Connecting Partners for COVID-19 Response and Recovery

Today marked the announcement of a new research partnership model developed in partnership with the City of Toronto, the 8 Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in the Greater Toronto Area, eCampus Ontario, along with our research funding partners Mitacs, OCE, NSERC, NRC-IRAP and Magnet. The announcement was conducted by Mayor John Tory, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Research and Innovation Ali Ehsassi, and Minister of Colleges and Universities Ross Romano. 

When COVID-19 struck the City of Toronto and the eight Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Toronto started working together to support Toronto rebuild and recovery efforts. This includes mobilizing the capacity of the faculty and students at GTA HEIs to support capacity development for the City of Toronto and GTA businesses. The City of Toronto Mayor’s Task Force for Economic Support & Recovery — HEIs, led by Councillor Jennifer McKelvie, convened the Academic Institutions Task Force. One key remit of this Task Force was to develop partnerships between HEIs and the City of Toronto to support local businesses and organizations. In order to meet this objective, the partnership model was put forward as a solution to rapidly connect the expertise in the HEIs to City of Toronto COVID-19 research needs.

Under the direction of Manjit Jheeta, Director, Toronto Office of Partnerships, the eight GTA HEIs established the Toronto Collaboration Platform (TOCP) to support City of Toronto recovery and rebuild efforts, leveraging the design work conducted to date. The Collaborative helped to source faculty and student experts from across the eight HEIs to support City of Toronto staff in addressing important and urgent project needs.

An important facet of this partnership is that students are participating in all aspects of projects, from conducting the R&D activities under the supervision of our expert faculty, to project management, teamwork and communications. Students are paid as research assistants, and also receive a micro-credential as part of their participation.

It was a natural fit for eCampusOntario to help coordinate this important technology-enabled effort between three levels of government and Toronto’s colleges and universities. We are connecting our city’s best expertise to help mitigate the impact of COVID 19 on its citizens.

eCampusOntario not only helps bring together partnerships like these, but also designs and manages the technology that connects our brightest higher education researchers with our municipal leaders.

As the convenor for Ontario post-secondary education, eCampusOntario helps connect and support this kind of research and experiential learning that is essential to help in our province’s pandemic recovery.

Together we can build effective solutions for our current challenges that will help create jobs and keep people safe.

Read more about these projects on the City of Toronto website.

More information on the innovative Toronto Collaboration Platform is at this website.

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!

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.

Research and the Transit of IP

The Ontario Expert Panel on Intellectual Property has recently convened discussion sessions intended to unpack and answer the questions of their mandate. 

Ontario, like many other jurisdictions around the world, is wanting to achieve more outcomes from the investments made in basic research. This is reasonable. Research and innovation policy discussions over the past couple of decades (at least) are concerned with how best to leverage the country’s research capacity into positive social, economic and cultural outcomes.

There are of course several issues with any model that seeks to enable more direct return on investment in basic research, chief among these is that there is seldom a straight and single path to commercialize an invention. And, the aims of science (and here I mean the entire research enterprise across all disciplines) is to create knowledge and freely share this. This is at odds with creating value in the economy.

Still, Canada – and Ontario – would do well to leverage the platform we have: world leading basic science facilities, excellent applied research and experimental development capacity, particularly in the Technology Access Centres, various innovation intermediaries and economic development agencies, and a multicultural population which is suitable for launching products and services into any country.

Key here is ensuring we can create a structured receptor capacity to support the transit of IP from idea to invoice. The logic model for Capacity and Contribution among research performers, which I have previously discussed, is one way to look at how we can better knit together the various system actors and enable them to play to their strengths.

I look forward to seeing what the IP Expert Panel puts together in December.

Research-Innovation Capacity and Contribution Logic Model

The Logic of Inclusive Innovation: From Inputs to Outcomes

The Canadian Science Policy Conference (CSPC) 2018 edition was held in Ottawa recently and featured an excellent array of speakers focused on Building Bridges Between Science, Policy and Society. I had the good fortune to attend and also to convene a panel of experts on the topic of inclusive innovation:

• Dori Tunstall, Dean of Design, OCAD University, on BIPOC entrepreneurship (and Black Panther!)
• Malavika Kumaran, Senior Associate, Research, MaRS Data Catalyst, on women in tech
• Ken Doyle, Executive Director of TechAccess Canada on later-stage R&D and diversity of activity
• Dominique Bérubé, Vice-President, Research Programs, SSHRC will address the role of humanities and social sciences in addressing grand challenges and multidisciplinary research.

In order to achieve inclusive innovation, we need to ensure that the inputs, activities and outputs are inclusive. When we do so, we leverage the full spectrum of capacity from across society, and help to build more resilient social, cultural and economic outcomes.

Here is the summary of our panel:

What is inclusive innovation? How do we achieve it?

These are important questions to ask as we continue to pivot into a knowledge based global economy. Inclusive innovation is a worthy outcome to strive for. But in order to achieve it, we need to ensure that the inputs are inclusive. We can usefully plot this into a logic model, which provides a way for understanding the relationships between the various inputs, activities and outputs that will help us achieve the outcome(s) commensurate with the focus on inclusive innovation.

When we look at innovation through this lens and work back from the goal of inclusive innovation we can see that there are gaps in the material conditions that would support the outcome of inclusive innovation. Innovation inputs usefully include the pipeline of science and technology and research and development (S&T and R&D), funding, people, culture, activities: those conditions and material supports that are put into play against any innovation effort. For the purposes of our logic model we can usefully who is involved in innovation, what do they do, and what happens as a result.

·      Actors: ensuring that decolonization, diversity and equity lens is applied to all people engaging in innovation related activities – we want to ensure that the inputs to innovation are inclusive. 

·      Activities: what activities are prioritized? We need to focus on diverse activities across the span of research and development (R&D), the disciplines needed to stand up multidisciplinary effort, and the complementary skills and competencies needed to realize outputs and outcomes.

·      Outputs: what is produced that will reflect diverse inputs? What happens if we only count what is easy to count? The OECD’s innovation categories are useful here.

·      Outcomes: an inclusive society with a growth-focused economy in a global environment.

Understanding each of these in turn will help us rethink how we approach innovation, what activities we prioritize and why, and what outputs and outcomes we can expect to see.

Innovation Actors

By ensuring that we support decolonization, diversity and equity we can help to create the conditions for inclusive innovation. This means ensuring that we have gender diversity and parity, and equal representation from diverse cultural groups, in order to ensure that we have equal representation on the inputs and ideas that promote and formulate innovation. The historical conditions that have created baked-in biases have resulted in a politics of exclusion that we are only recently starting to unpack. Calling for inclusive innovation compels us to engage in decolonizing our approach to social inclusion. We can ensure that everyone can access education and therefore be a full, equal and meaningful participant in innovation activities.

Innovation Activities

Innovation activities also benefit from a variety of skills and competencies. These are most often utilized and deployed in concert with complementary skills, disciplines, points of view. To achieve inclusive innovation we must see the actors not only through a diversity and equity lens, but also diversity in the skills, competencies, disciplines, and credentials required at each step in the innovation process.

The activities of innovation also assume a balanced approach across the spectrum of research – from Basic Research, through Applied Research and Experimental Development.^[1] Complementarity across the spectrum of S&T and R&D requires innovation systems to leverage multiple points of contact in order to achieve innovation outcomes, including those disciplines and activities in the experimental development end of the spectrum.

Innovation Outputs

The full spectrum of innovation defined by the OECD includes product, process, organizational and marketing innovation. Each of these represents a key set of social, cultural and economic indicators, with assumed activities and outputs:

1. Product innovation: A good or service that is new or significantly improved. This includes significant improvements in technical specifications, components and materials, software in the product, user friendliness or other functional characteristics.
2. Process innovation: A new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software.
3. Marketing innovation: A new marketing method involving significant changes in product design or packaging, product placement, product promotion or pricing.
4. Organisational innovation: A new organisational method in business practices, workplace organisation or external relations. [2]

The types of activities are contingent on the innovation category. In a recent op-ed Beckton, Irvine and McDonald state that “mainstream networks, incubators and accelerators often don't cater to female entrepreneurs and the industries in which they operate”, which compounds another issue they identify related to innovation outputs: “a marketplace where key participants still tend to define innovation in terms of technology and goods. The result is a situation where innovations that flow from other parts of the marketplace – innovations often created by women running service companies – are not seen in a similar, positive light.”[3] This is an important point.

Innovation Outcomes

Inclusive innovation means focusing not just on simple to count measures such as patents and publications, but on the full spectrum of innovation outputs.

·      We need to ask: whose perspective has been left out of innovation?

·      What activities and disciplines are needed to facilitate innovation?

·      What outputs result from these inputs?

When we look at innovation through this lens and work back from the goal of inclusive innovation we can see that there are gaps in the material conditions that would support the outcome of inclusive innovation.

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[1] OECD Frascati Manual 2.1.64. See http://www.oecd.org/sti/inno/Frascati-Manual.htm. The OECD uses the terms Science and Technology (how national governments understand the public production of knowledge) and Industrial Research and Development (how national governments understand private sector R&D and innovation related activities.

[2] https://www.oecd.org/site/innovationstrategy/defininginnovation.htm

[3] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-commentary/women-entrepreneurs-are-innovating-in-their-businesses-its-time-to-help-them-succeed/article38054681/