Sense of Irony or Perfect Timing: Examining the Research Supporting Proposed e-Learning Changes in Ontario

Only weeks before the 2019 annual meeting of the American Education Research Association (AERA) was held in Toronto, Ontario, the provincial government announced a major reform of education for that province entitled "Education that Works for You -- Modernizing Classrooms". From an e-learning perspective the proposal called for a centralization of e-learning, a graduation requirement of four elearning courses, and increasing the class size limit for e-learning courses to 35 students. The AERA call for submissions for the 2020 meeting issued a challenge for scholars to 'connect with organizational leaders to examine collaboratively continuing educational problems... [and] programmatically engaging with educational organizations.' This article accepts that challenge and describes a collaboration between scholars and a pan-Canadian organization to examine the research behind each of these proposed elearning changes. Based on that collaboration, the authors explore the existing system of e-learning in Ontario and highlight the concerning lack of details in many aspects of the proposal, as well as a lack of research to support the proposed actions