Education Without A Distance: Networked Learning Paul Bouchard Bouchard, P. (2013). Education without a distahce: Networked learning in Nesbit, T. et al (eds). Building on critical traditions in adult education. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing Inc. For many years, distance education has appeared a natural way to bridge the impossibly large spaces that isolate Canada's various communities, and indeed the country has developed a strong profile of experimental educational activities designed to accommodate the vastness of its landscape. Some examples are the Université de Montréal, which was created in 1878 as a satellite campus of Québec City's Université Laval. CBC's National Radio Farm Forum was a pioneering venture from 1941 to 1965, starting as a kind of radio agricultural extension service and blooming into a community service with the distribution of weekly printed materials and mail-in feedback sheets (Beattie, 1999). The National Film Board of Canada, from 1939 with its crew of travelling projectionist-animateurs, , has been a laboratory for creation, education and dissemination across the nation (NFB, 2012). Moses Coady, in the 1930's, founded a movement of local co-operative learning circles that was based on the principle of "bringing the school to the people". Athabasca University was founded in 1970 primarily as a distance education degree-conferring institution, and became the first in North America to offer an Ed. D. in distance education. One particularly visionary innovation since 2007, the National Research Council of Canada, in collaboration with Athabasca, U. Manitoba and U. PEI, has been