TORONTO: The Ontario government is transforming virtual learning by supporting nearly 400 innovative projects at colleges, universities and Indigenous Institutes.
These projects are part of the province’s Virtual Learning Strategy and will provide students with more flexibility and access to high-quality postsecondary education and retraining opportunities.
The province is investing more than $70 million to implement Ontario’s Virtual Learning Strategy, including $21.4 million announced in the 2021 Ontario Budget, Ontario’s Action Plan: Protecting People’s Health and Our Economy.
“Ensuring that Ontario’s postsecondary institutions offer responsive and flexible digital courses and programs will help students build the skills and competencies they need to be competitive in today’s economy,” said Ross Romano, Minister of Colleges and Universities.
“Our Virtual Learning Strategy is aimed at creating a platform that will allow all postsecondary institutions to compete in the new and necessary environment of learning from home. Students can access education where and when they need it.”
Projects will support partnerships between colleges, universities and Indigenous Institutes in key priority areas that include creating or adapting digital content, equipping faculty and students with skills and resources to teach and learn online, identifying educational technologies to support online courses and programs, and targeting supports to address virtual programming at Indigenous Institutes.
Projects include:
• A partnership between OCAD University and the University of Windsor’s Law Faculty to create a new online course in intellectual property (IP) literacy. The certificate will help students learn about IP strategy, copyright law, trademarks, industrial and graphic design law.
• University of Waterloo, in partnership with the University of Ottawa and Western University, will create simulated reality experiments in their organic chemistry labs to introduce students to standard equipment, procedures and experiments.
• Durham College, in collaboration with Georgian College, Humber College and Sault College, will create a fourcourse, competency-based micro-credential to help small business entrepreneurs and their employees learn how to manage sales activities, support customer needsbased solutions, virtual relationships and network across the business community.
Minister Romano said: “These projects will help small and rural schools who previously had limited virtual learning infrastructure, compete on the world stage. In addition, the projects build on other investments such as the creation of virtual micro-credentials programs that will give students access to these programs when and where they want. The advantages of building ‘digital-by-design’ programming extends far beyond resolving the challenges of training that have been dictated by current times, but even more importantly, these projects will transform the future of learning at our institutions and further cement Ontario’s position as a global leader in postsecondary education.”
Peter Bethlenfalvy, President of the Treasury Board, Minister of Finance, and Minister Responsible for Digital and Data Transformation said: “We are expanding access and choice to high-quality, responsive and dynamic education at colleges, universities and Indigenous Institutes in Ontario. We will continue to invest in our students as we prepare them for the competitive global economy of today, and the jobs of tomorrow.”
• Seventy per cent of all projects are a collaboration between two or more institutions.
• Projects are expected to create 383 new resources, simulations, courses, and programs.
• Up to 12% of the government’s funding will facilitate the creation of resources designed to support digital fluency for learners and educators.
• $1 million will support institutional partnerships with Ontario educational technology companies to enable and accelerate the development and application of made-in-Ontario educational technologies and build Ontario’s global competitiveness in virtual learning.
• eCampusOntario is a centre of excellence in online and technology-enabled learning whose membership includes 48 of Ontario’s publicly assisted postsecondary institutions. • Earlier this year, eCampusOntario issued a call for Expressions of Interest (EOIs) to develop virtual learning projects in support of the government’s Virtual Learning Strategy.