The Ministry of Education is developing Ontario's e-learning strategy in collaboration with teachers, school boards, and many education organizations. This valuable partnership is generating province-wide solutions to problems and innovative approaches to contemporary education opportunities.

e-Learning Ontario provides leadership, software tools, and guiding policies, while school boards retain full responsibility for the delivery of courses and resources.

The Ministry of Education

The Ministry of Education, through e-Learning Ontario, is committed to:

• Manage the provincial Learning Management System (LMS) for online credit courses and the Ontario Educational Resource Bank for digital resources.
• Set provincial standards for developing, delivering, and storing online courses and resources.
• Set policies for board participation in the e-learning strategy.
• Coordinate the development of online courses.
• Provide initial face-to-face professional development for new boards and ongoing online professional development.
• Explore ways to address the connectivity barriers facing boards.
• Review the e-learning strategy annually to ensure that it is meeting the needs of boards and students.
• Review the content of courses to ensure that they meet the curriculum expectations and that all external links and references are valid.

For more on the role of e-Learning Ontario, see About e-Learning Ontario .

School Boards

• Maintain all aspects of e-learning delivery within the board, including registering and tracking students, granting credits, hiring staff, setting program direction, and maintaining control over quality.
• Assign personnel for implementing the e-learning strategy, including one District e-Learning Contact (DeLC) to liaise with e-Learning Ontario. Six Regional e-Learning Contacts (ReLCs) are appointed by school boards and the Ministry of Education to support the implementation and the growth of the provincial e-learning strategy.
• Customize courses to meet local needs, while ensuring that they meet the expectations in the appropriate curriculum policy documents.
• Ensure that courses offered through the provincial e-learning strategy are taught by teachers who are in good standing with the Ontario College of Teachers.
• Establish class sizes and pupil/teacher ratios, according to provincial and board policies and collective agreements.
• Ensure that e-learning courses are considered part of the teachers' workload, as specified in the applicable collective agreement, for teacher scheduling.
• Ensure that students with special needs have equitable access to appropriate learning opportunities.
• Ensure that the LMS is used strictly for its intended purposes.

Please also see the e-Learning Ontario Policy Document (PDF, 63 KB) , section A.6.0.