Page 20 - ECCS 2019-20 AERR and Three Year Education Plan
P. 20

   East Central Alberta Catholic Schools Challenges ECACS Three-Year Education Plan and Annual Education Results Report
SOH Enrolment 40% Increase
Online Learning - 620 students Shared - 73 students
Virtual and Home School Education Programs
The School Of Hope and Vermilion Home Schooling programs evolved out a niche to provide alternative educational programming for students within the East Central Catholic region and across the province. The school supports home schooling, online learning, and shared instructional programs to a unique community of students and parents across the province.
Over the last six years, the Division has implemented a series of changes to align instructional and assessment practices to reflect current pedagogical and technological approaches that best support the various alternative delivery models. The change measures began with improving hiring practices, implementing regional learning centers, creating a school council, rebranding, revisiting program publications, and implementing a new Learning Management System (LMS) for course delivery. SOH administration and staff continue to explore professional development opportunities that focus on the instructional design skills required to create engaging curriculum aligned instruction and assessment practices.
To say that the 2019-2020 is an unprecedented school year would be an understatement. The combined impact of the three-year weighted moving average funding model, the shift from ADLC centralized distance education services, the introduction of Bill 15, Choice In Education Act, and lastly, the new school re-entry COVID-19 guidelines, school divisions across the province are scrambling to adjust their program delivery models to adapt to these new realities. As previously mentioned, we are anticipating a shift from competing regionally for student enrolment numbers to a provincial reality where a student can enrol in potentially any online program across the province.
Considering the potential increased competition in the online instructional space, the SOH administration and staff are focusing their efforts on transitioning all core and non-core courses into the Canvas platform. Secondly, the Division will be working closely with the school administration to integrate the program offerings from the SOH to improve program flexibility and expand high school courses that were otherwise very difficult to offer in our small rural school environments. Moving forward into the future, incorporating SOH online programming into all Division schools will play a vital role in sustaining such a
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