A partnership between Newfoundland and Labrador’s public education institutions has been recognized by the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) with the 2010 national Award for Excellence and Innovation in Partnership and Collaboration.

Dr. Chris Loomis, president and vice-chancellor, pro tempore, Memorial University; Ann Marie Vaughan, director of Memorial’s Distance Education and Learning Technologies (DELT); John King, former chair, Distributed Learning Service at College of the North Atlantic; Jim Tuff, director of the Department of Education’s Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation (CDLI); and John Baker, president and CEO of Desire2Learn Incorporated, joined together on May 20th to recognize the award and celebrate the 40th anniversary of DELT.

“We have always considered this provincial partnership as a progressive and innovative step toward meeting the needs of learners in our province, but it is an honour to be recognized as such on a national level,” said Ann Marie Vaughan, director of DELT. “By teaming up with Desire2Learn we’ve been able to enhance teaching and learning on campus, but most importantly we’ve made a tremendous impact on our learners in rural Newfoundland and Labrador and the communities in which they live.”

The award, which recognizes initiatives that contribute to supporting open and distance education within the primary, secondary and post-secondary sectors, was received on May 18 at the 2010 CNIE conference in Saint John, N.B. This is the second award the partnership has received. The first was the international 2009 Desire2EXCEL Community Service Award.

The unique partnership originated from the provincial government’s White Paper on Post-Secondary Education, which called for greater collaboration among publicly funded education providers in the province. In support of that directive, Memorial’s Distance Education and Learning Technologies (DELT), the College of the North Atlantic’s Distributed Learning Service (DLS) and the Department of Education’s Centre for Distance Learning and Innovation (CDLI) identified an opportunity to select a common learning management system to support all distance education in the province.

Partnering with Desire2Learn Incorporated, a world leading provider of mission-critical enterprise eLearning solutions, the three education providers currently offer a province-wide system that supports and advances distance education regardless of location, time or educational level. This enables ease of transition and access between institutions for students; supports rural based education development and delivery; contributes to a province-wide learning culture; and provides ease of support for learners in the province.