Canadian Council on Learning | Conseil Canadien sur l'Apprentissage

PLAR (Prior Learning Assessment & Recognition) is the practice of reviewing, evaluating, and acknowledging the information, skills, and understanding that adult learners’ have gained through experiential or self-directed (informal) and/or non-credit courses and workshops (nonformal) learning, rather than through formal education (Thomas, 2000).  

E-learning has made a remarkable transition over the past decade. In spite of a lack of definitive, empirical research, there is growing practical evidence that use of information and communication technology (ICT) can provide advantages to the learning process that are not readily available in other ways.

There are two major institutions (i.e., contexts) in which preschool learning occurs for many children. The first is the family. The second is early learning and child care programs such as kindergarten, child care centres, nursery schools, preschools, family home child care arrangements and other types of family support and related programs. The objective of this review is to determine the current state of knowledge about the effects of these types of programs on early childhood learning and development, including cognitive, language and socioemotional development, and then to recommend directions for future Canadian research to expand this base of knowledge.

This work represents a literature review of the current state of simulation in adult education. The use of simulation and games in adult education has a considerable history. They have played a supporting role in the more objectivist approaches to knowledge that has pervaded adult education for the last two centuries. They do so by representing a systematic illustration of a universal truth within a discipline. The constructed simulation or game would then communicate that “correct” image directly to learners. This approach to learning has worked well in training paradigms where the goal of the educational experience has been the creation of a homogenous workforce with consistent and predictable levels of competency. In recent years, most of the changes in the use of simulation and games in these settings have involved an increase in fidelity and realism brought about by improvements in computer technology.