Institutional Adaption Guide
For Post-Secondary Schools Adapting this Program
This program is intended for Ontario post-secondary schools as part of eCampus Ontario. Therefore, while the information and resources are general in terms of institutions, some of the content is Ontario-specific.
Under the CC-BY-NC-SA licence, you are free to share this Pressbook by coping and redistributing the material in any medium or format. You may also adapt this Pressbook by remixing, transforming, and building upon the material for any purpose. To do so, you must provide attribution by giving appropriate credit, providing a link to the license, and indicating if changes were made.
Customization
You can customize this Pressbook in many ways, such as, but not limited to:
- Appearance: Change theme and customize Textbox colours under “Theme Options”.
- We have made some changes to the custom CSS coding located under “Appearance” > “Custom Styles” (this is annotated at the top to explain what changes were made)
- To revert back to the standard Malala theme, you can simply delete everything under “Your Styles” and re-save
- Add, adapt, or substitute H5P and multimedia material.
- Edit content to be more specific for your institution.
- Since the program is modular, you can turn off chapters that may not be applicable for your institution, or add in new ones that your students may benefit from.
- To institutionalize it for yourself, you can make customizations such as:
- Branding with your school’s logo
- Branding by changing the colours of textboxes to your institution’s colours
- Change the name and/or cover of the book to be more institution-specific
- Replace general media with specific images of your institution, students, and so on.
- Infographic and book cover templates can be accessed and edited using the following links:
Original Decisions (Current Version)
We have made many decisions that lead to this finalized version of the Pressbook.
- We decided on 5 modules with condensed chapters.
- this was done in consultation with the literature and campus stakeholders with expertise in transition support
- We chose to utilize and create content based on what would be most significant to incoming students within the first few days to weeks of their post-secondary experience.
- We positioned this program to be viewed by students in second person narrative.
- We decided that in order to receive recognition for completing the program, students must submit a pre-survey, reflection exercise, and post-survey.
Sustainability Plan
Defining Sustainability
Sustainability is synonymous with longevity. The successful continuation of an open transition support program offered to first-year students beginning their post-secondary educational journeys provides opportunities for students across Ontario institutions to access content specifically curated for a smoother transition into a new school system. In terms of this project, we define the sustainability of this program as:
- The durability of the program outline as it provides a basic “template” for other organizations/institutions to utilize, revise, and incorporate for their own first-year students.
- The organization and formulation of program modules and activities, as they will need to remain up to date and consistently reflect the policies and procedures of their respected organizations/institutions.
- Accountability and responsibility from essential staff and organizations who accept the position of project ownership, with the sole purpose of ensuring the program continuation each year through successful management and administration.
- Financial sustainability through funding by the organization that retains ownership.
Defining Our Roles as Project Developers
As student partners, we’ve spent time designing this transition support program to highlight topics and concerns that any student may experience as they transition into post-secondary education through our own post-secondary education experiences and the experiences of our peers. Combining our perspectives and backgrounds with the direct experiences, concerns, and impressions of other students allowed us to develop an inclusive, accessible transition modules that focuses on central themes showcased in each module.
Program Manual
How was the program created?
This project was made possible by funding from the Government of Ontario and eCampus Ontario. This project was created through the Office of Open Learning at the University of Windsor
Project Lead: Nick Baker, Director, Office of Open Learning Institution: University of Windsor.
Rationale for Modules
The modules for this transition support program stem from genuine concerns, interests, experiences, and advice from post-secondary students and faculty. Therefore, we comprised a list of the most important topics we could provide knowledge and guidance on pertaining to the post-secondary experience. In addition to this, we wanted the modules to assist all students, regardless of age, gender/identity, orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, and geographical location.
Filtering, Updating, and Adapting Content
What needs to be done?
- Check all links to see if they are still live:
- If the link is still live, it can be left alone or edited for specific resources from specific institutions or organizations.
- If the link is no longer live, troubleshoot to find out why or replace it with a resource consisting of similar information.
- Update terminology to be consistent.
- Ensure the transition support program can be easily adapted/edited/integrated by other institutions.
- Is the content too generic? Too specific for one institution?
Check over measures of success for the program
How would we (the original developers of the program) measure the success of the program?
- The program has increased awareness/understanding/perceptions of important factors in the transition into post-secondary education.
- The program became an essential part of the transition process for first year students.
- The program is considered an essential part of the institution, with support and acknowledgement from various departments and individuals in and out of the organization.
- The number of participants for the program increased in comparison to the year before / The number of participants increases each year.
- The experience of participants for the program improved in comparison to the year before / The experiences of participants improves each year.
- The program content and approach has been utilized, adopted, and revised/remixed by other institutions.
- Modules and activities are successfully integrated into respective institutions.
- Additional funding or leadership to assist in sustaining the program and its services/activities has been secured.
Based off these measures, current developers/project owners should consider:
- What is being achieved?
- What needs improvement in order to continue growing the program?
