Ontario Extend: Engage, Explore and Empower Educators

Ontario Extend: Engage, Explore and Empower Educators

Ontario Extend is a capacity-building initiative, that was developed and piloted with the 10 publicly funded Northern Ontario colleges and universities. The project was designed and developed in the belief that the impact on learning should be the primary motivator for creating technology-enabled and online learning experiences. It is grounded in a framework presented in the Anatomy of 21st Century Educators as described by Simon Bates (2014), that focuses on 6 attributes: Teacher for Learning, Technologist, Curator, Collaborator, Scholar and Experimenter. The Domain of One’s Own, a key element of the project provides a way for educators to have a digital space that is entirely their own to experiment and to practice the key attributes that Bates identified.

Technology-enabled and online teaching require skills and knowledge in creating content, acquiring resources, facilitating learning experiences, and designing effective online assessments. As a foundational step to building capacity in these areas, educators need to extend their range of expertise.

Besides achieving mastery in their own discipline, educators need:

• An understanding and appreciation of what research has to say about how people learn.
• The ability to curate, develop, use, and share appropriate educational resources.
• Skill in discerning the possibilities—and limitations—of technology to support teaching and learning.
• Professional learning networks through collaborations with other disciplines.
• A scholarly approach to teaching.
• A willingness to experiment: to try, reflect, and learn from new approaches, pedagogies, and technologies to support learning (Bates, 2014).

These topics are covered in six modules which are grounded in the framework based on the Anatomy of 21st Century Educators (Bates, 2014). These modules have the following outcomes:

Teacher for Learning - Design effective learning activities and experiences that are grounded in research-based principles of learning

Technologist - Use technology tools effectively to address specific learning challenges.

Curator - Examine the process, value and the impact of collecting and combining existing resources when creating content.

Collaborator - Build PLNs to collaborate and share knowledge with colleagues within, across, and between disciplines.

Experimenter - Experiment with new approaches, pedagogies, and technologies to support learning.

Scholar - Create an action plan to examine key questions about improving student learning outcomes in a specific discipline area using your own course and teaching practice, informed by the research of others, to build your Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) plan.

The modules are designed to be sequential, with the knowledge and skills from one module supporting your exploration in the next. However, participants are also welcome to use each module on its own or as a combination of two or more. As the Ontario Extend program is openly-licensed, anyone is welcome to explore and engage in the modules as part of either a self-paced or facilitated learning experience. As a facilitated learning experience, Ontario Extend may be offered online, in a face-to-face workshop, or a mix of both. With all, participants are encouraged to explore the content, consider the resources, experience the activities, and reflect on their practice.

Accompanying the modules are the “Extend Studios.” The Extend Studios are where all the Extend participant action happens. Below are descriptions of the three different studios: The Daily Extend, The Activity Bank, And the Domains.

The Daily Extend Activities

The Daily Extend is a set of activities that help educators practice their media and networking skills while they explore new technologies or approaches to designing learning activities. They are invited to try the Daily Extends and to share their experiences, curations and creations via Twitter BY tweeting to @ontarioextend with the hashtag #oextend

Activity Bank

The Activity Bank is a place to see the kinds of things other people are doing with the Extend module activities. It’s also a place where educators can share what they have done with those activities. It is also a place where more activities can be added.  It is called a bank because anyone can put stuff in or take stuff out.

Domain of One’s Own

A Domain of One’s Own (DoOO) is a place on the Web that one personally manages and designs. From there, one can choose what they share and how they represent themselves online. A Domain is more than a blog or a website. It is an entire digital space that is controlled by the owner. The domain is used to create a personal portfolio that belongs completely to the domain owner and it is a way to truly be an open learner and educator.

The DoOO premise is different from most online activities that operate within infrastructure built by large companies or institutions (e.g., the Learning Management System, social media sites, Google Tools). While simple to use, these platforms often exchange convenience for personal information and flexibility. With Domain of One’s Own, the individual is in control. Digital identity and data ownership are at the core of this practice. It’s about creating a digital presence, learning how to use digital tools, exploring the possibilities of digital spaces, and defining an online identity. As an Ontario Extend participant, having a domain of one’s own is key to this experience.

The resources and activities focus on the skills, knowledge, and attributes required to extend and transform teaching and learning practices. They are a starting point, an activity-oriented set of challenges that are intended to stimulate further thought and collaboration. The Extend resources are openly licensed and available for all Ontario post-secondary institutions to adopt, adapt, reuse or remix as part of their own educator development initiatives.

This session will focus on the Ontario Extend framework and how it can be adapted to various teaching and learning context to encourage exploration of resources, engagement in learning activities and extending of skills to empower the creation of better learning experiences.

Reference

Bates, S. (2014). The Anatomy of a 21st Century Educator [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/EdPER_talks/the-anatomy-of-the-21st-century-e...