The e-learning portal of SOFAD (Société de formation à distance des commissions scolaires du Québec)
Administrators - Policies
Opening an administrator account
Once you have completed the required information to open an administrator account, SOFAD will process your request and verify the information provided.
We will inform you of our acceptance or refusal of this request within three business days.
If you are representing an institution located outside Canada, only online payment will be accepted.
Access periods
Once your institution has purchased an access code, it remains valid; there is no expiration date for the code until it is assigned to a student. Once the code has been assigned, the learner has a specific time period during which to access the eduSOFAD course. The exact time period is calculated according to the standard course requirements established by the ministère de l'Éducation, du Loisir et du Sport. If the student is registered for distance learning or through an on-site learning institution, this time period is considerably longer than the time limits imposed by school boards.
In a general education program, one hour of learning equals one week of access time, up to a maximum of 52 weeks. For example, the course The Human Reproductive System and the Perinatal Period requires 50 hours of learning. The learner would therefore have 50 weeks of access time as of the first visit to the course.
For a placement test, the access period is always 12 weeks.
Please note that learners may access the online course as often and as long as they like during the access period. However, the school board or learning centre may require the learner to complete the course in a shorter period (depending on the prescribed administrative or learning conditions).
Fees
The price of each course or service offered by eduSOFAD is calculated according to the number of units attached to it.
Generally, the institutional fee for access to a course (before taxes) is established as follows:
- One-unit course: $10
- Two-unit course: $20
- Three-unit course: $30
- Four-unit course: $40
- Courses of five units or more: $50
The rates for related services, such as placement tests, are determined according to the standard fees generally charged for these services in the school board network.
Individual fees for each course or service are calculated as the institutional fee plus 20%. If payment is made by mail or fax, there is an additional administrative fee of $3.
A 10% discount is given on the purchase of 40 or more access codes for an online course or service.
Taxes will be added to the course fees.
Payment and refund policy
All fees are non-refundable, unless the course you have selected is no longer offered.
Promotional policy
SOFAD has adopted a promotional policy for its online courses that will encourage their use and will establish a basis for carrying out research and collecting feedback on each course.
For a period of three months after a message has been sent to announce the publication of a new online course, an educational institution can purchase access codes at a substantial discount.
During this time, an educational institution can obtain a 50% discount on the regular institutional price of a batch of at least 20 access codes. It will also become automatically associated with the online course by appearing in the course credits.
Following the purchase of a batch of 20 or more access codes made directly through the eduSOFAD portal, a credit note for 50% of the invoice total will be issued. The buyer will then receive a form indicating the conditions for maintaining the status of the associate institution, namely that it will:
- name at least one instructor in the institution who accepts to be contacted concerning feedback and research on the use of the course;
- agree to the name of the institution appearing in the course credits, according to the terms determined by SOFAD;
- add a link to the course demo on the institution's Web site.