Why Hāpara for Alberta schools?

Alberta learners and educators secure long term commitment

Hāpara has provided learning technologies to Alberta school divisions since 2011. Over these nine years, Alberta school divisions and classroom educators have shaped the development and feature sets of Hāpara to meet their needs. Over the past decade, Hāpara has become an international edtech company that supports learner equity and learning excellence. They have accomplished this in part by being careful listeners and directly engaging with Alberta school jurisdictions.

• 15% of Hāpara staff in North America are Alberta educators.
• 50% of Hāpara management are Canadian, including the CEO.
  33% are Alberta educators.

Helping to guide its edtech stack development, and creating thousands of hours of provincially shared learning activities, Alberta educators have impacted learning through the Hāpara Suite.

• 40 countries
• millions of student and teacher subscribers

Hāpara creates student experiences that promote equity

Alberta school jurisdictions use Hāpara to enable and deliver rich learning experiences with equity at the centre, where learners are seen and valued for who they are. With Hāpara, students have access to, and ownership of the tools that best support them as learners.

Over three years, more than 150 educators from the collaborating Alberta school divisions developed curriculum based learning units, lessons, resources and full online course textbooks.

• 58 Alberta curriculum core courses K-12; 9 FSL courses; 20 CTS 
• 544 Alberta curriculum units and lessons
• 545 digital literature and informational text learning resources
• 39 K-12 Alberta curriculum full course textbooks

The Edmonton Regional Learning Consortium (ERLC) and collaborating school divisions commit to keeping the content current and evergreen, accommodating new Alberta curriculum requirements as released. 

Any school jurisdiction is welcome to join the collaboration and benefit from the full work.

ERLC has partnered with Hāpara to provide free access to the Student Dashboard Digital Backpack for every student in the province this school year. This allows school jurisdictions a long term evaluation of the benefits of learner autonomy and self-management through technology.

Hāpara supports opportunity and equity with technology tools 

Selected Alberta educators from across the province created learning opportunities for students that encourage and engage higher-order thinking and creativity. This work resulted in fewer worksheets and more connected deeper learning experiences than any other options provincially.

Alberta learners feel seen

Built based on John Hattie’s research into visible learning, Alberta students using the Hāpara learning environment with made-for Alberta units and inquiry based projects, students feel included. Educators can tailor assignments and learning activities to groups and individual students as required. Designed with Alberta students, the Student Dashboard surfaces the individual student’s learning expectations and gives one-click access to learning activities and resources. Parents are able to support their children with visibility to learning expectations, due dates, announcements, grades, formative feedback and digital resources.

Alberta educators have visibility to student learning activity online with Hāpara Highlights.

The tailored assignments in Alberta’s curriculum units and lessons help learners feel seen on an individual level. Teachers can use Hāpara to differentiate tasks and instruction delivery for specific learner needs and interests to make learning relevant. With Hāpara  Workspace cards, individualized content can be shared as text, video, audio, presentations or any combination of those. Links can also be pushed out to specific learners or groups of learners.

Alberta learners are engaged and collaborative using the made-in-Alberta content

Challenging, relevant, real-world problems are embedded in the Alberta learning collections that ensure that students have the decision-making power to solve, engage and learn.

Project-based learning that emphasizes student voice and choice within a structured learning experience has the power to be a significant driver of equity in any classroom. For it to be effective, educators need tools to provide that structure. Otherwise, the inquiry or project runs the risk of being a one-off activity. 

Hāpara Workspace became the choice of the Alberta educators in the collaboration, enabling educators and/or learners to structure projects. Hāpara Workspace is an online space where students and their teacher come to work together. Teachers can personalize the learning expectations, students can participate in setting goals, and students can impact and add to the Workspace as they learn, discover, solve and build knowledge.

The key to project-based learning is the critique and revision process. When learners are developing their project and ideas, it’s important that they get input and feedback from an authentic audience to improve and iterate on their ideas. Hāpara students working together in pairs and groups can make group tasks and assignments visible through the Teacher Dashboard, Highlights activity tab and Workspace group assignments. With the Student Dashboard, students see their progress and manage their workflow.

Alberta learners gain autonomy, self-management and digital citizenship

A key requirement of the collaborating Alberta school jurisdictions years ago was to ensure that the student’s learning experience is structured, reducing distractions and anxiety for students and teachers and for parents or other family members, including older siblings who are helping learners at home. 

The Alberta version of the Hāpara Student Dashboard is a tool that supports learners in developing their autonomy by helping them organize, manage and make decisions about their workflows.

Alberta learners develop their best selves

At the heart of equity are learning experiences and educator support that promote opportunities for learners to develop into their best selves. Using technology intentionally and partnering with a seriously like-minded global edtech company, ERLC and the collaborating school jurisdictions are providing access and tools that facilitate equitable learning environments for students across Alberta.