 and welcome to this very special gala session at the Alt Annual Conference 2021. We are thrilled to welcome so many of you joining us for the launch of the future of learning. Please do say hello in the comments and give a big warm, virtual welcome to the chair of Alp, Professor Helen O'Sullivan. Hello, Helen. Hi, Maren, thank you very much. And I'd just like to echo that warm welcome and I really do mean warm. I'm sure wherever you've been today, especially if you've been in the UK, you've experienced this wonderful warm weather. So it's my great pleasure to introduce this showcase this evening and this launch event. And it's a really fantastic opportunity for us at Alps to showcase what we do and to more broadly showcase the fantastic work that's done in this part of the sector. Education technology and the work that learning technologies do has really, really come to the fore during the pandemic. Even though there was fantastic work going on before that, this gives us a real opportunity to explain what we do to a much wider audience. And I'm enormously grateful to colleagues at ITN who made this so easy for us to do. And for those of us who aren't really experienced in these sorts of ways of working, they've made it incredibly easy and smooth and treated us with enormous regard and sensitivity and helped us to get our best. I'd also like to thank the other contributors to this film and we'll hear from those after the showcase launch. So you'll be able to hear from them about what their hopes and dreams are for the future of learning. And most importantly, I'd like to really thank colleagues at Alps. As ever, they've done a fantastic job supporting the development of this program. And you'll see how fantastic it is when we show you the showcase now. Hello and welcome to this special showcase of the Future of Learning, a program from the Association for Learning Technology and ITN Productions. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic saw an immediate closure of schools and colleges as lessons moved from students sitting in classrooms to them sitting at home learning online. In this program, we'll be exploring the role of digital technology in education, the challenges faced and the solutions to support learning as well as meeting the people that made it all happen. Digital technology is helping to revolutionise the way in which we teach and learn. It provides us with an opportunity to give students really high quality learning resources. And also, it gives them the opportunity to collaborate, communicate and learn wherever they find themselves. And while the COVID pandemic has brought its challenges, colleges and universities have embraced technology to reimagine how they can deliver lectures and lessons. And for me, that's one of the real silver linings of the pandemic because academics and IT professionals, learning technologists are working seamlessly together now to improve the learning experience and the research experience for all. And online learning platforms like this one have helped redefine the classroom. In terms of education technology in the future, it will just be expected by students. There's no excuse really for them not to have access to their resources and their materials and it'd be accessible for everybody. It really is just the case of having simple navigation for students and making it easy to learn. And that's really what we're aiming for with the platform. It's an easy user interface that connects teachers with their students. It's very easily laid out when you go onto it and you can access it through a computer or a phone or a tablet or anything. It was as close to the classroom as we could get without actually being in the class. It was really good. I think the fourth industrial revolution is on us and we have a responsibility to build technology into everything that we teach because it will be in every job that is available over the next 10 years. And in imagining that future, these students are animating ancient battles using motion capture suits to express their creativity in 3D. What we're trying to do at Rosebroughford is provide training for potentially the next generation of theater professionals who will be working in a virtual theater sector. This is an emerging sector. It's something that doesn't exist until a few years ago at least. And it allows us to produce theater and live performance in a entirely virtual and digital world. And the technology behind it is changing the way students create and work together wherever they are in the world. Simple cloud is very, very good because all the software is in there. It just connects from my laptop. Then that's it. Just if I can connect it and we can use anything like just like we are at college. It's what I've always wanted for the people I was working with. I mean, it's freeing the talent, the people, the students to use whatever software they want in real time. Connectivity between peers also enables both growth and learning. And JoyFE's Ideas Room is a digital space that encourages collaboration, creative thinking and innovation. Anybody can come to that, but teachers specifically come and talk about their practice. They talk about work they're doing with their students and they just think through their ideas. But in that, they also talk about their challenges. So it brings people together around an affirmative identity, a sense of belonging. And Joy is a practice is relational. That's what it's about. It's not about commodities, it's about people. And I think it brings that sense of, yeah, it's belonging, it's shared hope. Study help anytime, anywhere is how this online service supports students with subjects specialists and feedback on spelling and grammar, structure, choice of language and referencing. The benefits to our students of this StudioSty service means that anywhere in the world, anytime, they can submit some work and within 24 hours they've got some feedback on their academic writing. And in ever to be the speed of that is really excellent. And here in Exeter, this accessibility helps to feed into the university's widening participation program. Widening participation is largely about increasing access to university, so helping people who are traditionally underrepresented within higher education to be able to access higher education. But of course, once they get here, we want to try and help them succeed as well. They talk about the confidence it's given them. They talk about how it was there in their hour of need. They talk about how they never thought they'd be able to get to that answer or get that question done with the help of the tutor they did. So it's just amazing to see. Another online learning platform supports students to access crucial course material from publishers and tailor it to their own requirements. Students can go in there and make their own highlights, make their own notes. They can also have additional functionality like read aloud so they can learn and listen to their content no matter where they are, both online and offline. It was the perfect solution for this international college and with cutting-edge analytical tools, teachers can also track student engagement with their courses. I can access analytics through VitalSource that I can't do with a print textbook that tell me how many of my students have looked at the book today, how many of them have actually spent more than a minute looking at the assignment that I gave them, which means I can recognize very quickly and early on who's not reading, who might need a little bit more support. With artificial intelligence, this learning could become even more personalized to meet the individual needs of students. And the University of Law, their future academic model also embraces technology to enhance a more positive learning experience for their students. What we are doing is we're making sure that the technology is at the centre of it, but it's actually student-focused and allows the students to customize their access, but they are customizing their engagement with others at the same time. Part of the model is the Digital Academy with its intensive one-to-one support. It enables students to understand their digital capabilities and facilitates deeper learning in readiness for the world of work. I would say that the use of technology has made me much more employable, especially in the way that the Digital Academy has enabled us to find out what our weaknesses are, build on those weaknesses and come out with evidence of how we can use technology in those firms. At the Olympic Park in East London, Staffordshire University London's Digital Institute is working with some of the biggest technology companies in the world to prepare students for the jobs of the future. Our course portfolio here is very much along with the entertainment and digital technologies, so eSports, computer games design, alongside cybersecurity computer science, and we have a new portfolio coming on board, virtual production, immersive entertainment technologies, fintech and other professional technologies, artificial intelligence and data science. And with the Covid pandemic reshaping the way we learn and work, Staffordshire is aiming to become the leading digital university in the UK. Those companies that had good digital skills have thrived, been able to reinvent themselves and pivot quickly to a very changing marketplace. So for our students, making sure that they have strong digital skills is absolutely key. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are joining us. Studying while working can be a struggle, but professional organisations like the International Compliance Association are being supported in providing training for their members with this wraparound virtual classroom. The trainers love it. For them it's transformational, being able to read the room, to understand the level of energy and interest from the students by being able to see them very, very clearly, life-size on these screens. And with interactive elements from breakout rooms to stats that show who's contributing, it's a truly immersive learning experience. I think it's key that you still have that engagement with your peers, not just with the teacher itself, but you know that you're in a classroom and active, engaging classroom. When someone asks a question, you want to hear that, you want to see who asked that question, you want to potentially like that question. Hi there, hi Rachel, hi Richard, how you doing? And this is how GP training is often being delivered these days. What I asked you to do a few days ago was to have a look at the module on ELFH, looking at vaccines. The E-Learning for Health Care Platform is one of the ways Health Education England has made information more accessible and interactive. We're talking everything from E-Learning delivered over the internet, through people's smartphones or over a laptop or different ways of consuming that to things like immersive technologies or extended reality technologies like virtual reality, all the way to things like mannequins for simulating how you might do some sort of procedure. Emma Hawksworth is a recently qualified speech and language therapist. Technology Enhanced Learning has played a big part in her education, and she can also see the benefits for her patients. If a child had a submucous cleft palate that would be something that you wouldn't encounter very often. So if there was a way of using VR to see that, that could be really helpful because then you would know what you're looking out for in the future. And immersive technologies like these can also be deployed outside of traditional educational settings These children at Edinburgh Zoo are learning more about conservation with both hands-on experience and the latest technology. You can tell kids about deforestation and things but nothing quite replaces using technology to see the forest as it was and then the forest cut down and that sort of stark shock and actually feeling like you're there really increases the empathy which we need for conservation action. It's really fun because you get to do lots of really fun activities that you don't usually do when you go to the zoo and stuff. If you care about nature, it means nature keeps coming into life. It also brings learning to life, enhancing the opportunities to improve our understanding of the world around us. Thank you for watching The Future of Learning. We do hope you enjoyed this programme. All of our reports are now available to view on the ALT website. The details are on the screen now. From me and all of the team here, thank you so much for watching. Goodbye. Thank you. Okay, so there was a tiny bit of buffering and some audio problems I think at the beginning of that but I'm quite sure you've still got the fantastic quality of that and you'll see some of the people who were in that film. You'll see them appearing on your screen now and we're just going to take a few minutes to hear from each of the contributors to see what their hope is and what they're seeing about the future of learning. So I'm going to start with Isabel. So Isabel Bristow, who's the managing director in UK and Europe of Studiocity. Over to you Isabel. Thanks Helen. First I just want to say thank you so much to both ALT and ITN for giving us the opportunity to be part of this amazing film. It's the first time I've seen it all the way through and just, you know, learning about everyone else has been at the other participants and all those different fantastic initiatives have just been really wonderful. So the quality is brilliant and I'm really, really pleased to be part of this great project. I think for me because we're both mainly working in the university space my ambition and hope for the future is that, you know, that learning technologies can continue to be utilized to increase life chances for students. That's what we're all about at Studiocity. Clearly that is the same for other participants from what I've seen from the video. You all have that similar ethos to increase learning chances. I think these days, especially in these funny times like student expectations are so high they have an expectation that things will be instant, that they need support on demand and they need high quality support at any given moment. And I think we as a company will certainly continue to develop and improve to meet those needs. And it's really refreshing to see that many of the HEs that we work with the universities have a real openness to consider technological solutions, to improve student attainment and experience, all that kind of thing. At Studiocity, we have a vision where accessible student support is not just like an accessory to high quality learning, but the centrepiece. And I think that the use of learning technologies is really the way forward to achieve that. Thank you, Isabel. Okay, Matt, you're up next. So Matt Brindley-Sabler is director of Staffordshire University in London. So over to you, Matt. Hi, thanks very much, Helen. And thank you to everybody for joining us all this evening. I think from our perspective as a university we started a radical change with regards to our digital transformation back in 2015 where we scoped out what was the best infrastructure for us as an institution to be able to provide that widening access to as many learners as possible because our student populations are such a diverse range of backgrounds, but also capabilities. And we know that everybody doesn't join us with the same kind of portfolio of capability. So when we started our journey, the first thing we did as a university was lock, stock and barrel, we migrated everything to the cloud. We did that with the help of Microsoft. We were the first university in Northern Europe to migrate to the cloud. And because our current Pro-Rise Chancellor for Digital had worked at Microsoft previously, we had a connection there and we then helped develop frameworks that other universities and colleges have utilized going forwards. I suppose we fast forward then a couple of years, we opened our campus in London with a focus on digital education and technical learning because we know that the growth in various sectors, whether that be from eSports or games or computer sciences are crying out for a much deeper and broader knowledge and understanding from a technical level, going into graduate level jobs. We wanted to make sure those opportunities were available for students from day one hands-on learning. And we supported it all with our artificial intelligence driven student coach, Beacon. Beacon supports students. It learns extremely sort of suppose adaptively to students needs and we've currently had over 300,000 requests answered by Beacon, which has taken the pressure of the human resource to focus on additional help for students, which is why we want to use technology more, not to replace the humans, but to make their lives much easier to be able to provide a better student experience. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. Next is Brian. Professor Brian Smith is Director of Academic Enhancement at the University of Law. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here tonight with everybody and thank you I-10 and also for allowing me to speak. We've been riding the crest of the wave for some time now with technology. We've been embedding it in different ways and means, but in 2019, we took a collective view by placing the student voice at the centre of the technology that they would like to see in the future. And in particular, we start to look at what would the alpha generations of children coming through their education into higher education in the future, what they would expect and we believe that they would not ask for technology because it's in their fabric, they'd be using it all the time. It's a way of life for them. So essentially what we're trying to move towards and we hope for in the future is a complete inclusive learning experience that does place the student at the centre of it, that does look through the lenses of education, psychology, social technology and the student voice. Ultimately creating a wonderful experience that education can be shared at any point in time with individuals but equally through virtual reality, through all sorts of technology that you can think of. And that's going to help us as a university to address some of the changes that are happening in how solicitors qualify in the future. And we have taken huge steps forward in the way we use technology for them and for the future and for social justice in the UK as well as globally. Thank you Brian. Next is Neil. So Dr Neil Ralph who is with Health Education England and is Head of Technology Enhanced Learning Director of Innovation Digital and Transformation It's a good long title. He's also a consultant clinical psychologist and an honorary lecturer at UCL. Over to you Neil. Thank you ever so much Helen. It is wonderful to see the film come together and it was a pleasure working with the old team and ITN to be part of it. Now within the NHS the pace of change in health and care education and training has been truly significant over the last 18 months and it has really reinforced that technology has a significant role to play now and an increasing role to play going forward. Now to make that as effective as possible and to have the greatest impact on patient care ultimately we need to make sure that our workforce continues to develop and be equipped with the right digital skills to make use of that technology. That really is a significant factor for us as it is for everybody else who's with us this afternoon. During the pandemic technology enhanced learning team through the use of digital learning resources we enabled the health and care workforce to work differently such as in the use of remote consultation as a way of continuing to see and treat patients or in new roles as well such as the e-learning resources that everybody had to complete to be able to then go off and administer the COVID-19 vaccines. Now we also had a range of other roles such as more broadly we helped support our educators to try to maintain and continue education and training because the NHS is very much a learning environment for our training workforce by helping them adapt to virtual delivery rather than the traditional face-to-face teaching that typically goes on within for instance the hospital environment. Now looking to the future our clinicians need to be supported to continue to evolve their skills in a world of increasing complexity. Now what I mean by that in terms of health care is that for instance when we start to see widespread adoption of things like robotic surgery or use of genomics and that's all not that far away at all we need to help enhance the way we achieve that education and training and to do that consistently at its scale. So we're looking at the latest innovations of simulation and the use of immersive technologies such as virtual reality or mixed reality etc as well as how do we effectively continue to grow the integration of online learning whether it's synchronous or asynchronous in the way that we continue to train both new people coming into work into health and care but also as I mentioned before that continuous learning required for those that need to operate within and as to how we continue to evolve the way we treat and look after patients and public. Thank you Neil Jonathan over to you so Jonathan Perry is the manager at client services at Instructure. Hi yeah I just wanted to say thank you for inviting me to speak today and for inviting me to be part of this whole process. I work for Instructure and we develop the learning platform canvas and so I've got the absolute privilege of working with so many educators across a wide spectrum of institutions and within those institutions obviously a lot of educators as well who are delivering so many different sort of subjects and experiences for their students and this film that we've been able to make it gave me the opportunity to go and visit Grimsby Institute who is a fantastic person and it was a pleasure to go and meet some of their students as well and discuss the experiences that they've had through the pandemic and how technology supported them. I think with the question around the future of learning and how we're sort of linking that to technology I sort of approach this question with looking at it from a people perspective rather than the technology which is linked to it the way we work at Instructure we obviously roll out technology but we also support institutions and that's where I have the best job in the world because I work with educators and we're rolling out technology that makes the experience for students better and I think throughout all of the videos that we've watched and all the conversations that we've had here the focus on this has been about that experience for the students and I think when we look at that and with the situation that we've gone through recently there's obviously different starting points in sort of the uses of the technology within the different institutions and there's a lot of innovative things that have gone on and then we've also seen teachers who maybe haven't been in that situation of using the technology extensively where COVID has actually acted as a catalyst for them to bring them on so I think for me what I'm hoping for in the future is that there's a time for reflection on this that this isn't something that was seen just to solve the problem of COVID that you know everything we've seen in this video everything we've spoken about here is about either looking to an improved experience for students or to solve a problem and to see how technology can support that and so you know I'm excited by all the innovative things that we see but I'm hoping as well there's this mindset for teachers to reflect on what they've been doing in the past couple of years and you know the main goal of this is to provide that simple and easily accessible experience for students that continuously improves their learning experience and that's never going to end is it and with the technology changing to the cloud software that we've spoken about we're going to have to keep reviewing that and I think the only way that will work or what we have to do is it's the partnership between everybody involved in here and I think there's the partnership between the academics with the research into what's worked well in the use of the technology I also think that then has the partnership with the teachers and then we need to bring in the education technology companies but we need also the partnership between the education technology companies because a lot of the things we've spoken about here and the simplicity it requires a simple platform for students to access where we can bring those different experiences really targeted at the individual students and the experience so I'm hoping that you know the conversations, the events like this continue and there's those continuing conversations between all the parties involved and so that we can use these technologies together to make that experience better for the students so that's my view. Thank you Jonathan so welcome Alice next is Alice who's the managing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa and Asia Pacific for vital souls Thank you Helen and thank you to everyone for being so we're so delighted to be part of this initiative it's been an excellent piece to be a part of and I think when we look at what our hopes are for the future and it's really echoing a lot of the things that have already been said but I think we do play a large part in terms of improving access to course materials making it simple for students and instructors and institutions in procurement of course material and then how do students quickly gain access to that content on day one because we know that the sooner they can get into content and engage in content the better their outcomes are going to be and that really is something that I hope that now that we've normalized the blended learning hybrid learning model that we continue to see innovations around simplifying the access models I also think that around engagement and analytics I think AI and machine learning I think will play a bigger part in how we can deliver personalized learning and how we can really enhance those tools but I think I really like to see a continued development on what actually makes the student tick today in today's world and make sure that the platforms and all the technologies are continuously developing to meet the students needs make the study guide the study tools more intuitive make them more personalized making sure that they are meeting the students where they want to be where how they are learning so I think there's a constant innovation that I'm hopeful that this increased demand will make sure that we all meet and work towards and I think analytics is going to be so so powerful making sure that all the immense data that we're sitting on when we look at all the interactions that students have in the digital environments that we all work in that we can surface those actionable data insights for institutions and instructors to be able to help struggling students to be able to enable collaboration with students and really to be driving that enhanced learning experience and ultimately to be driving student success because ultimately that's what we're all here to achieve so yeah I'm really hopeful that this normalization of blended learning is really going to push continued innovation around those three key core areas Thank you Alex Next over to Simple Cloud where we have the Chief Executive Officer Olivier Waubourg Hi, well thank you very much for our participation in this programme very very exciting I think I fully agree with Alice that it is about building bridges with the student needs with the way that they want to engage I was working in the UK for many years with the largest gaming studio and animation studios as well as with the institutions and I saw this demand coming maybe six or seven years ago and so it's really about going in the way of the demand of the student but also bridging the connection between the institutions the students, the learning method and the demands of employers because in the end institutions are important in order to foster skills that will be hired by employers and the world is moving to digital and evidently so the pandemic accelerated a lot of things but the trends were there already we saw that in gaming studio and now you see that with the alpha generation as mentioned earlier on so at Simple Cloud our hope for the future of learning are really about the accessibility and equality in higher education as well as opening up the reach of institutions for real, remote and cross-border teaching and sharing regarding the accessibility and equality part it is important that in this digital age and there is no turning back everyone has a seamless access to the same adequate computer resources and to the same software and tools even the most demanding ones were needed there should be no digital divide that's a huge topic today and this digital divide should not be linked at all to social or financial resources or to location and that's why we want to enable all students to be able to run efficiently all software as demanded by the professor from the Raspberry Pi PC, an old tablet from really anywhere and as I mentioned this is about the equality of access but also ultimately about the equality of chances at the time of finding a job and having had the opportunity to work on the latest tools and using the latest techniques used by the future employers because as a former employer myself or employer today actually what I am looking for in students is the real experience the creativity and all the strong skills which are behind it and the education but in the end what you buy is the experience the end zone that they have with the different tools and the world of tomorrow and today actually is digital we also believe that there is a need of simple flexible and seamless collaboration tools to make for the institution the world youth campus extending the reach of institution and allowing the onboarding and participation of students as well as visiting professors from anywhere in the world as if they were interacting together on the same campus and we've got plenty of examples that we can share with you in multiple disciplines making architect students work together with technology students and together with engineers on the same platform in real time with visiting professors from the U.S. and from Asia all together seamlessly and that's the same in design art, VFX, animation and all that so at SimpleCloud we really want to allow institution of continuous education that for to make that other courses go remote in actually less than an hour it can be done in 15 minutes without having to use time of their IT staff that's a big blocking point that's end user focus and without any additional investment in equipment or resources thank you very much thank you and last but not least Damien so Damien Keane is the global field marketing manager for education for Barko over to you thanks very much Helen and also just like to echo the thoughts of everybody else here and say thank you very much for having me this evening and it's actually inspiring to listen to so many different institutions and providers of education technologies and learning technologies as well as to how they approach the future and their hopes of the future so thank you very much for having me this evening I think really like for ourselves I think when we look at the future of learning technology I think it's very important that we understand the concept of it and not really get lost in that particular buzzword because there is a lot of talk about adaptive learning technologies and needing to provide and facilitate learning technologies within institutions but the important part is always to focus on the fact that technology functions to enable positive learning outcomes and it will forever act as a facilitator to delivering an engaging experience for both the student and the teacher so I think it's very very important that not only educational institutions or any organization that facilitates education seeks to look for technologies that really suit their organization and that facilitates the best outcomes for both the people that are training people and both the student as well because really that is what is key and when we look at the past I guess maybe year and a half we've been looking at every single organization across the broadest spectrum of society whether it's educational institutions large corporates, small and medium businesses government institutions primary schools you name it everybody has had to adapt to applying some form of learning technology to their facility and has had to adapt to a new way of teaching and training their students or their workforce and I think whilst there have been challenges and a lot of hiccups and I think there's suddenly the development of the phrase zoom burnout I hope that there is an appetite still and awareness that applying the right learning technology can positively impact how you educate people be it young learners or more mature students and that educational institutions will always seek to find the best way to engage with their student base and I think as well maybe just as a final point I think while we can look at so many different technologies and the adaption of all of these into institutions I think it's important to focus on the fact that the future is actually still exciting isn't it I mean we've come through like a tough tough couple of months across the world not only to talk about what happened with COVID but then having to adapt to new ways of learning and working and there are so many possibilities now and I think it's an exciting time for every organization to really look at what is out there and there have been so many advances in artificial intelligence virtual reality augmented reality virtual and hybrid classroom solutions interfaces that measure student engagement and interaction it's just an exciting time for educational institutions to apply those specific learning technologies that really suit their organization and that it enhances the learning experience of the students and teachers and I hope now that these organizations will go out there and actively seek for the best solutions for them and I think that really sums up our vision of it thank you Damien thank you very much and thank you to everybody for keeping concise and giving us a flavor of your vision for the future of learning it's really good to hear all those different perspectives and put them together with what we've seen in the taster of the film we've probably got time for a couple of questions and I know there have been some questions coming through Twitter and on the chat so what I plan to do is probably take two questions and ask the panel to give their responses to that so Marin, shall I start with the Twitter question and put one up? Oh ok so from Fazzana Latif so the question that you can see there, as learning tech mainstream how will the role of the learning technologies change and what do we need to do to adapt so who wants to start us off on that one Marin, can you move the question out of the way? Is that alright? Ok Matt, sorry I couldn't see I can see you waving Matt That's ok, the wonders of collaborating online it's the digital hand or the real one on the camera so this is something that we looked at as a university a while ago because learning technologists do a lot more than just provides solutions from a technical perspective to enhance learning many of our learning technologists have enhanced their technical skill and capability and act more as mentors and guides and reassurance for the academic community to embrace technology in order to enrich students' learning there was a comment earlier on about the digital nativeness of students and there is that sort of I don't know whether it's sometimes our fault or it's that sort of ethereal thing out there but we make assumptions that against age demographics with the technical capabilities of young people they have a depth of understanding and capability a technical capability in certain areas but not in others and I use an adage of one of our sort of cyber security as senior lecturers who say I have final year students who probably unsupervised could hack GCHQ and ask them to put a PowerPoint presentation together to sell themselves for job interview and they go into a panic mode and I think that that's what we need to look at and the learning technologists and those technical specialists are there to provide a range of solutions for all of us both students, academic staff professional services staff to drive developments forward and I think that our reliance on them is likely to increase not decrease if I'm honest absolutely Any other views on the role of learning technologists and how it's going to develop Brian? Yeah, I just to enhance what Matt said, I actually see the role of the learning technologists is to be helping us to research and reason our use of technology to actually look ahead identifying opportunities with technology, ask yourself the question of where does that fit into perhaps tomorrow's pedagogy or maybe there's a new oggy of the future but actually it's very much about helping us to influence the way we are thinking so we are very collaborative partners now between academics and learning technologists and I think they play a vital role in that research and reasoning for the future generation of learners So those of you running ed tech companies how do you see the interaction with education institutions and the learning technologists developing over time who wants to come in on that one Yeah, I think we're seeing a change in terms of definitely around analytics and adoption data that side of that side of the sort of the learning platform so the technologists that we're working with I think it's that sort of evidence basis in terms of the improvement so there's a lot of conversations going on around the learning analytics so I think for the education technologists there's probably going to be deeper conversations around that looking at the evidence like we've already mentioned from the data that's available to try and as we said, yeah, coach and support and put in place the technologies we've been talking about where it's to enhance and it's improved what we're already doing so I think to some extent we're talking about it changing but is it a fundamental change the role of I think the educational technologists is to look at that sort of continuous improvement and support people through those improvements and changes and I think the changes will be that we've got more data we've got more tools to support that Yeah, what about learning design and how does that work in design, how do you work with learning technologists to develop that design of your programs when you were talking about some of the GP training for example Well, I mean we've seen a really a fundamental role for quite a while for learning technologists to work closely with sub-general experts in our field, that's typically clinicians international and national experts in areas of healthcare but also with educationists as well and that close relationship is just continuing to evolve and what I'm seeing is that people as they've been forced to adopt new ways of developing education or new ways of presenting their content or new ways of engaging with their learners some of those are working with their educational and learning technologists to help them be equipped with the confidence they need to take that plunge and to understand how they start to leverage some of what is even just the basic functionality of the platforms available to get their message to get their education across and interestingly also though there's a really powerful role for learning technologists to work with those who are wanting to race ahead so that they're not compromising that sort of educational effectiveness because they're getting slightly distracted by some very clever, exciting technologies and how do they make sure they're making good investment decisions whereas those that commission or if they're making best use of the technologies because it is a means to an end ultimately as intense so really exciting time for learning technologists really really is and I can only see that sort of the opportunities continuing to sort of grow and that their role within any area of education training really really thriving Thank you Nina Mara we have another question from Andrew Is there inevitably a tension or contradiction between developing a technical bleeding edge that might be a leading edge and narrowing the digital divide how are colleagues managing this tension in their plans? It might be bleeding edge it might be jargon that I haven't caught up with yet Isabel Sure I think it's a really good question it's really important to remember that not everyone has access the same technologies, not everyone has ability in the same way but I think where possible I think it's incredibly important to have that equity of access it's really important to make things available by mobile phone but not just any phone but low end mobile devices important to make sure that platforms run on perhaps computers or even internet bandwidth that aren't that great and I think as long as we can find ways to do that we can come as close as we can to keeping that equity of access and making that more available to people Thank you Someone who hasn't contributed Damian Damian you go ahead Alright actually it is a very very good question and I think it actually does link a little bit there are some parallels to be drawn with the question on learning technologists because I think what we found working with a lot of learning technologists in the institutions that we work with worldwide is that they're very proactive now and they're more vocal in speaking to providers of learning technologies and wanting to really shape these technologies to suit their organization to their method of teaching and I think when it comes to bridging that digital divide it is as human beings we're not sometimes the best at handling change and I think it is very much on the providers of learning technologies to be able to provide tech that really integrates seamlessly into what an educator is used to and really providing the technology that can fit into the organization so it doesn't upset the applicants so to speak that we offer those solutions that educators can use every single day without feeling like they're doing something alien or that it can really feel like it's familiar and I do think that bridging that divide or lessening that tension so to speak a lot of that is down to technology providers actually really listening to learning technologists teachers, students and really understanding what they need to achieve the best learning outcomes Thank you Diane Alice? Yeah I completely agree with that I think it is around it is on us as the platform to make sure it's intuitive to make sure that we can sort of cater to the spectrum of digital maturity that we see across in the UK or globally and so it really is on our product development and our engineers to make sure that they are very in tune with our customers needs and that gets adopted and how it gets used and we see very regional variations in that so there's a lot of things for us to take accountability for in that in our product development so yeah I completely echo where Diane was going with that in terms of the learning technologists I would also just want to say I think more and more they are the champion within the institution that's really again driving us as platform providers to be innovative and so they really are an extremely important and pivotal role I think for us and our development and for continuing to enhance the student experience Thank you Alice Thank you Just to add on that one because that's really a topic that is close to our heart Technology has been very often developed by super IT engineers with high skills for IT people within companies or institution they share a common language and we know that within institutions IT and central IT is very important but also they have loads of tasks on their hand and they cannot provide everything that's why on our side we've made everything end user focused and a teacher can say a set is working workspace with all the security protocols and all the onboarding of software in physically 15 minutes and then the big technological divide or digital divide comes from the access to resources it's not about the skills of the students as mentioned for PowerPoint maybe not but for coding and for using complex software and designing videos are way more skills than we are even professionals from our side but it's about giving them access to the resources and you know if they don't have parents that can offer them the big PC that goes with the GPU they may be blocked from learning the skills and the PC labs do not offer permanent access of the same type of machine at all time during the day or accessible hours and that's where we really want to bridge that divide by putting the resources in a way that does not require IT specialist into the end for the students or the teachers Thank you thank you all and really in those two short questions and your very concise and pertinent responses to that we really summarise some of the key things facing us as a community of learning technologies the access to technology and the skills and the digital you know the growing sort of divide around those so that is critical and the development role of the learning technologies and how they are taking on more leadership in institutions and how we can develop them to really grow in those roles and to provide almost like that third professional role between academics and professional services where they're in the middle helping with that learning design so that's been a fantastic discussion I really enjoyed that listening to what you've got to say and I'm going to end by handing back to Alts Chief Executive Officer Sara Diefel Thank you Helen and thank you everybody I'm so delighted that we've started a conversation that I think has been going on in the chat and on social media and we hope very much that the future of learning programmes and all the clips that are available now to you to view and share will help stimulate that conversation more widely across our sector we really want to play a leading role in spreading the important work that learning technologies do and showcase the positive impact that can have as well as exploring some of the trickier questions so thank you again to everybody who's joined us today here at the panel thank you especially to our chair Helen O'Sullivan who's chaired us this evening thank you to all of our listeners and to the colleagues at ITN Productions who have made this collaboration work to all of you please do watch the films and hopefully continue that conversation of the future of learning