Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, honourable committee members, thank you for having us. We're very excited to be here. My name is Dr. Elizabeth Childs. I have a doctorate in educational technology from the University of Calgary. I work nationally and internationally with organizations looking to move

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We're going to talk about the components of the strategy, and there will be more time for questions on that. I'm going to provide you with an overview, and then Patti and Ruth will go into the details of what is accomplished to date. One design criteria for the strategy was that

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We can do that right now, absolutely.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely, there is. For example, the lands governance director program is targeted at lands governance directors, so it's written at approximately a grade 10 level. With our partnered post-secondary institutions, there are all of the writing support and all of the post-second

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Absolutely. That's something we have definitely been wrestling with, because since the certification has been slow to develop for a variety of reasons, people in the field need something. At the virtual resource centre, the meeting place, those materials have been up since 2010

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We do, and I would defer to Ruth, because she's been quite involved.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The courselets, the little short ones, no. They're for users. It's meant to be that just-in-time.... In the certification program, absolutely. People will be moving through the courses as a cohort, so to speak. We're roughly estimating between two and three years to complete, if

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As for the online community, the virtual resource centre, and all of that usage that's been running since 2010, just for example, in this past January, we had over 4,500 hits to the site and about 150 unique users. You can get into the details further, but with respect to getting

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Just quickly, it's hosting, warranty, and maintenance. It means they host it. They maintain it. They warranty that it will work and function the way we need it to work and function. Going forward, I don't anticipate those costs to increase. If they do, it will be marginal. Where

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I will just add that the operationals have been using it since January 2010. They have been in and we've been getting their feedback. Much of their feedback has been, “This is great. Give us more and more detail.” That's where we have had to adjust, and that's where we would rea

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'm bursting at the seams. It is exciting. It is exciting in terms of the mentoring piece. Currently, the mentoring is done very much in a face-to-face setting, and the resource centre staff provide support for people who are coming in. One of our colleagues, Meko Nicholas, who

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  As soon as they're part.... The 18 that are new, for example, we find out from them who their lands manager or governance director designate is, and they're issued a user name and password.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll just quickly start this off and then defer to Ruth and Patti, who have actually been through the program. One thing we did early on in the strategy was prepare a 35-page comparison document comparing the courses offered through the NALMA training and the University of Sask

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  May I make a small comment?

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Just from an educational perspective, building on Patti's last comment, what that does is introduce cognitive dissonance. You're learning something—you're learning a legislation or learning techniques and practices—under one box of rules and then you have to go home and apply the