 Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us and a very good morning. I'm Matt Cooper and I'm your emcee for the next hour. On behalf of today's event hosts, the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the partners of the Next Steps Project, I warmly welcome our guests joining us in person in the RDS Dublin and a very warm welcome to many guests joining us online for today's live broadcast as the higher education sector comes together for the official launch of the report and the findings from the National Sectoral Partnership Project, Next Steps for Teaching and Learning, moving forward together. So I'm quick housekeeping for you. Phones and silent pleas for the event and live broadcast and please continue to be mindful of the COVID-19 guidelines that we keep each of us to help ourselves and to help each other be safe. Today's launch comes midway in valuing Ireland's Teaching and Learning Week in the higher education sector which is coming together to consider and discuss how we value teaching and learning and explore what the future of education will look like for the students of tomorrow. The Next Steps Project is an example of unique sectoral collaboration. 15 partners from the sector came together to address, in the context of COVID-19, just a single question. What have we learned and what does it mean for the future of Teaching and Learning in Irish Higher Education? This morning we launched the core report of the project that captures the key messages we identified and recommendations that have been agreed by all partners and it's my pleasure to now invite the Chair of the National Forum Board Dr Lynn Ramsey to open the event. Thank you Matt. Good morning everyone. This is a very special moment for us all and before the findings of this collaborative work are launched I would like to take a few minutes to acknowledge and thank the 15 partners including the National Forum who dedicated so much thought effort and time during an especially busy year to help us look to the future together. The document being launched by the Minister today reflects a sector in transition. Perspectives and evidence at a moment in time but the process of collaboration that led to this day represents an ever-present collaborative will to support the success of our students through any challenges or changes of contexts. These findings also come at the end of the current strategic period for the National Forum and as we move to a new sustainable reality for Teaching and Learning in Ireland it is also fitting that I on behalf of the Board extend thanks to all the people who have taken part in organised local or national events enhancement initiatives over the past eight years. Those who have informed frameworks, award structures, guides and tool kits. Those who have engaged in conversations about Teaching and Learning whether online or during those recently lost corridor casual conversations. We as an entire higher education community own the future of Teaching and Learning in Ireland and I am very grateful to the next steps partners for providing evidence-based signposts for us to consider as we shape our next strategy and developments. Thank you very much Lynn. Now it's an indication of just how important today's event is by the people who have come here and I'm delighted that we have the opportunity to invite Simon Harris the Minister for Further and Higher Education Research Innovation and Science to officially launch the report and findings from the National Sectoral Partnership Project. Next steps for Teaching and Learning moving forward together. Minister. Well thank you very much Martin good morning everybody here in the RDS and everybody joining us online. I'm so delighted to be here with you this morning for what I think is a really significant moment. A stock take if you like, a moment where we check in and see how our higher education system is doing, how it is done through the pandemic period and crucially what we want to do together next. I really do think this report, the next steps for Teaching and Learning moving forward together, is going to be an invaluable resource at a time of transition and change for higher education in our country and indeed for so many parts of how we live and work in Ireland. I really want to begin by thanking everybody who has worked so hard to get us to this point. I want to thank Terry and Lynn, everybody involved in the National Forum. The phrase I most like in the name of this report is moving forward together and I must say in the year and a half or so that I've been in this post I've been really struck by that sense of collaboration in the third level sector. Yes we might all have slightly different views or yes we might argue a row or debate about the pace at which we move forward or the sequence at which we do things but I've genuinely been struck even in the darkest days of the Covid pandemic by that strong sense of collaboration, that desire to do good by the learner, to work together and to pull together and this report really epitomizes that sense of collaboration so a huge huge thank you to everybody who has worked. Terry was reminding me on the way in that this is a a worldwide unique event in terms of the level of collaboration that's actually happened and I think everybody involved can be and should be very very proud in that regard. I also want to take the opportunity today to say thank you to say thank you to everybody working in our higher education system and to all the students in the system as well because whilst higher education changed and had to change in an emergency way and things moved from on campus to online overnight people had to work and learn in new ways and in difficult ways we didn't lose one day and that is a real testament to the dedication, the determination and the flexibility that was shown by all of the partners across higher education. Higher education never it had to work in ways that were less than optimal at times but it never stopped and I think that's to your great credit so as as minister for further and higher education I really want to to thank you for that and acknowledge that here today as well. As a country I think it's fair to say we've had to make extraordinary efforts over the last 18 months or so to contain the spread of COVID and that challenge let's be honest still continues today. Every aspect of our life has come under real pressure as we've worked together to respond to an unprecedented and almost unimaginable threat and not least of which have been the efforts of the higher education sector and your work. Since back in March 2020 seems so long ago now it's fair to say that higher education has experienced one of the most disruptive phases in its history. In a sector that's typified by considered research and incremental change overnight there was a need to move to emergency measures remote teaching learning and assessing let's be honest a way our sector doesn't usually work emergency response rather than that evidence-based incremental approach and despite the huge challenges you faced you did everything to put the student to learner first and as I say I'm so thankful for that. I think it is important though in reflecting as this report does to acknowledge that there have been pluses and minuses and I think one of the jobs of all of us involved in policy making as we try and emerge from this pandemic is to look at what have we had to experience that we never want to see again in our lifetime and how do we move as far away from that as quickly as possible and what good has come perhaps accidentally that we want to keep that we want to bank that we want to evolve and that we want to embed and that's why I was really excited to be invited to launch this initiative in May of this year and wanted to be here with you at the launch today the project this project has been a first of its kind in terms of scale and in terms of approach in terms of collaboration where all partners have submitted evidence-based findings and that's important not just an anecdote evidence-based findings on the experience of teaching learning assessing and working through the pandemic and it is clear the pandemic has made visible some of the cracks in our higher education sector and it has created a new urgency in responding to them we've seen things that can never be on scene and then we need to get on and address them it is time to reimagine teaching learning and assessment in higher education to capture not only what the sector wishes to change from the innovations required but also how the sector can most effectively maintain and build on those successful elements in doing so and in talking about change we are building on deep foundations foundations of an enabling culture established and evolving partnerships and collaborations prior and ongoing capacity building experience expertise and scholarship the sector can build on the lessons that have been learned and this will require an ongoing collective commitment to strategic alignment direction collaboration research and the development of infrastructure all supported by sustained funding and I want to assure you of my commitment in relation to that I wanted to just maybe reflect a little bit on some of the stories that I've heard as I've gone around the country because I think there have been pluses and minuses positive and negatives and to the 54,000 of you who've had your say as part of this project thank you so much for participating and giving us this real wealth of knowledge but as I've traveled around the country and as I've talked to students and I've talked to learners some pluses some minuses on the negative side the COVID pandemic has really highlighted the digital divide that exists here in Ireland I met students who didn't have a laptop I met students who couldn't access Wi-Fi I met students having to get in the car and drive to a certain part of their village to try and get enough connection and we've worked together to try and respond to that 17,000 free laptops being provided the expansion of the edgy roam to make that Wi-Fi facility available outside the walls of the college and we've more to do a second negative and we've got to be blunt about this it has exposed the real inequality when it comes to housing you know it's easy to say work from home or learn from home that's a very different experience for different people learning from home where you have a safe space a warm space versus learning from home where your bedroom becomes your workplace your learning place and and your your only space of socialization during lockdown so that inequality that has existed has had a real spotlight Sean on it on the plus side students have told me and I know we'll hear from Laura later the president of USA the benefit of recorded lectures don't know if you're like me sometimes they can take a couple of things times for things to go into my mind being able to attend a lecture and then play it back and then watch it back and go back that's been it there's been a real benefit to that the fact that we put in place in an emergency a fund we've never had before called mitigating educational disadvantage and we now want to normalize that and make that part of core business that we always have this resource to direct towards tackling educational disadvantage the fact that whilst some students have been yearning to get back to the college campus and it's been so heartening when I was on the campus in UCC the other day to hear the hustle and bustle and be walking into crowds of students I've also talked to other students students who might be the traditional school leaver who might be 40 with a mortgage and a full-time job and can't pack their bags and head off to college but they were able to access a university degree from Manuth based in rural Longford so actually the move to online did expand access for some students in our country and that's worth commenting on as well from a research perspective and so much research happens in higher education now is our time never before have people been talking about science and research around the kitchen table or on the couch as they have during this pandemic and we need to seize that opportunity to make the case for sustainable funding and how our country can lead in the research space and also we've seen a sense of collaboration I know there's been good partnership in this sector for many many decades but that level of collaboration the working together union staff representative student representative management coming together is something that we mustn't put away at the end of the pandemic and say that's how we used to work during the emergency we need to say how can we keep those vehicles now to tackle some of the big questions that we need to respond to together so I really find that we've an awful lot of learning to do I think we've an awful lot of good that we can build on I think we're at a very crucial time for higher education it is a time as Lynn said of great transition and we now have the first ever departments dedicated to work at this no longer are these issues hidden away along with primary school pupil teacher ratios or other issues we've a dedicated department civil service minister working night and day and further education higher education research and how we become a real department for the future so everyone can reach their potential I think we're going to have to prepare for the change that's coming the profile of the student is changing we have to stop thinking of education as something that somebody does at a certain period of their life and then says I'm finished with that more and more people are going to be dipping in and out of education as they need to upskill and reskill and that's going to require us doing things in different ways lifelong learning we're not where we need to be we're still below international averages when it comes to participation in lifelong learning what do we need to do as a government in terms of policy and what do we need to do as a sector in terms of how we make it easier and more accessible what does the university without walls look like I was speaking to some sixth class sixth class students this morning in a primary school in my way in here and they were asking me what are you going to do to help me get to college and I was thinking it's a fascinating question because what will college look like when that sixth class student is a first year university student very different to today and how do we crucially move behind the narrow sometimes snobby and elitist attitude we have to education and look at a fully unified education system that doesn't say there's a right way to learn in a wrong way to learn that doesn't have a 16 year old or 17 year old obsessing about the name of the university they attend but rather obsessing about the passion that they want to pursue in terms of their career and how we help them get there be a through further education apprenticeships higher education and the pathways amongst them all so these are just some thoughts I wanted to leave with you this morning but I think this body of work that I'm honoured to launch next steps for teaching and learning moving forward together is going to be instructive because it provides us with a level of content a level of evidence and a level of input that is unparalleled right across our world and I'm so proud of everybody who's been involved in this project so grateful to everyone who has participated and now like every report I'm really looking forward to working with you on implementing some of the recommendations and changes so thank you so much Gerv Milamogov thank you very much minister Harris for your presence and for your participation I'm here of course today in a professional capacity but I do have a personal interest in listening to these presentations as a parent of one child who is about to graduate in a couple of weeks time having completed her studies at Trinity during the summer two more children at UCD and two in secondary school who I'm looking forward to hopefully getting to third level education and anything there that will enhance their experience is something that as a parent I'm certainly very interested in so I'm not delighted to call on the national forums project lead for next steps for our next presentation Dr Allison Farrell thank you next steps is a cross-sectoral partnership project which explored the experience of teaching and learning in higher education in the COVID-19 pandemic the project though it had a short time frame had a broad brief it included considerations of what we knew before during and after COVID-19 about blended and online learning looked at higher education policy examined how teaching learning is valued in higher education and particularly it involved 15 partners from across the Irish higher education sector working together in unique collaboration these partners agreed in March 2021 to work together to answer one question in the context of COVID-19 what have we learned and what does it mean for the future of teaching and learning in Irish higher education as project partners we know that we are still living through the pandemic nevertheless we believe there was some value in pausing and reflecting at this moment in time to inquire about our experience in order to do this partners gathered evidence some existing and some new data to try to collectively understand the experience of teaching learning assessing and working through the pandemic we use ways of reflecting which we drew from the literature and which we described using the well-known shorthand of what so what and now what we are diverse partners while we all work with higher education we have particular perspectives or lenses through which we view teaching and learning the scale of collaboration in this project meant that we had to listen carefully and acknowledge different points of view we moved towards our outputs we had to negotiate compromise and prioritize we worked hard to do this with rigor and authenticity and of course a deep respect for one another we discussed our work often agreed our messages and recommendations and collaboratively co-authored our core output we also wrote from our own perspectives in a collection of insights I am honored to represent the next steps partners many of whom are here today thank you very much Alison I work in a sector of broadcasting which of course as well has gone to go major change in the way it delivers its services to the public in recent times obviously having a very very big story to cover as well but many of the questions that I'm hearing raised here today and the findings as well are things that I think could be applied in other sectors such as my own but maybe we haven't been as rigorous in doing the research and reaching the understanding as what needs to be done as has been done in the higher education sector so next we're going to hear from the director of the national forum Dr Terry McGuire Terry thank you Matt the next test project is focused on teaching and learning and how we can move forward together and it doesn't capture everything that we've learned as a sector of society about uh around COVID but what it's done is has looked at what we've learned through the lens of teaching and learning but when we talk about teaching and learning we need to think about curriculum design teaching approaches an assessment across subject areas in online face-to-face and blended context we need to talk about the related professional development of all those who teach we need to talk about student engagement learning and success we need to talk about community inclusivity and equity and we need to talk about the local and national contexts structures processes and policies surrounding all of these aspects the challenge that the next step partners faced was considerable but what we have done is really admirable and I don't know minister there is no other country where all the stakeholders across the higher education sector have combined all the data they collected to this point during the pandemic collected new data synthesize all the findings discuss them with other stakeholders to agree as a sector the key messages that have emerged and what we should do about them in addition to identifying key messages we also captured good practice and we drafted principles for further consultation which we hope will make a useful contribution to a future national and international conversation around how teaching and learning is valued time moves in one direction and we can't go back pre-covid we are aware we're not out of the pandemic yet but as a sector we've reflected we've taken stock of where we are now and as a result have that evidence based to inform future development we're aware we're going to have to continue to reflect and to plan and we know that this report is of its time but the findings provide a solid foundation to continue to support the enhancement of teaching and learning for whatever the future might bring based on our findings and our considerations of them as partners we've identified a number of recommendations as next steps to guide to enable and to support the future enhancement of teaching and learning in Irish higher education these recommendations cover strategic alignment and direction they point to the need for continued review support and development and most importantly the need for continued collaboration research and shared good practice we also identified a transversal theme underpinning all recommendations one of equity diversity inclusion community and belonging I would really like to thank all of our partners but I want to say special thanks to Dr Allison Farrell the project lead to Dr Claire McAvidia Dr Catherine Cronin and the rest of the national forum team who really have worked so hard and managing this project over the last six months the next steps project output has a number of parts the core report developed in collaboration with all partners that has been launched today in addition we've developed a collection of next steps insights written by partners which capture specific issues that have been identified in in their individual contexts these are all now available on the national forum website but if you think about scholarship the scholarship with impact reminds us that no numbers without stories and we should have no stories without numbers the next steps project includes the perspective of over 54 thousand voices for across the sector and beyond and the mini documentary which we're going to see now tells its story every year there are over a quarter of a million students participating in higher education many of them attending in institutions similar to this lecture theatres labs and corridors buzzing with the sounds of vibrant communities that all changed in March 2020 with the global pandemic I remember we were here in our offices in the Royal Irish Academy myself and the team we were getting ready for our first online meeting with the national forum associates because of what was happening and the restrictions at the time and we heard the announcement we threw the agenda of the meeting out the window and we met with our associates and nobody knew what was going to happen nobody knew what the future was going to be like and we were there saying you know how can we support you what can the forum do for you because we were all we all were in this together and at the time we were also trying to organize the launch of the Irish national digital experience survey which we had collected in October prior and little did we know how valuable that data set was going to be for the sector as they made decisions around digital over the the months that followed and initially I think it went to this absolute uncertainty the shock factor of all of a sudden the doors are being closed and locked and how long was this going to go on for would it be just for two weeks or was this going to move into the future in a long capacity where how are we going to shift our teaching into an online environment where some people had expertise and other people were maybe beginning to learn more about that field how are we going to do this across the board with every student I think my thoughts went straight to the students how all the assessments that we had lined up how would we communicate with them what technology platform would we use we use virtual learning environments and institutes have won but now we have teams and zoom we have all these different platforms that were familiar to many so we had to certainly work out which one was the best and which would work for the students how would we communicate with the students how would we engage what about the circumstances that they have so for example some had no broadband some had no laptops some were thousands of miles away from home and all of a sudden they're in rooms in busy houses noisy broadband issues and here we were trying to work out ways in which we could work in synchronous or asynchronous ways with our students so it was this shock of how were we going to achieve this momentous task that was ahead of us with almost a blank page in front of us a blank canvas as to how we were designing COVID-19 was the iceberg that few could have predicted and no one was truly prepared for the devastating effect it was to have on the education sector a few were competent swimmers some treaded water but for Manny it became a fight for survival grasping on to anything as they tried to stay afloat when lockdown happened I was head of student support services in TU Dublin City campus and really just in one day the whole world turned upside down and we all had to learn new technologies and new ways of supporting our students and for us initially the key thing the big risk for us I suppose was our students who were using the counseling services and the health services and we had to learn new ways of supporting them through teams and silver cloud and then after that it was the students who didn't have the technology to access the the online classes and the teaching staff were great they were very much in touch with the students and they identified the students who needed support our head chaplain had an essential workers pass and he was able to drive through deserted streets and deliver mobile phones and laptops to students who needed them and then we got some additional funding from the government and we were able to in a more structured way I suppose support students and the financial aid staff worked through the night to make sure that the students were supported but I suppose really I mean everyone in that period really pulled together it was just phenomenal to see the work that people focused on and pulled together to make sure our students were supported and our students could continue to learn progress and graduate and just continue with their lives there was a very steep learning curve for everybody and especially for lecturers the vast majority of whom would not have had any experience of teaching online on top of that the speed at which everything happened meant they were practically swept off their feet and in the initial stages at least that was very disorientating I know lecturers were putting in very long hours attending training redesigning classes and providing additional support to students professional staff too did a phenomenal job in transforming all those myriad of processes that enable teaching and learning to happen for the online environment and providing crucial support for lecturers and students if you think in terms of the usual trajectory of moving courses online it usually requires an intensive planning designing and development cycle that takes months if not years for just a single course in response to the pandemic literally thousands of courses across the entire sector were adapted and delivered to give that continuity and structure that was so important for students and everyone while the pandemic was going on when you stop to think about it it really was an awesome achievement the pandemic accelerated the use of technology to access and deliver learning opportunities it was in effect a real-world experiment that allowed us to utilize a multitude of online blended and hybrid approaches to teaching learning and assessment everyone had to learn how to use Zoom but then we also had to learn how to use other features of what we have as loop so that's somewhere where lecturers can put all our notes in our assignments and we had to learn how to use other parts of that we all knew how to get things like PowerPoint presentations and class notes off but we also had to learn how to submit an assignment through it or how to do a quiz on it and it was something that certainly in science subjects we'd never done before even though no one has done this before at the time I was surprised that we were still in the college routine despite the fact that we were sitting at home and in my case I remember being a little bit worried about missing something important and being a class rep I felt overwhelmed with questions from my classmates Pivoting to teaching in an online learning environment provided increased access to materials and potential for additional flexibility as students could work at their own pace learning via technology can also help students develop the digital literacies necessary for their future careers it was a new challenge for many staff and students particularly given the speed at which they had to respond students really value the on-campus experience and have missed the live in-person interaction with their peers and lecturers but students also appreciated the flexibility and accessibility that online content and videos provided as the pandemic continued and the country went in and out of lockdowns the phrase the new normal was adopted to describe many aspects of our lives but what would the new normal be for higher education from a learning perspective we can look at two different ways in which we learn the first we call it additive learning that simply that we add to what we know accumulates of our different abilities and skills and the second is transformative learning and that's where there's a more fundamental change in our understanding of the world and when the pandemic happened and we've shifted mainly to our homes to deliver our lectures and our teaching and we had to look at online methods what happened there was not additive learning but transformative in that our understanding of what it means to learn how to work with people has changed from a values perspective so we have a new understanding now of learning and teaching and what the possibilities are and also what the challenges are and hopefully that will stand to us in the future. A sector characterised by considered researched and incremental change was overnight forced to begin remote teaching learning and assessment this dramatic shift resulted in both positives and negatives that posed a series of questions for students staff and other stakeholders though still living through the pandemic in March 2021 15 partners from across the higher education sector agreed to work together to answer one shared persistent and urgent question in the context of COVID-19 what have we learned and what does it mean for the future of teaching and learning in Irish higher education. In the next steps project we work together to try to understand the Irish higher education teaching and learning experience during the pandemic with next steps we want to demonstrate the potential of broad collaborative projects of this nature want to contribute to conversations about higher education policy research and practice now and in the future want to work in partnership with the HGA and Minister Harris and we want our work to have a positive impact we hope that our next steps outputs are seen not as the end of a project but as the beginning of where we want to go to from here. So you want to get involved because it's absolutely essential for us to sectorally work together to actually learn from the experience of the past 18 months actually work out what worked well for us what didn't work as well as we might have hoped and critically what issues and aspects might we want to maintain into the future. The partners combined the key insights and findings from almost 55,000 staff, students and external stakeholders. The numbers involved the range of perspectives and staff roles represented and the referencing of previous consultations and reports provide a strong evidence base for the key messages and recommendations of the next steps project. What is clear from the findings is that how institutions and individuals address challenges was as important as what they did. Well I think when we look at teaching and learning in higher education it always needs to progress that's why the term next steps is very appropriate because we're constantly improving and for that to happen there needs to be an enabling culture. By culture we mean the way we do things and that means that we're all the time looking at ways and means of improving our teaching and learning practices both at an institutional level and across the sector. While many staff and students struggle to cope with teaching and learning from home COVID-19 has also advanced some teaching practices in Irish higher education that are more informed by accessibility, flexibility, choice and autonomy. A deliberate emphasis on equity diversity and inclusion must be preserved and further developed for teaching learning and assessment so that all students and staff can succeed and thrive. Learning is as unique to humans as their fingerprints and in order to reach and teach the huge diversity of learners now in our physical and virtual classrooms we need to build more flexibility, more accessibility, more student voice and choice into how we design and deliver higher education spaces and programs. Luckily quality evidence-based and internationally recognized frameworks for inclusive teaching and learning such as UDL or Universal Design for Learning can guide us in how to achieve this goal and ensure that every single student has equitable pathways to success. Community, well-being, collaboration and partnership were themes which stood out in terms of what worked during the pandemic and what should be maintained into the future. So one one of the few advantages to all the lockdowns was the fact that we could use online platforms to collaborate much more frequently as staff nationally and with students nationally and I think the highlight of a lot of our weeks or our months was the time when the staff and students could come together and share insight and learn about each other's work and the way that students are responding to the work and next steps is a great opportunity for us to keep that collaboration going and to learn more about each other in a collaborative space with student partnership. Community and well-being supports are important for all students including international students and studying abroad can be challenging in normal circumstances not to mind during the COVID-19 pandemic. International students experience you know changing culture, changing environment, after the new language, being away from family and friends and this really contributed to isolation I suppose and feelings of loneliness as well. The pandemic has revealed the need and demonstrated our ability to work together for the common good by tapping into the wealth of experience and expertise from across the sector we can influence the future co-creating new ways of informing and making decisions of identifying priorities and developing coherent strategies. The beauty of the next steps project is that it's sector-wide it allows all stakeholders across higher education to work together collaboratively to develop a shared understanding of what we might want to carry into the future of higher education. For Thea in particular we took the perspectives of the chief academic officers who are responsible for overall academic provision for their institutions and we wanted to provide an opportunity for these key senior leaders to reflect on the experience of the past 18 months and to plan for the future. The National Forum Next Steps Project is a welcomed continuation of higher education sexual collaboration and it was important for HECA that we could bring our unique perspective of higher education our learnings from COVID-19 and our vision for the future of teaching and learning to the national partnership project. The success of working together and collaborating with partners has brought to the forefront many valuable insights for the future of higher education teaching and learning particularly the importance of inclusion and ensuring that teaching and learning will be more accessible for all learners. One of the key findings coming out of our series of focus group discussions with heads of services across the universities such as IT services, libraries, heads of student services, heads of teaching and learning and exams officers was the crucial role that these groups had played across the sector in helping inform decision making and really good decision making at key moments during the pandemic. This meant that services could continue, students could complete their courses, do their exams and graduate or progress as almost as normal obviously in very different circumstances. We found too that student leaders were really good during the pandemic they had good structures in place they could and they helped feed in from a student perspective to ensure that the decisions that were taken were beneficial to everybody and could work. Effective student partnership emerged as central to institutional responses to the pandemic. With the backing and participation of senior leaders student partnership was prioritized students were consulted regularly their voices were listened to they participated in decision making and contributed as valued partners. We have a good culture of listening to the student voice in Irish higher education but more active student engagement in decision making means that students should be able to become partners who can shape change and not just provide opinions for staff to act upon through governance structures in the classroom, online and on campus and throughout the student learning journey. Students are experts in their learning experiences. When students work together and share their experiences with one another they can build a bigger picture of the kinds of positive changes the students can support in Irish higher education. When staff are open to partnership higher education becomes more responsive and proactive in shaping a shared vision for the benefit of all. Going forward students staff and institutional leadership need to come together to plan the way to support more proactive approaches to student partnership. Students such as myself are experts in their learning experiences when we work together talk share experiences with each other we can build a bigger picture. This picture contains the different kinds of positive changes that we as students can support and create in higher education. When staff are open to partnership higher education becomes more responsive and proactive in shaping a shared vision for the benefits of all staff and students alike. This approach will help shape not only our future learning experiences but also staff teaching and learning experiences. Where and how we teach, learn and assess changed during the pandemic. These changes revealed new opportunities and gave rise to some new challenges. When teaching moved online in March 2020 it was a shock to the system for all of us no matter how skilled we were using technology. Now over a year later we've learned so much. The move online meant that we had to reflect more deeply on our pedagogy and to really consider the skills that students need to navigate and participate in their learning. The higher education community in Ireland has been incredibly generous in supporting each other throughout COVID. Colleagues have shared experiences, resources, discussed challenges, provided pure training in the use of online tools and collaborated on new projects that support student success. We're now aware of choices and possibilities in learning teaching and assessment which maybe we hadn't considered so much previously. We've seen the physical spaces of the campus are just one of an abundant number of ways through which learning teaching and assessment are mediated and how we engage our learners. So the next phase has the potential to be very transformative as we rethink and redesign our learning environments both physical and virtual and they've traditionally been somewhat closed and now we have the space to make them open and inclusive and that also means we can respond to a rapidly changing world and changing demographics where people will return to education in the future at different career stages and different life stages. The COVID-19 crisis reminds us that approaches to internal and external quality assurance need to be flexible and agile. More generally it reminds us that our qualification system needs to be capable of evolving to keep pace with society's changing lifelong learning and qualifications recognition needs. It's timely to reflect on the need to ensure the teaching, learning and assessment practices contribute to widening the diversity of learning pathways and the enhancement of the permeability of the qualification system. The pandemic brought sharply into focus the scale of the challenges that we may face nationally and internationally. Higher education has an important role in addressing many of these societal and economic challenges. The rapid pace of change will require multidisciplinary expertise together with critical thinking, collaboration, communication and digital capabilities within our institutions and beyond. The world of work is changing. Higher education has an important role to play in helping our students to be work and world ready. Lifelong learning will continue to grow and develop as a feature of higher education. Through inquiry, interdisciplinarity and the use of appropriate pedagogies we can help our students to develop necessary attributes and transversal skills that they will need to thrive in the workplace and to contribute to communities and to address their urgent economic and social challenges. These key messages have implications for our higher education institutions and future policy development for the continued enhancement of teaching, learning and assessment. It is time to reimagine teaching, learning and assessment in higher education to capture not only what we wish to change from the innovations required as a consequence of COVID-19 but also how we can most effectively maintain and build on successful elements. The COVID-19 experience challenged many assumptions that had gone unquestioned for too long. Issues that had been seen as important but not time sensitive suddenly became urgent. Through the next steps project the sector can build on the lessons learned collectively. It is an opportunity to re-examine old doctrines and reimagine higher education. Not just for learners but for our whole society. The next step report is a report of its time. The pandemic isn't finished. We know that but what we've done is we've worked together to pull all the data that we have as a sector together to synthesise it and to collect the key messages in terms of what data is telling us to act as a starting point for further discussion and development. The report is just one part of what we've done. In tandem with the report we have also produced a number, a collection, of next steps insights. Each one developed by one of the partners that capture the actual context and the issues within their own particular context. What all of this does is it gives us key messages that we now know from what we've learned and based on those key messages we've actually identified good practice and we've highlighted recommendations to improve strategic alignment. We've encouraged through these recommendations that we continue to review, we develop and we continue to collaborate. What COVID did was to show cracks in the higher education system and there's now an urgency to actually deal with some of those and what Next Steps does is situates us really well to continue the conversations, to enable us to enhance teaching and learning for our students into the future. Changes to how we live, learn and work have occurred as a result of COVID-19 and it'll take time to understand these changes and plan accordingly for what happens next. We're at a crossroads in the development of Irish higher education. It's not one of divergence but of convergence and it's together we begin the journey and take the next steps. Of course all relevant COVID-19 requirements were followed in the making of that mini-documentary. Now we're joined here in the RDS and also virtually by a panel to discuss some of the issues highlighted in the documentary and there are very many interesting ones there indeed. So joining us here in person are Kirsten May who is president of the University of Limerick. We also have Tim Conlon, head of policy and strategic planning for international programs and gender equality at the Higher Education Authority. Claire Osteck is president of the Union of Students of Ireland and joining us virtually are two panellists. The first is Professor Frank Cotten. Hello Frank, good to have you with us here today. Frank is the senior vice principal and deputy vice chancellor at the University of Glasgow and also joining us this morning in his capacity as an international advisor to the Board of the National Forum. Our second panellist joining us virtually is Dr Gerard Osulavon. Good morning to you Gerard. Gerard is the head of the Department of Technology Enhanced Learning at Munster Technological University and is a National Forum Associate. So what findings from the next steps project struck you as particularly interesting or important? I'm going to put that to you first Frank. Well a couple of things stood out for me. The importance of community and well-being was one of them and for me this is a key finding that recognizes that educational design has to evolve to consider community and social dynamics. Now to some extent prior to COVID on the campus we took these for granted because there were so many aspects of the campus life that created community and social dynamics but as we evolve the teaching and learning model we need to think carefully about how we preserve community and make the whole experience rewarding for our students. The other point I briefly touch on is transformation of the learning environment. Many of our teaching estates are designed for the lecture-based model and we need to be mindful that the timelines around changing physical estates are long and so we need to think that through quite carefully. Grod, can I put the same question to you and your initial impressions please? Sure. Well I think a lot of the findings support and reinforce each other really so it's hard to choose but I do like the emphasis on equality diversity and inclusion. I mean I've been working in this whole space where learning meets technology for a long time now and I'm familiar with a whole range of different technical and pedagogical challenges but I think we don't emphasize quite enough that digital learning is really about breaking down barriers you know whether those barriers are personal or geographical as would have been the case with emergency remote teaching or they might be political or socioeconomic and you know it's in the DNA I think particularly with antecedent traditions like distance education which were always about providing access to people who had been excluded. So I think digital learning and remote teaching are those are practices that are continuous with those kinds of traditions and more modern ones also I suppose in terms of open source and open access, open educational resources and open practices so that's a message I definitely welcomed and would like to see emphasized more I suppose you know. Right but let me bring Claire in on that. Claire as a student perspective what are your initial impressions? Yeah so the the findings of the the report are definitely very reflective of what we would have been hearing from students on the ground over the last couple of months and with the global pandemic so the main thing is certainly around taking the positives from the global pandemic and moving forward and it's not about going back it's about taking the positive learnings in terms of how to be more inclusive, accessible, flexible in the learning environment and the need for a universal design for learning approach is crucial to all of this to ensure that the learners are met where they are in their learning journey that they can participate and engage and they can do that meaningfully in a way that they can reach their full potential. Another point on is definitely around student partnership and engagement and making sure that the key stakeholders student representatives and staff representatives are brought into the conversation to make sure that the the student needs and staff needs are met and so furthering the collaboration and the the partnership approach is crucial in terms going forward and making sure that we're adhering as opposed to what we can do best and make sure that everyone has the best learning and teaching experience possible. Kerstin, what's your initial observation? I would like to echo that in terms of the need for the co-creation by students in terms of the curriculum and the facilitation of learning but also the need to develop the capacity and capabilities within the institution to support the digital transformation of learning and teaching as well as the adaptation of our learning environments to enable the delivery of new pedagogies and stimulating learning environments that are inclusive and that speak to the multiple generations that will enter our higher education institutions through the learning throughout the lifespan. And Tim from the HJA, your initial impressions? Thanks Matt. I think following from the Claire and Kerstin of Boat said the piece for me is the need for collaboration across institutions and one of the things I've seen coming through is that it's it is of course teaching and learning but I'm thinking also of things like the student support staff, the counselling services where students teaching our ability to learn is impacted by other issues, other things going on in their lives and so those supports can be behind them as well too so it really is an all of institutional conversation but also an all of system conversation and that all of the pieces need to work together to support staff of course and delivery of teaching and learning but also students and their engagement of teaching and learning. I think it's fair to say that some of the recommendations that have come through the next steps project echo recommendations we've heard before such as the need to support more flexible ways of learning and working to address the digital divide and to reinforce the technological infrastructure of the sector so Kerstin what do you think is needed for these recommendations to be acted upon and what should be the time frame for those actions? Well I start with the time frame there is an urgency and everyone has emphasised that secondly there needs to be a policy framework and a resourcing model to enable the resourcing for the digital transformation of teaching learning and assessment of our institutions thirdly a collaboration within the sector to learn from each other to build capacity and capability together rather than in competition with with each other and then also to benchmark internationally to learn from best practices takes them on board. And too much your response to that? I think it's really important at system level too because we don't just have a set of institutions nationally who of course are competing for students and we see that through CAO and the conversation about leaving cert for example but we operate in an international higher education environment now and the quality of the offer and the quality of the provision at national level in the European context in international context is going to be really important and we're a small country at the end of the day so it's something that we should do once and do well as a nation to support students staff institutions but there are aspects of it that can be technology in particular technology is big-scale technology that we need to look at how we can do that at a national level but of course we can't enforce a solution and that's why I work like this is so important because it it communicates to us these are some options and some possibilities. Frank this event is taking place in the middle of a week which is focused on how we can strengthen the value of teaching and learning at Irish higher education. Do you have any reflections to share on how teaching and learning can maintain the kind of support and value that the past 20 months have demonstrated it deserves? Strangely enough I was talking about this topic earlier this week for me the the key thing is to avoid internalizing the discussion. I think it's critically important that academia avoids creating a concept of the value of teaching and learning that absolutely matters to academia but no one else recognizes. So what I would argue is that we need to build a narrative that society, business and industry, government, the higher education institutions, staff members and students all recognize and can all engage with and one that matters to everyone because for me that's the only way that we can create the right conditions for the value of teaching and learning to be unlocked and that means that we have to look at this problem through a range of different lenses. Claire do you want to pick up on that? Yes certainly and so just to echo some of the points made as well student support is crucial and we've seen that students have required additional support over the last couple of months particularly with the global pandemic around student well-being and student communication and making sure that communication is effective and meaningful. Students have struggled long before the pandemic in terms of you know mental health and you know struggled with the barriers in terms of access to education so what we need now going forward is that we know the issues we need to address them and one way of doing this is by first of all raising the issues and making sure that the services are well resourced, that they're well funded and well staffed that students when they need support and require additional support to help them through their education and journey that they're met and that they're supported through that and so I think going forward in terms of having open and effective communication with students with the student representatives but also ensuring that the student support services and that helps students stay in college and progress to college is as well resourced and funded as they possibly can be. Geroad there's a strong call across the sector for equality, diversity and inclusion to underpin all aspects of higher education and with respect to teaching and learning universal design for learning goes a long way towards this. What do you think is needed to sustain this movement and to ensure that UDL is fully embedded in the near future? Okay I'll come at the UDL point maybe from a slightly oblique angle and say that I think during the emergency remote teaching phase which I suppose we're not yet out of people took a lot more interest in usability, in user experience, in instructional design and in learning design and in this emphasis I suppose to make things as usable as possible to make sure that what was being offered was something that was not only pedagogically effective but something that could be used with the least amount of frustration etc. I think they were led to considerations about issues about accessibility. We had a lot of queries certainly about how systems were compliant with various different technical and usability standards but also I think people were led to a greater understanding really I suppose of the diversity of student needs. Now it's a matter really of strategically responding to what has been a sort of largely on-the-ground change and ensuring that it becomes a sustainable and mainstream practice. Claire, will you follow up on that? Yeah so it's about recognising that a universal design for learning can facilitate and help and support many students so we have to make it a priority and start embedding it into the structures of the higher education system. We saw that the lecture recordings were very positive over the pandemic. There was lots of positive feedback from students on it for revision and it's just about adopting the universal design for learning approach and the principles and providing training to staff to make sure that they're familiar and have the tools to be as inclusive as they can be in the classroom so we need a national framework on it to support institutions and embedding it within their own structures and institutions to ensure that students can engage as much as possible because there's no one type of learner. Another strong theme in the next steps findings including in discussions with senior managers is the need to ensure that staff who teach have the time and space to innovate. Being time poor has long been an issue for many staff so how can we truly support staff who teach to realise our ambitions for the future? Kirsten, what actions can senior managers take? Well first of all we have to have a culture that is enabling and conducive to teaching and learning within we embed continuous professional development. Secondly we need to look at what we teach, how we teach it, how it's being spread through the academic year to create a space for continuous professional development, the scholarships, the research that underpins it and that also includes work allocation models that are conducive for that to be implemented. Geroad, what do you think can be done to support staff? I think one of the big things is to ensure that they feel safe in taking risks. I think people took a lot of risks during emergency remote teaching and now we I mean I'm glad to hear the dimension of the word culture there. We often hear you know culture will will eat strategy for breakfast at least pedagogy and technology as well you know so people need to feel I suppose safe in their risk taking be sure and this works on two different levels not just to take the risk but to talk about the risk that has been taken in order to disseminate it and ensure that others can benefit from it so I think that's something of a of a sea change for traditional higher education but something to be investigated there certainly in terms of the relationship between risk taking, innovation, communication and distributed leadership which is another point the report leans into. It does. Now long recommended practices became common during the pandemic such as collaborating across academic and professional boundaries staff and student partnership in decision making and distributing leadership across the institution. Frank I'm going to go to you in this first what challenges do you think would need to be overcome to embed these changes in institutional cultures? Well I'd love to believe that once the genie was out of the bottle there would be no going back on this but actually I don't believe that so I think we need to look carefully at the conditions that created the new behaviors and in particular understand what was deprioritized or removed during the pandemic that allowed behavior to change. If we don't do that the blockers will progressively re-emerge and they'll gain currency again so don't assume and also don't assume that the challenge is purely cultural. There might well be structural and operational blockers that are subtle but the conditioned behavior that we have simply not given enough attention to in the past. Now I'm going to go to the final question which I'm going to put to each of our panelists because in the next steps project partners thought about what they had learned as a result of the pandemic and what this means for the future of teaching and learning in higher education. If you look to teaching and learning in Irish higher education 10 years from now what one word would you like it to be characterised by Garota and going to give you the first opportunity to give us that word? Thanks Masha. Plural I would say or maybe multiple or incurably plural to borrow a phrase you know but not in an unplanned or chaotic way you know but we you know as has been mentioned many times today higher education is slow to change it's very incremental in its changes but let's change that now. You know let's see about serving the needs of an increasingly diverse student body who has who have these diverse needs and who need a diversity of approaches in terms of teaching, learning, assessment, collaboration, research, partnership etc and of course that ties in with notions of universal design which goes right to the to the heart of curriculum and learning design also. Frank I would recall Frank in now to give us the one word we heard plural from Garota what's yours? So mine is transformative and unambiguously so education higher education should be transformative for our students it doesn't always achieve that if the sector can achieve that universally and unambiguously then in my book that's where it should be. Okay Kirsten what would your word be? Imaginative to create a future that we don't know yet. Tim? I'm struck by something Terry said in the video earlier on about the cracks in the system and you know the cracks are actually where the light gets in so I think opportunity is the piece for me I think there's a real opportunity I'm thinking of something Peter Cullen said in one of the videos as well too about the need for the formal qualification structure to follow the flexibility it has to all be done properly and the opportunities to align all of those bits and pieces of the system to really meet student needs to bring learning out there to the community in a way that we've had to over the last 18 months so I think the opportunity matters a bit for me. Claire that one word the last word to you? The last word would have to be accessibility and ensuring that wherever student is and where they want to story what course it is that they have access to education but that they also can progress your education and make sure that they can reach their full potential through a universal design for learning approach but that they also have access to the support services and the facilities and so in 10 years time I'd love to see a system that supports the individuals where they're at on their journey that we have a lifelong learning culture that regardless of where the student is at how old they are what they're doing what they've done in the past that they always have education to avail so it has to be accessibility. Okay our thanks to our panel of Kirsten, Tim, Claire, Grode and Frank for joining us for this discussion. Now a copy of the report insights and a link to the mini documentary are all available from the National Forum website teachingandlearning.ie forward slash next steps so that brings us to the end of our panel discussion and to the end of today's event before we go on behalf of the National Forum and next steps partners I'd like to extend our sincere thanks to Minister Simon Harris for taking the time to join us here today to launch the next steps report and also a warm thanks to all of our speakers and panelists to all of the guests many of them next steps partners who joined us here today either in person or online to mark this very significant day for Irish higher education now don't forget vital week the daily scholarship hour runs at 12 30 today and also on Thursday and Friday and a whole range of regional events takes place right up to the 30th of November which you can follow using the hashtag NF vital so for me thank you very much for your time for being with us today and goodbye to you