The Canadian Initiative for Distance Education Research (CIDER) is a research initiative of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL) and Centre for Distance Education (CDE), Canada's largest graduate and professional distance education programming provider, at Athabasca University, Canada's Open University.

CIDER sponsors a variety of professional development activities designed to increase the quantity and quality of distance education research. CIDER's professional development scope is broad, ranging from learning and teaching application, issues of finance and access, the strategic use of technology in distance education settings, and other factors that influence distance education in Canada.

The CIDER Sessions are an online, open and free seminar series through which researchers or research groups can present their work to a broad audience of fellow researchers, practitioners, and students from across Canada and around the world. Sessions are typically held monthly, on Wednesdays at 11am to noon Mountain time.

As our season develops, we invite researchers working in distance, distributed, online, or blended education. If you have recent research for our CIDER audience, contact Dan Wilton with a brief description of your research topic and approximate date when it will be available for presentation. A number of spots may be available for students nearing completion of their dissertation or thesis. International presenters are welcome; all sessions are held in English.

CIDER was founded due to concerns that distance education research has not been influential, useful, or well-funded. Most solutions to these problems focus on eliminating the dichotomy between research and practice. This solution is an approach to educational inquiry referred to as design based research.

Design based researchers—collaborative groups that typically include teachers, researchers, policy-makers, and others—design and test interventions or solutions to problems in everyday practice. We think that a design-based research program could provide a solution to the set of problems listed earlier: When the impetus for research is practical problems, and when practitioners and researchers collaborate on solutions, the outcomes are useful and influential. In turn, policy makers will be willing to fund research that is clearly useful and influential. We argue, moreover, that this approach to inquiry, which encourages multiple and varied methodologies and that can be applied to any educational intervention, provides a focus that guides and integrates the distance education research community.