 Staff are the greatest asset of any organization and hence the professional development of our staff is something that's not a trivial manner. We know that any successful educational change or transformation of an organizational culture really depends on bringing and winning the hearts and minds of the people you have in your organization, the people that you want to make the change. So accordingly this presentation, this proposal really builds on existing experiences and inviting and indeed encouraging professional discussion, professional dialogue around the area of what works and why, specifically in the context of technology in hands learning. There is a guiding question that spent throughout our entire project and I want to chat to you about that today in the context of all the questions that we were put forward by the by the forum. So now we start with the introductions. My name is is Dr. Marklein, I'm the head of the teaching enhancement unit in DCU. We have Maura McGuire, Dr. Maura McGuire from Dundalk and we have Billy Kelly also from DCU with apologies from our colleagues in Atlaun and Manut who unfortunately can't make it today. There are four separate institutions working here as I've just alluded to, four separate institutions learning from and contributing to this particular project. Technology in hands learning is the common ground that we're looking on and the overarching question as I say is what works and why. Our proposal builds on the digital literacy and the engagement of staff and students and what we are trying to do is hook everything out and trying to encourage critical reflection and professional dialogue, rich professional dialogue that's grounded in institutional context but also discipline specific practices. So what are we going to do? The overview of the presentation it really builds around the five questions that's here on the slide. What's our rationale? What will we do? How will we do it and how will we promote it and then finish off by how we will evaluate it. But because we're working on the principle of what works and why the evaluation really runs through our entire project. So starting off with our rationale that we have, what is our rationale? Where are we coming from within this project? It really orientates around four key assumptions and you will note from the handout that I've just given you here it actually puts in context the current literature that emphasizes our rationale behind this project. So firstly professional learning is a social and dialogical process. It's not something that is done to individuals. Also impactful professional learning and professional development leading to better outcomes for the student and for the learner really involves a wide range of people. It's not just individual lectures we're looking for, it's a team of people. And developing teacher groups and as you say it's highlighted in the literature today, developing teacher groups and peer mentoring circles is a valuable strategy in trying to make sustainable development. Sustainable but also impactful, demand led, discipline specific training. And the last one, the last thing I want to say the last assumption we're building on is the fact that there's a rhetoric, there is a gap in the rhetoric between the technology enhanced learning and the reality that actually happens on the ground and that's actually referenced within Henderson's paper there. So you will see here to answer the question what will we do, I've put up a before, a during and an after. So straight away it's quite obvious we are not just doing one week, there is an entire process that will be following over the entire duration of the project. Quite similar to people that I've presented before. And I will get into details as how we're doing different bits and pieces and subsequent slides but I just want to point out to you one or two things on this slide and you will see here that we're going to establish a steering group before and indeed we'll be identifying generic topics but I just look at the steering group. We're going to have representatives from each of our partner organisations on this steering group and that will ensure that it's a truly collaborative process that has not just been dominated by one particular institution and it ensures that we're all learning from and contributing to this particular process. We're also going to, you'll see up the top there, appoint an events manager and this is crucial for us because as everybody alluded to earlier on, we're all under time pressures in our normal what we call day job and there's so many events that we have because we're not limiting it to one particular week. We'll have over 20 different events and over eight different teaching groups and there will be a minimum of 20 events and a minimum of eight teaching groups. What we want to do is evaluate what works and why with each of those. So it's actually a huge process and that's the value of having an events manager attached to it. But just to give you an insight on what I want to do now is concentrate now on the next two slides on our teaching topics, our generic groups and also our discipline based groups. So with regards to our teaching groups, this is how we're going to do it. We're going to establish these teaching groups and the reason why we want to do that is because we want it to be not just one person being the expert and as soon as that expert walks out the door, the expertise walks out without them. What we want to do is we want to build the expertise and build on existing expertise within the four institutions. Looking at common areas that we have generic areas assessment, universal design, online teaching, they're ideal topics that will facilitate teaching groups and will facilitate them across disciplines but also across institutions as well and generate that discussion. Let's start talking about research into teaching. Let's start talking about what works and why. Remember that's the key question for ourselves. They lend themselves very well to build networks and that's what this will do, build something that is sustainable beyond the funding of this project. But here's the crux of our proposal. We're also going to be discipline-led and this is crucial because what works and why for a maths lecture is different to what works and why for an arts lecture or a communications lecture. There's so many different examples that we can come up with in terms of a maths lecture, online quizzes could work very well for a maths lecture but maybe wikis might not or discussion forms might not whereas when you start looking at the other subjects, other technologies will be more suitable to that. Again, you may look at blogs for one subject and podcasting for others so it's what works and why is what we're going to be looking at and by getting scientists talking together, by getting chemists talking about how they teach chemistry as opposed to their research projects that are getting loads of funding for will help us build these communities because lectures talk to one another and they listen to one another. They don't want somebody parachuted in there and told this is what you should be doing and there's always that feeling of that wasn't invented here, that won't work here, that doesn't work for me as a chemist, that doesn't work for me as a mathematician. So when we build discipline-related groups, that works and we want to spread the word essentially and just like some of the presentations earlier on, we will be developing case studies but the case studies as well as them being spread here will be applicable to all of higher education. It's not just limited to ourselves because we are being discipline-led. Some of the other points that were brought up earlier on was where does the student fit in? It's crucial for us that the student is a part of this project. What works and why for the student? The image here on the wall is an example of, or the image on the screen, excuse me, is an example of a blogging project within DCU and what we've done is we've actually got students talking about their experiences, blogging about their experience as a student. Within this Telweek project we're going to replicate that except we'll be asking the students what works and why in terms of technology. So how does the VLE work for you? Right? How do online quizzes work for you and so on and so forth? So this is even using technology, gathering feedback, gathering experiences from real people. And what we will do with this type of feedback, getting the student voice into this project, we'll actually combine this with staff feedback as well. If I cast your mind back to the slide, we actually had a section where we would be gathering feedback from staff. We'll be compiling all of this into short vignette style videos telling people what works and why, what works in international relations, what works in science education and so on and so forth. All the time using technology throughout it. You will also find, or you may remember, on the plan that we had for the actual project we said about funding innovative teaching projects. This is a core part of our funding proposal because what we've done is we've allocated an amount of funding across our partner institutions to facilitate the innovation, to facilitate innovative teaching. And just to give you an example on the screen and why we will be putting out the call for expression so I can't actually predict the future as to what proposals they're going to come up with. But here's one particular example of a biotechnology lecture used a head camera to give point of view direction as part of a science laboratory technique. So very, very smart use of technology. But what was great about this is this lecture took that extra step and actually did a bit of research and what worked and why did it work. And this lecture actually recently got published for this particular work. That's the sort of stuff we want to continue. That's the sort of stuff we want this teaching and learning fund to promote. And if I went in and if I told that lecture you should have a head camera on and you should do whatever else, they'd laugh at me and say, sure, you're just a techie geek. Whereas now I can get this science lecture talking to another science lecture and saying why this works. And again that might be applicable to somebody in arts. They may use video for something else. So what works and why is crucial and it's discipline specific, discipline led. How are we going to promote this particular work? Well you may have noticed on the very first slide we already have a Twitter handle for it. We've set up a blog and we've already set up social bookmarking facilities to share resources and so on and so forth. So we will be taking advantage from the onset of social media. But we'll be running a series of webinars and indeed sending out no more than anybody else here in this room. Sending out emails to targeted lists that we've we've built up over the years. Using our national contacts, I think we pretty much know everybody in the room in this context, and we'll be letting people know just like in our case when we get the information on your tell projects, we'll be spreading the word. We'll be creating a series of short videos throughout this project and we'll be using those as case studies. But the problem with that is that's all technology orientated. Then we'll be we'll be preaching to the converted essentially with that respect. So we're also going to be actually using posters and flyers and traditional ways of doing it. The posters could be promoting different initiatives on what works and why. That's what it's all about. We want to reach the entire community, staff and students, not just those that embrace technology. It's coming towards the end here folks. So the final question really is how are we going to evaluate the impact of our project? So the obvious thing is looking at the quantitative stuff. Well how many teaching groups are we going to set up? How many events are we going to run? The number of videos, the number of posters produced. I mentioned earlier that we want lectures to and students to look at what works and why. So the number of academic papers generated would be a great metric for us. The number of TEL projects that we fund. But we'll also look at it qualitatively and look and see what run focus groups to see what works and why. Get the feedback from the staff, get the feedback from the students and actually build that into case studies. One of the other bits that we would find to be a crucial part of our evaluation is looking at our inter-institutional collaboration and reflect on that process both individually and together and see how we can improve that because hopefully the form will be around for a while to come and hopefully we'll be able to take advantage of the funding that they can do that. We want to optimize how we work together as a group. So in summary what do I want to say? The aim of this fund when it was first released the aim of this fund was to enhance the teaching and learning by driving enhancement capacity in higher education. Higher education institutions. That was the phrase. I believe, we believe, the multifaceted approach that we'll be taking to our project, what works and why, will drive enhancement capacity. We're building on a history of collaboration between our institutions. We're building on literature, strong research already. So we're already starting from a good spot. We are taking a team based, a teaching group and indeed a discipline led teaching group approach to this sort of stuff. So I believe it's sustainable. It's sustainable development because this funding will run out unfortunately at some stage but hopefully this will carry on. And the last thing I want to say to you just before I go is we want to do this. This is not about developing a skill set. This is not about telling people how to use Twitter, telling people how to use Adobe Connect. This is changing a mindset and that's what it's about. That's what makes us sustainable. Thank you very much for your attention, ladies and gentlemen.