 Good morning everybody. My name is Fiona Farr from the University of Limerick and I'm here this morning to give you an update on the Digital Literacies project or as we now call it the Digi Languages project Which is a little bit more catchy than our original ten-word title or something like that so we're at the end of a full calendar year for the project really and it's been a very busy year but We think it's also been a very productive year in terms of what we've done on the project And that's largely due to a great group of people that we've got working on the project across a number of partner institutions So there are six partners involved in this project The Limerick partners as we call them on the top here from the Shannon consortium institutions And then we have NUI Galway and two Dublin institutions involved as well Dublin Institute of Technology and Dublin City University and that gives us a nice geographical spread around the country as well In terms of the project the dissemination the integration and the development So just to give you a little bit to remind particularly for those of you who might be new to the project to give you a very Simple overview of what the project is about the idea behind this project is to develop a framework for the enhancement of digital literacies specifically for language learning and teaching in the Irish higher education context and Once that framework had been developed and it now has the curation and the development of a number of supporting resources to help students and teachers to develop those literacies Within their own teaching and learning contexts. So a number of open educational resources So far the first I suppose in my own head I always think about the project in three phases the first phase of the project was very much about and Needs analysis and research to see what was needed among the stakeholder groups So we spent the first three or four months of the project at the beginning of The last last calendar year talking to our students talking to teachers seeing where the gaps We're looking at some of the curricula that are in place in the third level institutions and also talking to colleagues internationally as a result of that consultation and research we have been Building the portal to host the activities and the design and the development of that portal is ongoing Hopefully the panel have had an opportunity to have a look at it. It's still very much under development But has moved Quite a lot in terms of its development since we last spoke We have had a number of national events last June. We had an open educational Resource Fest which was here in Dublin and we had about 45 Participants from right across the country language teachers language tutors those interested in teaching languages And they are a group of people who many of whom have now become part of our content development group And I'll talk to you a little bit more about content development in a few moments So the second phase of the project from June really or July Until December was very much focused on content development So as part of our project, we are curating and developing quite a lot of content across a range of six languages for two groups of users teachers and Students language teachers and language students That content development is ongoing and will be and not just to the end of the project We see this as a much longer term Initiative we've also started the piloting and the evaluation of some of those resources and the portal Pre-Christmas, but most of that piloting and evaluation is happening now in phase three of the project along with the finalization of the technical development of the portal and the localization project around the Irish language And we have been having ongoing meetings with stakeholders within institutions showcasing the portal and we've had a huge number of Dissemination activities. This is something that we've been very conscious of not just nationally, but internationally At a number of different events and I'll mention some of those later So coming back to the content development at the moment. We have developed approximately 500 hours of content Across that's not per language. Sorry. That's in total across the three themes on the portal So if I were a student or a teacher wanting to use that it would it would be quite substantial in terms of what's in there and We plan to develop quite a lot more over the course of the coming months And that's taken us really quite a lot of time over the last six month period The content has been sourced from a number of different For as opposed our workshops our open educational resource Fest Student student teachers and language teachers and and we've also employed a number of people as content developers For the project and they report to the plenary group members We have developed and obviously are maintaining an activity database And this is something again, which is quite important for and the sustainability of the project post-funded period and The project website has been developed in the portal. So with lots of help files frequently asked questions, etc Now one of the things that we were conscious of over the last two presentations that we've had with the International evaluation panel. We've had some really useful feedback, which has helped us to direct the activities In a way, which I think has been to To the advantage of the project. So in general, we've had some nice positive feedback We did have to grapple quite a lot with the structure of the portal and and the project and the framework Because of the number of target user groups and the number of languages Six languages and two target groups as I mentioned already. So we've done quite a lot I think to simplify that it's simplified visually. We now have multiple access points on the portal and the content is searchable and Lots of filters for language level, etc And I think the piloting and evaluation between now and the end of April will also help us to refine that structure even further So that it becomes as user-friendly as it can be by the end of the funded period of the project And we've had a lot of student involvement and this is only growing at this point in time So students were very much involved in the initial research stage they have been involved in the piloting that has taken place so far and Student teachers are a particular area of interest for us and a growing area of interest actually This is something that we hadn't quite anticipated and would be as beneficial to the project as we are now learning It will be so we have a number of teacher education programs and the Participants on those teacher education programs have become really valuable resources for not just for piloting and evaluating But for content development as well And lots of those types of teacher education programs in language certainly will have modules around things like materials development And this fits really nicely So we're getting some nice content back from students on those kinds of programs and we will be not just at national level but internationally as well And a focus on staff development has been Very important as well and we've been linking in with a number of other projects and we've been doing quite a lot nationally with colleagues So at this point Shanaid is going to take you on a little walk-through on the portal We had some backup slides just in case that didn't work But we're now going to switch out of this and just take you through as a little demo One of the key asks that we had Wanted from the project was a very clean and simple interface that would easily direct both the students and the teachers To their own pathways and their own activities So within the teacher interface we've split that between cpd activities and activities that they can use in the classroom And then for the students then it just brings them directly then to the navigation panel here at the top Which breaks down into the three themes or the map interface at the bottom, which will bring them directly then to that subcategory and Each of the map and will provide a little piece of information and a link then to bring them to that subcategory if you take them to one of the digital literacies there for example and The hypertext literacy This details what a hypertext literacy literacy is in English and then further down Towards the end of the the activity you can see that it also details that in the different languages so that will Help the student become familiar with the terminology and in their own language in the target language Then within the activity then we also have a little tables which directs it to other activities that will incorporate using hypertext literacies Which the students and that is sorry that the students can perform on their own or can be used for teachers within the classroom So for example here There's a student accommodation one which helps student find accommodation for their mobility programs in Year two, so this would have a number of videos that would help them then with their listening skills and and Within their own language on finding student accommodation and On their arousal program so students particularly like this particular Activity because it helped to them become familiar with Their destination within it through the target language and if they struggled listening to the to the activity There's also links then that will bring them to Helping them with their listening and viewing strategies so that is how the three work packages integrate with each other and Within the activities that are useful for students during their language program Yeah Yeah Okay, so that's just a very quick demo of one of the activities and the the three themes that we have for the development of the content are and Sorry, there we go. So transitions and contexts language skills and practices and digital literacies And as you'll have seen the introductory sections to all of the activities are in English And then the activities themselves are language specific Which we think is quite a nice model as well So I'm just going to Here we go Okay, so just to talk a little bit about National impact and the type of impact that we're starting to have already and we're continuing to work on so We had our national survey and that allowed us already to make quite a number of stakeholders aware of the project and the project aims and Outcomes we have an implementation strategy across the six institutions and any other partner institutions We've run a number of workshops and our OER Fest We have three further what workshops organized and in March and April for April for Teachers and tutors and we have a number of walk-through clinics and which we're organizing for Students to pilot the programs within the institutions We've done a lot of dissemination in terms of conference presentations and we're linguists We like to talk so that's what we do and in total we've had or we will have by the end of the project and Present at approximately 25 papers at national and international conferences We've already had one publication from the project and we have two more Publications which are in preparation at the moment and we've been very careful to try and find a balance between Practice or applied oriented conferences and more research focused conferences So we've also worked quite closely with professional development organizations So the French teachers Association the German teachers Association English language teachers Association and as well as the more research oriented Conferences which I've mentioned so I'm not going to go through all of those in details, but you can see them there So just thinking about Where we're where we're at at the moment and we're working on obviously or we're having regular and ongoing meetings We have quite a nice structure around the project at the moment We have a plenary group with representation from each of the institutions We have an international advisory panel with 10 members from right across the world and We have now got quite a strong content development group as well and those groups might work quite well together And dissemination as I said has been happening throughout the program or throughout the project The integration into curriculum is one of the things that is our strongest Pillar in terms of the sustainability of the project and the exploitation of the materials So at the moment a full review so far to date a full review of all of the language modules In DCU has happened to integrate learning outcomes associated with the project and at the University of Limerick We're just about to embark on a full review of all of the language modules And when I say all we're talking about approximately 150 modules in each of the larger institutions Certainly across all of the languages So we're just about to embark on a large project to map our language modules onto the common European framework of reference Which gives us a lovely opportunity to integrate learning outcomes in relation to the Digi languages project as well And there are lots of other things that some of the partners from the other institutions might also want to mention in a moment And the online platform will be available as an open educational resource We have made the platform available to some colleagues already within our own institutions to get some feedback from them and also to allow them to Get a sense of what's involved so that they might be in a position to contribute some Content that relates to their own teaching as well and the localization project into the Irish language has already begun And that will be completed by the end of the project So for 2017 for the remainder of the the project I suppose obviously the the project management is an ongoing activity and Research and development piloting activities in the partner institutions Data analysis redesigning selected components of the portal curriculum development Content development is ongoing as I say this is never going to come to an end. We would hope and The localization project is is very important for the Irish speaking community And as well as the development of Irish language activities and their two separate work packages We are planning to launch the portal at a national level over the summer will pre-summer break sometime in June or July And we also have committed a we're meeting on the 3rd of March I think and the purpose of that meeting is to start formulating a written sustainability and Exploitation plan for the project and we're very lucky in that Professor Francois Bland who is one of our project team members is Has published widely on the area of sustainability and we've got some nice models and frameworks that we're going to use to have a written sustainability and governance plan around the project and Obviously the ongoing project evaluation is is important in terms of what we're doing for the last phase the international panel and have been Very very supportive not just in terms of giving feedback But also in terms of disseminating some of the work that we're doing two or three of them have also come back to say Can we pilot some of the activities with our students? So we've had comments like it looks like you've been doing a great job. Congratulations And I quite like this one There's a similar project about to start in the Belgian context and we're going to work very closely with them Fanny says we'll be starting a similar type of project for Belgian teachers in the next week Or so I'll promote your project as the perfect example to follow and get inspiration from so it's nice to hear that We don't see it has been quite perfect yet, but we hope we're on the on the right road And I think I've spoken about most of these things already the shorter term sustainability organizational practices the longer term sustainability. I'd just like to finish up by saying that there are a number of Actions that we've already implemented into the project which we think will allow the project to be sustainable over a longer period of time There are two things there's the exploitation of the materials and the use of the materials and the sustainability of that is very much We feel through curriculum integration, and that's why we focus so much on that at this point in the project And the other part of it is the content development And as I said a nice door has been open to us in terms of the content development a part of us Apart from the plenary group being committed to the ongoing content development We have a number of teacher education programs which are interested in contributing to the ongoing content development and the international advisory group have also That that has also suggested individuals on the international advisory group have also begun to suggest some Activities that might help us to sustain it on a longer term basis. Thank you