I’ve been watching the generous outpouring of tips, webinars, workshops, resources from the US and Canada, aimed at helping teachers pivoting to online teaching.

Check out the page of curated resources offered by ecampus Ontario (official name Ontario Online Learning Consortium): Supporting Remote Teaching and Learning During COVID-19. You will find webinar recordings, all kinds of open-licensed resources, and thoughtful dialogues about assessment. Nice to see David Porter (formerly of BCcampus, now representing Humber College) and Giulia Forsythe, Brock University sharing as both educators have an amazing depth and breadth of knowledge related to engaging learners and teaching online.

Like BCcampus open resources, all the materials on this website (unless otherwise noted) are shared under a wide open Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike International 4.0. Kudos to them as sharing with this license encourages others to do the same AND may result in repurposed or improved offerings as we move through the next year or so.

Several of the resources highlighted in the pivot page offer instructors a chance to develop their digital fluencies by digging into the open, self-paced modules that are part of the popular OntarioExtend self-paced, customizable, bilingual, professional learning online series. This series has been on my bucket list for a while as I have watched some of the social media posts that are spawned by enthusiastic participants. If you are lucky you can time your participation to coincide with a facilitated event; one seems to be coming up from Conestoga soon.

I took a quick dive into Brock University’s Centre for Pedagogical Innovation. Lots of great ideas, resources, teaching and evaluation techniques; I did have to dig a bit for OER but found OER at Brock in the library research guides. As I anticipated, Giulia Forsythe (Special Projects Faciliator and amazing doodler and proponent of open) has been busy helping Brock faculty to produce OER.

You can also check out the Centre’s useful Guide to Teaching and Learning with Technology.

Ontario’s other online teaching resources are neatly organized by Institution and Department thanks to teachonline.ca. If you check out Ontario Faculty & Instructor Training Resources, you’re sure to find something that develops and expands your online teaching skills and confidence.

Thanks to the recent BCcampus newsletter, I’ve discovered a new OER that contains lots of useful examples of how to produce learning content with the amazing tool – H5P! Check out the Catalogue of H5P Content from ecampusOntario.

Lots of help available online and probably within your institution as well. Let me know if I missed something your college or university is offering to help instructors during this challenging time (contact me sylvia r at educomm dot ca)