A different kind of online school
Built by educators who believe that how a student learns matters as much as what they learn — and that the future belongs to people who can think, not just recall.
Why OOS exists
Ontario Online Schools was founded in 2019 — the same year the Ontario government mandated that every student in the province would need to earn online credits as a condition of graduation. Most schools treated that mandate as a logistical problem to solve. We saw it as a design challenge.
The honest criticism of online education has always been the same: large classes, shallow assessment, and students who feel disconnected from their teachers and their own learning. We agreed with every word of that critique. So instead of replicating what already existed, we built something different from the ground up.
“The reality of today is we need to be embracing technology for good. And when it comes to online opportunities for our students, I think we should all agree: we want to make sure that they have every opportunity to put their best foot forward.”
— Lisa Thompson, Former Ontario Education Minister
We took the minister's challenge seriously. OOS was designed to do what online schools rarely do: replicate the best of the classroom — the conversation, the relationship between student and teacher, the genuine back-and-forth of learning — while taking full advantage of what technology makes possible.
Inquiry-based learning — and why it changes everything
Every course at OOS is built on a single foundational idea: students learn best when they are doing, questioning, and discovering — not when they are passively receiving information and reproducing it on command.
This is what inquiry-based learning means in practice. Instead of presenting students with facts to memorize and formulas to apply, we present them with real problems to investigate. Students form their own questions, gather evidence, construct understanding, and demonstrate what they know by applying it — not by reciting it.
This is not a soft alternative to rigorous education. It is a more demanding form of it. A student who can recall an answer has learned something. A student who can use what they know to navigate an unfamiliar problem has developed something that will serve them for the rest of their lives.
- Question
Learning begins with a genuine question — one the student cares about and the curriculum is designed to help them answer. The question drives everything that follows.
- Investigate
Students gather information, explore concepts, and test ideas. Their teacher is active throughout — guiding, prompting, and pushing their thinking — not waiting at the end to mark a final product.
- Construct
Students build their own understanding through the work they produce. Assignments, activities, and projects are designed to require original thinking — not the retrieval of pre-packaged answers.
- Demonstrate
Each course concludes with a culminating activity — a project or applied task that requires the student to show what they can do with what they have learned. There are no final exams. The work is the evidence.
- Reflect
Throughout the course, students reflect on their own learning in conversation with their teacher. These check-ins are not tests — they are the ongoing dialogue that makes education real.
Why inquiry-based learning is our answer to AI
The arrival of generative AI has exposed a structural weakness in conventional education: if the goal is to produce the right answer, and a machine can produce the right answer instantly, then the conventional model has a problem it cannot solve from within.
OOS does not have that problem — because we never built our courses around the production of right answers. We built them around the development of the thinker.
An AI can write an essay. It cannot hold a genuine conversation with a teacher about the ideas in that essay, demonstrate understanding under questioning, or produce a culminating activity that reflects a student's individual journey through the material. Our assessment model is built on exactly those things.
Three things AI cannot do for a student at OOS
- Participate in a check-in.
At key milestones in every course, your teacher has a direct conversation with you about your learning. That conversation is the evidence. No proxy can replicate it.
- Complete a culminating activity authentically.
Our culminating activities are designed to reflect the student's individual inquiry — the questions they asked, the path they took, the connections they made. A generated output has none of that.
- Develop the skills the curriculum is designed to build.
Critical thinking, communication, and the ability to apply knowledge to new problems are not things AI gives you. They are things that only come from doing the work yourself — which is precisely what our model demands.
We are not anti-technology. Students at OOS are welcome to use AI tools as learning aids — to explore ideas, generate practice questions, or clarify concepts they are working through. What we require is that the thinking, the work, and the demonstrated understanding are genuinely the student's own. In an inquiry-based model, that is not a restriction. It is the entire point.
How we know a student has learned
OOS follows Ontario's Growing Success framework — the same assessment philosophy used across Ontario's public school system. But we apply it in a way that is uniquely suited to deep, inquiry-based learning.
A student's final grade is never determined by a single event. It is the result of a teacher's informed professional judgment, built from multiple forms of evidence gathered across the course:
Assignments, projects, and the culminating activity — the tangible outputs of a student's inquiry throughout the course.
How a student engages with the material, approaches problems, and develops their thinking across the course — not just at the end.
Structured check-ins give teachers direct evidence of understanding — and give students a chance to articulate, clarify, and deepen their own thinking.
Your teacher draws on all three sources of evidence to determine a grade that reflects your genuine achievement — not a snapshot performance on a single test.
The people behind your education
Every course at OOS is delivered by a professional Ontario-certified teacher. Not a tutor. Not an automated system. A qualified educator who has demonstrated mastery of their subject, genuine familiarity with online learning, and a commitment to the kind of authentic, inclusive education that actually prepares students for what comes next.
We call our teachers “education facilitators” — not because the word sounds modern, but because it is accurate. In an inquiry-based model, the teacher's role is not to be the keeper of knowledge. It is to facilitate the process by which students construct their own understanding. That requires a different kind of skill — and a different kind of patience — than standing in front of a class and delivering content.
Our facilitators are carefully selected for exactly these qualities. Class sizes are kept deliberately small so that every student has a real relationship with their teacher — not a ticket number in a queue.
When a teacher carries fewer students, they can read more of your work, have more meaningful conversations with you, and make assessment decisions based on a genuine understanding of how you think. That is not a selling point. It is the structural condition that makes inquiry-based learning possible online.
Technology that supports learning — not replaces it
OOS courses are delivered through Moodle — the learning management system used by universities and colleges across Ontario and around the world. Students who learn through Moodle are already familiar with the platform they are likely to encounter throughout their postsecondary education and careers.
We designed our courses to be accessible from any device — desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone — with most content available for offline use as well. The platform works on both iOS and Android. The technology adapts to the student, not the other way around.
Courses run in any modern browser and are optimized for mobile. Offline access is available for most materials.
Moodle messaging connects you directly with your teacher. Responses within one to two business days, always.
No live classes. No mandatory meeting times. You work on your own schedule, within your agreed course window.
Ready to earn accredited Ontario credits?
Browse our full catalogue of Ministry-approved courses — Grades 9 to 12.