While no one says Internet tutoring will be the Mounties’ salvation, it is seen as one way of ingraining more police professionalism. A pilot e-learning program ran for the past year, started by former commissioner William Elliott, a career Ottawa bureaucrat.
The new, expanded program would entrench the Internet leadership courses and sharpen their focus on breaking with the past. “Developing an Agenda for Change” and “Mobilizing for Change” are the names some of the other prospective courses.
The hope is that rising officers will learn these leadership skills at their computers, while posted in detachments across the country.
One obvious advantage of Internet learning is that it eliminates the need for expensive travel and sabbaticals. But the courses are not intended to replace other police training or even be all that in-depth.
“Web-based courses are just one piece of a much larger approach to sustainable leadership development,” said Sergeant Julie Gagnon, a Mountie spokeswoman. The consulting contract envisions Mounties taking up to eight distance-learning courses in a year-long curriculum, each being “no more than 15 hours of applied time.”
For the rest of the article, go to RCMP banks on e-learning to instill better habits among officers
