What is CHENINE?

Change, Engagement, and Innovation in Education: A Canadian Collaboratory (CHENINE) is a national, interdisciplinary Canadian Centre with global impact and reach. It inquires into, creates, and coordinates technological, pedagogical, and curriculum innovation in education. It is designed to promote all students' learning and engagement irrespective of their context or circumstances. CHENINE is an open-access public resource for educators and educational leaders in all provinces and territories at all levels and is an intellectually independent and transparent university-based entity. 

CHENINE is headquartered at the University of Ottawa, a bilingual institution located in the National Capital of Canada. As the home for the ARC Education Project, the University is associated with an international network of education systems that share the core values of equity, diversity and inclusion; values which undergird the mission of CHENINE.

The new CHENINE team has already made numerous prominent contributions to COVID-19 education discussions on CBC radio and CBC, CTV, Global, and Rogers television, as well as in The Globe and Mail, The National Post, The Washington Post, The Conversation, The London Times and The Star.

The 2020 world-wide COVID-19 pandemic exposed four startling realities for education:

1. We cannot do without teachers, physical universities, and schools. Schools provide care from qualified adults and, like universities, build community among young people, and they are places where accredited experts rather than well-meaning amateurs or impersonal machines are the best teachers for our children. Technology cannot and should not replace highly qualified teachers and professors.

2. Some technological resources and platforms can and do provide excellent enhancement for learning, but access to these resources is unequal across families and has also been variable, due to different levels of teacher interest and expertise with technology, throughout our schools, universities and communities.

3. The crisis of COVID-19 and the transition to distance learning has meant that there now will be practically no teacher or professor anywhere without basic competence in and familiarity with online or remote learning. We have the opportunity to resume formal schooling and university learning after COVID on a new, higher level of engagement and capacity.

4. The case and conditions for creating universal, equitable and inclusive access to technologically enhanced learning, engagement and innovation for all students, everywhere, as a basic human right, could not possibly be stronger than it is now.