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About AlphaRoute Access

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The full-content, password-protected AlphaRoute site managed by AlphaPlus was officially retired in April 2011. A scaled-down, password-free version, called AlphaRoute Access, is currently available in the Literacy and Basic Skills area of the Employment Ontario website.

AlphaRoute was conceived in 1996 as a small Ontario pilot study focused on the feasibility of using online learning in adult literacy programs. Funding received annually from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU) and National Literacy Secretariat (NLS) always included a research component which informed and guided AlphaRoute development over the years. 

It was an adult literacy online learning environment developed for the Deaf, Native, Francophone and Anglophone streams of the Literacy and Basic Skills (LBS) program, the publicly funded Adult Basic Education (ABE) program of the province of Ontario, Canada.

AlphaRoute was unique in Canada because it offered all of the following:

  • Targeted adult literacy students wanting to learn online
  • Offered adult literacy students ongoing mentor support from trained LBS and ABE program educators
  • Offered ongoing learning opportunities which complemented and reflected learning goal areas expressed by adult literacy students
  • Offered an online community for adult literacy students to learn online together within a password-protected learning environment
  • Provided opportunities for adult literacy students to develop leadership skills within a pan-Canadian community
  • Provided Canadian online content
  • Provided AlphaPlus with research data about the state of e-learning in Canada

Sustainable support for AlphaRoute came from the LBS Section of the Ontario MTCU, and from the NLS, now the National Office of Literacy and Learning , Department of Human Resources and Social Development Canada.  The Office of Learning Technologies (OLT) of the Department of Human Resources and Social Development Canada (HRSDC) also supported research, and the Ontario Trillium Foundation (OTF) supported redevelopment of the AlphaRoute learning environment.