{"id":4492,"date":"2015-02-25T14:19:18","date_gmt":"2015-02-25T19:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/2015\/blog-state-e-learning-ontario\/"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:15:21","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:15:21","slug":"blog-the-state-of-e-learning-in-ontario","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2015\/blog-the-state-of-e-learning-in-ontario\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: The state of e-Learning in Ontario"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dragana Polovina-Vukovic, EDC Assistant Director (Acting) <\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, a few members of the EDC team travelled to Toronto for the 2015 Chang School Talks on e-Learning<\/a>, a mini-conference organized by Ryerson\u2019s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and the Ontario Universities\u2019 Council on e-Learning\u2019s (OUCEL<\/a>) annual meeting. While the Chang School Talks were slightly disappointing (more about the disappointment in one of the next posts), the OUCEL meeting was (as always) informative and marked by a meaningful discussion with colleagues across the province.<\/p>\n

The OUCEL gathers representatives from e-Learning units across all Ontario universities, and it is committed to a scholarly approach towards e-learning in relation to teaching, research, and service. Attending annual meetings and OUCEL\u2019s summer institute are always great ways to learn about new projects that our colleagues and peers are engaged with.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, this year we spent lots of time talking about Ontario Online<\/a>, the Government of Ontario\u2019s initiative to establish and expand online learning opportunities for students across the province and provide an opportunity for universities and colleges to share their resources and expertise in online teaching and learning. The second round of Ministry funding has just been announced, and Carleton did very well<\/a> with eight projects that received funding. Only Queen\u2019s University and the University of Toronto did better than Carleton, obtaining funding for twenty and nine projects respectively.<\/p>\n

An issue\u00a0with this round of proposals, according to the discussion at the meeting, was the inequality in the number of successful projects per institution, with some institutions (Trent University, for example) not getting any of their proposed projects funded, and others (Queen\u2019s, for example) becoming Ontario\u2019s Athabasca in their online presence for courses and programs.<\/p>\n

The Ontario Online representative explained that the quality of proposed online projects was the main criterion used in the review process, but she also noted that sometimes there were really slight differences between those that were selected and those that fell below the \u2018awarding line.\u2019 Thus one needs to wonder whether the blind peer-review process would better serve both the Ontario Online initiative and the Ontario post-secondary community in general. In addition, as noted by the representative from the University of Windsor, if we want to build a province-wide capacity of institutions that offer blended and online courses and programs, maybe in the next round (with a new call for proposals planned for fall 2015), in cases where there is a slight difference between two proposals regarding their quality, funds might be streamlined toward smaller institutions that have not had any luck in this competition so far. Whatever approach Ontario Online takes in the future, it would be important to ensure that we are not in a situation where only a handful of big universities dominate the field of online learning, with smaller institutions pushed aside.<\/p>\n

Part of the OUCEL meeting was devoted to updates on new projects from each institution, and not surprisingly, with the increased need to develop students\u2019 critical thinking skills in all types of classrooms (face-to-face, blended, and online), some of them are piloting, or fully implementing, the Peer Scholar tool<\/a>, originally developed by Professor Steve Joordens, a 3M National Teaching Fellow from the University of Toronto, and currently owned by Pearson Education. The tool allows students to submit their written assignments (text or images), and to use grading rubrics<\/a> to evaluate their peers’ work, provide constructive feedback, and then reflect on their own work as compared to their peers\u2019. As Harvard\u2019s professors Steven Komarov and Krzysztof Gajos (2014)<\/a> remind us, peer assessment helps students develop their skills in \u201ccritical enquiry, reflection, and \u2018learning to learn,\u2019\u201d as well as \u201cvaluable workplace skills such as the ability to collaborate and the ability to evaluate the work of other professionals\u201d (p.1). Our own cuLearn<\/a> has a workshop tool, with similar capabilities for peer assessment and peer feedback, so if you are interested in exploring and implementing it in your course, please contact the EDC<\/a> and we will show you how it works.<\/p>\n

In addition, many Ontario universities are piloting online exam proctoring tools, such as Respondus Monitor<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Proctor U<\/a>. These tools allow distance students and students enrolled in online courses to take a proctored exam online from anywhere, with the only requirements being that they must have a reliable high speed Internet connection and a web camera. Via their web camera, students connect to their proctor and take the exam online. The whole exam is recorded, and these recordings, together with warnings from proctors, are shared with course instructors. So far results at universities who tried this method are positive, even though an open question remains about how this process can be scaled if all students come online during, let\u2019s say, final exams. We are proud to tell you that our CUOL<\/a> office is piloting online exam proctoring and that some of Carleton\u2019s students have already had the opportunity to take exams in this fashion. If you are interested in exploring this tool, please contact our team at cuolexams@carleton.ca<\/a>. Other activities at different Ontario universities include projects on active learning spaces<\/a> and programming for TAs and instructors who teach in blended and online environments. It is good to know that many of them, when planning their professional development programs, draw upon Carleton\u2019s cuOpen<\/a> resources, which the EDC and CUOL teams created last year and offered to anyone interested in using it, re-using it, and adapting it to suit their own needs.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, I am happy to report that Carleton\u2019s Teaching and Learning Services do very well compared to our counterparts at other institutions. While we can envy universities who have four or even five instructional designer positions or three or more educational developer positions as part of their base budgets, we should be proud of our EDC, CUOL and IMS teams, which produced comparable results and are always enthusiastic about exploring and implementing new innovative learning tools and methods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dragana Polovina-Vukovic, EDC Assistant Director (Acting) Last week, a few members of the EDC team travelled to Toronto for the 2015 Chang School Talks on e-Learning, a mini-conference organized by Ryerson\u2019s G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education, and the Ontario Universities\u2019 Council on e-Learning\u2019s (OUCEL) annual meeting. While the Chang School Talks were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nBlog: The state of e-Learning in Ontario - Teaching and Learning Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By Dragana Polovina-Vukovic, EDC Assistant Director (Acting) Last week, a few members of the EDC team travelled to Toronto for the 2015 Chang School Talks\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2015\/blog-the-state-of-e-learning-in-ontario\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"CCMS Editor\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2015\/blog-the-state-of-e-learning-in-ontario\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2015\/blog-the-state-of-e-learning-in-ontario\/\",\"name\":\"Blog: The state of e-Learning in Ontario - 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