 everybody. I have to tell the Zoom lady that it's okay to accept the recording. Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for joining us this morning for this the second of our webinars and that's talking about the agile curriculum. I am delighted to that our chair for today is Dr Jim Murray from Thea, a board member of the National Forum and Jim chaired our first session so I'm delighted now to hand over to Jim for this session. There you go Jim. Thanks very much Terry. We're all very welcome and just to reiterate Terry's welcome on behalf of the the board of the National Forum. This is a very very interesting and topical topic as we discovered at the last meeting the first webinar on this topic and what we want to try to do today is is to take stock of where we were out of coming out of the first webinar and develop it a bit further and move along ultimately to hopefully getting into a space where we can define what an agile curriculum is ultimately. We've a bit of work to do still though so we move ahead. You can just see the agenda just very brief bit of scene setting and context then we're going to have lightning talks from as it turns out unfortunately one of our speakers say but we'll have three project leads from the HCI pillar tree projects. We'll have a perspective from employers through ISME and then we'll have a panel discussion at the end and there will be a further exercise looking back as well and what we've learned from the discussions to date. So we might just in terms of housekeeping you will have heard I think the lady from Zoom telling is that the webinar has been recorded so just to highlight that to you and that's really to help with the preparation of the publication so that we're not all scribbling 100 million notes throughout this. We very much welcome comments and questions through the chat in this webinar that they would be really helpful and certainly will help also inform our panel discussion today and also just to extend the thanks to everyone who on registration did actually respond to the prompt questions. So again if we might just move on to the next slide just to recall a little bit from the first webinar you know the key question we are trying to answer there is why is it important to develop an understanding of what we mean by an agile curriculum at this time. The concept is really becoming more and more prominent I mean the HCI pillar tree innovation and agility initiative that really you know has highlighted the concept of agility and brought it very much into the lives of quite a lot of academic colleagues now as those who are working on the HCI projects and those projects are very very big projects and they're very extensive and they've quite a lot of tentacles so this is a concept that you know is really really coming to the fore now in the community. There's 22 of those and it says that they're very very big projects so the reach of them is very extensive and at the first webinar we really began to see the really very exciting and very challenging work that's starting to happen in these projects and through that we're building this concept of an agile curriculum and hopefully today too we will see that emerging emergence actually quickening and accelerating so maybe we might just move on to the next slide thanks very much. So today's webinar as I said it's to continue this conversation around the agile curriculum and we want to explore further the features that were identified and associated with the agile curriculum and we you know today we will we will get more insights from our additional projects that are under the HCI banner that and we'll also have this employer perspective as well which I think is very important that we're not just talking to ourselves so I'm going to stop talking now and introduce the the main people, our speakers so we have three projects just to acknowledge the apologies of Dr Marguerite Nayan from UCC who's going to speak to his unsustainable futures but she's had a router IT breakdown which is very unfortunate so so hopefully we'll be able to hear from Marguerite in some context again but we do have our first speaker is Professor Jacqueline McCormick from IT Sligone she's going to talk about the HCI pillar 3 project higher education 4.0 we have Dr Blan O'Dwight from DCU and she'll talk about DCU futures and we have Dr Ken Thomas from Engineering in WIT who's going to talk about the AMAS or AMAC project and I'll let Ken he can explain that to us further so I'd like to call on Jacqueline first who will tell us about the higher education 4.0 project thank you okay hopefully can you hear me okay yeah and can you see my screen all right yeah okay so thank you very much for giving us the opportunity to present on the higher education 4.0 project and so higher education 4.0 is an ambitious and innovative project from the members of the Connacht Ulster Alliance so ourselves in IT Sligone plus GMIT and LYT and then we also have a large number of enterprise partners who are involved in various different aspects of the project so although the three partners within the Connacht Ulster Alliance you know have a significant experience to date in lifelong learning and online learning this project really represents a step change for us in terms of our activities you know allowing us to have higher levels of innovation improving access and quality increasing flexible and agility and agility and hopefully reducing the cost of provision of higher education by introducing a number of new models of learning so our project consists of a set of interlinked online learning innovations which are underpinned then by a series of 21 sub demonstration or innovation sub projects and the aims of it really are about trying to build lean systems necessary to respond rapidly and effectively to training and higher education needs of employers and employees to allow us to cost effectively develop new flexible modes of higher education for both younger and lifelong learners so overall the project contains a number of key innovative actions and this is allowing us to responsibly develop convenient and flexible courses you know to meet the needs of employers and employees through systematically monitoring their requirements coupled along with systems for lean course development processes we also hope to assist adults in the recognition of prior learning or RPL and through developing a career learning and learning pathways through higher education we also plan to improve the quality of the learning experiences of both our own campus learners and our lifelong learners by developing a range of different new models of online and flexible learning enhanced by various aspects of technology and as well as this we hope to achieve for these processes financial sustainability by minimizing our development costs using lean content methodologies and trying to achieve economies of scale so within the project there are two services that we plan to develop the first of these is an externally facing service a learning pathway service and you know it plans to to provide RPL and careers and study advisory services which are focused on accessibility and future proofing learners with relevant industry relevant skills we plan to inform this process by regular engagement with employers we plan to advise these individuals who would be making use of this of this service in terms of learning pathways that will be available to them to help them to try and achieve their career objectives or improve their employability so we'll be guiding them through this process we'll also help them to try and gain credit for both their formal and experiential learning that they've already achieved and through their career path to date and to try and help them in terms of their career development and then assist them in aggregating their learning towards major awards and using the information that we gather through employers to help us to rapidly drive our new program development processes in terms of the second service that we're planning to implement this is an internally facing service a lean content development unit so it's really about trying to have more agile processes for program and content creation and helping us to build a system which will allow us to respond as quickly and as agile way as possible to meet the needs of employees and employers in an agile and efficient and cost effective way and the service then will include both the technology that's required the personnel and then as well as that the implementation of a lean course content creation methodology process and so I don't have time in this like five minute presentation to go through the details of the project so I'll just kind of quickly put it up there are three themes and at the first is the one to do with the learning pathways into and through higher education the aspects to do with RPL and the career pathway service the second theme then is to do with the innovation aspect about helping us to facilitate these opportunities at scale to meet the needs of employers and employees so there is the support service and then we have 21 kind of sub projects that are aligned underneath this one big project where our academic colleagues across the three CUA colleges have put forward a whole suite of different innovative modes of of flexible and online learning and as as sub project within this bigger project and then because there are so many kind of moving parts within it the third theme then is about the enablement of the project in terms of the coordination of the various different sub projects and aspects involved we recognize that in these processes to develop agile curriculum are going to require us to develop policies and processes and regulations within the three institutions so a part of this project will also be dedicated to developing evidence-based recommendations for policy regulation and process changes and then implementing them across the three partner institutions although hopefully within the next short while we'll become one institution so implementing them then across the technological university so obviously it's a very quick presentation haven't got time to go into the details in five minutes but you know this project maps out our vision for the future agility of higher education so that we are able to respond in an agile way to the needs of individuals and two employers and we'll be using the funding then to establish the capacity to allow us to be able to implement this vision and establish it in a sustainable way and if anyone has any questions they can contact me by email okay hopefully I'll just stop sharing now thank you Jim thanks very much Jacky so very interesting presentation there and I was quite taken by the fact that the agile curriculum also depends on agile processes and and and appropriate policies so that that's that'll be a challenge for institutions as we're developing agile curricula to respond in an appropriate manner okay I'd like to call on Blonnett now to to talk about the DCU futures project thank you very much I just share my screen here and hope everybody can see that and so great thank you I'm going to quickly like Jack me and give you a whirlwind tour through DCU futures which is our major HCI program and I put my name up here I'm the Dean of Strategic Learning Innovation in DC but also that of my colleague Kieran Dunn who's the transversal skills director they're both posts that were created explicitly as part of the futures program and so if you've got any questions from today please feel free to contact either of us and one of the things I was anxious to do today um cognizant of building like Jim said from the last one was to consider what did we mean in terms of agility and for us in DCU essentially what we're trying to to achieve is an agile curriculum which creates agile graduates who can thrive in a world that's changing regardless of how it's changing and actually can shape how those changes are going forward and it's great that I follow immediately from Jacqueline because the other consideration for us and I was struck by what Lynn spoke Lynn Ramsey spoke about in the last one too around how you foreground all this and the project that I'll talk about in a couple of seconds is around our hopes and our aims to achieve that but we need an awful lot in place in order to be able to be agile and so when we thought around that this slide here is around the different components the strands that we need to enable our that agility and for us that looks like that we have that ongoing continual conversation with industry around what the skills needs are so that we can be responsive to them but we're they're accurately informed and that we're building a flexibility into our approval processes to allow us to be able to adapt in this way. Critically for us too there's a large piece around increasing our staff capacity to embed particularly things like challenge-based learning and our innovations in our teaching and calling out explicitly that institutionally this curriculum renewal is at the heart of our strategy and so the my post for example it's the first new deanship DCU has created in over 20 years and it speaks very strongly institutionally to just how important it is and curriculum renewal and DCU futures sit within the first pillar of our institutional strategy as well as increasing our staff capacity from an academic perspective but also increasing the support so dedicated learning designers and learning technologists so that we can apply that scholarship and teaching and learning to ensure we've got robust pedagogies around what we're incorporating and building in that systematic flexibility in our program so that there is that things aren't locked in place for the next four years and then the last component for us is around explicitly designing in robust transversal skills development across all our programs regardless of what they are and all those strands for us give us DCU futures and so DCU futures is the reimagination that radical reimagination of our curriculum and we're building it on three components so that looking to the future in terms of what our students will need to learn transforming how they're going to learn and then embedding the transversal skills our students will need to thrive in the future so in terms of new areas of study we considered very strongly as the world is changing what does it look like and we're considering how data and technology infuse our world we're transitioning to zero carbon economy that institutionally as a higher higher education institution we have a responsibility towards helping to support in the most holistic sense a sustainable society going forward and also that our graduates they continue to be employable but with human centric discipline skills and so considering all of those these are the 10 new programs and specialisms that we're developing within futures and all but the BFC and global challenges we have worked flat out since we got the funding so they're all ready for September 2021 intake and you'll see they're all if I take for example chemistry which is my background we look at what we're doing in terms of say COVID vaccine development and leveraging machine learning to enhance drug development and then drug production systems things like that so here we see that like I say that evolution in what our students learn but a wrapped up in that too is also transforming how they learn so those innovations both in pedagogy and in assessment with things like that online learning to teach students how to learn online so that they can become lifelong learners looking at things like virtual labs you heard last week from Denise Rooney around DC or a partner also in that project challenge based learning very strongly with students working on real-world problems and that ongoing deep engagement with industry and the idea is that this all becomes part of the DNA of the programs what we're doing and we do an awful lot of it already in DCU but not at a systematic program level that's infused by design from the very beginning and then the third strand is around the transversal skills pathway whereby recognizing that our graduates will have an increased career mobility and so that value that interdisciplinarity but still having graduates for eminently employable and you can work across multiple domains and so that brings the third component this transversal skills component which we've built on those four pillars ways of thinking ways of working tools for working and tools for thriving so there are students can really in the most holistic sense and really achieve the fullness of who they want to be when they graduate from us and that is my whistle-stop tour through DCU futures which I've hopefully kept to time for thank you very much thank you very much Blanat very very interesting again very taken by your statement around you know the human centric and the learner centric aspect of this you know preparing students to thrive in the non-scripted world and differentiating them from AI and automation those concepts I think are very important as part of the agile curriculum so we can see the you know the dimensions where institutions staff students all and the out the whole world really has to contribute to to development of this agile curriculum so very exciting and it's bringing in so many different dimensions so our final whistle-stop tour is going to come from Dr Ken Thomas from WIT who's going to talk about the Amazon project Ken. Okay thanks thank you Jim and Terry and everybody involved here today delighted to be to be here I was told this would be a lightning talk I decided to go for one slide I thought that might be appropriate and to try and talk around this one slide if that's okay for everybody our topic unlike Jacqueline and Blanat there is very focused on one particular our HCI pillar project is a pillar three project it's very focused on one topic called additive manufacturing which is 3d printing in most people's language but additive manufacturing is the official title and the AMA's project that Jim referred to earlier AMA ASC is additive manufacturing advancing the southeast so it's getting a very much a regional approach and a bit like Jacqueline mentioned earlier on about the the CUA the connoisseur alliance we very much developed this proposal and eventually became successful in partnership with stakeholders in the region it ticked the boxes in terms of ourselves and colleagues in carlo and rtu project and and plans so it brought together a lot of moving plates if you like within the region and very much focused on the strategic development of additive manufacturing skills and knowledge in the region so we want to make the southeast of Ireland at the cutting edge of 3d printing manufacturing and we have a possibility to do so because we've got some very leading edge companies so we developed this particular application and indeed program with with our companies 10 10 leading companies in the region so that co-creation idea and working and I've been agile to work with our with our partners in industry we also work with engineering the southeast cluster and again the academics within the organization even the agileness of using our research informed teaching and our research facilities came into the picture here as well so we had a lot of in-house resources that we're able to call upon and a lot of connections with our external stakeholders in the region that we called upon and brought that together under this project and even though we're we're we're trying to push the whole region we we it's the HCI pillar project our pillar three project is focused on a new degree in additive manufacturing at level seven but it's got four embedded awards as well so we've got across the micro credential idea so not necessarily what you want to do it do the full program I just don't want to do part of the program so there's an agile aspect to that as well it's also going to be a mix of online work integrated work based and campus based so there's a lot of agility involved in all of that delivery aspect of our program and again it's going to be targeted at full-time working people so you're going to try and figure out how do you how you agile enough to cope with people who are working full-time but want to get this qualification or micro credentials in this area and you work around their schedules and you work around their current work the target audience will be people who are actually using additive manufacturing at the moment so you may not sure of the how how up to speed people are here in the audience but additive manufacturing is effectively used in the medical tech devices so creating pacemakers and different medical devices hip replacement joints traditionally would have taken a piece of metal and carved it down or cut it back to suit a particular situation this is the opposite you start with powder and you grow the object so it's a very disruptive innovative technology and it's going to it is transforming industry around the world some sectors are ahead of others but the medical devices area are pretty strong but there are other areas also that are are catching up and see the benefits of this so there's a lot not only of investment in machinery and equipment and technologies and all ships and forms there's also a need to upskill people so people have got to be brought on board as to how you change from the older industries to this new way of manufacturing so again this this this HCI pillar three project is focused on the upskilling of people and their knowledge in this area and an ability to to work in this new new future situation so a lot of the companies we're working with are heavily involved already in the technologies some are thinking about it and they're so we're going to have a mix of people in the audience are in the in the participating in the programs and in the courses that will have some prior knowledge but some will have little or no knowledge so we're going to have to deal with that and that's another agile aspect of of the program as well so just to repeat it's a 60 credit the main program is 60 credits breaks down into four 10 credit modules micro credentials and then a 10 20 credit project at the end and the project is very much based on the workplace so it will be each individual project will be aligned to the individual student and indeed their workplace so that is quite agile as well in terms of that ability to achieve the overall learning outcomes or the the targets for the for the individual modules and program but to do so in a certain way that suits that individual participant so there there's just some ideas on agility and relation to today's topic but it's very exciting it's been a bit of a hectic time in the last 12 months for everybody I suspect on this call on ourselves we were slightly behind schedule in terms of getting the project up and running but I'm glad to say now that we're very close to being ready to go for September and the plan is to have we already have over 20 people who've expressed an interest in doing the program we were kind of hoping we might get to 30 but we'll see where we go in September but the the target is to get to 32 people by September and as I said we think we're on course for that but the agility aspects are very much along the lines of co-creation and delivery and utilizing the research informed the research capability within the organization to the teaching and their facilities as well so there's just some some of the aspects for today's presentation okay thank you thanks very much Ken again two very very important concepts in terms of agility that the co-creating the curriculum as you've said out on the others of manufacturing program and also flexible delivery again that that notion that we can't expect in the future curricula to have all our students free to come into full-time programs running over multiple years that we have to develop the curriculum in a way that that that that suits the the lifestyles and needs of potential learners okay so that was our our tree whistle top speakers on whistle stop speakers on on the HCI projects we're now going to get a perspective from enterprise another hugely important perspective the employer's perspective in all of this idea of the agile curriculum so we our speaker today is Adam Westerley sorry Adam Wetterley who's the head of learning and development from the Irish SME association is me hi Adam you're welcome hi hi Jim yeah well done on the surname tricky one I have trouble with the Irish names so you're more than welcome to have trouble with mine thanks for having me along it's great to be here and it's so well attended as well which is really good to see it's been a big learning curve for all business representative bodies over the last 16 months as it has been for everyone in in varying different ways depending where you are what sector but what was I some some of you I know I've said this before so forgive me for repeating myself but 2019 for us was horrible we were in a bull economy very busy and long story short we finished the year I finished in the learning and development team we have very high metrics to achieve you know businesses to engage people to engage number of training days to to achieve and we were at 35 percent of target and I was despondent and then good old COVID came along and our fortunes changed considerably so when people when we went into the first lockdown people came to they engaged with us for upskilling in their droves and it was just it was absolutely I was delighted to see that and that told me one thing it told me that it's not the SMEs won't upskill it's it's because they can't and this discussion today is is is a vital part of you know the why they couldn't engage and it's because I think we lacked that agility we lacked that ease of engagement for them to take that continuous journey of learning and I if COVID has got silver linings it is it's it's created an appetite for upskilling I'll run through a list of a short list of our most popular topics that people engage with us over the last 12 months and it's quite simply business tools were the most popular so those were things like you know going from excel beginner to intermediate and intermediate to advanced and then the one you know the other one the excel which was very very popular is is how to do pivot tables and bar charts and how to crunch the numbers and all that sort of thing the analysis side of things that that was by far the most popular I had a natural aversion from doing excel for beginners and throwing good money after that sort of training but I misread the appetite for it and the reason being is that you can get a perfectly good youtube video now for free that will get you off the ground in excel so I was reluctant to throw sort of some of the so I'm losing my headphones that some of that you know we we receive money from skill net island we run a skill net and putting sort of taxpayers money after those sort of training programs I was reluctant to do so but to be honest with you the appetite is so voracious that we'll we now do that the other the other really important programs that we ran was HR everything HR we ran one yesterday it's an eight part mini series that we're doing for non HR people and we have 16 people on there 12 of which none of them have got an HR credential but they wear the HR cap when they go to work so our job is to help a non HR person make sure that they've got a proper properly function functioning HR service to their employees but also we provide them with tools and templates that they can populate with their own content and that was the second most popular program the other initiative that we're running is something we launched last year this time last year which is back to business and that encapsulates an awful lot of things but from my perspective from a learning perspective it's about remodeling your business it's about providing coaching and mentoring to business owners and their staff to ensure that they get back to business when we're finally sort of unleashed upon the world again that we can that they're in the best possible shape to hit the ground running at a good pace and we've got a number of initiatives that encapsulate the back to business strategy I'm also involved in a number of steering groups and advisory groups one in particular being headed up by Lynn Ramsey on the micro credentials and I see that as a very important vehicle to continue this agile discussion and there's an advisory group that Lynn's a part of and as am I and I think that's a very exciting project for Irish businesses and and you know people coming out of university who want to increase their skill levels in a quick and efficient way I think another part of it is also the affordability and that was mentioned earlier in one of the speakers presentations you know if there's money in the bank right now they want to leave it in the bank right now unless they see value in taking that money out and investing in their skills that's going to help them make money to be brutally honest if it's not going to be beneficial to the bottom line they will not engage so I hope that sort of gives you I don't want to take up too much time but I hope that gives you an overview of what the appetite has been over the last 16 months but also the accelerated the accelerated reason to to provide these agile events and learning sessions etc and I think that should continue my fear is that we'll that Irish SMEs will revert to type and we'll go back to 2019 but I'm seeing that there is a curve an upwards curve of engagement and we've just got to keep that crest of the wave going and that's the that's the challenge over the next 12 months so thank you very much everyone I hope I've covered my my journey and an Irish SMEs journey over the last 16 months but I'd be happy to answer any questions that you might have thank you thank you Jim thank you very much Adam I think make a number of very important points there the fact that you know the myth around SMEs not willing to upskill but really it's a case of not being enabled to and I think it's very interesting the way that we have the coincidence now of so many different things coming together the the COVID crisis showing that SMEs if the ease of engagement is possible that they will do it and approve an appetite and and the initiatives that did start pre COVID around the agile curriculum maybe again being accelerated in this in this context so it's very very helpful input into today's discussion and no doubt we will take up some of those points later in our handle discussion so thank you so my my brief is to keep things moving so I'd like to move on now to our next part of the of the program Terry's going to take this it's going to take up some of those points around the the questions that have been posed both the previous webinar and in prompted in the registration as well so Terry okay so um well today already we've heard sort of different perspectives on an agile curriculum and we heard other perspectives in our first webinar and we did ask everybody who registered to if they would mind answering some questions about what what what in their head what how do they define an agile curriculum and the second thing we asked them was their two features two word two features that they would associate with it so what we've done is we put together a little video about how you was participants the different views of an agile curriculum and that you shared so I'm just going to share my screen and we'll just have a quick look at the video thank you million and you can see that a lot of the definitions that that you submitted or you were thinking about have captured the flexibility the responsiveness the co-creation and that that we've talked about so clear if you just wouldn't mind sharing it and and actually these are the same themes that we that came up at the at the end of our if you remember in our first webinar we had a google document that asked you that asked us to look at the different features of of of the agile curriculum and all of these kind of things came up so you see iterative dynamic evolving responsive talking about pivoting quickly focused on transversal skills innovative and then comfortably thinking the roles here at the duration and front loaded programs and I think that's capturing some of the talk about the micro credentials that they were coming through but when we asked the participants for this webinar to to give us their their feedback some of the stuff that came back was very interesting so I just give you a moment then to to have a look at some of those there and they also some of them we classified sort of as kind of characteristics or principles so these are the kinds of things that are coming through but I think what's very clear is that there is that that's kind of consensus about what it can do and Jacqueline I'll be very interested to talk about afterwards about you were talking about the process of putting it together and one of the questions I suppose that that I've asked there in the in the chat is how can we how can what's been learned within each of these individual HCI projects how can we as a sector share what's coming out so that we're all learning from the experience and informing each other so that's one question Jim as I hand over to you in the panel that I'd like you to tackle for us as well thank you Terry we'll certainly do that so uh we'd like to invite panelists back um obviously you don't have to come up onto a stage now but uh from your living rooms or our offices um I think I'll start off by putting Terry's question to to to all of you um how can we share the learning that on the agile curriculum that's coming from these HCI projects and indeed also the learning that we're getting from industry and enterprise and particularly to Adam the learning that he's had how that we can disseminate that more widely within the higher education context okay so I might uh pin it on Jacqueline first as you started earlier okay thanks Jim I mean I certainly think it's an important aspect Terry and the likes of this type of thing is a first start on that process in terms of people knowing what each other's projects are about and I suppose it is about us being willing to disseminate information and share information and as I said in my presentation we recognize that part of the ability to be able to have this agile curriculum is having in place um processes and processes processes and policies that allow us to do that and that is one of the challenges so it's important for us to build the evidence base um of you know what works and what doesn't work uh and to be able to share the practice so I think the National Forum has an important role in that in terms of being able to share practice plus um certainly in our project and I'm quite sure it's the same in the other projects built into it is in one of our work packages is about dissemination um you know across our own three institutions in the first instance but then wider beyond that because it is important to share practice thank you Jacqueline um Blondard uh do you have any pearls of wisdom to us or for us on this one no yeah I'm I was going to say everything Jacqueline said um absolutely um what were the things I was thinking and like that too it is important for us and one of our key outcomes that we would share and so one of the things that we have built in is that evaluation that ongoing evaluation and that reflection and then examining ways that we can disseminate that both because internally it is important for us to raise that the profile and to establish that the importance of doing this in a robust evidence-based kind of silent pedagogy and and if it meets all of those things then not just um for like this which I completely agree Jacqueline are incredibly important but also in terms of actually publishing um and sharing disseminating almost internationally the extent to which within Ireland we are developing and embedding systematically the different aspects that we're doing across these projects thanks Blondard uh before I come to Adam I might just ask Ken for his his view on this question of dissemination of the learning that we're all developing on on the agile curriculum thanks Jim a bit like Blondard and Jacqueline we're there's an openness saying generally we're kind of excited about the project we expect to learn an awful lot of lessons we certainly have those internally but I have I think that the project team will be quite happy to share those on a wider basis I was a lot of our work has been in partnership with industry and some of those companies are competing with each other and you always have that tension within the groups that well who's willing to share information and publish and so on but I think this is a general spirit of openness to learn lessons and to to to share on things like co-delivery and co-creation and I think there is a willingness and again like Blondard said that we will publish we will try and share in some appropriate forum be it national or international some of the lessons we have from the project thank you thanks Ken Adam I'm just wondering I mean this I suppose you know in an academic environment there is that tradition of networking and sharing of learning in terms of breaking down the barriers the walls between academia and industry and enterprise is there is there anything that comes to mind to you about how you know a group a body like ISME and employers and represented bodies generally how they can actually share their learning you know with academia yeah I I have a very good example actually a very very recent and relevant one where we we work closely with Solace and a couple of years ago when their skills to advance program they were trying to launch that and get it out there and what we did is they partnered with us and in the giddy days where we could actually travel around the country and do what we called our business roadshow um is that we the local representatives from the ETBs came in and gave a talk on skills to advance and we supported that and just on Ken's point there about sort of you know internal competition and people attending being in the same in the same boat there is a level of openness there and the skills to advance training initiative very much competed with my own training but I don't think that matters I think I think it depends on what suits the individual and the company and the sector that's important over and above the fact that you are sort of vying for a similar similar piece of business in a similar space that's really important but you learn more from your competitors in a collaborative environment and a work group than you will from someone who's in a completely different sector all together so um I think my I would encourage to engage with me I would encourage to engage with chambers the small firms association ibec of which SFA are part of of course because they have we have big business networks that we can promote these types of agile programs etc um out to the marketplace thank you very much Adam so the the offer is there everyone um I have an interesting question that's come from the uh the the the the the floor um and yeah it's a really interesting one and a tough one to answer but i'm going to to give it to the panel anyway because i'm tough guy do the speakers have a view on the length of the agility life cycle and and what's meant by this is you know how long before today's agile responses in turn have to be replaced by a newer agile response um in other words can we keep up with agility in in in effect so Jacqueline again yeah I mean it's certainly it's a very good question and um you know what that's what that shows the importance of this type of funding and these types of projects is in order to enable us to be able to be innovative and keep up to date because things change all of the time and so rapidly especially in the area of digital technology and systems and so on so we've got um national you know as a country and as a sector to make sure that we stay on top of this you know in order to be able to meet the needs of of our students and our and the employers that we're seeking to serve so we we have just got to have that kind of mindset and ethos within our organizations and you know we're certainly very grateful um within the cua to have received this funding in order to allow us to be able to um extend our capacity to be agile and innovative but it's got to be within the mindset of the organization and the organizations and just as you know a general approach um in order to make sure that we're providing to meet the needs of our students and also that we're able to compete um you know internationally um within this particular sector so it's it's very important but it just has to be a constant mindset of always looking out for new innovations now not just to jump on the bandwagon of something just because it's trendier whatever you know it has to be done in a in a in a sensible way but it's it's certainly important to have that um within the ethos of the organization and to um you know resource it in order to be able to happen yeah thank you Jacqueline um imposing this question to Blondard I'm just going to maybe add a little bit to it I mean and it goes back to something that um Adam was talking about earlier I mean have we with the COVID experience you know are we jumping through a more substantial agility phase now or and is this the big crossing of the rubicon or not as the case may be but if it is then is it going to be more you know smaller more ongoing incremental change thereafter I mean these are big questions but I'm I'm going to ask it um well I I think that absolutely and and my colleague here on Dawn we've had multiple conversations around this that change was afoot and then and we would feel strongly that that COVID has accelerated that so it's not been the the initiator of it but certainly it's accelerated the rate of change that we're experiencing at the moment now absolutely and we do need to and I know a colleague mentioned before we need to make sure we don't go back to 2019 in every way and that we do take the learnings from the last year and a half good and bad and build and continue to to develop on those so I do think in many ways I hope we have crossed the rubicon that we don't just now that everything it looks like there's an end in sight that we don't discount the last two years and all the changes we've gotten from the COVID induced restrictions um that that we build and learn from them because certainly in DCU and I'm sure every institution is the same some things have worked better than we'd have expected and there are positives that have come from some of the the approaches that we have taken to where we have had to change how we would have done things prior to it um and I think to in terms of agility one of the things that we've got to do and then Jacqueline mentioned this in terms of talking around that mindset change I think the mindset change that's been catalyzed certainly in DCU and I think in other institutions too is around an openness to to consider things that you wouldn't have previously considered and so I think capturing and developing and and ensuring we don't lose that mindset whilst coupling it with an evaluation of and that reflection of what has worked and what hasn't worked um with the the third piece as Jacqueline again said the resourcing to be able to act on those reflections um can mean that while the life cycle to the question I don't know and it's one of the things that we will learn through things like HCI um certainly the concept of us having to evaluate and build and develop on that is something that hopefully COVID has accelerated to an extent that allows us to do really exciting things in the next few years. Thanks Blanet, Ken I was wondering do you have a perspective on this you know the agility life cycle the big bang and yeah well I think we're all still grappling with the lessons from COVID and I think it'll take a while for them to be absorbed across the sector but as Blanet said there's there has to be positive developments and we should hang on to the those developments as we go forward but in terms of life cycle the HCI pillar three is 2020 to 2024 so that's a life cycle in a sense within that then we've got annual reviews so there's many life cycles and we go back and change things but who knows the future not to be a sudden this call knows what's going to happen I think we've got to be more agile in the future to deal with whatever comes at us if we don't have students at the end of the life cycle for a particular program but I think there's lots of students out there from 17 to 70 who need lifelong learning skills and knowledge and lots of different technologies and and again their work life balance has changed hugely in the last year and I'm very conscious of that community out there they're out there they've reflected on where they are in their own lives and where they want to go in the future and I'm not so sure they've figured all that out either so in terms of dealing with that lifelong learning community Jim I think it's going to be a while before we absorb all the lessons but I think agility is just going to be part of the norm first in the future to be honest and that's just that's just the reality thank you many thanks Ken Adam you in some ways stimulate this question earlier do you have anything further to say on it you know about yes okay thank you it's all yours well firstly I think Ireland should be very pleased with itself in the way it responded to the crisis and it proved that we had extremely robust frameworks and models in place already the other thing is just just imagine that you know something that Ken just mentioned the HCI is 2020 to 2024 we'll just imagine if it was 2022 to 2026 we wouldn't have had the HCI in place on the outset of COVID you know and thank goodness it was in place and it was already sort of embedded into our into our models our frameworks but I think it proved that Ireland has got these robust models in place to be able to respond quickly so I think that's a big tick in the box you know we have Skillnet Ireland is to me I work with colleagues around Europe who have the same role that I do and they are very envious of the Skillnet model the way that funds are distributed amongst these training networks whether they're sectoral networks or whether they're regional or national as my remit is which is another challenge I have but anyway that's another story for another day but I think you know we also have a very well stocked national training fund which as I mentioned I'm on the national training fund advisory group but I mentioned in the meeting on Monday that it was strategically plundered to address these problems that we have so we're very fortunate to have that levy on business to build such a robust national training fund that is I hate the word surplus but it is in surplus so you know we have that cushion but I think strategically Ireland sort of in the lead up to the HCI in 2018 and 2019 that was very much well ahead of the game across I would say against that EU neighbors so I think I think we could be very proud of what we got but you're right as as we move into into 2022 you know it's a little bit of a crystal ball what's going to happen we don't really know but we if we carry on doing this sort of work I still I think we'll be in very good a very good state of health thanks very much Adam I think that's it's it's 1329 now so I think that may be a good optimistic note to end the panel discussion we obviously with webinars we have to keep the time slots fairly tight but here's to strategic plundering anyway so I got to pass over to Claire in the forum now who's just gone to lead us out of the webinar with some points thank you Jim and thank you everyone has said a lot of food for thought in the discussion there and I suppose we began with a key question for both webinars and at the start of this series which was whether people think it is important to have a national understanding of agile curriculum to support the current developments particularly under the HCI projects and around the likes of Michael credentials which we've discussed today and you know that question again was something we put to people in the registration process for today and out of the 32 answers received there is an overwhelming majority saying yes and I think that you wouldn't be surprised to hear that having heard the very rich discussion and the contributions of all our speakers today and in the first webinar but with some nice comments here and again illuminating this a little bit further it needs to be supported nationally to interpret and implement agility properly there was some really interesting questions in the chat there just now about what agility means and in response to what how we work together towards the common goals and share the best practice and innovation Terry has raised the issue in the chat of whether we need a network for this it could be something we pursue further engagement at European and national level including all of our stakeholders a methodological approach to ensure that the key aspects are met and a national understanding as long as that's not going to drain energy or local level agility around this issue so there's so much for us to to work with there and in terms of our next steps within the forum the conversation first of all would be taken forward through the development of a new national forum inside publication which will follow later in 2021 but we do want to continue this and conversation is the word used intentionally here if you'd like to be involved in that continuing conversation please get in touch and my email address is there as the point of contact in the first instance for this and something we'll pick up and develop on further going into the next academic year just then to mention the final seminar in this particular series which is after the summer break on the 6th of October transforming teaching and learning for student success so we highlight that and ask you to save the date for that one and now i'm going to hand to Terry just for a word of thanks in terms of today thank you very much Claire Jim many thanks for for chairing for this the second of the webinars we really do appreciate it to Jacqueline to Blondard to Ken and to Adam thank you very much for speaking to all of you as participants I know it's the end of June and I know everybody is tired so I really appreciate the time that you've taken to join us today the conversation isn't finished the forum will be um continuing our work around the agile curriculum and I would encourage anybody who'd like to be involved in those conversations with a to to contact Claire thank you very much again everybody bye bye just now bye everyone thank you