Launching a Community of Empowered Educators
Trent Online’s first cohort of educators in eCampus Ontario microcredential begin program
In collaboration with eCampus Ontario, Trent Online recently launched the 2021 Ontario Extend “mOOC" (medium-sized Open Online Course) with a cohort of almost 150 educators from around the world.
While the program on digital pedagogy can be completed asynchronously, the team at Trent Online marked the occasion with a virtual launch party where educators had the opportunity to connect with each other and hear from key players at eCampus Ontario including Lindsay Woodside, digital learning associate for Ontario Extend.
“Open practice, open pedagogy and open communities of practice are embedded in the Extend philosophy and Trent Online is working to advance that philosophy with their Spring 2021 mOOC offering of Extend programming,” shared Lindsay Woodside, who leads the Ontario Extend program. “Through their efforts to connect educators, the Trent-led mOOC will contribute to the digital fluency of educators to support their decision making for the appropriate use of digital tools and to inspire one another to explore a range of emerging technologies and pedagogical practices for effective online and technology-enabled teaching and learning.”
For Trent Online, the official launch of the program is the culmination of months of work as the team completed the program themselves, so they could share their experience with this new cohort.
“Trent Online is really about online learning with heart,” shared Terry Greene, eLearning Designer at Trent Online. “We are excited to be engaged in this process. We are practicing what we preach by doing this.”
The Ontario Extend program is still open to join. Faculty members or staff who are interested in the program can email extend@trentu.ca.