Lace Brogden and I wrote this report a couple of months ago, but I never got a chance to post it here. Here’s the executive summary:

This report was written at the request of the Keewatin Career Development Corporation (KCDC) and in follow up to A Comparative Assessment of Four Online Learning Programs (Bale, 2005). This document reports on the findings of the Phase 2 Feasibility Study. The foci of Phase 2 of the research were to identify (a) factorsrelevant to the development and implementation of an online, interinstitutional partnership for virtual resource centre alternatives within and between specific First Nations educational communities, and (b) how such interinstitutional partnerships might be beneficial to a
broad constituency of collaborating education agencies.

The report is divided into four main sections. First, a description of the context, including a review of literature relevant to technology and to First Nations communities, a discussion of proprietary and open cultures, and an examination of several existing learning object repositories and their characteristics. The second section describes the research methodology and presents an analysis of the research data. The third section includes recommendations for the establishment of a First Nations learning object repository. The fourth and final section proposes areas for further research.

The highlight of the report for me was working once again with Lace. I feel that we work and write very well as a team, and I have learned more about writing and research in the few hours I spent with her than through all of the other formalized venues in my experience.

I hope that this report may be of use to someone out there. I also thank the rich discussions in the blogging community for much of the information found here.