This August, the CCDMD (Collegial Centre for Educational Materials Development) will celebrate its founding 20 years earlier. This column offers a short overview of the organization’s contributions to the CEGEP network in the form of teaching materials since 1993.
Short Overview of a Large Contribution
20 years already! It was in August 1993 that the Collegial Centre for Educational Materials Development (CCDMD) was first created, when the administration of the teaching materials development service, a division of the Ministry of Education, was entrusted to Collège de Maisonneuve.
And what a road we’ve travelled since then!
For two decades, it has been the CCDMD’s mandate to provide the teaching staff and students in all the study programs in Québec’s college network with quality teaching materials.
The organization offers the entire network a truly unique educational legacy. As of today, the CCDMD catalogue offers over 270 products, including 125 textbooks, 90 websites, and 50 software programs. It also provides access to thousands of different resources: interactive exercises, PDF documents, video clips, animations, and photographs. Since 2005, when the Canada-Québec Agreement on Minority Language and Second-Language Instruction came into effect, some of these materials have also been available in English.
From floppy disks to CDs to DVDs and now the web, the CCDMD has changed its production methods several times over the last 20 years, but the goal has always been to offer users products that are perfectly suited to our constantly changing technological realities. SECRA, for example, a software program that simulates communications in a helping relationship, evolved from a text format (1992) to a multimedia program (1997) to a website (2013). And since Fall 2012, several CCDMD textbooks previously available only in hard copy have been offered in digital format with interactive aspects. Last year the CCDMD also launched its own online store to make it easier to purchase software and digital textbooks.
A Team Effort
It is an enormous challenge to produce quality teaching materials that reflect constantly advancing pedagogical practices and keep up with the vagarities of endless technological revolution, but that is exactly what the members of the CCDMD’s qualified, dynamic, and dedicated team have been doing for 20 years. The many awards earned since 1993 confirm the team’s thirst for excellence: no fewer than 26 CCDMD products have received awards or honourable mentions at the Concours des prix du ministre, not to mention several other products that earned recognition at the Octas and the Mérites du français, in several different categories!
The composition of our expert team has undergone many changes since the founding of the CCDMD. In the beginning, there were just ten on the team, but in January 2013, the CCDMD welcomed its twenty-first member to the staff. Only one of the 21 was on the original team in 1993, and three-quarters of the CCDMD project managers have been on board for less than ten years.
We also need to acknowledge the invaluable contributions of the people who poured their hearts into the creation of all these educational resources: hundreds of professors from the CEGEP network who have authored CCDMD materials over the years. Through the projects they submitted to the CCDMD selection committee and their cooperation as content specialists, these professors put their students’ success first by participating in the production of the incredible array of resources the CCDMD offers today.
Finally, we want to salute the valuable input of the CEGEP network’s many partners, whose involvement and conviction have supported the publication of and access to the CCDMD materials produced by and for the CEGEP network.
Thank you, everyone!
Coming Events in 2013
Of course 2013 will be a memorable year for the CCDMD. Several activities are planned to mark the occasion, including a questionnaire on the new web version of Netquiz that explores the first 20 years of the CCDMD. Events are also being organized so the CCDMD’s partners, contributors, and authors can get together with the team to celebrate.
Have a great 2013, and many happy returns to the CCDMD!
© Camila Patino, participant in the Intercollegial Photo Contest 2011 2012, World of Images.
It’s not often I get to do an activity uncertain whether I am doing so as a teacher or an editor at Profweb, but this is my current dilemma. As a teacher I have had the honour of working with many of the CCDMD’s excellent resources including NetQuiz, A Listening Companion, The World of Images and CEPO. Without fail, they’ve livened up my classes in an original and effective manner, making the English language come alive for my students. As a Profweb editor I’ve seen many more original resources that I couldn’t use in my classroom, but I admired none the less. Problem-based learning for Physics, Muscular Development, Viaje al Pasado (by my colleague at Vieux Montréal Matilde) and the amazing Sonic Truths. Congratulations to the amazing, dynamic and above all warm and friendly gang at CCDMD. May you all have at least twenty more good ones!