CNIE Annual Conference in Banff, Alberta - April 2008

I was very pleased that I had the opportunity to attend the first annual Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) conference in Banff, Alberta at the end of April 2008. Wonderful to be able to spend some time in Banff - as it truly is one of our country's natural gems!!

This was a VERY busy conference for me - as I'm also the Research Director for the CNIE - so I was involved in a series of pre- and post-conference meetings. I also made a couple of presentations. One, with Zehra Akyol and Randy Garrison entitled Community of Inquiry in Online and Blended Learning Environments and one with Mike Power from Laval University entitled Taking Blended Learning a Step Further. There was tremendous amount interest in Randy's Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework and I enjoyed chatting with some of his colleagues about their work (i.e. Peter Shea with teaching presence, Karen Swan with social presence and Phil Ice with synchronous audio).

I'm already looking forward to next year's conference in Ottawa in May 2009!!