Lena

East Cohort, eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

The student as customer

Lena on June 24, 2018June 24, 2018

I spent most of my time this spring visiting Ontario institutions. When I visit, I share the idea of growing a community of higher education collaborators that use digital tools to reach across institutions and connect. I share stories of excellence and compassion. I share the values of our organization fixed on access and the empowerment of educators and learners: the people at the core of our collective success. And, I always make a point of sharing the story of […]

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East Cohort, eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

Handle with care

Lena on June 24, 2018June 24, 2018

Reflections from Festival of Learning, 2018 Photo by: Chris Fernlund Late May is a good time of year to go West. The rhododendrons are in full bloom and the Pacific is warm enough to swim. We packed it all in to 3 full days at the Festival of Learning conference, hosted by BCcampus. The conference theme – Handle with Care – explored the many manifestations of care and compassion in educational processes, policies, principles and pedagogies. An opening keynote from […]

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East Cohort, eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

East-ender Extenders

Lena on March 6, 2018March 6, 2018

Explore – Engage – Extend – Empower This is the first thing you see when you get to Fleming College in Peterborough. We arrived early, but it looked like these carpentry students had been there all night building a house. Besides the fact that this might be the best carpentry training space I have ever seen, it also served as a good metaphor for a day of activity, online and in person, with the Extend East cohort. What are we building? Since […]

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East Cohort, eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

eCampusOntario – two and a half years out

Lena on February 22, 2018February 22, 2018

I went to Québec to talk about the future. I ended up thinking about the past A few weeks ago, I got on a plane to Québec without my winter boots. It was January and I was on my way to visit colleagues at TÉLUQ University for a series of conversations and presentations regarding the potential shape of an eCampus initiative in Québec. I received a very warm welcome and a ton of concern about the temperature of my feet (I […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

Learning with Lynda(.com)

Lena on February 13, 2018February 13, 2018

This post was co-authored with Jackie Pichette, Senior Researcher and (Acting) Manager for the Centre for Learning Outcomes Assessment at the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO). NASA Goddard Space Flight “Cultivating Egypt’s Desert” used under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 2.0) Educators around the world are being called on to pull up their socks and save the economy: to “bridge,” “plug” or “prevent” the skills gap by equipping students with the technical and transferable skills needed […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

Our house

Lena on November 12, 2017February 5, 2018

Week 5 Open Ed MOOC – Research and impact “Cyclr” by Skil Fibber Research questions can be revealing. Areas of focus provide insight into how we define value. When we choose to invest time and money to pursue a question, we are declaring the outcome important before we even start. I did a command F search on the Open Education Group OER research page to see if Stephen Downes was blowing smoke about the narrow focus of past research. He says it’s […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

Elevation gain

Lena on October 29, 2017February 5, 2018

Week 4: Open Ed MOOC + signals from the network I’m writing this post at high elevation. I’m in the mountains of Colorado after spending the week at the WCET conference. In addition to my very important role as sole Canadian representative present, I spent my time listening and trying to translate differences between the American and Canadian education systems. This post is a mash-up of ideas that have been floating around the network for #OpenAccessWeek and #OpenEdMOOC and have […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

Disowning

Lena on October 22, 2017February 5, 2018

Week 3 Evangelism – Disowning The idea that copyright is automatically assigned to an artifact on creation is bizarre. I had to find out for myself. Sure enough, the one official academic document to my name is marked. Very weird. So, I wrote to the good people at Dalhousie University and asked them if I could make a change. I’m going to take a moment to say that the response I received from the Dalhousie English Department was so quick and […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

The big picture

Lena on October 22, 2017February 5, 2018

Week 3: Reflections on #OpenEdMOOC and stock space footage Have you noticed that every video Stephen Downes posts for #OpenEdMOOC has a moving space-theme for a background? I have, and I can’t stop thinking about it. Stephen Downes: Open Course 3 First, I want to know where this stock space footage is coming from so I can project it, in a loop, on my living room wall. Beyond curiosity and party tricks, I think there is design at work here. I […]

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eCampus Ontario, Extender Blogs

California love

Lena on October 15, 2017February 5, 2018

Reflections on 2017 Open Education Conference and #OpenEdMOOC Week 2 This post is serving two purposes. It happens that #OpenEdMOOC and #OpenEd17 overlapped this week. For one thing, I’m keeping my MOOC completion dreams alive. On the other hand, the overlap of these two open ed events has resulted in a confluence of ideas + an effort to come away with a clear idea of where we are all headed. And, I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. I […]

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