 So, hello everyone again. My name is Sandra Kucina, I'm Eden President, also Assistant Director at the University Computing Center, University of Zagreb. We should warm welcome to today's session, the last session of this year's Year European Online and Distant Learning Week, 6th in the row. This year we are having eight sessions with 40 speakers and about 700 individual participants, meaning that some of them participated in the number of sessions. I'm very happy for such a good response and such a quite big number of interest to our Online Distance Learning Week. What I want to address as well is that this event is organized in partnership with Open Distance Learning Association in Australia with flexible Learning Association of New Zealand, who are launching Asia Pacific Online Distance Education Week. Also in partnership with United States Distance Learning Association, who is holding National Distance Learning Week. And also we had a special session by ICDE as our long-term partner and association with whom we have very good collaboration. This week is an excellent opportunity to reflect on the lessons learned during COVID-19 pandemic during crisis. And today our aim is to discuss how education should look like in the post-academic era. Before I start with the introduction of my panelists today, I will just briefly remind you on two slides. This year Eden is celebrating 30 years of serving modernization in education in Europe. We had really huge number of activities, big number of members, collaborations, activities. And we are passing all these to Eden Europe, new association, which has to be established because of the Brexit. I'm very happy that Eden Europe is already functioning and all our events are already organized in collaboration, in partnership with Eden Europe. Also, I would like to say that we are very happy that Eden has received the prize of excellence for institutional contribution to the field of Open Flexible Distance Learning by ICDE for 2021. I would say this is the, you know, like cherished on the cake of our anniversary. So we are very happy with achievements. We have aimed, we have achieved, but I wish to thank all Eden members, Eden community, and people around Eden to help in helping to achieve all our successes in last 30 years. So going back to our session today, title is report card on the crisis. What is the legacy of great online of higher education? And I'm very happy to have with me distinguished panelists, speakers today. So let me briefly present them. So this is Georgi Dmitrov, Head of Unit and Interim Digital Education, Director of General Education, Youth, Port and Culture, European Commission. Dr. Joseph Planele Estani, Rector of Universitat Aberta de Canal, Catalonia in Spain. Professor Mark Brown, Director of National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University. Professor Irina Volumgeviciana, Director of Innovative Studies Institute at Vitatos Magnus University in Lithuania. And Professor Alfredo Suero from University of Porto in Portugal. So thank you. Thank you for joining me today for this last closing session, where we aim to discuss a number of questions. They may seem quite simple at the first, but I'm certain that replies will not be so simple, or even it's not going to be possible to give quite clear reply to all of these questions. But as I said, our aim is today to reflect on lessons, learn and see how the future of high education should look like. What is the role of Digital Education Action Plan in contribution to shaping new European education area? Has the future of online education been endangered by emergency remote teaching? What, how online universities are going to function in the future? What are the recommendation and the advice from them to high education? And a number of questions so far. I also invite you to join us in discussion by stating your comments and questions in the chat. We will try to address them all. At the beginning, I would like to start with the question, which I will address to all my speakers, because it's quite general. And this is just a brief summary. So my first question would be if you can briefly summarize from your professional point of view as rector or director of unit as the director of learning Institute of Innovative Study Institute as a professor with a respective long time experience in education. How do you see the present situation in high education today? Almost two years after the pandemic started. So after we have started working in crisis, and what we have learned to build a better future, the future we deserve. So I would like to start with you. You are in Ljubljana at the presidency conference. You have some fresh new maybe insights from your point of view, from point of European Commission. What is your opinion about present situation of high education today? Thank you. Thank you very much, Sandra. And hello to the Eden community. And also congratulations on my end for the 30th anniversary. Plus, of course, the award of excellence, which you have fully deserved. So indeed, I'm in Ljubljana for the presidency conference of the Slovenian presidency on digital education. And I think that the experiences so far are a bit in line with the work that I have been doing in the past around about three, four years, primarily on the digital education action plan. And you asked about my views in terms of the experience that I have. And my experience when it comes to higher education has been primarily in two domains. One, in terms of innovation policy and how we can support higher education institutions and universities to be part of the innovation ecosystem in Europe. I have spent quite a lot of time in this domain. And the other area where I am working now more on is obviously digitalization of higher education. And looking back at the two years, I would say that in both cases, when it comes to the innovation capacity of universities and any other types of higher education institutions, I'm just using universities because it's a shorter world, but I really do mean any other types. As well as for the digitalization, what we have experienced essentially is a great catalyst and something that should really not be missed. On the side of, let's say, innovation capacity, it's very important to realize that creativity and innovativeness, be it in teaching, be it in the delivery of specific online learning or other workarounds in very difficult circumstances have led many people to reassess and to appreciate more. Let's say the ability to deliver education also in, let's say, non-standard circumstances. And I think that things like instructional design have gained rightfully so in importance because my thesis, and as I would think many of yours would be that we are going to see a continuation of a blended sort of learning. So it's important to keep that openness, that innovativeness and that ability to, let's say, dare to do things which have not so far been either part of the standard or business as usual. So this is very, very important. It has something to do with innovation, idea itself and the innovation mindset that we need to support, I believe, very much in universities. And when it comes to the digitalization, which is the core of, let's say, my work so far, well, I think that the way I would describe this is that it is really a one-off-a-time moment in the last 20, 30 years to really put the role of technology and the digital technology, obviously, much more, let's say, in the mainstream of what we are doing in terms of education. And I believe that many universities have done this in a very, very reasonable manner. But obviously, there is many, many more that would probably have to follow up on this. So for me, this is a moment of crisis, obviously, but it is really equally a moment of opportunity. Thank you, Sandra. Thank you, Gergi. A very, very good summary. Yes, I think we should see this as a moment of opportunity to do something differently, to do something better and innovative. So going to you, Joseph, you have no issue with different digital technologies because work is online university. From your perspective as a rector, as a person coming from online university, how do you have an overview on present situation in high education today? And how should or what is the future of high education for us? Thank you very much, President. And first of all, thank you for inviting me to participate in this discussion. And I want to congratulate Eden as well for the Philippines' anniversary and for the award for actually. I would start by saying what Professor Sanjay Sharma, Vice President for Open Learning at MIT says that the 21st century starts in 2021. Because at the end, what we have seen is that technology has become vital in helping to ensure that no one was left behind. But many challenges have appeared, revealing a whole set of weaknesses. First of all, it will actually became apparent the lack of digitalized learning resources to facilitate the emergency remote teaching. In the second place, we have seen a lack of digital competences among teaching staff and students. In the third place, and after several months of lockdown, it has become clear that the use of streaming lectures with no further changes on the methodology explained why part of the student's body did not welcome this change. And in the fourth place, in distant learning solutions, were unevenly adopted around the world. So overall, while it can be argued that lockdown has served to demonstrate the educational potential of technology, the digitalization model of the higher education institutions must be reconceptualized if we are to maintain the quality of the learning process and leave no one behind. Genuine digital transformation means more than simply integrating technology into teaching activities. It calls for a profound organizational and cultural change, and it's about formulating the right question. In the case of work, 25 years ago, that question was, how can technology enable us to do what we are unable to do by other means? This was the starting point for us, for our learning model, a model that has evolved and adapted to different situations in these last 25 years. And in that case, our model that may be different from other institutions, our model is a model in which a student is at the center of the learning process by learning by doing. And in this model, as we see it, technology is absolutely necessary, but alone is not enough. So a whole range of other measures have to be taken that probably we will be discussing later. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really good points. And you really summarized these first four issues, which become quite clear apparent after the crisis. Yes, technology itself cannot solve the situation. We really do not need to reflect and be innovative, as already said, in shaping the future we want. So thank you from now. Irina, going to you as a director of Innovative Study Institute, you have been dealing with digital education for a long time also as a former president. You have quite an experience and overview on what's going on. So from your point of view, how do you see present situation in higher education? And how should the future look like? Thank you very much, Sandra. Yes, indeed. I agree with the director that it takes many years to prepare for digital transition. And if we are speaking now about the year even 2019, 2018, and retrospectively into the past, looking into the past, it is still amazing for me now to think about the European policy in education with what kind of confidence was digital education action planned and how strange it was still for the majority of higher education institutions in Europe. We must admit that a small group of conventional or traditional universities or colleges or whatever we call them, you know, we're prepared to a better extent to organize online and blended studies. And of course, Eden has been always in consultation with the Open Universities, mainly on how to proceed on what to research and how deep to go into this research, and what are best practices and what are the factors influencing successful development of digitalization within an organization. We have wonderful tools available since 2015, and even earlier in Europe, like DitchCon OR and DitchCon EDU and other tools that have been supporting organizations step by step, but only the minority of higher education institutions took into really serious consideration and integration of these instruments into practices. And what happened now, and what I would see now is the really successful consolidation of efforts to rediscuse what this preparation means for us today. And to rediscuse where we are now, how digital, digitally enhanced learning and teaching should be happening. We don't question whether it has to happen. We already ask how it should be happening. We already discussed what are the needs of students and what are the needs of teachers and how existing frameworks of quality assurance in higher education in Europe might support this new digital transition, whether we put into the framework that we must follow or whether we raise the needs to be more flexible with existing schemes and existing procedures and how we would wish to change the situation. And I think we have two things. We have already common understanding. We have collaboration in Universal Alliance anyway, and in different different other initiatives taking ground. We have common understanding that we need to develop that we need common knowledge on existing best practices to learn from each other from from our colleagues. And we already need to overcome the barriers, but we don't say that something is not possible already. We just talk how how to overcome the existing barrier. And at the same time, we are looking for flexibility. And I think here we have a lot of questions still to address in the shared areas and to what to which level we are welcoming flexibility that is allowed by digital technologies. So thank you. Thank you, Irina for pointing out the the I would say the loose ends where we are vulnerable, and that we actually need to regrouping and strengthen the activities more so that it's more like on a national international level, not just that it's on a personal or institutional level. So we need to work more together because that will ensure the better success and achievements. Thank you. Going to you, Mark, I know that you have been very busy because your Institute, National Distance Learning Institute, the University of Dublin City University, by vocation is institution who should develop new things and support digital education. So what is your overview on the present situation and things which should be done? Well, thank you, Sandra, and hello, everyone. It's really nice to be here, reflecting at this point in time as we come towards the end almost of 2021. My overarching impression, if you like, or observation is drawing on that sort of ecosystem metaphor, just how resilient the higher education ecosystem has been. You know, we had an incredible crisis. We're not through it yet, but we got through it. We responded. And so I think we should recognize that in ecology, resilience is a real strength. It might also be what slows down change. But I think that's the fact that we were so resilient tells us something. And we should take credit for that. Similarly, the power of human capital. I'm using a term that's quite common. Let's just talk about the spirit of the human and how we're able to rise up to challenge. You know, I'm sure we've all got colleagues that you wondered how they kept going. But we found it in ourselves, not to dismiss that everyone had their highs and lows and challenges, but together that human spirit got us through. So those are two, I think very powerful elements that we should congratulate ourselves and history, I hope will judge as being really important. Perhaps I like to see things half full rather than half empty, but that resilience also is a little bit has a two edge sword to it. So what I learned is just how strong pedagogical beliefs are the beliefs of the teacher and how difficult it is to challenge those. Because you know, we do have to be honest, emergency remote teaching was typically transmission or model teaching. That's the default approach, which is again, a dirty little secret we still have in higher education. It's the dominant form of teaching, generally speaking. Lastly, I think, or maybe I have two more things quickly, learning how to learn online. I think we now just understand as a crucial life skill. It's something that I'm very passionate about in the work that we've done. So I think a takeaway for our learners is how important it is not just to leave them to learn online by osmosis, but they need to be taught how to be effective online learners. And my final takeaway, and I think this is going to be something that will be with us for a long time, it's comes from the change literature is change in transformation does not follow a straight line. We also learned that nor do viruses. So we need to recognize that change is actually lumpy. It's mixed. It's messy. It's not something that's going to be simple. Yes, you're quite right. It's quite messy. I can say it from the perspective of Croatia. We have ups and downs definitely, but definitely learning to learn is important not only for students, but for teachers as well. So going back to you, Alfredo, as a teacher, person who has quite a wide experience of teaching and being present in numerous associations. And I know always you are supporting teachers saying that they should be trained more. So what is your overview on present situation? You have to turn on the mic. Sorry, I was not ready. Thank you for the for the invitation to Eden and to you Sandra. I have to and allow two panelists and attendees. I just have to continue what you were saying is that the question of training the teachers I think it's fundamental. Not only training, but also verifying that they are trained to teach online. I think one of the biggest problems we had these two years, year and a half, was that many people knew about the tools, the technologies, the gadgets, but they don't know how to teach online. That was terrible for the learners because some learners had capable teachers and some others had incompetent teachers online. And that is terrible. That cannot happen. That's my first point. The second point is that this imposed transformation of using remote teaching and remote learning opened a lot of options for everyone. I think there was a lot of lessons learned from everyone, like Marc has mentioned. Also students learn how to self-learn and to learn online. And teachers also knew that they could do other things that they could not do or they didn't know they could do before. And the third is that and that was I think a consequence was that there was a lot of informal learning for everyone that somehow should be recognized. So those are my three points and I'll probably have the chance of talking about other things. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Alfredo. Yes, definitely a lot has been learned informally because when we met the situation we had to learn how to adapt, how to use different tools and technologies. So Marc, do you think if you said that we showed resilience that looking at the cup half full, not half empty, but are we ready to change traditional views and practices by embracing the transformative potential of digital education? Actually, why did we need pandemic to be a catalyst for digital transformation of high education? Please turn on the mic. Yes. That's all right. I just lost my mouse there for a minute. You really put me on the spot there, haven't you? Those are pretty tough questions, two questions. Are we ready firstly to transform the traditional? I think the word transformation is typically used very loosely, particularly in the context of higher education. I'm probably as guilty as the next person by referring to transformation without really defining the term. And if you take a dictionary definition of transformation, it's about an extreme or radical change. So in many respects, I think transformation is a bit like a aerosol deodorant. We spray it around. It smells good for a while, but it doesn't really last very long and all evidence of the spray disappears. And I thought I'd bring a little prop with me. You see, I'm transforming here. It smells pretty good, but it's not going to last long. More practically, I think it helps to make a distinction between transformation with a small T, a little T, and transformation as a capital T, a big T, if that makes sense. An example of little T transformation that I experienced last week brought about by the pandemic in Dublin outside of higher education is that taxi drivers now take cards instead of cash. For me, this is a fantastic transformation with a little T because if you don't have cash, it was always a challenge, especially for people coming outside of Europe when they arrived in Ireland. I think we've seen many small T transformations by individual teachers during the pandemic, small tweaks and adaptations to their teaching. However, I'm less convinced that we've witnessed many really fundamental big T transformations yet. Remember, I said it takes time though, but in most traditional universities, and I will use university here quite deliberately, conducting and publishing research is still valued at a higher level than one's teaching. The idea of face-to-face teaching hours or contact hours has not been removed or transformed for measures of academic workload. And let's be honest, the traditional transmission model of teaching is and was still the dominant metaphor, if you like, of teaching, which I referred to earlier. And if I give one other example, it remains to be seen whether the traditional examination is going to be replaced by more authentic forms, more contemporary forms of assessment. In fact, new digital technology can be used to merely replace old ways of doing things with new ways of doing it through digital proctoring, but no fundamental big T transformation. So that leads me to the second part of what you asked, which is why did we need the pandemic as a catalyst? I like an ecological understanding of the system we're in. Higher education is part of a complex ecology. The organizational culture of an institution itself is complex and culture can be very conforming. It's very hard to hack the system. A little plug for the Digi-Ed hack going on right now. Hopefully we'll see some really great hacks of the system, but resilience to change can also be a virtue, as I said previously. Change in an ecological sense usually is gradual. It takes time. And often you don't even notice it. Despite popular opinion, universities and educational institutions are not stuck in the 19th century. Technology has already transformed higher education for better and worse because I spend most of my day answering emails now. So I think that point also shows that transformation isn't benign. And I'll just finish by saying that again, borrowing from ecology, you can't really change your fundamental DNA. Transformation is hard. It's like getting rid of COVID bulge that we perhaps got. I know I did, because it takes real determination and keeping your eye on the end goal of what you really want and not falling back to bad habits. So it's not easy. Yeah, definitely. It's not easy. So I said questions sound simple, but the answer is difficult to provide. When you're referring to the traditional university, I thought that you had a quite good overview of Croatia, because this is the situation we are facing. Actually, I'm hearing because I work with higher education from the high levels that online education cannot replace traditional education that is just substitute, that we should go back to where we were, because this was good. And that because of emergency remote teaching, we experienced quite lots of bad reflections from students and teachers who didn't find it quite useful because of social aspect and mental health and so on. So in a way, the results can be endangered by a different and I would say not very knowledgeable information about actually what's online education. But let's go to you, Irina. We said that actually we needed pandemic to do some changes in digital transformation. I also invite the participants in the chat to give their opinion. Did we need the pandemic as a catalyst for changes in higher education? So do you think we will be able to retain advantages and benefits of gaining more experience in online education, or we will feel compelled to go back to the normal times? How actually digital faculty in the digital age should look like? You are quite advanced in Lutvenia at Vitato-Smartness University, so you can share your experience about it. Yes, Sandra, and not only I think, I think here we have to rely upon several things. One thing is whether we have a vision. And I think I'm a part of a group of people who usually create visions and try to think what we want to be and how our education should look like in 5, 10, 20 years. And I think this is very important, because as we have seen from the past, if we didn't have a preparation, we would have failed much worse than we could have imagined. And I think it also depends upon our choice. We are all humans. I believe that every system, every organization depends upon the vision and the small choices and small decisions made one by one. I think we have to answer many questions. Of course, we should start with the questions what we would like to see, what students would like to see, what teachers would like to see, what national and institutional policies would like to embed in the visions of their institutions. We have to answer the question how much we trust science, how much we trust research, how much we also make lessons from the feedback that we receive from our stakeholders. We also have to decide about other things. For example, now we see tech projects on the national level taking good advancement. I always question inside and also with a group of researchers and with my colleagues in Europe and in Lithuania, how do we see the goals of innovations, economic development and education and how fast the impact of education can be towards the changes that we want to see. We witnessed how quickly and how successfully schools went online, school education during the pandemic, maybe not very successful in terms of methods that they chose, maybe they had a lot of dropouts at the moment, maybe they did not manage a lot of things, but schools had to move online and that was out of the question completely before the pandemic. We can count schools who had experience with digitalization. Now we see the merge of unicorns that each country wants to see coming out of the national context. For example, we also want to see how fast we develop and how fast we gain recognition and then I go back to the area of education and ask myself, what is the benefit for education out of the digital development, out of this new game or new tool? I want to literally a description how sustainable it is for education in my country or in Europe in a long-time perspective. So I think these are really important questions and I would think that first we need to think about them then to try to answer for ourselves how we think and what we would like to see in the future and then which way to go. We need to go back to the questions of openness and transparency because digitalization always improves transparency, always improves the openness and this is our strength in Europe, I think. At least we always declare it full-heartedly for our colleagues globally because we are prepared for the openness. I would claim that we are and I think the solutions that we choose now for schools, for vocational education and training for adult learning for higher education also should be based on our values. So if we choose a simple tool, a simple digital instrument, do we contribute to human capital development in Europe? Do we contribute to our wealth in the future or we choose the solution that we can manage now but we don't think what will happen in the future with our institution, with our university or school. So I think when we answer these questions, what we want and when we make our choices then we can save us better confidence whether these lessons will be long. Thank you, Irina. Replying with questions on my questions but very important questions, actually we do need to think what do we want and how do we want to shape our future. I think this is a very important task for all high education institutions. We do have the plans, we do have the mission and visions of the institutions but these I would say long-term visions going back some years but how management of institution is open to change these vision and missions based on the lessons learned. This is also something to talk about. So Giorgi, going back, going to you now. Digital education action plan, it's been a year and maybe a month after it has started. It was presented but actually it started in 2021. So how are you satisfied with its realization after one year especially because of the pandemic and disruption of education from which no one was prepared and what influence and enhancement Dieppe can have on European countries in resetting education for digital age? Well, so I can maybe just start with 20 seconds of what the digital education action plan is because I see that there are many people here from around the world and I really don't want to take it for granted that you know what that is. So basically this is a European Commission policy for the next seven years as it were because so long is the programming cycle of the European Union. So it's kind of long-term by design and what this digital education action plan is is basically a set of measures but also a set of two very strategic priorities. One, the need for a building what we call a digital education ecosystem which ranges from connectivity through equipment through infrastructure and the skills of the teachers and then on the second side we have the long-term objective to support continuously digital skills and competences. So sorry I had to make that parenthesis. I really don't want to assume that anyone would know that and now the question on being satisfied I mean I have my difficulties to be satisfied with something which I think is going to be long-term by design not because this particular action plan is long term because we want that it clicks to other key policies on finance, on labor market. We want this to be part of the conversation around digital transformation in Europe and not just in kind of splendid isolation. This is very very important because of the member states and I'll come back to this in a second but I also am not able to be satisfied in year one because we are just starting and I think we have made actually a good start. We have already launched a couple of very important actions which for example on the one side we are going to be supporting educators and teachers with development of specific guidelines for them on the one side on how to deal with AI and data in education and training. This is a big big topic in education and we would like to propose something which is meaningful and practical and then we have a working group on this which is going to be working over the next six seven months still and then we have another similar exercise again to support teachers and educators when it comes to dealing with disinformation. We have another example that we are not yet done with but what we are going to be announcing very very soon which I believe is going to be a very important initiative at the EU level. This is the digital education hub which we are going to be procuring and we are going to be announcing very very soon. This is about creating an interface at the EU level for cooperation between policy practice research and also the private sector at the EU level because we believe that this type of cooperation is not yet as institutionalised as it could have been and one needs to just compare it with the verticals of let's say higher education or maybe the school sector to see that this is not yet there. So we have a lot of work to do so that's why I cannot be satisfied because we really need to work for a number of years I think on it and because of your question on the member states I think we have to be very clear as to the competencies of the European Commission when it comes to education. Again for all those not sort of in the know the Commission does have very limited competencies in education and essentially supports the member states. The member states are responsible for designing and for the content. However because this topic has become so relevant and because of the increasing importance of this policy the digital education action plan which I have mentioned we are seeing more influence also when it comes to the member states and what I mean by this is I would like to give the example. It is actually something that we announced in the action plan as well so it's not something which came on top of it. It's the dialogue with the member states on digital education that we are about to launch. We would like to go deeper with the member states on the needs on the gaps on the bottlenecks and on their plans when it comes to digital education. We would like to do this over the next year so it's going to be a time bound process. It's going to be something which involves the top level of the political leaders in the member states. It was something which the President of the European Commission announced two months ago when she called for leaders attention to digital skills and education and it was something that a project group of commissioners so a very high level group of commissioners from different parts have put their weight on and I believe that over 2022 we're going to see also more exchange and deeper conversations with the member states and this is a very important aspect for us because traditionally we are really not doing this sort of every so often but because the situation is so exceptional and because everyone seems to be intuitively realizing that the relevance of this topic is so huge that we cannot just let's say leave it to be as business as usual. We are taking those measures and we will also look together with the RRF the resilience and recovery plans and the European semester into how member states are actually addressing digital education in a more sustainable way so I am being a bit modest with the expectations here because we have to run this process first and we have to see at the end of next year what the result will be but the opportunity for sure is there and just final element to mention that the contribution of the digital education action plan is a long-term one and it is something that will help to build the European education area further and this is very important because it is really about the European education area and not about the different let's say enablers of it be internationalization or digital and this and that these are the things that will make European cooperation work even better and I think that we have excellent experience in Europe when it comes to cooperation between education and research the most popular program is called Erasmus and I think that this is the ultimate objective so I do believe that of course with the relevance of digital and the relevance of the flagship we have on the table the digital education action plan we will be able of course to probably leverage this because the times are right to do that and I think it's our also responsibility a bit in the commission to to do that because the member states are also expecting it and by the way the stakeholders as well great very good to hear about the number of actions that you are performing I'm looking forward to digital education have but also I very much welcome this communication with the countries with the high state profile people management I think it's very much needed to be aware of the present state of what's going in each country and to able to tackle these issues with them and see how it can be solved or proposed some actions in a way that they found the solution we will welcome you very much in Croatia definitely so great thank you for the answer yes I know with just one year since the digital education action plan is out but you know although it's a long-term plan always the first actions are very important you know to see how it has landed you know on the floor does it spread the seed or or it's not so yeah great thank you Joseph going to you now uh oh I can celebrate in 25 years already my god uh university was started with the idea to take the advantage of incipient web worldwide web to create first ever distance-less university and have been very successful in it so congratulations on on your 25 years but my question to you is are online universities living the renaissance in response to pandemic world and what lessons can we take from online universities in effective implementation of online education are we likely to see the new generation of online universities arising from crisis what would be your answer to that let me start by the by the end in fact I don't really know if we are likely to see new generation of open universities or if universities are living their renaissance in response to the pandemic world but what I know for sure is that a lot of brick and mortar universities are combining or will be combining in the future both face-to-face and virtual methodologies tackling their own digital transformation some of these will probably start offering distance education as a complement of their of their main activity so I think that the future of higher education will be for sure more digital than it is at present and open universities have the duty to lead this transformation from from our own experience education in a virtual environment is not only a mere technological issue but one that requires planning commitment and complicity the willingness of the institution to work online is not enough it is necessary to create the whole infrastructure to support governance and management in our in our own experience and thank you for the 25th anniversary now now we have become a young university only 25 in our own experience there are four basic pillars that sustain digital transformation the the the starting point of the first one for indigenous transformation must therefore be to define the university model itself so the first thing is that the university finds which is the niche of students or the model that the university wants to wants to be and being digital means that the whole institution works with the same model or pattern in our case 3000 subjects structure organized and technology powered in the same way the second pillar is to bolster the digital competences of all those involved in the process so it goes in line it goes along with the digital education action plan mentioned by georgie the need that everyone involved has the digital competences it is essential to raise levels of digital literacy and to develop digital competences in the general public but also specific training is needed to the education professionals responsible for implementing the digital transformation both the teaching staff and anyone involved in teaching innovation for us the third pillar is the is the one that promotes quality assurance mechanisms with quality assurance mechanisms based on collaborations or collaboration with all the agents involved in the regulation of distance higher education and the fourth pillar which last but not least is it is crucial to perform joint research and collaborative work for evidence-based digital transformation and in that sense I think that the work that Eden has been doing is crucial to reinforce joint collaboration between academics and and institutions thank you thank you just for pointing very good that we do need to train teachers to be able to teach in different environments than than just traditional lecture or lecture room teaching and that collaboration is of very importance thank you I'm going now to you Alfredo I have prepared the question from you but I see that in question and answer we have one question I think is just written it's written based on your first reply so if you don't mind I will move to this question which says I understand being a professor is inspiring being by the side of the students supporting them and being an example when teaching when passing on information how do you see online education helping these four aspects I think this is a question just for for you so please would you like to answer that okay I'll try as you know I've been involved with the area of the learning and this is learning for many years and I knew the first rector of the Open University of Catalonia Professor Ferrate so I'm that old so going to the going to the this specific issue I think that online is one big advantage about the face-to-face teaching and learning which is the possibilities of communication and circulating information I think that's the biggest advantage of the online tools that we have so far that we haven't exploited I think we have to deconstruct the models that we had because what happened in this pandemic was people were replicating what they were doing in the classroom and that's not how it's supposed to be you have to deconstruct the model and build new models for online learning in terms of using the tools for instance one that I see that it's has a high potential is the simulation you can do incredible things there is a university medicine a German university based in Cyprus that it's doing all its courses online without with simulation and for me that I'm an engineer I think it's the possibilities are in us but concentrating on the question that I didn't see I'm sorry it's the point that the digital tools and distance learning can facilitate mostly communication we can communicate anytime with anywhere and communicate almost everything we want to transmit of course learning is a personal thing we have to understand that learning is personal we can dance we can we can sing we can tell jokes but the learner will learn if he wants to and if we give them the right models to learn and that's where I think the distance learning can help the teacher have more potential in transmitting the pedagogical model to the to the learner I don't know if I answered but it's the best I can do thank you just just to add I know that in education we are very much focused on content and I think that traditional types of learning are basically focused on teaching not on learning and much more on content than on the skills do you see that online education provide the better way to to to work on the development of skills for teachers and students again it's the question of why are we here right why are the teachers there why are the it's because of the learning outcomes it's the the competencies they will acquire from that perspective I think that the digital tools can provide a better understanding of why we are spending time trying to teach people and people are getting to learn what they eventually need I personally am very concerned with the assessment especially the assessment online and I think that there's a lot of work to do because for those that are in the formal in the institutional learning and teaching the exams are terrible I mean they are stressing events and personally I think they are most of the times unfair to to to the students learners so we have to work a lot on the assessment and produce better tools and they're the digital tools with the simulation with the portfolios with them records of what the learners have done etc I think that we can do incredible things if again like I mentioned in my first intervention if the professors are prepared to do and we have to work on the preparation of the professors and it's not using the tools it's not for instance the digital competence framework it's good but it's not pedagogical it's not the pedagogical framework so we have to teach we have to make the the teachers and trainers to learn how to teach online thank you Alfredo I think it's very good point what we have to be aware aware of okay so let's move Irene a question for you how can associations such as Eden help high education institutions in digital transformation what you were in Eden UK for a number of years and still are present we were one of the founders of Eden Europe you have great visions and perspectives on how things should look like definitely Eden provided the good ground the good platform for collaboration what we are now in verge of establishing we have established already but with new association Eden Europe we can do things differently and even better what do you think we need to undertake to meet the increasing demand of of high education and helping the high education institutions Eden is very European in terms of fostering collaboration building bridges among different different research and practice communities and sharing best practices initiating peer learning so these are the strengths that allow us since many years and not to provide solutions expert solutions as such per se but to re-discuss and renegotiate with every context including global context because Eden also has very very important and valued global partners so over the world what are the factors that would affect integration of one another innovation in education in a successful way or could cause some risks and failures innovations in education need some keywords so that they are better understandable for the majority of stakeholders in education and on all levels of education and knowledge development is very important and I think we have experience in that and this must be continued so the transformation in the concepts and keywords is also going on in parallel for many years when we talk about virtual mobility open educational resources open educational practices micro credentials for example now we always try to elaborate and increase the scope of the discussion in terms of what it affects and what might be the impact of for one or another scenario taken as an example when we are invited experts from Eden network are invited usually to consult national policymakers international organizations and groups on one or another area of digital education I think the best that we can do is to introduce the criteria how we can and the measurement indicators how we can measure this innovation and the characteristics how can we describe this innovation and then to discuss what implication of one or another scenario could happen and what implication we can anticipate so actually I think we have been doing it successfully but as you Sandra mentioned that correctly we also go under transformation because we need to transform as well as an organization and Eden will I'm sure I'm confident it will take all the best values from the 30 years from the 30 years of existence but at the same time now in in Europe digital learning in Eden digital learning Europe we put on a very very high priority level such values as openness also transformation in management including national associations as our very important stakeholders within Eden partnership with global associations as well in order to learn from each other and many many other things that I think would correspond to the values of Europe and also to transfer the European instruments tools that have been successful through the years also to other continents and countries we think this is very important time for us not only to support our European institutions but also to support globally institutions that address the same challenges so I think we are in the process of transformation I hope to hear every voice and every opinion and take it in on on the table to the management board of Eden Europe and general meeting of Eden Europe and to openly address this and to find solutions and to analyze successes and failures and then to feedback to our region to our Europe and our education policies as well with those that we with this feedback that we collected so I think this is our mission and I'm sure that we will continue with it thank you yes I agree with you just from this webinar today we see that our participants are actually on a global level coming from really a number of countries out of Europe as well what was I could say the the confirmation to us when was when pandemic started then we started with these webinars online together providing the space the platform for everyone facing this disruption and looking for place where they can talk discuss find new ideas find the solution see that it's not that they are not alone and there are others who are facing the same problems and actually the strength the strength of our community because I would say that Eden members are really people with hearts and soul devoted to education and their job as educators contributed to that that Eden actually could be I would say a platform for transparency in incoming and upcoming information you know so that they are visible to to everyone and I think that is one of the the best strength of Eden as such but let's not praise our ourselves although we do have a little bit thank you thank you for your opinion Mark I will go back to you now we have heard several times so far the issue of research the importance of research which has been quite rich last two years because actually they could research on the present situation and things which are still going on but what is my question to you we have lessons learned we have results of research how to move from the point that we know something actually to implementing it and move forward well Sandra that's a excellent question because I guess in part I'm contributing to that research community adding bullet point recommendations and various reports and I'm reading those reports but I'm also starting to get almost overwhelmed with the amount of research and I'm starting to filter it a lot more critically because I think we're at a point where less talk and more action is probably desirable or maybe the talk and action go hand in hand so I think we really have to walk the talk and this is one of the challenges we've had that the research community can't be siloed from then being challenged to put the ideas the evidence-based thoughts and experiences into practice and what we know again about large-scale changes important this was known before the pandemic we have to walk the talk we have to have the change owned by all I'm not great on top-down visions I think visions come from the community and sometimes there's a body of literature that says the vision is what you end with without wanting to sing DCU's praises too much you have to win the hearts and minds of the community so three maybe possibly even four years ago as part of an envisioning exercise of what the university wanted to do in the future we held a 24-hour online DCU fuse event which was the first time many of the staff actually learned to be learners online went as I said for 24 hours not dissimilar to the Digi-Ed hack event going on walking the talk bringing people with you middle change is very important as well many of us are in middle positions we took about top down and bottom up change the middle out shouldn't be underestimated it's the glue that joins things together ultimately though we all have a degree of personal agency we can all be change catalysts when I hear someone says oh the university hasn't done this or the university hasn't done that or some institution we're part of that and if we just sit back and accept it then it will be what it is so we have to be activists and then plans are important plans at all levels it's a sort of slogan but if you don't plan then you fail to plan and one really important thing I think that's missing right now from the research literature and I say this quite convincingly because we've been analyzing the literature around the student perspective the student experience you know what the student voice despite our best efforts is not that clear in coming through there are only a couple of publications that have actually been co-authored with students most of the student voice is done through surveys and that's not a student voice that's someone else telling the student voice so I think we also in those plans need to hear a lot more from students who's been a great experience here in Ireland from the Irish University Association where they crowdsourced what students said they wanted the future of higher education to be so you know students can be a powerful change force here if we want to harness them rather than manage and control them so ultimately if we're not committed to change and we're not going to win hearts and minds and bring people with us we'll get the change that's given to us yes mark you are right students have to be heard it's important I know that we are doing lots of surveys but basically we hear one or two students we do not hear actually all of them and they are the other people for whom we are doing all this you know so yeah thank you for that okay Alfredo going back to you supports to teachers to become digitally skilled this is something we need we want we have already been providing it for some time your advice and an expert in that field how it should be organized how it should be provided well thank you Sandu make me difficult questions so yeah I mean even I forgot to mention but even as a top teaching online permits which is a competence framework for teachers online and all of us have a lot of experience I didn't mention either but the walk was the first world online university totally online so for instance organizations like the walk know how to prepare their own teachers to teach online and some of you know that I come from mostly from the continuing education and lifelong learning from you can etc etc and there the online courses not only here but in the United States and China they are common and what has been happening is that the people that teach online in those areas for the adults for the lifelong learning for the professionals either they are successful or they lose money most of them are private they are profit organizations not the public like the public much so what I'm saying is that this how do I say these expertise this knowledge this competence to train online teachers exists but exists probably in places where we do not looking for it and my recommendation is for instance take a look at what has done take a look at what Coursera does and other other organizations they know how to teach online because they have to maintain their own learners because if you are an engineer you're taking a continuing professional development course online and it's not well done you will not come back again you will you'll quit and probably ask for the money back so you have to be aware that this competence exists we just have to put it in place I was hearing the European Commission talking about the policies etc don't forget the competent training of teachers online because if you don't have competent teachers online will never be constant and I think it should be one way or the other I believe in the uber learning I think that people will learn like they pick a uber and when they do that they they probably will try to find those that have good teachers online and they will find the good courses and those will survive and the function from for the universities as I see it is probably becoming a validating center or accreditation center of competencies provided by the ubers that that is my that is my perception for the future but we'll see thank you Alfredo thank you good points okay Georgie let's go to you now definitely this pandemic is continuous there's no ending I don't know if we're going to face the end or and when so no one can predict that institution teachers and students are exhausted already with present situation so how do you think what do you think what will be the challenges for 2022 in high education very important mark mark from mark was that we need to see here the student voice as well so what are opinion of European Commission or your about how how it's going 2022 to look like so if you allow me I just want to quickly reply back to Alfredo who made an excellent point and I you know it's up to both but as part of the first year of the action plan we already launched three different measures which are all addressing digital competencies of teachers one is the proposal for council recommendation on blended learning for primary and secondary it's really a very very interesting document because we have never gone in this area I know it's not relevant for higher education but it's an interesting example two it's the selfie for teachers two that supports teachers with their digital capacities and three it's the Erasmus teacher academies so just in parenthesis to just reassure you that I mean I don't want to to just list things that we are doing but I absolutely agree with what you said now I want to address your question Sander which is excellent with two two two different perspectives personally if if the question is what what we kind of should be should be looking into next year given the very difficult and also I mean psychological situation I think that we especially those of us that are in positions where we are able to transmit information that others either read or listen to or somehow communicate and in fact every single person here around this virtual table is doing that nowadays because we are very connected so it's really not about the question of hierarchies or everyone can do it I think we have to be a little bit responsible with the let's say a possible pushback towards this digital let's say digital turn because history has shown that for every extreme move there is another counter move and we need to be very responsible and explaining what it is what we really contribute as a added value when it comes to the quality of education I think this is the the the main point because otherwise this fatigue and exhaustion can easily go into well rejection even and and so forth and so on so I do want to recognize that there is this element which is also already kind of there but it is in the responsibility of those who know this best to also share this in a really in a responsible manner without without let's say the the the hype or the the counter element of it which I think we have seen for the last 10 years plenty of times so we really have to mainstream it it needs to be a bit more normal than it will you know replace universities or it will have no role whatsoever so it's as always in media threats the second point is more institutional from the side of the commission and we are working on excuse me we are working on a new strategy for european universities and in this new strategy we will of course address digital transformation and we will identify the importance of it and propose some specific measures that will support the digital transformation of of higher education in europe what i think we will however do is we will integrate it into the overall objectives around the cooperation the transnational cooperation which is at the core of the european work and in education and research as well we will also like to stress a bit more the international role and by international i mean really the global outreach and the global role of european universities and also we will talk about the values and i think because irina who mentioned it we will also talk about the values because ultimately it comes back to some of the values that we stand for and we need to be thinking about them because technology does have some implication on it it's up to to be protectionist or anything like this but to recognize the deep let's say the the deep role that values do have in shaping technology in future so we will propose this new strategy early next year and i think it's time to broaden the horizon and to think about the the picture perhaps to zoom out a little bit this digital let's say focus that that we have had even though i'm of course the first supporter of it but it helps out to see how it is integrated in the bigger picture of where society is moving and we will of course put specific calls in the Erasmus program already in november now we will of course have a number of digital priorities more than before which are going to support specifically a number of different areas which we believe are let's say more more interesting for a cooperation in 2022 so but that's more on the program program side thank you thank you very good news looking forward to that but definitely yes zoom out and have an overview actually not focus on just one thing but to see how it can enhance the society as such not forgetting the ecosystem sustainability of a number of issues and citizens and such how they live in a society today thank you Joseph going back to you i would say that Georgie has opened a little bit the line to your question which i have for you is did online education lose its proper meaning and distinguish qualities in rush to emergency remote teaching if so what got lost so did we lose the value of online education by this emergency remote teaching thank you yeah firstly i think that it is essential to distinguish the emergency remote teaching that the education system had to adopt as a response to the pandemic to covet 19 crisis from what it is quality online education now we have to explain to traditional universities to students and to the whole society that what was done during the crisis to keep instruction is meaningfully different from a well-planned online learning experience we have to assure that all of society is able to see the difference if we fail to do so open universities may be facing a regression in terms of reputation mainly in those countries where e-learning has had to make a great effort to be recognized as a quality form of education in fact i firmly believe that quality online education is nowadays more meaningful than ever and that it has nothing to do with the improvisation done during the pandemic additionally quality online education is one of the more effective and efficient methodologies to achieve the sdg on quality education for all thank you thank you Joseph for for stating importance of quality of education we did not have time to talk about the number of issues relating to online education and education is such a going from quality micro-condentials student voice the others i just slipped my mind but definitely exams which is very painful a painful issue i think we would need a number of sessions to tackle all all this issue we are coming to the end of our panel today and for the end i would just like to each ask each of you briefly usually we say let's summarize what will be your predictions what do you see how it's going to look like or so my question to you would be what do you think are the biggest mistakes or risk we need to avoid in our efforts to build a better future of higher education so what would be your idea of what your perception what should be avoid in building the future of education we want not what is served to us so maybe Alfredo let's start with you open open the mic please yes i was typing to mark the conference without what the university is without walls so my final remark is that we we we should take advantage of everything that it's done or it was already done because there are a lot of good work and we should try to to do more research one of the things that i see is that there is not enough research for instance in assessment of conferences there is very little work done by researchers of online and i think it it should increase because it's fundamental for the the question of quality we were talking about quality of education and like i said i'm an engineer and i have this principle what you cannot measure you cannot improve so you you have to measure and to measure you have to use the right tools the learning outcomes and competencies we have are very different and we should employ assessment methods and techniques that are suitable for each type of learning outcomes and competencies you don't assess an attitude the same way you assess knowledge or skills so and that is not from my point of view sufficiently research we have to do more research so let's say that my final comment is support the research and targeted towards online and specifically towards assessment okay thank you Irina your final sentence on risks and mistakes i would say three things maybe the first mistake would be to go and search for comfort zone in the past because this is an illusion and then i think we could all lose ourselves and the second would be to lose self-criticism and the reflection on our actions constantly and the third i would go to the positive side and i think it's it's a it's in the main condition is to keep the balance balance is important everywhere so not to lose the balance or i would say to keep the balance thank you Joseph what will be your final words yeah thank you i think that that it's not a question or face-to-face versus online learning instead we need to determine which of the many ecosystems possible is best suited to the type of learning we want to provide and the type of students that it's saying that so that to ensure that no one is left behind and in the in in in in the second place i think that another challenge universities need to deal with is the fact that they are no longer the only actors to provide lifelong learning platforms such as google or linkedin large telecommunication companies like microsoft are making a strong beat for lifelong learning and the provision of micro certification of short term training for upskilling professional profiles so the risk for universities precisely not to become obsolete against these initiatives they have to differentiate themselves from these other actors the university must have the aspiration to become a key institution in this new era in the new era as the world's greater generator of knowledge science and research on the democratization of knowledge as it has been demonstrated during the covine 19 crisis are fundamental to the progress of humanity and universities must be active in claiming their central role in this in this sense thank you perfect yes university has to be competitive and to define themselves in order to others institution providing lifelong learning and other modules of informal formal education which are present on the market and for which we are going very often to work wanting to some short modular education that will provide us with the skills we need at that moment okay mark your your time i'm conscious timers almost up so really quickly yes technology matters but educators matter most and i think we have learned just how important the role of the educator is in achieving our end outcomes you know for me if i want to develop more creative innovative and imaginative learners the prerequisite for that is more creative innovative and imaginative teachers the big mistake i think we have to avoid in creating such teachers or shall i say working with them and building those sorts of mindsets is avoiding a supply driven approach to cpd to professional development what we've got is a real supply of professional development there's there's an overwhelming range of opportunities but we need to understand the demand part of it because the people who really we need to get to are not the ones typically taking up these experiences and probably i'm talking about the people who are with us right now are not the ones we really need to be addressing yes good point good point and ghergy you are now last to able to summarize it's difficult because these points were excellent so i really want to thank the four of you before i think that we would probably i'm as you can tell i'm not really the the specialist in higher education but i think that it's it's important to not lose kind of the the the forest because you know we're looking just at the couple of trees and we need to to be thinking about the the role of the the university in this big big big transformation which i argue the digital transformation is despite the fact that everyone is tired of hearing it and we need to be thinking of where the students are going to and this is a very important point because they are voting with their feet and or with their whatever computers and it's a very important point and the point about the lack of research in that is is is probably a little bit worrying so actually it would be interesting to to see how we can perhaps close this type of gap because i mean short term shocks are always bringing people out of their balance but in the longer run people let's say the the changes that happen tend to be underestimated so i i think it's very important because of that to be in collaboration with also the institutional leadership of the universities and organizational change is important and it is a place where we have to also be thinking of when it comes to the transformation of of of higher education in the future the biggest mistake would be to just forget what we saw last last two years thank you thank you we have come to the end of our session today i wish to thank my panelists for excellent visions and overviews i think that each of you had time to get some food for thought you know to think about it this is the the one of the discussions about this issue i think many more are still to come in order that we move from the lessons learned actually to some actions and start performing changes take time it's complex it's dirty it takes a number of of ups and downs but i think that what's the best is the enthusiasm of all of us working in it and a collaboration which is very important because one person cannot make the change it's it's a crowd it's a forest that can do it so with these thoughts i'm closing the this year european online distance learning week thank you participants thank you panelists see you in another occasion thank you again thanks andra thanks everyone thank you very much bye bye