Ontario funds research and innovation in online learning

eCampus Ontario (2017) Research and Innovation: Funded Projects Toronto ON: eCampus Ontario

A few days ago, eCampus Ontario officially announced nearly $2.5 million of grants for research and innovation in online learning for Ontario universities and colleges. This is a separate fund from their grants for developing online courses.

The 45 grants, from a total of 135 proposals, ranged from $17,000 to $100,000 in total. Ryerson University and Mohawk College each had five projects funded, but the University of Waterloo had the most in total grants at $396,000 with Ryerson close behind with $380,000. Mohawk received a total of $259,000, and Algonquin College received $186,000. Of the 45 grants, 14 involved two or more institutions working collaboratively.

The one common factor among all the proposals was their variety. No one area of online learning dominated, although six of the proposals were directly concerned with assessing quality in online courses. Four of the grants were to study ways to improve the course development process or to facilitate faculty better in online teaching.

Then there was a bunch of grants looking at the effectiveness of particular technologies, including four for games/gaming, three for the use of animations or simulations, and grants for exploring virtual labs or the application of virtual reality. There were about four grants focused on the use of online learning for skills development, including one on evaluating competency-based learning.

Lastly, there was a very significant grant of $80,000 to Ryerson University to support the national survey of online and distance education that I am leading.

Comment

Even setting aside my gratitude for my own grant, eCampus Ontario and the Ontario government deserve praise for investing in research and development at this level. There has been a desperate lack of funding for research or development in online learning in Canada, at least in recent years, and hopefully a great deal of learning, new developments and innovation in online learning will emerge from this process. 

The major challenge now will be to ensure that the projects disseminate their results across the system, so that major innovations do not just hide within tiny corners of the institutions. I am eagerly looking forward to seeing what emerges from these grants.