“When distance learning is responsive to social and cultural demands, when we acknowledge that everything we create has socio-cultural implications, we realize we are alchemists, and well-intentioned alchemists can do good things. But they also have the capacity for doing great harm. The most mundane ideas in one culture can become a dangerous virus in another. So we find ourselves making moral and ethical, not just practical, decisions when we design and deliver distance education.”
-Dr. Richard Sweir, 2020
Drop-in Courses
- Free Massive Open Online Courses
- Blended Learning Practice (open course) runs April 19 – May 16, 2020 and you can register at any point during the course. This course is an introduction to blending technology and distance education teaching strategies with traditional, in-person classroom activities. This course is open to teachers and other educational professionals considering implementing blended learning practice into their own classrooms or programs.
- Learning to Learn Online MOOC (open course) offers strategies to become a better online learner.
- Technology-Enabled Learning MOOC (open course) helps teachers build skills for teaching with technology.
- Pivoting to teaching online (open course) is a free, 6-week EdX course on moving teaching online based on research and practice
- Commonwealth Of Learning: Online Learning (webinars)
- Professional Development
- Blended and Online Learning and Teaching (PD modules) helps teachers develop blended and online teaching skills.
Tips for Online Learning
- Connect with networks
- Ask an expert for advice about moving education online and receive a response within 2 days from Contact North! (ask an expert)
- The Quick Technology Guide (Google doc) can help to support moving to an Online Class or Conference
- QM Emergency Remote Instruction Checklist for Higher Ed. (Google doc) is a tiered list of considerations, tips, and actionable strategies to enact during an institutional move to temporary remote instruction of classroom-based courses.
- The Community of Inquiry (blog): The CoI framework represents a process of creating a deep and meaningful (collaborative-constructivist) learning experience through the development of three interdependent elements: social, cognitive and teaching presence.
- Articles
- How to be a better online teacher (guide)
- Understanding the difference between emergency remote teaching and online learning (blog)
- Priority steps to transitioning your class online (blog)
- Online learning in a hurry (blog)
- What makes a successful online learner? (blog)
- How to adapt courses for online learning: A practical guide for faculty (blog)
- Transfer your content to the Canvas learning management system and begin teaching remotely (blog)
Online Learning Resources
Online Learning Guides
Curated Educational Resources
- The Society of Teaching and Technology in Higher Education (database) provides curated resources to support: Teaching and Assessing, Wellbeing, Institutional Level Resources, & Free Webinars.
- Keeping the doors of learning open COVID-19 (database). This Commonwealth of Learning site is an OER collection from around the world that supports all levels of learners and educators.
Open Textbooks
- UBC Open Textbooks (website) provides searchable access to hundreds of open textbooks for Higher Ed courses.
- OpenStax Open Textbooks (website) provides access to hundreds of open textbooks.
Scholarly Articles
- Beetham, H., & Sharpe, R. (Eds.). (2019). Rethinking Pedagogy for a Digital Age: Principles and Practices of Design. Routledge. (book)
- Cleveland-Innes, M., & Wilton, D. (2018). Guide to blended learning. (book)
- Vaughan, N. D., Cleveland-Innes, M., & Garrison, D. R. (2013). Teaching in blended learning environments: Creating and sustaining communities of inquiry. Athabasca University Press. (book)
