The Living Classroom is a partnership model that integrates education into a long-term care or retirement home to support workforce development. Students, faculty, and those living, visiting and working in the home engage in a culture of shared learning. Personal Support Worker education is one of many Living Classroom experiences. Learn more on the Living Classroom website.
Resources
Living Classroom Implementation Guide
The Implementation Guide provides information and tools for long-term care (LTC) homes and post-secondary educators (e.g., community colleges) that have an interest in collaborating to create shared learning environments for Personal Support Worker (PSW) education and workforce development.
The authors and contributors to this guide hope that other post-secondary educators and LTC organizations will be inspired to become part of this new innovative, educational, and workforce development strategy. This model extends the capacity of current approaches to post-secondary education and placement relationships by increasing options for collaborative work, in order to meet the growing and changing workforce needs.
Living Classroom Readiness Checklist
If your long-term care home is interested in collaborating with a college to build your own Living Classroom, the Living Classroom Readiness Checklist will help you reflect on a variety of factors that can contribute to a successful implementation. The purpose of completing the Readiness Checklist is to support planning and decision-making.
The Readiness Checklist includes 19 questions, grouped under the following categories:
- Leadership Support
- Human Resources to Support Teaching and Learning
- Quality Assurance and Change Management
- Organizational Culture
- Critical Mass and Diversity of Services
- Physical Infrastructure
- Partnerships
Living Classroom Infographic
Learn about the foundations of a successful Living Classroom, and the benefits for students, educators, team members, residents and families.
Webinar: Is Your Long-Term Care Home Ready to Build a Living Classroom?
The objectives of this webinar are to:
• Understand the benefits of the Living Classroom model,
• Learn about the 10 essential building blocks of a successful Living Classroom, and
• Know how to use the Living Classroom Readiness Checklist, a self-assessment tool for LTC homes to answer the question, “Is your LTC home ready to build a Living Classroom?”
This webinar was offered by the Ontario CLRI hosted at the RIA was presented on February 27, 2019.
Video:
Benefits of a Living Classroom
The video includes interviews with students, faculty, long-term care home team members, residents, family and administrators at three different Living Classroom locations: Waterloo, Hamilton and Ottawa. Participants speak to the many benefits of the Living Classroom as well as the importance of partnerships between post-secondary educators and long-term care homes.
The Living Classroom partnership model was first implemented in Ontario through a partnership with Conestoga College, the Schlegel-UW Research Institute for Aging (RIA) and Schlegel Villages.
