Badges

Extend Badges

The successful completion of the Extend activities, which demonstrate achievement of the outcomes for each of the program modules, is recognized with six digital badges. In the context of Ontario Extend, educators attain badges as evidence of successfully achieving learning outcomes and completing the program. Through the successful completion of all six modules, participants receive their capstone Empowered Educator badge, to congratulate and celebrate your determination to invest in your own personal and professional development.

How Do I Apply for a Badge?

  1. You must complete all the activities contained in any given module.
  2. Check that you have indeed completed all of the required activities by reviewing the Module Checklist, found at the “end” of each online module.
  3. Click on the “Apply now for your ________ Badge” link provided at the bottom of each module checklist page and you will be transported to the eCampusOntario page on the CanCred Factory displaying the badge and its description.
  4. Complete the form to provide the information and evidence needed to be issued the badge.
  5. Your badge application will be reviewed by the Ontario Extend program team. If you have supplied all of the evidence, you will receive an email awarding you the badge!
  6. In this email, you will be prompted to “Get Your Badge” – click on this and you will be taken to the eCampusOntario Open Badge Passport. The Passport is the place to accept, store, share and display your badges. If this is your first-time using Passport, you will be asked to create an account.
  7. Log in and accept your badge! You can now do whatever you wish with your badge – store it in eCampusOntario Open Badge Passport, share it on social media, display it on your blog or in an online portfolio, resume or other application.

Remember, if you complete all six modules and receive all six badges, you will automatically be issued an Empowered Educator Milestone Badge acknowledging this tremendous accomplishment!

This milestone represents over 35 hours of dedicated effort across six areas of focus in the Ontario Extend program. This extender has submitted evidence to demonstrate excellence as a teacher for learning, a curator, an experimenter, a technologist, a collaborator and a scholar. This evidence has been evaluated against the learning outcomes of the program outlined below.

Module Learning Outcomes

Recipients of the Teacher for Learning badge will have explored how we learn and what we can do to ensure learning environments are effective. They have considered strategies for designing significant learning experiences that are grounded in and informed by research principles that foster student learning in specific contexts.

Criteria Required for Badge Assessment – I have:

  • Identified a concept that is often misunderstood in my discipline and created an analogy to help make sense of it.
  • Created a concept map of a syllabus for a course I teach.
  • Practiced my note taking skills.
  • Brainstormed a list of “What’s in it for me?” from a student perspective.
  • Identified a concept in my discipline that is like driving a car and specified the component skills that are required to master this concept of skill.
  • Found a “nugget” and made it as meaningful as possible.
  • Conveyed a metaphor for teaching and learning.
  • Reflected on the module experience.

Recipients of the Ontario Extend Technologist badge have demonstrated the ability to select, use, and integrate technologies in a way that supports, facilitates, and enriches learning experiences. 

Criteria Required for Badge Assessment – I have:

  • Designed and developed an empathy map.
  • Identified a learner challenge.
  • Used the SECTIONS model to evaluate a tool.
  • Identified and explained the technology I selected.
  • Developed and refined a prototype of my technology-enabled learning activity or resource.
  • Shared my technology enabled activity or resource.
  • Reflected on the module experience.

    Recipients of the Ontario Extend Scholar badge have examined how they can use their classroom and courses as a research lab to explore how they might improve their teaching practice and positively affect student outcomes and their satisfaction with the overall learning experience in their course. They have considered research about teaching and learning within their discipline and reflected on a process to implement a research plan. 

    Criteria Required for Badge Assessment – I have:

    • Identified three key characteristics of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) that resonate with my professional experience and practice.
    • Selected a few statements that would motivate me to become more engaged in SoTL activities.
    • Further refined my SoTL plan.
    • Designed a SoTL plan for one of my courses.
    • Updated my SoTL research plan document with a dissemination strategy for making public the key findings of my research study.
    • Shared my SoTL research plan.
    • Reflected on the module experience.

      Recipients of the Ontario Extend Curator badge have explored ways to curate from the learners’ perspective to create engaging, interactive, and open course materials. They are versed in Creative Commons and Copyright and have explored strategies to search for, find, and evaluate Open Education Resources (OER).

      Criteria Required for Badge Assessment – I have:

      • Located and shared an openly licensed image and provided an explanation for how it was discovered.
      • Explored repositories to curate content and curated three (or more) OER to support learners’ understanding of an element or concept for a course.
      • Demonstrated my newly minted OER curation skills.
      • Used the CRAAP test to evaluate curated OER and reflected on how to use OER in discipline specific ways.
      • Reflected on the module experience.

      Recipients of the Ontario Extend Experimenter badge have completed a series of challenges inviting them to experiment. They have been curious and creative as they explored and reflected on new approaches to designing learning experiences and have extended their skills related to online and technology-enabled   learning.

      Criteria Required for Badge Assessment – I have:

      • Completed three experimenter activities, with at least one of the activities done using a tablet or smartphone.
      • Summarized my experimenter activities in a detailed written reflection and a short explainer video.
      • Reflected on the module experience.

        Recipients of the Ontario Extend Collaborator badge will have explored tools for online collaborations and ways to create and extend professional and personal learning networks (PLNs) through collaborations within, across, and between disciplines.

        Criteria Required for Badge Assessment- I have:

        • Created a Twitter account and explored how to extend my Personal/Professional Learning Network (PLN) by engaging with others.
        • Created and shared the collaboration attributes of one recent project, represented as an image of a collaborative dining table.
        • Thoughtfully expressed why it would be important to nurture my PLN and identified specific activities I could engage in to cultivate and expand my PLN.
        • Mapped my PLN as a diagram.
        • Reflected on the module experience.