full reference is:

Brindley, J.E., Walti, C., & Zawacki-Richter, O. (Eds). (2004). Learner support in open, distance and online learning environments. Oldenburg: Bibliotheks- und informationssystem der Universität Oldenburg.

Newport Bay Consulting Services Ltd., a Victoria based company specializing in program planning, project management, materials development and evaluation for distance learning and innovative training, continues to work with us in a number of projects. Its principals, Arlene Zuckernick and Linda Schachter, possess expertise that supplements and complements the skills available in RAA, including skills in instructional design and materials development, research, evaluation and program review and research and public education on labour market issues, multiculturalism, the voluntary sector and human rights.

Journals

One or more of RAA's team members are on the editorial boards of these ‘must read’ distance education journals

the Journal of Distance Education/La revue de l’éducation à distance, http://www.cade-aced.ca, sponsored by CADE-ACED

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning , http://www.irrodl.org/current.html, published by Athabasca University
Distance Education , published by Carfax Publishing on behalf of the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia.