About Us

Overview

The Ontario Extend Program is a professional learning program designed for educators. Extend is grounded in the belief that digital fluency is a process, not a product, and that learning to teach effectively with technology requires an experiential learning approach. The Extend resources are intended to be a starting point, an activity-oriented set of challenges to stimulate further thought and collaboration.

These resources are freely available through a Creative Commons license for adoption and customization and a French version of Extend is publicly available.  Educators, instructional designers, educational technologists, librarians and grad students are just some of the professionals who engage in Ontario Extend.

To learn more about the benefits of Ontario Extend for higher ed professionals read “5 Things You Should Know About Professional Development with Ontario Extend” here: https://www.ecampusontario.ca/5-things-you-should-know-about-professional-development-with-ontario-extend/ and watch the video ” Join us for the Ontario Extend Program”

Background

The Extend resources were originally created for the Northern Capacity Building project, led by Northern College, an initiative among the ten publicly funded Northern Ontario post-secondary institutions. The project focused on designing a collaborative approach to knowledge building, skill development, and resource sharing to support the technology-enabled learning initiatives of the institutions. The resources were piloted with a group of 30 participants from the 10 Northern Colleges and Universities during the Extend Institute, in August 2017.

After the Institute, the Extend program was made freely available on the Internet and educators were encouraged to use the materials for self-paced learning and to complete the Daily Extend activities and to share their work via Twitter by including @ontarioextend and the hashtag #oextend in their Tweet.

From January to May of 2019 a facilitated version of the six modules was offered to educators as a “medium sized Open Online Course” (mOOC) via the support and communication tools of the edX platform hosted by EDUlib.

As of spring 2020, the modules have been updated and refreshed. Participants are encouraged to complete the modules and receive badges at their convenience through self-instruction or to organize an Extend cohort at their institution and complete the modules using a collaborative facilitation approach.

All of the resources are openly licensed (CC BY-NC-SA) and available for all Ontario post-secondary institutions to adapt, reuse and remix.  Unless otherwise noted, the drawings in the Modules are done by Giulia Forsythe and shared under a CC0 License.   

eCampusOntario

eCampusOntario.ca is the primary face of the Ontario Online Learning Consortium (OOLC), a not-for-profit corporation whose membership is composed of all publicly-funded colleges and universities in Ontario. The OOLC is governed by a Board of Directors with leadership from two Board Chairs. Operations are headed by a CEO. Funding for eCampusOntario comes from the Government of Ontario.