I know that this is old news, but I’m sure that there are many people outside the local area who don’t know that Canada’s National Research Council has given up on e-learning as an area of focus (even though it’s still listed on their website).

I was involved in some of the early round table discussions that brought about the creation of the IIT (Institute for Information Technology) with its satellite e-learning office in Moncton. Only a few years ago there was much hoopla about e-learning and how this research centre would be an asset to the local learning industry. Now it has just died a slow death. I was reminded of this while reading Dave Tosh’s recent interview with Stephen Downes:

In addition, since the NRC has disbanded the e-learning research group (I have been reassigned to ‘Internet Logic’) and moving away from e-learning per se (I have been asked to work in other areas, such as human-computer interaction) the production of OLDaily (and of e-learning in general) is becoming less and less a part of my professional work and more of (as it was originally) a hobby.