 Hello, to our webinar. Sorry that I'm unable to be with you. I think, however, it's an important occasion. It obviously marks the launch of the book that we have worked on, and I think the book is important as a tribute and as a record of what we went through during the pandemic, as individuals, as professionals, as university people, and across the sector. I think the webinar and the book are also important because they provide another opportunity to reflect further on what has happened since the writing and the editing, and to consider what might happen next. Will there, for example, be some new normal and what might it look like, and how do others see it? Both amongst the contributors, the editors, and amongst the participants of the webinar now. I hope to watch the recording and catch up on what everyone is saying and thinking in the course of the chat. So good luck, and over to you, everyone. So that was a very warm welcome, and we're going to hand over to Matt now. Matt, your mic's still off. Of course it is, of course it is. Like I haven't been doing this for the last two years. Brilliant. Thanks, Marilyn. Thank you for setting this up and getting it sorted, thanks to John for that little intro. Just very briefly, most of you, I guess, will understand what the point of the book was. It was to bring together vignettes and experiences and ideas and experiences, more than anything, of people working mainly in higher education, but one or two in further education, looking at where we were, what things looked like, in that forced shift that we all went through, as we were literally forced online when COVID hit and we were locked down. We've had some really fascinating chapters on a whole range of things, and a lot of the speakers, the chapter authors, are here today to talk to us. Let me just briefly share my screen, because it, what I'm showing you now, is how you get to the book. So it's here. If you just Google digital learning in higher education, it should pretty much take you straight there. We can cut and paste the amount of address, the address into the chat there. What I'm here to tell you is, although it's relatively expensive, if you order it between now and the 30th of this month, you can get 50% off. You need to use the code Digi50, which is DigiAllCaps50, but you can get 50% off the price of that book. So obviously, I would encourage you to do that, but that's how you get hold of it. And we are thrilled with it. We're thrilled with what we received from our collaborators and our authors. There's some really exciting stuff in there, and hopefully you'll get a flavor of that over the next hour or so, as I have chat with the various authors about where they are, what they saw, what they experienced, and perhaps if we've got time, where we think we are now, whether we've established a new normal, whether things have moved, whether we've regressed back to where we were, or if we're somewhere in between. So that's the plan over the next kind of hour as we go through all of those. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen, he says. And the first person I'm going to bring up is Professor Sarah Hayes, who's a colleague from University of Wolverhampton. And then what we're planning to do is to run through the chapter authors, essentially an order that a one or two missing can't be here like John, for various reasons, but the majority of our authors are here, and then hopefully we'll have time at the end for a Q&A session where you can ask any of us and the various authors what they've done. So Sarah is up first, and she's got a few slides. Not everybody has, some people have. So Sarah, over to you, talking about post-digital policy. Oh, thanks so much Matt, and a little scary to be the first. I hope everyone can hear me okay. Mainly these couple of slides are really just to remind me what I wrote about in the book. And I'd like to first of all just thank Matt and John and everybody enormously for the opportunity to participate in something that's so meaningful and that really gave us a chance to actually do the kind of reflection that John said on, you know, what the pandemic as this sustained period did in relation to our working and home lives. And so I called this chapter, pandemics, policies and positionality, a bit worrying that I've called it pandemics, because I hope we don't have too many more, but you know, things look that way. And then I said, how COVID-19 makes the case for post-digital policymaking in HE. And really by post-digital and talking about this very messy entanglement that we find ourselves in of on offline hybrid situations in life and work. And what my chapter was doing really in a sense was speculating on some of these challenges that the pandemic intermingled with that we already had in higher education, things that I had written about in terms of policy language. I think for many years as having worked in support of learning technology and worked in academic teaching and research, I have had a problem with the way in which we've spoken about the use of technology in teaching and in learning, because we tend to have missed out the human element of that and all of the human labor that goes into that. So my approach to this chapter really was to some extent to use it as a little bit of a bridge between two books that I wrote, one before the pandemic and one during the pandemic. The first one really looking at this idea of policy language that if you look at it critically and analyze it through a critical discourse analysis, you find that it's crediting technologies with human labor, agendas, buzzphrases, but not necessarily people. So this was where I had approached this problem before the pandemic and then I had looked at what does this mean in terms of people and their different contexts during and beyond the pandemic. And I talked about people's post-digital positionalities and just how diverse those are. And so the post-digital highlighting this entanglement and access that you may or may not have to all that is digital the way in which data plays with us and then individual contexts through the idea of positionality. And I think I can just move this on one and say that what I drew upon was a colleague who's based in Zagreb, Professor Peter Gendrick, who has worked with a number of us on different articles and is the editor of a journal called Post-Digital Science and Education. And what Peter did at the start of the pandemic is encourage people to write 500 word testimonies about this thrust of us online at very short notice, speech and to try to study. And so what you hear, what you see before you hear our images, just a few of them that people sent in of their circumstances, family life pets and all of the things that people had going on at the same time as attempting to teach or learn. And just drawing on this really in the chapter, I wanted to demonstrate that these are the realities. This is what COVID revealed, personal, intimate narratives shared by our international community and not empty language that seems to stay static within higher education, describing what things do rather than people. And so just really to sum up, I would say that there's something of a case here in a COVID-19 throwing into relief, if you like, that not everybody gets to participate in digital living. There's certainly a lot of inequality and just down the road from us where we're based in the UK and the West Midlands, still a fifth of people not using the internet. So the positionality of people within the pandemic and how it intersects with all of the things that go on exclusively of whether they have access or not, the ways in which data is drawn on us and forms of digital inclusion. I wanted really to make sure that we don't forget this and that we actually think about these initiatives around our universities, some of them we've done projects on in relation to digital and data and disadvantage. And in universities we still seem to be less keen really to join up our policies that look at equality, diversity and inclusivity and those that look at how technology is said to enhance learning and what we're doing with data, etc. So yes, just to say really that we seem to be at this pivotal point where it would be an ideal situation if we were to review policy as well as to review how we teach online and how we work in blended environments. And if we don't, I think there is a danger that we can counter some of our claims to inclusive practice at the policy level. So that's all I had to say really, Matt, about that chapter. That's great. Thank you very much. And it is really interesting isn't it, how well I found it really interesting that the jump to online had, you know, so many detractors but actually it opened up the door to some people, you know, and one of the things that came to me really strongly was that some of the more disadvantaged, maybe not digital disadvantaged, but some people, you know, with specific difficulties and needs have found it easier being online without the need to be physically present, to be able to work asynchronously at their own time to watch back. So there have been a whole raft of kind of affordances that this has given us. And we've got to capture the best ones and not lose, you know, not just roll straight back or keep plowing on without that real understanding of where these are. So thank you for that very much indeed, Sarah. Thanks Matt. Brilliant. I'm going to forge straight on to Professor Bob Harrison, who's going to give us a bit of a view from further education. He's worked in further education for a long time. So I'm really looking forward to this. So over to Bob. All right. Adonis, can you hear me okay? Yep, all grand. Okay. I don't know if Alison's on the call in the webinar because she might add something to what I'm going to say. She can't make it. And Howard, your other collaborator, he's in flippin' Madeira, he's off and I need to leave. I can't believe it. Okay. All right. Well, I'm in Irmston and it's nice and sunny. But anyway, well, the first thing I'd like to say is it's a bit of sweet for me this. I mean, I supplied some data and information and views and Howard and Alison kindly crafted them from a piece of coal into the jewel that is that chapter. But what I'd like to say is having spent 25 years, most of my life and career trying to persuade policymakers, politicians, headteachers, principals, governors and teachers of the value of using technology to extend and enhance learning and engage and empower learners. It took a pandemic and the death of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people and achieved more in probably six months or a year that I did in the 25 years. So it's bittersweet for me. However, I've got a chance now to reflect on what's happened. And just a quick reminder that the six key themes of Feltag, because this was put in the context of Feltag and post-Feltag and what's happened. The six key themes, recommendations of Feltag was, you know, does the college have a vision for the future, a vision for future learning? Does it have the infrastructure? Does it have learners using their own devices? What about the funding and accountability system, you know, funding particularly? And also accountability, offset and ESFA. Does it have, you know, a full program of CPD for staff? And finally, does it engage with employers to make sure that there's some synchronicity between what students are doing in an outside college and what's going on in the workplace? So I think, you know, I think the pandemic shifted the paradigm very quickly for a lot of people, but for not necessarily the right reasons. And I'd be interested to know what Alice and all the practitioners say. I think those colleges that embraced the spirit of Feltag in 2014 and 15 were better placed to cope with and to take advantage of the infrastructure that they built in and the staff. And those colleges, I think thrived during it. And those colleges that didn't embrace the spirit probably found it as found it more challenging. So I think the pattern met across the sector at the moment and some really good work by Jisk and some really good work by ETF going on. And across the sector, my view is that it's variable. Some colleges will reverse just straight back, right? Well, they found it too challenging. They didn't have the infrastructure. They didn't have the resources. The staff weren't up to speed and everything like that. And I think for those colleges, it'll be very easy just to slip back into the straightforward face to face and, you know, what was the norm? I think those colleges that had invested and followed the Feltag spirit will see the opportunities that there are. My main fear, this is more to do with, I think, the government's policy position is, and it's more, it certainly reflected more in schools than in colleges. But my main fear is that the investment and the shift in paradigm has been to use technology for teaching and not necessarily technology for learning. And just on a final point, Matt, next week I'll give a quick plug. It's the assessment association conference and presentation of awards and things like that. And I'm the chair of the judging panel for that. And in terms of assessment, I mean, I think there's some fantastic things going on, but I don't think the sector, and you can look at, you can blame Offqual for this because, you know, during the Feltag, we challenged Offqual to say, you know, why are you such a strangle or why are you investing in, you know, technology for assessment. And of course, in the private sector, which is where most of those awards are at the conference next week, they've moved miles on. You know, it's absolutely fantastic what they're doing. But I don't think the sector's caught up yet. And I think that's going to be, you know, the big challenge. So that's a quick run through. A lot of the basic stuff I did, and a lot of the theorizing Alison and Howard did. So I'm not going to comment on that. They're the academics. They're the academics and the pragmatic ones. Brilliant. I mean, there's some really key things out. And I think you're absolutely right. And it's not just the FE sector. I think it's all sectors. Some schools are leaping forward. Some unions are really taking it forward. You know, and others are just reverting back to type. But I think that's absolutely key. I'm really interested in that idea about tech for teacher, for teaching, as opposed to the tech for learning. And really, they should be married together, shouldn't they? And some of the conclusions in the book are kind of pointing towards policy rather than practice. You know, almost everyone that's come, I guess, to this meeting is going to be thinking about what it means for them in practice. But actually, it's that level higher about how do we enable that? And hopefully, Maram will speak to that a little while later when we look at the Association for Learning Technologists and what they did for this chapter. And I also think you're absolutely right that this pandemic has brought things, a whole load of things forward that perhaps should have been being done anyway. And the challenge for all of us is to capture the good bits and, you know, force them to be kept. And it's also identifying those. And it might be different in different contexts, but we've got to, we can't just allow it to slip away again. You're absolutely right. I agree. Brilliant. Thank you very much, Bob. That was great. Moving on, then we've got Caroline Kuhn, Dr. Caroline Kuhn, for that matter. Talking about student agency, so a whole new point. Yes. Thank you so much. I don't have slides. My intention was to just talk about what I wrote or with what I was preoccupied at the time. It's amazing that we're already at the end of the second academic year after the pandemic, but here we are. So my preoccupation has always been with agency and how can we foster agency? It was also the topic of my PhD. What can we do and how, you know, what are the constraints, I think, that are always there for students to deal with? So in my chapter, I was preoccupied with a quote that I put in that chapter about a student. She said, I find the virtual classroom sessions quite scary. And I'm not sure why, but it's just very overwhelming. And that really, she sent me an email. And I was saying, wow. And we're talking about young people, 20, 21, 19. And so it really brought to my awareness once again that emotions are so important. And although I have to laugh because while we were reviewing our chapters, someone said, emotions, really, do you do you really need to talk about them so kind of theoretically? And yes, because we tend to just not think about the importance of emotions when we do anything, in particular, when we engage with technology, which was what I was thinking about. And so what I did really in my how I coped, I think with this overwhelmed emotions that students brought to the classroom was to create a space that I call a space of care, of presence, solidarity, and reciprocity. And I started to do a lot of checking in with emotions. How are you feeling? Is there anything there that, you know, I can hold the space for you? Can we share? Can we can we hold each other's space in a way? And so that I felt helped because as Sarah said, in her own work, of course, her work is more policy based. And I would say she's more at a more general level. But I think that the human element really, really needs to be taking into account because it does make a difference. And emotions are a causal power, as Margaret Archer would say, and they do things happen. And they do make things happen in the good sense when you're motivated and you're positive, but they make things happen in the negative sense. So you would shy away from situations that make you anxious, which was my experience with students doing this online, so on. And so this is, yeah, I think mainly my idea, I talked about how I did this and how I putting emotions at the forefront is I consider quite valid in the pandemic, because I also think it was not only about the technology, it was about so much that all of us face, you know, family losses, problems, economical problems, not having the tools, having to care for people that suddenly fell ill. I think there were so many emotional kind of like little nods of emotion that people were pivoting around that they made really studying very difficult. At least that was my experience. And yeah, I think sorry, what do you think are the most important things that educators can do then to support those emotional needs? I think checking in and acknowledging that this situation is not normal. So for example, during the pandemic, I don't think it helped that we just went in and said, well, great, let's crack on with our session. I think it helped to say, is everyone okay, checking in? Anyone needs to share anything? Is there anything, you know, whatever it is, but acknowledging, I think that there are emotions that maybe are hindering the engagement, however you talk about engagement. And so I think asking and connecting with them in a way that feels comfortable for you is for me a key thing. And it has worked in my case with my students. Fantastic. So if there was one thing that you'd like to kind of have people take away from these last five minutes, what would it be? What would be that summing up? What's the one thing that you think, you know, if I ruled the world, this is what everyone would need to do? That's a good question. Well, I think it's really creating our classrooms as spaces where emotions are welcome, not drama. I'm not talking about drama. I'm not talking about sometimes people I think, yeah, they think that emotion, dramatic moments, and it's all really no, I think emotions are fear, anxiety, joy. So putting those emotions at the forefront of what we do or weaved into what we do is something I would say we need to do that in our classrooms, so that the world of studying is a world that is more, I would say, yeah, more doable, less arid, less difficult to engage with, I think. Brilliant. Thank you. And it's not always easy as, you know, you sometimes face classes of 36, the 120 in a room and no one is going to want to pour out their emotion. And certainly for us, when we were in the middle of those COVID times and we had bubble groups of eight or 10 students that came in for one afternoon or one morning, there was, and those groups really bonded because they were able to blurt about their parents, you know, but how do we, you know, and it's just totally rhetorical, but it's something for us to think about, how do we retain some of those amazing tutor-tutti relationships and allowing space for that emotion, whilst all the education that has to happen is still ongoing. Yeah, well, I think the problem is that we allow ourselves to think that we can just do it without it. I think it's an illusion, but, you know, it's a fair enough that, yeah. But I don't think it can happen. We just crack on and we do it, but I don't think it is the best scenario for learning to happen. That's how I see it. Brilliant. Thank you very much for that. That was really, really useful. And I think that's something that we can all take away about how might we look to do that. Fabulous. Thank you, Caroline. Right. The next chapter is, follows on quite neatly because it's Elliot Lancaster and he talks about student perspectives, but unfortunately he's busy on a project today, so he can't be with us. So although that would have been fascinating, you're going to have to buy the book. I'm afraid to find out what students think. So we're going to jump straight on to Liz, Liz Parcell, who works for, with Jisk and is particularly as a librarian. So this is a really, really, we moved up the, the first part was all about that kind of overviews and students. And the middle part of the book is about some of those wider perspectives on teaching and learning from people who aren't necessarily stood at the front of classes at the Colface, doing the actual kind of education bit, but those that are the vital support networks. And we're starting then with Liz. Thank you very much, Matt. And actually Caroline's words there provide a really nice flow into what I want to say because you talked about emotions and the human dimension Caroline. And that's exactly where libraries are. They are a bridge between the technology and the human student teacher researcher. So thank you Caroline for, for leading into my session very nicely there. Matt, I think the first point I'd like to say is that libraries have always adapted to their context and the needs of the community they serve. So now whether students, teachers or researchers are on campus or online or a blend of the two, libraries are there in two places at once if you like. And the big challenge now is to work towards a more seamless experience for learners and researchers, whether they're engaging online or face to face. And for the library to have a stronger brand online, as it has demonstrated that it has got physically during, during COVID when people really realized what was missing when they couldn't actually go to the library. And I think that, you know, libraries are a support service, but they're also at the forefront of learning and teaching. They are in classrooms, they are teaching themselves. So, you know, they're in a lot of places. And I think that's both the huge opportunity and the challenge now to maintain that quality. You're absolutely right. I mean, we always invite our librarians in to talk to all students, you know, about how, what they can, how they support, what they can offer, what they, what they add, rather than just what they do at the side is literally what they add to the, the overall experience. You're right. That, that seamless experience is one thing and a lot of that's to do with the tech, but it's also the experience and the expertise librarians kind of facilitating that. Yeah. How do you build a stronger brand online? How have you, well, how have you gone about it over the last few years? Well, I speak for somebody who observes the library sector, rather than actually being at the curl face, if you like. I think like, like pretty much everything in the library world, when you're trying to deliver a quality service, quality experience, it starts with the users or the potential users. It's about the conversations that have to take place with those people, whether they are currently, you know, advocates for the library or whether they've actually never been to the library, finding out what they need, doing really good user experience investigations, really good user centered design. And that's not new for libraries. I mean, people like the Open University, for example, have been doing it for a very long time, but now really is the time for all libraries to be able to develop that really strong online presence so that it's not just something that's grown incrementally and in a slightly ad hoc way, but it is absolutely part of the whole library brand. And this isn't unique to libraries, of course, you know, learning platforms are having to adapt in the same way. And I think there's a lot of common ground to be explored between those looking after the learning platforms and those working on the library platforms so that it makes life easier for students and researchers and teachers and not putting barriers in their way. Because I'm sure that's what it often feels like for users of campus services that they're having to jump through a few hoops. And libraries want to change that, obviously. I mean, one of the crucial things you said there is not just about supporting students, it's also supporting the staff. Do you want to say a few words about how, what that has looked like over the last couple of years? Well, I think, I think one thing that became fairly obvious, certainly from where I work in GIS, where we do a lot of work with the sector around content and discovery of content, is that it became noticeable to a lot of teachers for the first time that the library actually had a role in delivering digital content that they tended to associate the library with print materials because that was what they saw with their own eyes and didn't really realise that the e-books came from somewhere where the library was involved in delivering them. And of course, there was a positive side to that where the e-books were readily available, but there's also a downside where it became very noticeable that a lot of e-books weren't available or they weren't available at an affordable price. And so I think the role of the library mediating that access, but also working to bring some down some of the many barriers that we still have with digital content for teaching and learning, I think that's come to the fore now. And here at GIS, we work both with teachers and with library staff to try and make sure that that path is as seamless as possible. We're not there yet, probably, but it's something that we're very much working on. And I think we have to do it together. We have to collaborate teachers and librarians together. We all want the same things. But those professional divides need maybe come down a little bit more. Yeah, we're constantly being told to get out and have our own silos in terms of our faculties and our departments and our schools and so on. But actually using that same metaphor with the service providers, I think is really important. A point you made to me is that libraries are not just service providers. They are partners in education and certainly in difficult development. And I think that's really, really important. And as Liz has just put in, the library has a major role around study skills and metacognition. So thank you for all that you do and long may it continue and that partnership. And thank you for bringing me into the conversation, Matt. I really appreciate it. That was great. Thank you very much indeed. Right, moving swiftly on again, I'm not sure we've got, I don't know if you should be, of course we have, Marilyn is up next. Talk about some of the things that were found in the last ALT survey and some of the ideas that comes from the Association of Learning Technology. We're learning technology fit into this. Obviously it's supported a huge amount of it. So I'm looking forward to this as well. Thank you Matt and hello everybody. I'm so thrilled to be here with you. Both of those who are looking forward to the book and also with my fellow authors and collaborators. I wanted to start by just saying a huge thank you to Matt because I was so snowed under trying to support learning technologies through the crisis that this chapter would have not happened without Matt, who helped co-author the chapter and brought it all together. So I just wanted to say a big thank you Matt. And obviously if you have anything that you wanted to add in terms of this particular piece of work, please do. But the work is really based on findings from our annual survey and in particular during the pandemic period, this survey has provided an opportunity for an independent voice to bring together lots of different perspectives about the impact of the pandemic on learning technology. And I wanted to share some findings from the survey from this year and also give you some links to be able to download the findings from all years and the data which is openly available. But just to give you a sense of the kind of data we were looking at for this chapter, which is really thinking about the vast increase in blended and hybrid models of learning and also thinking about shifts in technologies and tools. So I think in 2020 we saw a huge shift towards technologies and tools like Teams and Zoom to a very readily available and implemented at huge scale. Now this year we've seen a shift again a little bit away from that to bring a more nuanced offering. We're also reflecting throughout the pandemic that student engagement has never really wavered as the number one drive for the use of learning technology. Just to give you a flavor of the kinds of data sets that we were looking at. So this is a good example of the kind of data we were looking at in our chapter. So looking at, for example, enablers and drivers and looking at how these have changed throughout the pandemic. We have I think six years of comparative data now that we can draw on and again this is openly available if you want to have a bit of a deep dive into that yourself. So that was one of the things we looked at. We also looked at the technology in particular which technologies came to the forefront and this slide shows your comparison of 2020 against 2021 just to see how much, for example, Teams in particular dominated everybody's experience of crisis provisioned learning technology. And one of the questions we asked as well is how learning technology professionals felt their colleagues, their wider colleagues within their institutions, perception of learning technology enhanced teaching changed in response to COVID-19. And for the past couple of years, there has been an overwhelming response like over 80% each year of participants who said that they felt there was an increased positive perception of tell. Now, I certainly want to acknowledge all the dark sides of the pandemic that we have started to reflect on and that many of my co-authors has mentioned already today. But I also think there's been some positives that we can draw from, particularly when it comes to learning technology itself. Now, here is the link and I'll put it in the chat as well if you want to explore the data sets that the chapter is based on. But again, a big thank you particularly to Matt who helped co-author this chapter. You're very welcome. It was a really useful one to do some work on and to have before we had to kind of hand in the final proofs because it led me to some of the kind of major conclusions we used both at the opening part of the book about where the book was going, but also at the end. And the key thing was that was slightly interesting. It was slightly intriguing. I wasn't necessarily expecting it, but I suppose it makes absolute sense that where you asked all of the little technologists to sort of talk about what were going to be the most important things moving forward and nobody put Mentimeter, Kahoot, Polster, Padlet, all of those kind of whiz bang flashy things that we all started using. And oh, have you seen this? And everyone's starting. It wasn't all those kind of new glittery things. It was simple tools for collaboration, whether synchronously or asynchronously, that things where students could work together and where students could work with their teacher, whether they were online or not. So it was much more, and as both several of the people in the chat have been mentioning, it's the collaboration. It's not just the teaching, it's the learning. And I've been told before about that being a false dichotomy, but actually, I always say I'm not in a classroom to teach. I'm there to facilitate the learning of students. And rather than just having clever ways of getting it across, having useful ways for people to talk and to argue and to fight their own way to knowledge, that's literally what constructivism is, you know, which many of us will kind of cling to. So I absolutely encourage you to have a look at that survey. It's eye-opening and really interesting. So yeah, perfect. Thank you very much, man. That was great. And I really enjoyed writing with you as well. Thanks, Matt. Great. I don't think we have got Rachel from the kind of publishing side of things, because that, you know, which again was interesting. So quite a short little vignette rather than an essay in the book. But again, it's really interesting. So I'm going to move on then to Sarah and Shashi from the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange to talk to us a little bit about the impact on them of Covid. I hope you're making a jump on. Hey, Matt. Thanks so much for the invite. This is a super exciting time for the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange, which is the cross-institutional organisation that I manage direct, whatever you want to say I look after. I am sat here on the sofa with a very poorly assistant. So apologies if you can hear horrible children's music in the background or once in a while see a little face there, but she's not feeling very well today. So I will be very brief and then I would like to hand over to Shashi. So my experience of lockdown and the pandemic was actually that I was on maternity leave looking after this small person who was a lot smaller at the time. So I came back to work in November 2020 to a completely changed world. My world was fairly changed anyway, but everybody else had been experiencing different things and so the service that I run and manage, I'd let in the very capable hands of Julian Bream, who hopefully will be on this chat if not right now imminently. It was not quite the maternity cover role he had expected either, but the point of our service has always been about bringing people together, facilitating the sharing of good practice and making sure that our colleagues, academics, learning technologists, staff development managers are all supported and that support kind of took a slightly different turn in the pandemic. So we brought people virtually together to make sure that they were not feeling too sort of burdened, of course they were, but just giving them that space and opportunity to talk about the effect and the impact of lockdown working on them. In order to put this chapter together for the book, we actually did a slightly different, we took a different approach. We were interviewed and Shoshie, who I'll hand over to in a second, might want to say a few words, interviewed us about our experiences, how our practice changed what the impact was on our workload as well as how we were supporting others and we brought in Shoshie as a friend of the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange, but someone who doesn't work for an institution that's a partner. So she sort of liked a critical friend who could give a kind of an overview and sort of bring out findings and things that we couldn't see, you know, sometimes you can't see the forest of the trees. So Shoshie, I wonder if you wanted to say something at this point? Yes, sure, just trying to reshare my video. Oh, no, that's going to show the back of the room, which isn't helpful. Apologies. I was really excited when Sarah gave me, contacted me about taking part in documenting what the Bleed had been through and what they achieved during the pandemic. I thought it was, as I mentioned before, in fact, that kind of effective reflective stage, which people didn't have time to really work on or do much of, especially at the start of the pandemic. And what was evident was that this was not only an opportunity for those involved in the Bleed to do this, but it was also an opportunity for them to demonstrate how this had become such a popular working model during the pandemic. So the conversation in the book, as you'll see, moves from the technical support and that guidance to learn technologists and to member institutions into really supporting staff to find their way to create community practice, to create a community, to offer coaching, to help people feel like they weren't alone and they weren't the only ones dealing with these immense pressures and to provide a space and a time. And in quite a positive story, and Sarah can back me up here, I think it's actually changed your approach going forward, is that you actually are really continuing with this coaching model, with making that a primary service that you offer member institutions. So it was just, it was exciting to see in the context of one chapter of that journey and also lovely to hear how it fits in with what other people are saying as well around lessons learned from COVID changes of approaches, especially when the Bleed works very much with learning technology fields. So colleagues who often aren't certainly included in these conversations because they're maybe service providers and they're working maybe a bit dissociated from the students themselves, but having that space to reflect and to form the community. So that was a lovely experience. Thank you Sarah and thank you everyone else for enabling me to be a part of this project. Bro and you're absolutely right, it suddenly shocked people like that into the foreground and we know we need to acknowledge those partnerships more going forward that you know they aren't service providers, they are real partners and that's been certainly a real eye opener for me. So thank you for that. What I liked about that was you know the obvious link to what's already been said about it's about facilitating good practices. Again it's collaboration, it's exchange, it's sharing the best, it's not keeping it to ourselves and being oh well I'm you know we'll do that and our competitors won't be able to and we'll be better. It's not about that, it's about you know the most effective support for our students. So that was really interesting and you know in terms of just the book itself, what was fascinating was the way the chapters came back, they were all different and that yours with the kind of series of interviews was a really interesting one. Just for 10 seconds would you like either of you just to say a little bit about the dedication? Oh yes please thank you. So one of the founding partners of the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange was the marvellous Nicholas Short and Nick Short who hopefully some of you will have worked with. He was a qualified vet but he headed up the digital media unit, electronic media unit at the Royal Veterinary College. One of the brains behind the Bloomsbury Learning Exchange and he took early retirement but he remained a big important figurehead in my life and continued to be a mentor. He sadly passed away last year and he knew about the book chapter. He was looking forward to getting his hands on a draft and helping us shape it and unfortunately that never happened. So I asked John and Matt if it would be possible at all to dedicate a chapter. I know it's not usually a done thing for a chapter in a book but I was really grateful to John and Matt who said yes immediately. So thank you for that. Thank you for that absolutely right brilliant. Leaping forward we've got a really interesting thing now from Rachel and Rob about lecture capture. So Northampton particularly but are you there? We are thank you very much Matt. Excellent. Just waiting for the slides to appear. I think it's been really interesting as I was listening to the earlier kind of presentations I was thinking how does our chapter fit in but actually the more that the conversation has gone on the more it's become clear as to why this has been such a useful thing for us to go through and hopefully a useful contribution to the book and just picking up you know Bob was talking earlier about technology for learning and not just teaching and Caroline talking about connectedness and how do you add that value in face to face and so hopefully as we go through this that will give us some kind of you know we'll see how this connects together. So I'm just going to talk a little bit about the situation around lecture capture at Northampton pre-pandemic and then how we responded during the pandemic and then Rob's going to look at how we've adapted since so have we learned some of those lessons what we kept and what are those ongoing challenges that we kind of have to face as we think about the kind of new normal as we go on from here. So the lecture capture policy at Northampton was introduced at a time when the university was in the process of a large-scale transformation of learning and teaching anyway so we were in a process of shifting away from one-way transmission of information unless that was clearly the most pedagogically appropriate approach. Where staff could add more value through focusing on the application of learning in face to face sessions then it would be more appropriate for them to produce custom-made recordings and situate those as part of a wider asynchronous learning activity that students could engage with prior to the face-to-face interactive session. So the lecture capture policy was really about articulating that approach and making it clear that when you did have lecture style elements in your sessions and where that was appropriate that only those purely transmission elements of the face-to-face session would be recorded. We also wanted to only record the staff voice so that would help us to avoid that requirement to obtain and to manage the student consent and also to just focus on audio recording only although we did say that you know we should record slides where appropriate. But then we had COVID and during that period to emergency remote teaching at the start of the pandemic it kind of saw a shift in the approach and the university made this sort of strong recommendation at that point that all synchronous sessions would be recorded. Now the idea behind that then was that we would have them available on the VLE for subsequent replays at any time at any place anywhere kind of thing for our students. However when we moved to that business recovery phase at the end of that first lockdown and the university began to start planning for that return to campus in September 20 the university agreed that it was important for us to think about return to that pre-COVID policy position. Let's just go back a slide that's it leave it on the on-air one that would be great. It would be important to return to that pre-COVID policy position where recording was a decision for the staff to make based on pedagogic appropriateness guided by student needs and designed to maximize the pedagogic value of recordings to students as well as to maximize the pedagogic value of the face-to-face sessions when staff were actually in a room either virtually or physically with their students. And while we had this drive to enable staff to own and manage that recording process themselves and to share what worked we still had a number of concerns. I'm just going to hand over to Rock who's going to sort of pick these up now with a more in-depth look at what the current position is around like to capture at Northampton. Thanks very much Rach. So in terms of this chapter I mean as Matt said it's slightly different because obviously it's looking at very much the the policy and the system impact at the university. So in terms of the the challenges that we had we we'd moved to a dedicated space essentially or sorry moved to a dedicated campus essentially in in Waterside right in the center of Northampton. And some of the people obviously during COVID they didn't necessarily have those spaces to learn and study so obviously that by itself was a very much a challenge for those people. As we know a lot of people had problems with their internet access and generally devices to to actually access. Luckily enough similar to what Bob was saying we made some changes a few years ago where we gave all staff mobile devices and all students as part of the student promise actually we we give all incoming students a mobile device as well. So actually some of our students were better equipped than we were finding at some of our comparator institutions. Broadband obviously was still an issue but obviously we tried to help where we could do but obviously that was quite difficult. Even though people had devices didn't necessarily have the right level of digital literacy to actually engage and the actual move to remote learning itself of most of us I think actually found obviously had a real mental and physical health impact upon all the people that were involved in the process. In terms of looking at our types of access we were obviously looking quite widely we support students across the world and particular in China we put in some additional provision using a connection called Alibaba to try and promote a better form of connection with those types of students. So ideally trying to overcome some of the broadband limitations that people actually have. So the impact on storage space and some of the associate costs obviously people were starting to store things in a way that they hadn't previously and so we noticed from a system perspective quite a big increase there. In terms of where we are now HyFlex is still around although I think it's probably faded off from where people were looking at it previously. There's still a few tutors that will use it but it's very selective actually and they are recording some of the synchronous sessions where it's appropriate. We've been looking at the retention period. Some of the academics actually really valued some of the sessions that have been recorded during the times of Covid and they've actually wanted to retain those in our VLE for a little bit longer. We've had a look at the proportionate burden for checking captions as well because some of the academic staff if we were working right to the full level of the WACAD regulations they would have to human check the recordings to make sure that the captions are actually accurate and we actually produced a disproportionate burden as part of that which took some of the weight away didn't necessarily take away the the accuracy because what we did was we said that students that need that would be taken down a slightly different path with a different team to support them in that process but for the majority of tutors it meant that that didn't put them off creating the lectures themselves. We looked at the working space and ability and you've got there the open book and home office looked at some of the the tools for session engagement and also looked at the use of recorded sessions particularly around research. We hadn't used some of the the tools previously in a research capacity but actually a lot of people found that during Covid it was actually working better some of the recording tools than they had done previously just using personal data phones so that was very much a change for us but overall it was great to reflect on that in the in the chapter. Thanks Matt. Thank you very much and one of the points of the book really is for people to see what was done and compare it to their own practices and praxis and to work out you know what you could use what you could steal magpie what you could even offer as a solution to others so it's really interesting to capture all these different elements that are going on. It's interesting that you were giving out mobile devices way beforehand and there's actually a link to the the chapter done with Trudy and others from from Leeds on supporting medical and ward based learning because they were doing that again I think from 2012 I think it was said you know so quite a way before so there's some really interesting things there and I know we've kind of blasted over time on this one but I remember working with David Cousins from Northampton a while back when we were writing that while I was writing a chapter with a colleague about flip learning and we use some of these ideas about preface to face and face to face so it's interesting to see that kind of continuing and being moved so lovely thank you very much for that. Next is me and you've heard enough of me about initial teacher education and if anyone wants to pick that up they can do it perhaps in the Q&A because I'm conscious we need to move forward. Trudy is more he's going to pick up anything around medical based stuff again in the Q&A so coming towards the end now we've got I think we've got Carmen who's going to tell us about the impact on Arden the private university. Yes great thank you I'll just pop my camera on if you can see that okay yes okay perfect it's another one I've got there Dr during this journey so well done to you. Yeah so again you know a big thank you because John was supervising me at the time of this chapter and Matt was being very patient because I was saying just a bit longer just a bit longer because I'm just writing up the findings so it was a very hectic time for me because I was writing about online learning teaching practices and have shifted it from blended to purely online just because that reflected the nature of what Arden did so I basically changed my I guess the collection of data in the middle of the pandemic so it was a very busy time so thank you for the opportunity and for helping out Matt but you were really great over that period so at the time then our chapter is focused on Arden's experience during the pandemic and much of what we planned really in our chapter was based on the evaluation of the first wave of the lockdown so we were looking at how we could use the experiences on the first wave and be a bit more proactive and I guess less reactive in the second wave so we focused on September to December of that first year of the pandemic and we at that time we had a project team that came together to help us one thing we did learn is it was very much hands on deck in the first wave and we wanted to have more of a collaborative approach from different departments so I think one of our kind of key learnings here was about we talk about trust and about how we responded to lots of unforeseen events and the challenges of working I guess across different natures of working which is explored a bit there about in the chapter about the makeup I think of some IT colleagues and and maybe some more of a project management style of some colleagues and then the academic discussion style so how we kind of navigated the different cultures and habitat so we have got some of that in the chapter as well so one of the things that we're doing so just to very briefly tell you about what we tried to do we were looking at a project called your degree your way which was aimed to give students flexibility and choice of when they attended not when how they attended the session so we ran our timetabled sessions as normal throughout the pandemic and there were four hour sessions for blended learning students so they were the same timetabled sessions and in some ways we had a different experience to other traditional universities and that we had we came from a distance learning perspective so we had modules and fully built up modules that our blended learning students had so within our experience we brought to the surface really kind of challenging questions about what is the nature of our blended learning and why are we using the materials in this way and I think we were really keen as a group to be pedagogically led and learn from the unique contextual factors of our students so many of our students were carers many of them were working in healthcare we had a lot of first generation learners and Arden at the time was growing at 60 percent by students and staff so we had a high turnover in term high intake of new staff so we were really focused on how we could use professional development to help coach and mentor staff and then look at the unique opportunities of how we could learn from our students and how our staff went through the pandemic and we captured a lot about pedagogical practice and how we could be more inclusive so that was really our kind of journey we've summarized it it was definitely a catalyst for lots of conversation we learned a lot about blended we we thought we knew quite a lot about blended but we learned more I think ironically from our face-to-face students about the blended and the online kind of learning aspects and our staff base although we had a history of distance learning our lecturers were those who had been used to face-to-face so we found that we had less of a division between distance learning lecturers and students and blended and that kind of distinction between the both felt much more closer together which is Arden's position now and much more rejoiner between our distance learning provision and blended learning okay so I think that's if there's any questions there Matt. Really interesting thank you and it's interesting that you kind of picked on what did you learn from the first wave to get ready for the second wave if you know and how much of that was kind of doable and you know coming from a not everyone's distance learning I guess but though the majority that are you were already kind of set up whereas what I think we tried to do was to replicate our timetable to but doing it online and that was really tricky you know and we did that sorry we did that so for our blended students we did that but we didn't necessarily have the lecturers who were supporting students we have seven campuses so students who were being supported in the campuses were being obviously supported face to face and probably hadn't used the online materials as much as what other you know other students have done so there's a perception I think that they were blended of course we had to really think about what's the best use of the online the face to face the materials and then we allowed students to switch between modes so to come into campus you know when they could and to switch between that okay we we we moved down to a this bubble method of a very small groups once each so we guaranteed our students would have some time on campus if they wished for it but there were others that could could be solely online so it was it was interesting really you know it was a real kind of mismatch so thank you for that that was really interesting my final speaker was planned to be professor Diana Lorelord but I think she's had to go I know for a fact she's on granny duty um with um a very little one and so she says she's dropping in and out so my key point I think that I've picked up from everybody has been just how important collaboration is collaboration between uh between members of staff between staff and service providers between learning technologies and librarians and between publishing houses and each other relying on staff teams and also of course crucially that collaboration with students and that that idea about facilitating learning and not just educating not just teaching so there's a whole load in there that was really interesting and that is drawn out in the book you know the the we are heading towards well we thought we might be heading towards this new normal as we really kind of um you know move to a sorry I've just got a message from Diana she just can't deal with the little one which is fair enough 10 months old um so it's hard to drop out we you know we all these ideas we're moving towards this new hybrid high flex uh blending approach where we're going to be able to use and actually a lot of places a lot of people are reporting already that we're kind of sliding back into the old normal and we know that we've removed face masks so you know and that the pandemic is over um and it's really interesting to see what have we kept what have we kept hold of what what it has been important to us and what have we managed to ditch as soon as we could right uh what i'm going to do then is i'm going to throw it open to those participants who have very patiently sat through all of that uh hopefully you've enjoyed it and found it interesting and useful um but there are at least 17 people who have hung around so hopefully they've got questions to ask so Maron what's probably the best way of doing this hands up or writing the chat or both um um just on it um so I think everybody who is a participant should now also have a mic um I've enabled that so um hopefully you should see a mic button appear so I I hope that we can just um have someone raise their hand um I'm going to just demo that so this is what raising hand looks like and then Matt hopefully you can um call on individuals as we get questions is that okay yep that'd be great okay so just to clarify Matt is it free for all are there any specific questions um no people can either pick on you know they can ask they can ask me they can ask a specific person they can ask a specific question or they can just or just generically you know raise your hand and say if you did something different or if you've taken something from this and all we did you know ask is radically different or very similar anything at all would be just interesting just to add to that um by conversation Liz um yeah so my question is that now that things are supposedly getting back to normal um there seems to be a rhetoric in the media and the wider public that you know um things should get back to just being face-to-face and I just wondered what are people doing within their institutions to um extoll the benefits of the blended learning approach and and really educate the people about the fact that you know teaching learning doesn't just have to be face-to-face it's it's much more um you know a holistic and it should be a much more holistic experience than what just happens in an hour in a classroom I don't know about trying to educate people I know our university like many others has gone back to as much on in on campus as possible um there is still some elements of the lecture capture and uh having things available I what we I don't know whether it's a you know a classical phrase that everyone's using but we we're trying to keep hold of what we're calling COVID keepers so things that were forced on us and um actually have become really useful and one that that's crucial for me is the idea of online tutorials because you know if you're doing a raft of say master's tutorials or doctoral distributions or um or even undergrad year one tutorials but you've got to get through 20 25 in a day everyone's coming in they might be driving 30 miles in on their commute to come and speak to me for 15 minutes which is just a giant waste of time so having online tutorials I think has really freed up space and time for people to to get on with their their work and their life and then have those important discussions so I will never go back unless someone specifically requests it to onsite in office tutorials and this and the other thing that's opened up for for me particularly as a teacher trainer obviously I have lots of students in schools the ability now to talk to mentors by just jumping on teams rather than having to go in you know you book these visit months ahead now if there's a problem you can just jump on teams that has become really really useful I think so there are these COVID keepers that we're that we're definitely latching on to but I think very easily we are slipping back into our everyone's onsite as always but there's an interesting I've kept my source and we just float past then about using the VLE for exams um hours is uh mainly um on the VLE we only have exams in year one but yes they all now are online rather than in a room I don't know what anybody else thinks any other um moderators or presenters Rob? Yes probably in terms of where we are um the I think the just insight survey has been really useful in terms of seeing um what our students actually require moving forward and actually what's interesting for us because we've been tracking this over the past five years uh is that big increase I think in the number of students who are now looking for more flexibility in their work generally um and the reasons are all the reasons that we've heard already you know it's about balance it's around um like you said not necessarily having to to drive in for a one hour session and they're driving for at least two to three hours perhaps to just go in for that that one session it's not necessarily their feeling the the best use of their their day we're trying to um we're still trying to look at what makes a sticky campus so what what the students want when they actually come on to campus and making sure that they actually have value when they're on there but I think we're looking harder now at um what are the reasons why we do require a student to come on site and when is it appropriate actually when they can be um sort of more remote um and then just engage with us at a distance and obviously um there's been a big increase in the digital capability of both the the staff and students um that's been sort of scaled up so I think people are actually making advantage or taking advantage uh from that as well thank you and Liz has just popped in this old list rather has put some stuff in there from from jist around exactly that how students feel and I think that's I don't know how early it couldn't be here but that that's a really important thing in all of this you know we can't lose the student voice we can't pander to everything they need because you just can't but where things can be recorded and can be posted up so that people can access it asynchronously and can engage I mean I'm involved in a in a European wide project around co-creative courseware when we're looking specifically to have platform I would build a platform rather it's not that dissimilar to google docs I suppose but where people can go on read um they can leave a comment they can they can question each other they can answer and then you can put all that in a flipped approach up front and then the teacher can go on and see all that collaboration all that work and those kind of key questions and then build their session off the back of it so getting that student voice is absolutely vital um and having some of those approaches like putting stuff up early in the preface to face doing the session and then maybe even having a post face to face where they kind of go back and reflect on it and think and you know the old traditional homework style of things I think that those three part model you know there are issues with the post because lots of students don't want to do it because the pre-session gets validated when you say oh brilliant I love the way you've said that the in-class of course is validation because you're taking part the post no one sees so there is an interesting element to that there's a lot of stuff going on now Fiona this mix of teaching online and in class that's a massive challenge I absolutely agree um I've tried it by having my laptop open and recording and so it's been it's not streamed it's been recorded by penopto whatever so it's linked to the um linked to the whiteboard so it changes as I speak you know as I can move it forward the and students can then go back and say I really like that slide I want to read that again so they click through to that slide and they get that bit of speech but it's really tricky for me because I'm one of those teachers that prances up and down and walks around the classroom and as soon as you get anywhere distance from your laptop you can't hear but I what I haven't tried really is streaming and in class at the same time because it's so high oh sorry I've missed it yeah so just wanted to add in there that um there's part of our project we invested in kit so we had cameras that followed lecturers around the room and then we did have to think really carefully about how do you present to students at home and students in the class how do you use in fact whiteboards how do you do student centered learning when you're streaming um and you've got students in two different spaces so yeah we had like movable cameras that was kind of one way that we dealt with the issue matter from not having to be changed to the laptop interesting I mean we've done the same well ever since we moved to the online team meetings staff team meetings and phase meetings we've never yet I don't think had a meeting since where we've all been in the room we've always had several people zooming in teaming in whatever you know what whilst they're traveling and then you've got to do you either have their enormous face looming at you from the whiteboard over there or do you have a couple of laptops and then you've got to try and make sure they're not squealing to each other so everyone's got to have them so it can be quite tricky but web come in the middle of the room do you know I was I was at this conference I was just or at least that project I was talking about the pan European one we were at Lerven in Belgium last week and they had this amazing thing it looked like a kettle more than anything else about yay high about a foot and a half high a kind of dome shaped and it had sort of six cameras on the tops it was a giant microphone with cameras in every direction so when you saw it on screen you could see everybody's sitting around the table at the same time and those who were online it's quite expensive it was at least a grand but it was a really interesting piece of kit and then something else they had which I loved was a giant fluff ball you know remember the dice that you were able to do I've done a few you're not all primary teachers of course like I am we used to have a great big fluffy dice you could throw around the classroom and get kids to answer they had exactly the same thing it was again about I don't know 10 inches high and in the middle of it was a microphone so you could throw it around the room and it was all fluffy and wouldn't get broken but when you got to the person they could then speak and it would come to the speakers so lots of really interesting bits of kit out there but again expensive Jed has been brilliant today I meant to say earlier thank you for adding those things from for Bob's section and other bits but there's another one 360 degree cameras it's one way of doing it providing you've got any funds left and if you're anything like us the answer is no fab let me just see what this bit says um yeah that was a rich point thanks for that comment Rob that's really helpful and yeah that's what's really interesting and their points raised and again they're in the all these but most of these points are brought out in the book and if you go back up through the the chat people who are just joining you will find a link to both whether you can get the book and the code to get 50 off the book so do have a look at that um yeah and also Rich you know not just walking about isn't it it's part of my teaching style it's also that classical teacher thing of knowing where to go and stand and who to stand near to make sure they're actually getting on with it or to go and support those who are struggling or to go and draw on that group who are really working hard if you're stood at the front tied to a microphone that is much harder so um yeah it we're not offering absolute solutions here but certainly suggestions for for ideas uh any other points and questions i know some people have only just joined so um that's a good point actually Mara how will people be able to get hold of the recording thanks Matt so we will be sending out the recording from everyone registered to the webinar within the next couple of days and we'll also make it available via the alt website that's brilliant thank you very much so yes if you if you have only just joined or you missed a bit or you dropped out whatever um it will be available so that's good um so yes um before we wrap it up slightly early are there any other questions or points no so it just remains me that say thank you very much for everyone that's come i hope you found it useful enlightening interesting um obviously the book has a lot more of this kind of stuff so go and have a look talk to your librarians maybe about getting a copy um if you have colleagues that are teaching on uh research or masters or undergrad digital things then there is a whole load of stuff in there that you may find useful and they might find useful to have on their reading lists i'd like to say thank you to alt for setting this up to mara and for kind of running it for us to elgar obviously who published it and approached us about the possibility of the book and to every speaker thanks ever so much to all of you hope you found it great i've really enjoyed that it's my first of the books i'm really excited when it comes out and there you go this absolutely put it on a reading list make sure that every student not has to read it that's not fair but definitely worth having a look at thank you very much indeed everybody and um hope to see you at a conference or an online event sometime soon