 And we're recording, so Lindsay take it away. Perfect. Hi everyone. Welcome to today's session. I am so delighted that you can join me as I talk about Ontario Extend, an open program to enhance digital fluency for educators. Extend is a timely and relevant professional learning program for which we have seen participation increased by over 300% just this year when compared to the scene period from last year. My name is Lindsay. As Christina mentioned Lindsay Woodside and I work as a digital learning associate who leads the Ontario Extend Initiative and my co-presenter Lena Patterson who is the Senior Director of Programs and Stakeholder Relations was to join me today but she sends her regrets due to a scheduling conflict with a panel session that she's currently on. So I'm fine solo but rest assured you are in capable hands. Although we meet in a virtual platform today I would like to begin by acknowledging the Indigenous peoples of all the lands that we are on today and personally the traditional lands of the neutral Anishabe and the Sudanese peoples where I join you today. As a settler I'm grateful to live and work on this land. Please join me in acknowledging our shared responsibility to improve understanding of local Indigenous peoples and cultures. So during today's session I'm going to be presenting on the following pieces. So I'll start off here momentarily providing a brief introduction into EKF Ontario. So who are we and what do we do? I'll move into introducing the Ontario Extend Program. I'll provide a high-level overview of some of the main nuts and bolts of the Ontario Extend Program. I'll then move into providing you with some data and testimonials in Extend in Action which illustrates program uptake and value since it commenced and in particular highlight for you the increased engagement and uptake which I just spoke about that we have noted this year. Although I move into sharing with you an exciting recent global program adoption case study and provide you with some context details if you're interested in adopting and customizing this program for your own context. And we'll round off the session today hopefully providing a few minutes for question and answer. So again as Christina mentioned there at the beginning she has kindly agreed to drop some links to various websites and videos into the chat for me that I will be referencing. I just want to note that you can access all of these in OEG Connect on the session presentation page along with this slide deck. So you may or may not be aware but Ecampus Ontario is a Canadian non-profit government-funded consortium and our members are all of the 46 publicly assisted institutions in the province of Ontario so that consists of 24 colleges and 21 universities and we are all part of the SEME ecosystem. Our headquarters are located in Toronto Ontario and we are the centre of excellence in online and tech-enabled learning for all publicly assisted colleges and universities as I mentioned. And this week just to note we are also the hosts of the Eastern Time Zone for OE Global as well so just give a quick shout out to that. So moving along here we work in a space of digital fluency education with open principles and values throughout. One of the ways in which support Ontario educators and Christina is just going to drop the first link into the chat there is through the Ontario Extend Program. The Ontario Extend Program is a suite of professional learning resources that launched back in 2017 and this has really been a pivotal time for Extend and the importance of this program has been in its value as a holistic baseline for digital skills. Moving into a few more of the nuts and bolts of the program so as I mentioned launched in 2017 the program consists of six modules which take on average about four to six hours each to complete and upon the successful completion of each of the modules participants are able to apply for a digital open badge which demonstrates skills achievement for that particular module. And when all six modules are collected I'm going to show you a graph a graphic here in a moment when all six badges are collected participants can apply or are automatically awarded rather the empowered educator milestone badge. The program is self-directed self-paced and or it can be collaborative it's been offered through cohort style framework by many of our teaching and learning centres across the province. The program is openly licensed it's available in both English and French and we've seen a range of participants in terms of the profile of an Ontario Extend participant so anyone that wants to build up digital skills for teaching and learning so whether that be an instructional designer instructional technologist librarian you know frontline educator grad student the list goes on so here's a here's a graphic here which helps illustrate illustrate the program so the program has foundations and origins in Simon Bates's model for the 21st century educator and I'll just give you a quick sort of cold notes version here of the of the program modules so up on the top left there is the teacher for learning module this module is focused on smart principles for effective teaching and sort of roots one in their pedagogy below below that on the left hand side is our curator module this module is a really nice low stakes entry point to learning about open education resources creative comments and copyright and how to vet open education resources below that on the left the technologist module is focused on leveraging a design thinking approach to solving learner challenges we toggle over to the right the collaborator module is focused on building up professional learning networks across and between discipline areas below that one of my all-time favorite modules of really learn by doing and getting your hands dirty and has been leveraged extensively this year has been the experimenter module and this module is focused on leveraging all of the open technologies that the modules reference in terms of experimenting with technology in your classroom and then below that is the scholar module on the bottom right and this module is a reflective module that encourages one to focus and reflect on the scholarship of teaching and learning we're often asked you know where do I start we often recommend starting with the teacher for learning module as it grounds one in the pedagogy first before sort of you know embarking into the technology pieces but after the teacher for learning module the great thing about this program is it's a sort of a choose your own adventure and so these modules meet you where you are and so you pick you pick with what you start with next after the teacher for learning module and again you can see there in the middle when you achieve all six of those digital badges which can be shared on you know LinkedIn and social media profiles you're automatically awarded that empowered educator badge there in the middle just pausing there for any questions Christina if any questions have come up in the chat yet nothing yet issues okay perfect okay sorry okay perfect so let's move on to exploring extend in action so I'm going to provide you with some data and testimonials which help illustrate program engagement and uptake and I'm going to share with you the global adoption of the program in New Zealand as I mentioned at the beginning so how are our own Ontario institutions leveraging extend we recently set out to better understand how extend was being used at our provincial institutions and how it was being customized and adopted and this was done earlier this year and Christina is just going to drop a link into the chat there for the Ontario extend practice in research practice report this report again which was published on our website earlier this year was focused on finding out the ways in which the modules and resources are being used by colleges and universities on Ontario this was accomplished through a survey that was distributed and some follow-up interviews and the findings were we're interesting we determined at the time that 10 institutions reported their use of these materials for course curriculum professional learning opportunities and and professional learning recognition institutions cited oops sorry didn't go to the next screen there we go institutions cited materials being used as supplemental resources in in newsletters for faculty onboarding that complemented existing educator programming and recognizing one's involvement in professional development activities one of the greatest values of undertaking this report was being being able to confirm that extend with being customized to the local context of institutions which was really great to see I'm happy to report that at the beginning of 2020 as I just mentioned we noted uptake from 10 of our institutions I'm now happy to report that that is now at 20 so we've seen an additional 10 institutions adopt and customize this program just in the last you know 10 10 months since the beginning of beginning of the year so uptake to date what does that look like so 900 plus educators have participated in the program since its inception back in late 2017 and we've issued 450 digital badges so those badges that I showed you there on the previous screen and we have 40 empowered educators across the province you might be looking at those numbers and going I wonder why there's so many participants but not as many badges and and that's really due to the flexibility of the program again you can start stop or pause your learning journey whenever you like so we've seen many participants who have come in and dabbled in the program and are likely continuing or planning to continue to you know extend their extend their journey and continue on the journey and they can come back to it at their own at their own leisure just to share a quick testimonial with you you can see there on the screen so thanks to Ontario extend this was really powerful and no longer avoid technology based learning in my courses I was able to complete all six modules at my own pace and earn my empowered educator badge Ontario extend equals confidence and that was from Connie she just became an empowered educator a month ago here in Ontario from Fanshawe College all right so let's now take a closer look at some more recent uptake by way of some data visualization so we can see here on the left the the graph shows program site visitation through page views which you can see has been on a steady incline since post-secondary institutions closed in Ontario back in March 2020 as evidenced by that that darker top purple line when compared to the same period in 2019 as seen in the the lighter purple line there on on the bottom so again that's directly as a result of you know schools closing and the program importance you know on a steady incline in addition to in addition to the sorry the increased site traffic has also been supported by the successful piloting on Ontario of a series of facilitated deliveries of this program at institutions since April 2020 and so what I mean by that is it's the increase is twofold it's due to likely due to post-secondary education's closing and then a facilitated approach that we've used since April 2020 in assisting teaching and learning centres across the province with the deployment of various Ontario extend modules over to the world map on the right hand side site visitation since January 2020 has been you know quite geographically dispersed outside of Canada obviously represented there in the dark purple this data speaks to the importance of this program as I mentioned before in its value as a holistic baseline for digital skills but also confirms that educators are seeking this type of professional development and learning if you look closely to the map on the right you'll note that New Zealand is shaded in light purple and I'm really excited to share with you how extend ended up extending itself pun intended to the opposite side of the world from Canada so let's take the look at our case study okay so back in late 2019 our friends at a TAGA Polytechnic which is a public tertiary education institution in New Zealand reached out to us after hearing about extend at an international open symposium with the intent to customize the extend program resources to pilot for their educators to enable and empower them to evidence and develop their practice before rolling it out nationally across across other polytechnics in New Zealand and internationally via the OERU network and partner institutions throughout the developing world so in early 2020 we connect connected with Claire Good who is a learning and teaching specialist at Otaga Polytechnic and she with collaborating with the New Zealand Center for Open Education Practice which is also supported by Wayne McIntosh director of OER foundation of the OER foundation to make this a possibility so it's important here as you're sort of looking at the screen and seeing the steps that Otaga Polytechnic undertook to make this a reality it's important to note that Otaga did most of the heavy lifting while we were cheerleading them on so they kept to the spirit of the open license of the program but the content was developed by them in their wiki educator or in wiki educator and published in wordpress thus you know openly available to others for adaptation and for scaling they used the Moodle OER Moodle as a launch pad for learners and Claire amended some of the language in the modules so that they were appropriate to geographical cultural geographical and cultural references you can see there on the right hand side on the graphic with the badges she also adapted the badges to give them a bit of a different look and feel for the New Zealand context so they were able to to roll out the program through a pilot and they saw over 25 educators participate in that pilot nine of them received badges and through a series of progress and final updates that they shared with us they noted that they didn't tend to move to roll out the program nationally across New Zealand and again through the OERU network and so that's been really great to hear about their progress and success in adopting and adapting the program to their context for their educators again just to share a quick testimonial here's Phil Phil Hancock from the Institute of Sport Exercise and Health at Otaga overall I can highly recommend the extended courses they're practically applicable relevant and simple to work through at your own pace again that theme theme comes up again right at your own pace I never stopped learning with teaching and learning and this was a great personal development opportunity so as our program resonated with you today and perhaps you're an educator or working on behalf of the teaching and learning center and you're interested in customizing this program content for educators at your institution or perhaps embarking on on one of the modules yourself or if you're looking to learn more about engagement strategies for uptake I encourage you to to reach out to us and and connect with me in that regard and it looks like I have a couple minutes there for questions perfect you're doing really good in time any questions for Lindsay I'll drop my email into the chat as well fantastic I think there's a question about the potential for extend for k-12 oh thank you for catching that yeah that's that's a great question so we've been working with the Ontario school system here to provide extend materials to k-12 educators here in Ontario and so that work is being done by a committee currently undertaking undertaking some of the adaption of those resources I think they were looking at editing the Ontario context of you know dropping that into an Ontario wide LMS but apart from that being Ontario specific because the program is openly licensed if you wish to adapt and roll those out for your own context you're free to do that certainly though if you'd like to connect with me to chat about that further I'd be happy to we do know that we we have seen appreciation of these program modules at the k-12 level of course they would need some customizing and tweaking because you know some of the references do do reference put the post-secondary sector but again in the spirit of openness they are available to adapt and adopt great that's good to know I may be following up with you um any further questions for Lindsay