History of AWAL

BC AWAL

AWAL was conceptualized and developed in British Columbia in 1997 with funding from HRDC and the BC Ministry of Education. The original project began as a K-12 initiative with a strong emphasis on the individual participants’ professional development (PD) experiences.

AWAL NATIONAL

From 2000 through 2003 HRDC provided funding to BC’s Centre for Curriculum, Transfer and Technology (C2T2) to manage and promote the AWAL project. At the same time, the project’s mandate expanded in three significant ways:

• From a provincial to a national project
• To include adult educators while continuing to work with those in K-12
• Made a shift to place an equal emphasis on both the professional development and the curriculum development aspects of the project

This expansion meant that assistance became available to all educators in any jurisdiction across Canada interested in adopting or adapting AWAL. In addition it meant that AWAL began to look slightly different in different parts of the country as the project tools and processes began to be adapted, and continue to be adapted, to better suit the priorities and activities of different regions.

AWAL INNOVATIONS

From 2003 through 2006 HRSDC provided funding to Camosun College, Victoria BC to manage and promote a new AWAL project: AWAL Innovations. Building on the success of the earlier AWAL projects, the objectives of AWAL Innovations were:

• To apply the principles and lessons learned from AWAL National to a suite of new project activities led by the AWAL National Office: AWAL for literacy, increased employer involvement, and AWAL as a tool in the development of system and organization-wide curriculum resources
• To apply the principles and lessons learned from AWAL National to three new projects: specifically Research AWAL in New Brunswick, Student AWAL in Ontario, and Workplace AWAL across Canada
• To maintain the Web site and database and support the work of AWAL in established jurisdictions and to initiate the technology transfer of AWAL into new jurisdictions
• To address the question of sustainability and work toward the identification of a permanent home for AWAL