The Online Learning Consortium and Instructure Announce Partnership to Reimagine Equitable and Inclusive Digital Learning Environments

• Multi-Year Partnership to Include the Shared Dissemination of Research, Training and Effective Practices for Building Equitable and Impactful Online Learning Communities

The Online Learning Consortium (OLC) announced a multi-year partnership with Instructure to collaborate on research projects and utilize Canvas LMS tools to enrich, support, and connect aspects of equitable and inclusive digital learning.

As leaders in online, blended, and digital education, OLC continually seeks new opportunities to implement and model creative uses of technology that highlight the evidence-based practices widely used by faculty, designers and students in their educational work. In addition to topics that are technical in nature, faculty development programs are increasingly approaching topics such as self-care and caring for students.

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“The pandemic demonstrated how important it is to ensure that faculty and students alike have access to robust and detailed technical documentation, training, and support,” said Angela Gunder, Chief Academic Officer of the OLC. “Our partnership will enable us to share a plurality of digital learning practices that educators can employ across contexts to better address the needs of our students.”

Over the multi-year term, the partnership will include:

• Hosting OLC professional development courses on the Canvas Learning Management System.
• OLC member access to Canvas Studio, access to the subscription training portal, project consulting and support services.
• Instructure as a partner on OLC’s Institute for Emerging Leadership in Online Learning 2021 leadership development program, providing scholarships for participants.
• OLC as a partner in the Instructure Edtech Collective, a recently launched community of innovative companies and educators working together using a leading learning platform to create an open and extensible ecosystem.

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“There has never been a more critical time to forge deep partnerships and leverage our collective strength in the form of diverse communities of practice, specifically around technology usage in the classroom,” said Melissa Loble, Chief Customer Success Officer. “These professional development programs are designed for the modern learner with technology at its core. By partnering with OLC we can reach more educators and impact more learners.”

The partnership has already made a marked impact with new projects including:

• Work with the Association of Public & Land Universities and Achieving the Dream, through Every Learner Everywhere, to model communities of practice for discipline communities.
• A digital strategy workshop in Canvas for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), built with OLC Fellow Dr. Cristi Ford and Cengage, to promote inclusive and equitable access to higher education through professional development and mentorship opportunities for higher education leaders.
• An Engagement Platform for the OLC Accelerate 2021 conference that is accessible for a year after the conference for those interested in “attending” the event and viewing the sessions and related content asynchronously.

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