 Hello everyone and welcome to UCAT Festival TV. I feel like a sports anchor right now because I am getting to introduce three absolute giants of the advising slash personal tutoring world. So I'm delighted to be joined today by Oscar van de Van Harde, Charlie Knott and David Gray. Gentlemen, how are each of you doing? Doing great. You're well, thank you, Colin. Excellent. Yeah, well, I'm pretty excited by this as well. We have just wrapped up day three of the wonderful UCAT Festival and kudos to David and the team behind it because it has been absolutely fantastic thus far. David, as the man behind the curtain as the Wizard of Oz how has it been for you? It's been busy, I think, but actually it's gone really smoothly and I'm overwhelmed by the messages of support and gratitude we've had from people about the experience they've had. They've felt really engaged with this event and they're really getting into the spirit of it. So it's been so wonderful to see them and I've been dropping in and out of sessions and it's just been really animated and lively discussion amongst the participants. It's great. They've all had a fantastic time. So there's been a lot of hard work on our part to bring it to this stage but it's been worth every minute of that hard work. Well, absolutely. It certainly has been and the people that I have been speaking to in the sessions I have been able to attend have been really great. I know the Amashi and UCAT joint webinar today was fantastic. So everyone that I have been chatting to has had a different highlight. So it's been really great. But one of the interesting things has been that although this is a UCAT festival, there are people from all over the world involved. And I suppose it would be interesting to hear from the tree of you because we're all in different countries right now as to maybe why you think that this kind of national conference festival has attracted people from all over the world. Yeah, I think one of the reasons in my view is that it's just another extension and example of what David and Oscar and I have been trying to do for many years. And Colm, you joined us when we were in Dublin a few years ago and that is to really show that advising a personal tutoring is not a one nation issue. It's not a one country issue. That we're talking about students and it's student success no matter where they are and how do we support them? And I think we see every year at our international conference at the UCAT conference when it's in person, when it's not to be virtual, we've had people from different countries there at that meeting as well. And I think it's just more of an example of folks recognizing that we need to learn from each other and what's happening in different countries and different places. But also that building connections, building relationships with people across the world who do the same thing as you do. I think it's really resonating with people that they have friends and colleagues in the Netherlands. They have friends and colleagues in Australia, in the UCAT. And these are just people that they know, these are people they're friends with. And it's really building that real connection of humanity around students and what we believe in. And for me, that's just what is so exciting about these international opportunities is to really bringing us together in that way. I mean, Charlie's right. This is what advising and tutoring is about, isn't it? It's about relationships and people build these relationships and there are some fantastic friendships that form through these conferences, not only those professional relationships but those personal ones as well. They're really fabulous. And I think it's also Charlie's right. It's an extension of what we've been trying to do for a long time. So we've recognized that whichever nation we're in, we have similar challenges. Our students have similar challenges. Our educational context might be different but our students face the same kind of issues. And the responses we take might be slightly different but we can all learn from each other. But I think right now one of the reasons why people are perhaps so connected and so engaged is that we're all going through the same thing at the same time. Let's recognize the elephant in the room. We're going through this big pandemic thing. It's the first time in human history that the whole of the globe has been through a pandemic at the same time and knows that we're going through a pandemic at the same time. And at the same time, we've all had to react in very similar kind of ways and how we deal with our students. So the more we can share and learn from each other at this point, the better it is for everybody. The easier it is for us to tackle those challenges that we're facing. I think we're also following with a little bit of a delay in the footsteps of our students, to be honest. If it's hard to say when this started exactly, but I would say, I mean, there's a few moments that you could point at, but I think this trend or this desire to sort of look across borders is maybe something that started roughly 10 years ago, something like that, maybe. And I think part of it is that we've gradually seen more and more students sort of traveling to other countries to study, which created sort of the initial need, I think, was just to understand literally where they were coming from or where they were going. But I think that also sort of implicitly set that sort of created the right climate for advises themselves as well to think, they're benefiting from this. I might benefit from this too. Within the fortune and coincidence that I think the demand definitely in the Netherlands. And I think also sort of in the UK because of changes in higher education for a more understanding university. I don't necessarily want to say caring university all the time, but also grew, which also gave a different role for advising, tutoring and similar positions. And then I think there were a few happy moments that just could have gone sort of completely sort of unnoticed, but happened to be, indeed happening at the right moment where people experienced how great it would be to get together. And I think it really snowballed rapidly after that. It's, I've also seen in the Netherlands a really rapid development from, yeah, it could be interesting, but sort of, no, not now. They do things so differently. What would be the point for me in going there in sort of people sort of with our Dutch Association, we made scholarships available for the recent NACADA conferences, the international conferences, people basically lining up to get one of those scholarships. And yeah, now I think now you can stop it anymore. So, yeah, sorry, go on, Charlie. No, I was just gonna say, I think what you're really talking about in the subways of scholarships, our students talk about how their lives change from studying internationally and abroad. We hear the same thing from our colleagues who for the first time attend a conference in Dublin or in the United Kingdom or in wherever it may be who are just totally mesmerized by it. And they don't really understand why we should be global until they experience it. And then they come back as just the cheerleaders for we need to all be global within that. So I think it's that same type of thing that we're learning there within it. I really also think that we're going through a time we've never experienced before. We don't know what it's gonna look like when we're done with this within it. But I don't think we wanna waste the opportunity if we wanna say it that way because when we think about it, so many people I've talked to in the UCAT who've said I've always wanted to go to the international conference. I could get registration, but I can't afford the airfare. My school won't pay, we'll do this. This time, this year, they can all come and not have all those expenses. And our folks have been able to come to your conference this week and not have all those expenses. And I think we need to really build upon that in ways we've never done before because this is really an opportunity to build these global networks even stronger in a year that quite frankly, it's cost effective. You beat me to it, Charlie. I was about to say the same thing. What we've done with it, there are challenges that are around at the moment, but you're right, let's not waste this opportunity. And one of the things that the situation we are now is forced to do is to break down some of the barriers. The virtual technologies we're using has broken down the barriers. All four of us are sat here tonight in different nations, but we're able to have this conversation. It just makes it so much easier for people to engage. Which is exactly what's happening on our campuses, which I think mirrors what we're doing. Higher education, y'all have heard me say it before, it's like it moves slowly. People in cemeteries will move faster than higher education. We dead people get up and walk faster than we do. So we've always thought you've got to have bricks and mortar that's the only way you can do. Well, higher education has had to admit in the past six months that bricks and mortar may not be the future. And that I think is scary the hell out of some institutions and some administrators. And I think we're headed the game here because we had advised that they've recognized for a long time and built upon that that it's more than bricks and mortar, it's the relationship, it's the connections you build and how you do that. Doesn't matter where you're located, it's that partnership. It doesn't have to be in a building. It can be in a car or a cell phone, wherever the case may be. And I think this just really brings that together so much more. Although it also requires us to really think about what sort of enables those relationships. I mean, the fact that we can have this conversation so easily is to a large extent also because we know each other and we know each other from sort of face-to-face meetings. So we understand each other, we find it very easy to transfer that onto sort of it's an onsite medium like this, but for instance with new students, I think many universities across the world are struggling with the fact, okay, what do we particularly do in regard to our incoming first year students who cannot sort of fall back on at least the memory of what it meant to be on campus but and have the time to build relationships with their peers and with faculty and advisors but who need to start from scratch. And that also applies in a way to our profession again. I mean, every year there are new people joining the profession who will probably need even more support in all kinds of ways than the ones who are in it. So I think that's an interesting challenge also in the domain of teaching and learning but also in the domain of advising that we can no longer take for granted, oh, this is why things work out so well when you get together in a room. We need to understand that. And that we've got to be intentional. That we've got to make intentional, how do we intentionally make these things happen that maybe just arbitrarily happened before? I mean, I'm going to use Collin and Matt as an example. Last year in Hostlet, there were these two guys didn't know each other from other sides of the world who I happened to look at the same time and go, wait a minute, they both like to do video and I'm going to put them together. That was easy to do because we're in the same place. Yeah, exactly. How would we intentionally make that happen with virtual ceremonies or virtual cocktail parties or virtuals, whatever. It's not as easy for me to just go grab Matt and pull him over and say, you two need to meet. How do we intentionally make those happen? So I think it's really challenging to us or the intentionality of these types of connections that we've really got to think about. And David, just to give you kudos again, that's what y'all have done so well with this festival. You've intentionally built these types of ways into that and trust me, would we still be from you for the virtual to color meetings? Because we learn from each other. But you've done some really, really good ways of intentionally building these that would just arbitrarily happen in the hallways and we can't lose that. And so I just really applaud you for how you've done that. And I think we all have to think about how do we do that? We've let poor Colin out here that had a chance to say a word, look at him. I'm thinking, reflecting and going on, I suppose Oscar and I had discussed this a little bit when I interviewed him for the podcast a few weeks ago, but building on that intentionality and I discussed this with Peter Hagan and George Steele as well. I think it's thinking about, because as you said, Charlie, it's no longer just bricks and mortar, but the virtual space is a different space to the physical space. And we cannot merely replicate what we did in the physical space. I know in March that everything had to be turned around a really short space of time. And I know faculty members who maybe had 72 hours to turn their entire course around. And then I think there was an understanding on both the student side and on the faculty, advisors, everyone was doing what they could in that situation. But I think we need to think now about how we best utilize the virtual space. And I think David and you kind of given us some great ideas, but I think we need to think about how we connect with our students, not just amongst advisors, but how we actually bring the students in and begin to break down the barriers. And that is something that is going to take us to be intentional. And it's going to mean that higher ed, third level needs to move a little quicker than maybe the glacial pace that it has done in the past. But I think an example of what you just are talking about, Colin, just in your comments, I was talking to Oscar last week and I talked to Peter Hagan and George Steele with David, four countries there, that you're talking to people from four different countries that let's be honest, two, three years ago you didn't know these people. And so all of a sudden you've built this network of international friends and colleagues that you can intentionally talk about how we break these things down within that. But I think that's where we have to really begin thinking about within that, because it's, and you're right, we can't simply, everyone was patient with us in March. The patient is over now. You know, you've had from March till now to figure this out. So don't tell me that you're just gonna take the course and make it be exactly like it is in person because that didn't work. And we just gotta face that and they're gonna be the same thing with advising. You know, students are warning different ways of advising. Advisors are warning different ways of professional development. They're warning different ways of connecting and their patients have run out with we've gotta figure this out. We've had time now to figure it out. And once again, David, you're a good role model for the rest of us to follow here and how you do that within those pieces. Well, yeah, I mean, and I've had conversations with George as well, along very similar lines. You know, we're at a point in our development where the things that we've done in the past, perhaps there's not gonna work in the situation we're in now. We have to do things differently. Here's a great opportunity for us to look at our practices as advisors and find better and new ways of doing those that really support our students in the way they need to be supported in this climate and going forwards. Because even if things go back the way they were, some of the things we've learned about how we can better support our students will still exist and we will carry on doing them. What's really, I mean, I know you've mentioned the glacial pace of higher education, Charlie, and I don't think any of us would argue with that, but I don't know how it is for you in the US or for you in the Netherlands, Oscar, but one thing that's been really encouraging for me, for years, we've tried to talk about the intentionality of advising and we've talked about the importance of advising in supporting student success and building those relationships. But what many institutions in the UK have realized in the last few months is actually the way that they're gonna have to support their students is through advising. The advising becomes the centrality, the glue that connects it all together, the way that we can actually build relationships with students that will make the learning process work. And many of them have moved to these group-based advising approaches where they can intentionally bring students together and it's been really gratifying to see how quickly they've realized that advising is actually central to student success. They might have known it before in a sort of head knowledge, but now they've really taken it to heart. And what I'm hearing when I talk to campuses are the people who say they're connected with students they had never connected with before because the student who was afraid to come in didn't quite know what to do, who only could come at night, the advising sort of wasn't open, that they're really connected with more students virtually than they ever did before. And in much more, much deeper and more really involved conversations than just what courses to take. What I think we have to do is really capture that in data, capture that in how that happens and be sure that those administrators above us with decision-making power understand that. Because I'm not sure they understand the level and depth of which advisors have been connected with students in this new virtual way that is so much more so than they would do in face-to-face. And let me tell them. That's exactly also where I see your risk. The sort of the lack of understanding of the importance of advising, I think there are two potential consequences that we don't want. One is that all of a sudden everyone or many more people are expected to perform advising roles who are not prepared for it. And another one, which is even worse, I think, is that there might be sort of the misconception then that sort of if we want to connect students to our institutions, it should be done through advising and advising alone. And I think that's what could water down sort of the role of advising because let's admit it, even though we can be the glue, sort of a big part of the student experience in the institutional side of it is in the teaching and learning. And we should not sort of miss the opportunities that these trends are giving us to position advising more firmly. But it is also a wake up call for what happens in teaching and learning. Well, I think this is what we want to even more carefully Oscar do. What you just talked about is basing advising in the teaching and learning and connecting it to what's happening in the classroom and instead of it being two separate things because it is exactly what happens in the classroom that is so important, what happens in advising. But if we look at them as two separate instead of really the connection, and this is a great opportunity to do that. Because I think you're right, we run the risk of saying it's only the advising that matters or it's only the teaching that matters when it really is an opportunity to really show more than ever before it's bringing both of those together in these new ways. I think we're at a real, I think point of really making that a stronger, I don't wanna say argument, but a stronger piece than ever before, if we do it well. And it's that doing it well that we have to do, which I'm just gonna point to David and say that's UCAT's role in the UK, that's the Carter's role, that's LVSA's role, how do our associations help do that in our respective countries within those as well? What's our role? What's our responsibilities? Including, I would say, sort of indeed sort of a demarcation of saying, we feel that this is or could be advising, but those other pieces are not advising. Don't come to us for that. If students walk away because the teaching is not engaging, don't expect advising to fix that. Absolutely. Or if they walk away because the advising isn't any good, don't expect, so that building that partnership becomes even more important. I think one of the other things that this has done, this COVID situation in terms of, and I know it's not a long-term thing, but even I'm thinking, David, of the shift to the essentially, say, beginning of September for this UCAT Festival. And it has, to me, almost, it's worked really well, especially this year because there was so much uncertainty at that time and now people are moving back into the academic year. We're at the beginning of it. And I sometimes found that previously at summer conferences, I might have an idea. I'd come back really full of enthusiasm, right? And everyone is out of the office on annual leave and by the time they came back, it was like, no, the enthusiasm has moved on and they're trying to catch up. It feels this year that there might be the potential that people have the opportunity to bring those ideas right at the beginning before students have arrived in the UK, in essence. I know it's different elsewhere, but I just wonder, not that we necessarily move everything, but I think it might give us pause to rethink because things were done in such a, we knew the structure of the academic year previously. We knew when things run and I know at my own institution this year we've had to rethink graduation. We've had to rethink exams. We've had to rethink orientation. And I hope that this is a time where we become, we use that intentionality and we really think, why is it that we have structured it this way? Does it have to be this way? Are there other ways that we could go about doing it? And Colin, I think one of the things that goes along that line with me is I worry that when we go back to normal, whatever that looks like, that we'll forget all the things we learned through these virtual ways, so that we'll go back and say, okay, we're just gonna do it in person, you can't. That's all we'll do. Forgetting that, why can't you do it in person, you can't meeting in the spring and then a festival that's virtual every fall? One doesn't preclude the other. And I think that's where we really wanted to be thinking some exciting things is we have tended to think it was one or the other. And I think we've really learned we can merge these. The people who can't come to the in-person, let's do a festival that's virtual and quit worrying about, oh, that's gonna take away from our tendons. So how do we build these together when those, I think becomes really important? And then thinking internationally, we've always thought, okay, David, don't you do anything in October? Because that's when the card is and we won't do anything in May because that's when, why can't we do these that are simultaneously, we build and work and how we do these? So I think the things we need to really not lose when we get to go face-to-face, that are worrying we might if we're not intentionally keeping them alive. And that's the opportunity really, isn't it, Charlie? The opportunity is for us, as Colin said, to challenge our preconceptions, the things that we've always held almost as those sacred cows to actually break those down. And when we go back to whatever normal looks like, what we want to be doing is taking the best of what we had and the best of what we've found now and bringing the two together so that together they're stronger and we've got even better going forwards. I think just as with students, it would be interesting to explore new approaches in which actual get-togethers, actual gatherings are really much more about the gathering. And a lot of the exchange sort of at a professional knowledge level could have to continue to happen online. But I think, and this is not very feasible if you have to travel, you're not going to travel a day to spend time with people for a day and then travel back again. But it's to rethink the way we use sort of the offline space and time, I think is as important as to rethink the way we can use the online and a bit of opportunities. Sort of, as we said at the beginning, sort of we can easily have a conversation like this and go on for hours because we don't have to break any barriers anymore in terms of knowing each other because we have to know each other sort of in the after conference time, maybe even more than sort of the during conference time. So maybe conference time should be all much more about the after hours in a way. And then we continue online. I think that with students, it's the same, I think. You can easily see now how much students can do together working on stuff online, getting together on campus might serve particularly the purpose of getting to know each other and in a way feeling that we are doing this together. And now we can each go our own way again and connect via Zoom or whatever medium we use. And I think it's very similar sort of for us in sort of as professionals as well. Oh, I agree, Oscar. I think recognizing that even from the current standpoint, we've always, and I've always joked about what makes us think we're just so good that we do this, that we run sessions from 7.30 in the morning to 5.30 at night. We must think we're so damn important because we gotta keep people all day long. Maybe when you look at this differently, maybe we only do certain hours in person in sessions, other parts of virtual and we spend a lot of that time just getting to know each other and just having conversations about, I mean, let's just be honest, where is UCAT, LVSA, and NACADA going to be in 10 years? That's a huge conversation that I would love to see have with all of our associates, not independently, but together because where UCAT's gonna be in 10 years, I think it's gonna impact where NACADA's gonna be, where LVSA, but if we have those conversations separately, we're not really looking at that. And so I'd love to be able to get your board together, David and LVSA and NACADA's to really do some strategic thinking about where do we want to be in 10 years with all of us and how do we connect with that? And you can't do all of that virtually. You gotta do some of that face to face. You know, it's nothing stronger than conversations over a good beer in Dublin or a good scotch in the UK or a margarita in the States that made the conversations any more in depth. And I just think we need to recognize that some of those social, what we think of as social, creates some of the greatest information sharing and partner sharing that we ever have within that. I hate to be the spoil sport here, but I am conscious that some people have meetings. I'm going to act as timekeeper, but I am going to give the last word to you, David, given that it is the UCAD conference. I think this has been great as well and something we should look to do in the future. But the floor is yours, Mr. Gray. Well, just to say thank you to everybody who's been involved in this festival to make it such a great success and something that's really engaged people. I think, you know, you said some kind things there, Colin, about where we've put the timing of this, you know, to be honest, some of that was more luck than judgment, but it's really pleasing to see that it's worked well. And I think you're absolutely right with the fact that people are going away with new ideas that they can take forward straight away. And that gives us something new to think about as well. So it's been really useful and informative from that point of view as well. And I think for me, it's been fantastic to see people from all around the world engaging in this and recognizing the value of advising. People really seem to have recognized that. And that's something that we actually want to do with the festival as well. So we made some deliberate decisions. Charlie's mentioned that. We made some deliberate decisions about the things that we are doing at certain times in the festival and we took a deliberate decision to close the festival with a celebration and a recognition of what people are doing in terms of advising. So we've introduced an award ceremony and I think most of us would recognize what many people say about advising that it's often an invisible piece of work that doesn't get recognized and doesn't get rewarded. And that was a deliberate decision on our part to actually recognize those who are doing really good, innovative things. One of the most rewarding things for me in the last few weeks was contacting somebody who is going to receive an award of that award ceremony to tell them that we've actually recognized their practice. And this is somebody that's never engaged with UCAT or NACADA or LBSR before and they're not from the UK, they're from the US. It made their day and it made my day in actually being able to actually recognize that for them. And I think that's what we need to do is to celebrate and recognize more the practice that advisors have. And David, I'll just add to that. We've chosen with NACADA to do begin with the celebration for our conference with the awards because we wanted to begin with that celebration to show everybody that. So it'll be interesting to kind of see those two pieces within it. So, you know, guys, I think Callum ought to give us a regular radio show. I don't know about you, yeah, I hope I don't. This has been absolutely fantastic. So all that remains is for me to say thank you, Oscar. Thank you, Charlie. Thank you, David. I appreciate you taking the time to chat to me. For anyone watching, you can find more details about UCAT on their website and on their various social media channels. It has been absolutely a pleasure, gentlemen. And I look forward to catching up with you all again soon.