Supporting Business Growth through Collaborative Innovation

The postpandemic recovery requires businesses to innovate, to create products and services for global markets while supporting workforce education and training to ensure employees remain at the forefront of business innovation and economic transition.

A series of articles in the Globe and Mail outline Canada's innovation policy and the context in which research and development (R&D) operates as a pipeline for innovation. The first article outlines the work to stand up the Canadian Innovation and Investment Agency. Many good points are raised about the need for clarity of purpose, but I would sum up the issue as a historical inability to differentiate R&D from innovation. Canada is the G7's highest per capita funder of research in the public sector and the lowest for business R&D. Compounding this is the fact that Canadian companies underinvest in education and training and new technology adoption. This is the three-legged stool of innovation and productivity.

The second article outlines the Artificial Intelligence strategy deployed by Ottawa over the past several years. The challenge here is again the over-reliance on basic research, to the detriment to applied research, and most importantly, experimental development. As I have said before: 

This continuum matters. A lot:

The continuum from basic and applied research through to experimental development constitutes the types of activities that make up the innovation carrying capacity of national economies: the ability to proactively create value from public investments in basic research by fostering private sector receptivity and engagement to the public S&T systems.

The third article in the series offers a clickbait title that detracts from the main issues: the need to increase business R&D as well as receptor capacity in Canadian businesses for innovation and Intellectual Property (IP). This includes not just products (which are easy to patent), but also other forms of IP.

The Expert Panel on Intellectual Property Report: Intellectual Property inOntario’s Innovation Ecosystem outlines 13 types of IP that are essential and important to the intangibles economy. We can add to this things like startups, software, databases, policies, traditional knowledge, practices and positions. A commitment to inclusive innovation means acknowledging that there are many types of IP being commercialized, by many types of people running many types of businesses. 

The bottom line here is that it is good to see innovation policy front and centre, it's just too bad that these reports did not unpack many important and related issues: diversity of actors, inputs and outputs; receptor capacity for supporting R&D and IP commercialization; and the role of reskilling for innovation to name just a few (check out two recent reports on the innovation literacy angle - one from Mitacs and the other from the Future Skills Centre). 

There are 440,000 small companies, 9,000 medium sized companies, and fewer than 2,000 large companies in Ontario. Not enough of these companies currently perform research and development (R&D). The most reliable indicator we have for R&D performing companies is from the SR&ED tax rebate program; currently only 2% of companies in Canada file SR&ED claims. The lack of R&D performance is clearly linked to lacklustre economic competitiveness.

Small companies that do R&D are more likely to survive and grow, hire more people, export more goods and services, and have a bigger economic impact in their communities. Startups, new companies, and small companies that are seeking to join the global economy in key sectors like health, IT, manufacturing and automotive – they need help finding supports to conduct R&D. The potential here is vast.

This is why we have built the Ontario Collaborative Innovation Platform. By working together the entire Ontario higher education system is able to help support the transit of IP - from idea to invoice.

Virtual learning is real learning

Sharing my TESS 2020 opening remarks as we kicked off TESS2020 today. If you missed day 1 you can catch some of the presentations on our social – it was an exemplary day.

Thank you for joining us at The Technology and Education Seminar and Showcase 2020!

We at eCampusOntario are delighted you’ve taken the time to be part of TESS this year. I’d like to extend a special welcome to our colleagues from Kenjgewin Teg, who recently joined eCampusOntario as our 46th member and, significantly, our first member Indigenous Institute. 

As Lutfiyya and Daniel have said we have a great lineup – discussions, panel presentations, and breaks with a variety of entertainment. We have benefitted from support and help from many people – not the least of which is our fantastic team who have worked behind the scenes to make this event what it will be. We are also indebted to Jennifer Gordon from Humber College who provided key input and advice on running a virtual conference – thanks Jennifer. 

In this virtual conference we are all convening from different places. This is one of the things that makes the online environment special. The land acknowledgement Daniel read is an important way for us to begin our proceedings-- and we can build on today’s acknowledgement. Each of us can acknowledge the traditional territories from which we join the event today. To do this, I’ll ask you to go to the site posted in the chat

https://native-land.ca/territory-acknowledgement/

and find out which traditional territories you are on. Then please share this with everyone through the chat. 

I happen to be in east Toronto: the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinabewaki, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, part of the larger Mississauga nation. I’ve lived in many places in Canada, and was born in Saskatchewan, on Treaty 4 territory, traditional home of the Cree, Blackfoot and Sioux. 

It is important to acknowledge our relationship to the land and those that have lived here before us. Doing so is an important reminder of our responsibility to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls To Action.

This social context informs our work. It includes the imperative to join the fight against anti-Black racism and anti-BIPOC racism, and to support Equity, Decolonization, Diversity and Inclusion in everything we do. 

Above all, we can seize this moment to rebuild and support an environment that prioritizes inclusion, representation and voice. 

Taking time to remember and invoke the land outside is an important way to remind ourselves that our lives are so much more than technology at a time when so much (including this conference) is mediated by screens. 

This is a significant time for all of us. We collectively have been navigating unprecedented changes due to COVID 19. We know that the pandemic has disproportionately affected those already experiencing marginalization. And so our theme this year – Humanizing Learning – is an appropriate way to think about the ways in which we can work together to make learning as human as it can be.

Because most of us are now teaching and learning online as our default mode, we are navigating the different tools and approaches we can use to help ensure our online courses are as engaging as our face to face ones. 

We have to remember a very important point: Virtual learning is real learning. 

Many of you joining us today are leaders in creating innovative, interactive and above all high-quality online learning experiences that result in meaningful learner engagement. We have the ability to ensure not only that our learners can access these quality experiences, but they can do so as part of their lifelong learning journey.

The online learning experiences continue to get better and better, precisely because we convene at conferences like this and share our stories, our successes, and our failures. These events – virtual or otherwise, are important conduits for our own professional development, that in turn have positive effects on our collective ability to model learning as an active way of engaged living. 

Our sector – with rest of the world – went through a sudden pivot when the pandemic first hit. You are all to be commended for navigating this sudden turn. The work we have done together over the past five years provided our sector with guidance and leadership on creating quality online learning environments, which greatly benefited this sudden shift to remote learning.

We now turn to the challenge of scale: how do we build on the work we have done, to continue to provide high quality learning environments that generate enthusiasm, engagement, and a sense of connection in our learners. We can do this by embracing the principles of human centred design that remind us to put the needs of the learner and the social contexts in which we all live at the centre of our curriculum design. 

So welcome to TESS 2020 – I am certain you will enjoy the program!

From Digital First to Digital by Design: Education for the Post-Pandemic World

I’m truly excited to be joining eCampusOntario today. Thanks to everyone for the warm welcome to this integral organization.

The eCampusOntario team has done an amazing job of managing the pandemic pivot, led by Interim Co-Executive Directors Lena Patterson and Jamee Robinson. Their message from 3 August 2020 outlines the critical role eCampusOntario plays in the Ontario post-secondary education system, from supporting the student experience and faculty innovation in pedagogy and the use of educational technology, through to broader strategic goals such as furthering the development of micro-credentials and sector collaboration. We really are all in this together.

As we go forward we need to be mindful of the current social context. This includes the imperative to join the fight against anti-Black racism and anti-BIPOC racism, and to support Equity, Decolonization, Diversity and Inclusion in everything we do. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated challenges for people experiencing marginalization in our society. We will seize this moment to rebuild and support an environment that prioritizes inclusion, representation and voice.

I take the helm of our organization at a time when what we do at eCampusOntario is more important than ever before. The team has done a superb job of helping the PSE sector pivot into digital first. This work will take on even more resonance as eCampusOntario leads efforts to enhance the learner experience across all campuses in Ontario.

And we should remember that while we are navigating a wholesale transformation of society, not least the post-secondary education environment, these changes are not necessarily all new. The internet has been with us for several decades. My own undergraduate learning experience in the mid-1990s included online video conferencing classes with learners from across northern British Columbia campus connection sites. This enabled learners to access courses and credentials without travelling far from their homes. These were formative experiences for me, confirming that we could take new technologies and ways of communicating and create meaningful learning and access opportunities.

Having worked in Ontario’s post-secondary education sector for the past 20 years--10 years in colleges and 10 years in universities--I am struck by the incredible opportunity before us. We can position Ontario PSE to collaborate to compete together, supporting pandemic recovery and resilience.

Following the pandemic pivot, our focus can now shift to Digital by Design. Where the pandemic forced us all to scramble to put everything online, we now have the opportunity to more mindfully and artfully design digital learning environments that support all learners. For the future of digital learning must be about options: options to facilitate learning in distributed, online environments, to scaffold face-to-face and in situ learning via mediated communities of practice, and to provide ways for learners to access microcredentials that ladder into certificates, diplomas and degrees in support of ongoing career progression.

Over the next three months, eCampusOntario will consult broadly with stakeholders as we create a new strategic plan to take us through the next 3-5 years. How can we support system transformation and stability through digital by design learning? How can we create meaningful education when face-to-face interaction is limited? How do we ensure all learners can access education and support for ongoing career and personal development?

I look forward to learning with and from our community in this process. We are interested in your thoughts, your innovations, your caveats and cautions, and the excellent research that will help guide the way. Stay tuned to hear more about ways you can get involved, including at our upcoming annual conference, being held 20-21 October 2020.

Research, Remote or Otherwise (plus 3 geese)

Some really good announcements on the research front this week from the federal government, including ample new support for COVID-19 medical research and vaccine development in addition to Support for students and new grads affected by COVID-19 and support from the granting councils for research assistants to extend research scholarships, grants and fellowships via various programs for several months.

There is also an additional $250M in funding for firms to access via the Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP). The Logic's overview (paywall alert) also details changes to the SR&ED (mainly halting audits) that Minister Bains has outlined in the COIVD response package to supporting firms in Canada. One thing that should be done is to get the SR&ED program in line with its original terms and conditions and support more experimental development activities - the ED part of the SR&ED that has historically been ignored by those administering the program. This singular failure of the way in which SR&ED is administered needs an urgent fix now as we look to support firms to pivot and reframe their businesses in a COVID context. 

This new funding will go a long way to ensuring that we can continue supporting research as much as is practicable while some facilities are closed, and to pivoting into remote research where this is feasible. There are also new avenues of research opening up, for example in looking at ways in which we are collectively navigating the changes and challenges before us, from remote learning to remote systems and service delivery, through to how culture and cultural production is being adapted to mental health and well being. 

The opportunity afforded here is to enable Canadian researchers to help not only lead the world in navigating the immediate public health crisis, but also in adaptation of the economy. And speaking of local adaptation, below is a particularly Canadian adaptation to the 2 meter physical distancing rule - stay three geese apart!

COVID-19 sign from Toronto's Beaches that says Do Your Part. Stay Apart. The length of 3 geese.

Instructional Design for Extensible Online Learning

"In those tumultuous and kinetic times, the time of actualised desire, I myself had only one desire. And that was, for everything to stop.”

Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Angela Carter’s fin de siècle science fiction novel presages an approximation of where we now find ourselves. The COVID-19 crisis has led to physical distancing and isolation from social context, with a concomitant social media “exercise in status display” taking hold in some quarters.

For postsecondary education we are told that “Universities, colleges face potential budget crunch as they assess impact of COVID-19 on international student enrolment.” This is an important reminder to the fragility of the economic basis in which we operate, namely the reliance on international student recruitment to fund the enterprise.

There is some hope: “time spent in an online course would count toward the time in Canada required to earn a work permit.” This is an important development that will aid our modelling of how we emerge from the current constraints, and into the mesocosm--an experimental enclosure--that will mediate and mitigate physical distancing in the time it takes to create a COVID-19 vaccine.

Scenario modelling could use a 50% probability basis for unpacking how we will return to in situ work. That is: we have a 50% chance of returning to face-to-face learning in September. And within this, that we will have to accommodate 50% less students on campus. This latter could be because of declining enrolments or physical distancing rules.

Basically this means we don’t know, but this should not stop us from modelling out the differing types of scenarios. We should do this while standing up the learning supports to enact a more flexible, distributed learning. Because either way, more remote learning is in our collective future.

Government and health leaders are advising that the current physical distancing practices will last months. This uncertainty, coupled with the COVID-19 experience of other jurisdictions, suggests that universities and colleges need to prepare not just for the long-term impact of the current physical distancing practices, but also for shorter-term approaches to address the continued need for physical distancing and isolation. Responsible, responsive curricula development necessitates significant changes to and adaptations of curriculum delivery, such as this is feasible within our programs, and which ensures that we collectively continue to provide positive teaching and learning experiences. This can be done while supporting and protecting faculty autonomy and prioritizing effective pedagogy.

Flexible learning is an approach that blends online (synchronous; asynchronous) teaching and learning with face to face (F2F) or in situ learning. While F2F learning will not be feasible in the short to medium term, we can start to anticipate a gradual return to this as it is imperative to reifying skill and competency development.

Alex Usher offers a good take on a post-pandemic collective effort in which the sector has an opportunity to collaborate on wider online learning development. This is smart--and optimistic--thinking. More and effective cooperation will help us build a system in Canada that can ensure students are provided with the appropriate scaffolding for learning now coupled with the ongoing iteration and development of a more robust realm of learning across sectors and levels. (As an aside, the National Research Council once had a whole research unit dedicated to e-learning, including the development of technologies, metadata standards; it was disbanded in 2006 or so).

Think of this as a way to offer a seamless student experience and a single point of entry into learning capable of bridging initial engagement to learning to employment to community building through alumni. Effective online learning as a core component of the larger pedagogical support structure will help us teach the skills and competencies that our learners will put into practice. This is the essence of “extensible online learning, where the goals of skills transference are made explicit in relation to online learning, and these skills are in fact transferred into practice” (Luke et al 2009).

There are various components to consider in the migration or transition into flexible learning:

1. Determining courses and course components that can be accommodated online
This will highlight curricula strengths, and it provides an opportunity to disaggregate programs and courses into microcredentials that can be stacked in potentially creative ways to achieve learning outcomes. This disaggregation will be important for our 50-50 scenario modelling.

2. Sequencing / Flexibility to continue delivering small–group f2f learning 
A modular, flexible learning approach will not only support new modes of teaching and learning but also allow us to continue to deliver core curricula. Online components of courses can be staged or sequenced to work in conjunction with in situ learning. This extensible online learning will help us achieve learning outcomes in a staged way, and also help us stage in situ learning with less people in one place at one time as need be.

3. Matching just-in-time remedial detours to support in situ learning
Having online content readily available and accessible and shareable via a robust learning object repository will enable learners to access content when and as needed to support in situ learning.

4. Exploring integration with other curricular models and systems provincially, nationally and even internationally 
By supporting an expanded set of learning approaches and curricular options for students, there is significant opportunity to explore integration of other systems, learning objects, courses, media etc, as per Usher’s point about collaborating to compete together. eCampus Ontario's Extend is one good example of this.

5. Ensuring iterative, agile development and evaluation
Develop and deploy evaluation instruments within courses that conduct formative and summative assessment on learning outcomes, in addition to faculty and student satisfaction, for continuous quality improvement. Online learning has been around for three decades at least. This is an unprecedented opportunity to not only leverage the research and insights gained through this time, but also to conduct ongoing research and evaluation of how best to stand up flexible learning.

Doug Saunders, writing in the Globe and Mail, reminds us of another science fiction writer, William Gibson, and the premise of “The Jackpot” that underwrites Gibson’s stories: “It’s not a big bang, but rather a lethal spiral of preventable disasters abetted by incompetent leadership and economic contraction.” “But there is hope” Saunders reminds us, in that “During this crisis, and in its long recovery, it would be a terrible waste if we did not spend in ways that also make the world a cleaner and more resilient place. If we have these higher goals in mind, though, we can turn a fatal spiral into a hopeful one.”

From anytime, anywhere, to all the time, everywhere

Many years ago (2001 in fact) I read a very insightful piece by Phil Agre: Welcome to the Always-On World. This piece has been on my mind of late as the world transitions into remote work. I am reminded of something a student once said - or rather posted in an online course I was teaching back in 2003 or so (in which I was referencing the above article). We were discussing the pros and cons about online learning, and talking about the phrase being bandied about then of the Internet enabling learning anytime, anywhere. This student said online learning is more like all the time, everywhere. 

While we all realize that working from home brings its own challenges - not to mention that it has amplified issues of accessibility, access and broader digital literacy - we are all realizing that it is important to have some boundaries, mostly time-based, but habitual as well. And in many respects learning all the time everywhere is what we do anyway. It is an apt representation of what we now call experiential learning. What the Internet adds is the connection to wider communities - communities of learning, communities of interest, and communities of practice. We are all engaging in some form of "legitimate peripheral participation" in which learning happens with our peers.

For those of us in post-secondary education making a wholesale transition into more online learning, as much to enable students to salvage current semesters as to scaffold the current reality into the new normal. In making this transition we have to recognize that not everything can be taught online, but we can - and we should - leverage the wider capabilities that online learning affords in order to support skills development and digital literacy more broadly.

This means we need to engage the cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning modalities, to help learners move from head, to heart to hand - to link thinking, with doing, and to do so with care.

I've been working on updating a model of flexible learning developed via research on this topic over the past couple of decades.

Diagram showing a circular model of flexible learning, connecting the conspicuous contribution of the academic enterprise with community learning and in situ making.

Budget 2019 and Full Spectrum Innovation

Federal Budget 2019 has been touted as a “skills budget” for its focus on supporting education across the primary, secondary and tertiary levels, and right through to entrepreneurship and supporting firms with a slight revamp of research tax credits. The implicit focus on education is noteworthy, as education is an important input to the research and innovation continuum. But some inconsistencies are evident in the ways in which various programs support activities related to education, research & development, and innovation & entrepreneurship. Addressing these will be relatively easy and will help Canadians companies better compete in the global innovation economy.

Several components of the Budget support its focus on skills, notably the new Canada Training Benefit, the International Education Strategy, the commitment to work integrated learning, and new funding through the Tri-Agency for graduate scholarships. Significant investments in Indigenous education and entrepreneurship will provide meaningful opportunities for indigenous people to attain higher education and create jobs via entrepreneurship. These are all very good to see.

Worth pointing out is that enriching the undergraduate experience through work integrated learning will be an important conduit for further downstream research: undergraduates become graduate students or enter industry where they can participate more directly in research activities. Research activities are of course one of the many ways in which work integrated learning offers all students opportunities to learn and work within specific contexts. Research activities, as part of work integrated learning, socialize participants to the practice of R&D and, ideally, its relationship to innovation and entrepreneurship.

The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) Program gets a modest tweaking in Budget 2019, notably eliminating barriers to scale-up firms in accessing the tax credit. These changes to SR&ED are welcome, but do not go far enough. In fact, they highlight a disjuncture in Canada’s approach to education and research and their relationship to innovation.

Over in the Canada’s Student Work Placement Program part of the Budget, it appears we are finally embracing what I call a full spectrum innovation: leveraging disciplines from the Sciences, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Math and Design (STEAM+D): “Budget 2019 proposes to expand the Student Work Placement Program to give students in fields outside of STEM—such as the arts, humanities and social sciences—access to work-integrated learning opportunities.” This is positive.

The disjuncture here is when we turn back to SR&ED, we see that “research in the social sciences or the humanities” are specifically excluded from SR&ED eligibility (as is “market research or sales promotion” – more on this below)[1].

The SR&ED adopts its definition from the OECD’s Frascati Manual in outlining the types of research it considers eligible for funding under the tax credit regime. A full comparison of the SR&ED and Frascati definitions of basic research, applied research and experimental development is beyond the scope of this brief review. Suffice to say any astute reader of science policy can see how strikingly similar these definitions are, even though the official history of the SR&ED definition does not once mention Frascati or the OECD.[2] No matter.

What is of consequence is that, unlike the Frascati Manual, the Canadian definition of research in the SR&ED regime omits the humanities and social sciences disciplines. This includes the disciplines of design.

Why is this important to science policy?

According to the Design Value Index published by the Design Management Institute, design-focused companies in 2015 outperformed the S&P 500 by 211%.[3] Design, and more broadly those disciplines in humanities and social sciences, are included in how Canada measures its strength in science and technology.[4] More to the point, lean startup methodology tells us we should embrace the full span of disciplines in order to enact a full spectrum innovation. The design-focused agile development approaches to product and service design and development, including talking to customers, are proven to better shape product-market fit and downstream business success. What we know about successfully supporting and scaling startups means conducting market research and sales promotion, yet these are excluded from SR&ED. And let’s not forget that product development is only one type of innovation. Services are a key feature of the Canadian economy.

The good news is that Canada is updating its definitions of what constitutes research, through the Canadian Research and Development Classification 2019.[5] Taking its cue from the Australian and New Zealand research classification systems (something OCAD University proposed to the Fundamental Science Review), the new CRDC will include the disciplines of design among other disciplines that have emerged in the past 40 years. This new definition will apply to the Tri-Agency; SR&ED would be wise to follow suit and update its own definition.

Budget 2019 expands Canada’s Student Work Placement Program to include humanities and social sciences. This represents a key step forward in ensuring we can create new products and services emerging from our excellent basic and applied research capacity. Modernizing our approach to SR&ED, and thus expanding our definition of what constitutes legitimate activities for creating better products and services for the global economy, will align public education and research activities with private sector research activities, itself a locus of public education via work integrated learning. Enabling Canadian companies to embrace multidisciplinary business methodologies from startup to scale-up will help Canada compete and prosper in the global economy.












[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-research-experimental-development-tax-incentive-program/claiming-tax-incentives.html


[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/scientific-research-experimental-development-tax-incentive-program/a-brief-history-definition.html


[3] https://www.dmi.org/general/custom.asp?page=DesignValue


[4] See, for example, the Council of Canadian Academies 208 report Competing in a Global Innovation Economy: The Current State of R&D in Canada. Expert Panel on the State of Science and Technology and Industrial Research and Development in Canada. https://www.scienceadvice.ca/reports/competing-in-a-global-innovation-economy/


[5] http://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/funding-financement/nfrf-fnfr/crdc-ccrd-eng.aspx