 I'm conscious that you've all been tweeting and asking questions and discussing and reacting even inside your own heads to so much of this very rich set of insights that have been presented to us today. One of the things that really struck me was the importance of the student role and student partnership and student leadership in a whole range of ways and the National Forum is really committed to this. I think it's important to recognize that this was a very singular exercise in looking at where leadership within the institutions are right now and everybody has reminded us, everybody on the panel has reminded us that this is in the wider context of a whole network of projects and work that's going on. So the student voice is being gathered and absorbed through a whole range of different media, not just within your own institutions but also there's a real commitment to that at National Forum level. And I think that in the round all of those pieces are going to be enormously important. So we're shining a spotlight today on a particular set of perspectives and I'm really grateful to our panel for really pushing our thinking, not just the thinking of everybody in the room but particularly the thinking of the National Forum, the language that we're using, the lenses through which we've seen issues, the way in which problems are presented and Fiona and Mark and many of you on the panel have reminded us how important language is. So much of what we achieve through the National Forum is through language, is through conversation both formal and informal. And while we have to be careful about the language that we choose for official documentation, I think we also have to be effusive and transparent and authentic in the way we engage with one another or we're not going to get to those real heartfelt issues that Larry talked about and that Jim said, you know, it's not just the stuff that we put in the reports, it's our instincts. We are committed to a very strong evidence base and that's got to be a very important driver but on the other hand everybody tells us that teaching and learning is highly contextualised, highly intuitive, highly responsive within very specific environments and if we leave that all behind then we're missing something extremely valuable and important and we're losing the essence, the heart and soul that Larry so articulately referred to. I'm going to take a little bit of time, I know we've gone over time a little bit but I do want to give a chance to give voice to some of the questions and issues coming out from the audience and perhaps. And I hate to put Fiona Riley on the spot but because he's at the back of the room listening and attending and participating and has been a huge ally to the National Forum's work too. But there was a question that did come through about how some aspects of the report may suggest that for example VLEs used in particular ways may not be mission critical at undergraduate level to students and it would be really useful perhaps to hear from Sean about what Izzy might be suggesting in that regard. I don't know if you want to talk off the cuff or perhaps feed into this discussion when we...that would be great Sean, thank you. Thank you sir, I'm certainly listening more intently in the last ten seconds or so. That's the point. I suppose relatively from the point of view of the Irish Service Student Engagement it's important to actually recognise that when field work finishes at the end of this month we will actually have three years of national data based on what students are actually telling us. So amongst all of the many other elements around the structure and context and policy and the overall planning of the national survey it's a survey. We ask students questions and they respond and in 2014 almost 20,000 students responded and so far in 2015 it looks although we're not at the end of field work yet that we will be looking at an increase. There are a lot of questions in the survey and there's another whole discussion around that but there are two particular questions which may well contribute to the discussions today. One is a question asking students how much their experience at their institution has contributed to them developing knowledge skills and personal development in terms of using ICT. Now in 2014 65.5% of students who responded responded positively to that question. There was a second question asking students how much they have used an online learning system to discuss or to complete an assignment. So in many ways that question may well offer more valuable insights into what's actually happening but again 65.3% of students who responded to the survey in 2014 said often or very often in terms of responding to that particular question. So it strikes me that perhaps at the heart of many of the contributors today was the point that there's perhaps quite a bit happening on the ground but how we make that visible at a whole variety of levels within the institution may well be an issue to ponder in the future. Much more structured response than I would have expected having literally sprung that on you but Sean thank you, thank you for that. I think it's really interesting to hear some of what Fiona tells us about the assumptions around initiation response and feedback that might still prevail among certain students and how we really get a reality check about what those assumptions might be in terms of how people report their experiences of learning. Just moving very quickly then to some of the questions arising particularly from Larry's piece. I think there's been a huge interest as evidenced by the kind of the Twitter feed and about the questions coming in. One of the key ones and I won't go through them all and we'll tabulate everything anyway but can QA cover encouragement of HR processes to ensure teaching is valued equally with research. That parity of esteem issue that's always been there that we often lament that people recognise as a real challenge. How can QA be aligned in a way that addresses the parity of esteem issue? I don't know Larry if you want to say anything to that straight away. Again I'm going to say that's not the role of QA. The greatest culprit in that is ourselves. We do not, our identity particularly with academics still lies with our discipline. We tag on the role of educator as an afterthought. I think it's been articulated here extremely well that we now need to recognise that the profession we're in as a professional educator first or discipline comes second. It should serve the needs of our role as professional educators. So the reason it's not recognised I would argue is we've contributed to that because we want recognition in our discipline. That's why and it's interesting I noticed in the QA where there's a bit of an argy bargy who's accreditation is more important. Your professional body's accreditation are the QA authorities and what they're aspiring to do is ensure that they minimise the effort we've to go through in order to accredit the programs. At the minute some of us go through two or three variations of accreditation all for the same program. So to answer the question I think the solution that's in our hands, we need to be bold, we need to shape the vision for professional educators and I think what I see and all the evidence I get and I'm very privileged at the moment working within the TU for Dublin support team. All of it there cries out for the professionalisation of our role as educators first and foremost. The rest of it is secondary. But that's my opinion by the way. I'm just going to quickly run through again just picking up on a few key questions. Coming to Mark's insights on developing a shared vision and goals for digital learning and again really pushing us to think carefully about not just the metaphors that we're using but the kinds of actions that might arise from a vision that's already been declared. Through for example the national strategy. This is kind of an impossible but rather seductive question that came in through Twitter. What is the one action leaders could take to release academic staff to be more flexible? It feels like a holy grail question but it feels invested in passion as well. I don't know if Mark you want to respond to that in a way that or maybe reflect on it. I don't think I have a magic bullet in my pocket but for me probably space is as much a metaphor so it's not about physical space, it's about cognitive space, mental space. So providing the space to be innovative and that links back into not the individual but the culture, the some cultures within your institution. Thank you Mark that's I think another important insight. Fiona who talked about the unit of change and who brought I think a really interesting perspective on the disciplinary commitment and orientation to teaching and learning innovation. I guess one of the really challenging things that came through and I'll just focus on one question is why is it possible for department or faculty level innovations to break out of their silos? Is this discussion about signature pedagogies that suit particular disciplines perhaps some way of segregating what could actually be united at a more collaborative level? Is there something about an anomaly to do with that paradox that you might want to talk to a little bit Fiona in the light of what you told us? Yeah absolutely I think there's a huge amount of space to break out of our disciplines and I think we do that in all sorts of ways within our institutions, outside of our institutions around teaching and learning projects. Within communities of practice we have wonderful communities of practice within our own institution which are bottom up communities where you have a range of people from across the disciplines working in a really organic way to share practice and to learn from what happens within the other disciplines but the key is always I think how you then apply that within your own discipline. So I'm not suggesting for one minute that we can't learn from other disciplines or that we should silo ourselves in ways which create boundaries and barriers, not at all in fact the opposite. I think we've got a huge amount to learn and we do but the key is in applying that within our own disciplinary and teaching and learning context. And because practice is disciplinary based we can't ignore that. Thank you Fiona. John I'm going to ask, I know you'll find this a very useful question in the light of your own convictions and ideology. A question has come in that says should we not separate teaching and research? Are they not relying on different business models? Should I be contained now or will I be taken in the way of the codes? All I ask anybody is who inspired the most as anybody in this room. It's often somebody who is practicing as a good teacher as a researcher. For me I can only speak for me and I think one without the other it just doesn't exist for me and I don't know if that's... I think the danger we run is that we start to polarise difference where actually together we can have so much and hence the approach that I'm trying to take in UCC is have an academic practice where we recognise that some people have a slyer heavier weighting of research and some have a slightly heavier weighting of teaching but everybody is doing some research, everybody is doing some teaching so what does that mean in practical terms is that we would not employ people purely for research, we would not employ people purely for teaching because we don't believe that's represents the details of what we're about. So that's in a nutshell I think it's about values I guess and about value in education. I think that's a real common theme as well, declaring our ideology, stating our values, owning what's important to us as a sector and within our own institutions. Thank you John. Vincent a global question for you again based on some of the really interesting insights both pragmatic and ideological that you brought to the debate. How can the disconnect between the teaching and learning on full time on campus programmes and that of online programmes be overcome? Yeah, if they have an answer. I think this is a huge issue and it was I suppose I felt when I came to Eidish Lagann and known its reputation online that there would be more penetration so why has that not happened is a key question and I think it's an evolving one but the structure in the IOTs is around provision of x amount of hours and we've got a free up hours in that sector in order to allow people to do that. So even those that are committed and want to and have taken on the CPD aspects of it are finding it difficult to get the time to make that translation. I don't think there's any major stumbling blocks that but I do think it is a time issue. So from the strategic leadership point of view it's how do you value this? How do you get it across that? We value the time that it takes to make this transition. We value the outputs of that. How do we incentivise it? Because at the moment the only level of incentivisation really is to take some time out but that time out in the IOT sector is traditionally to go to research and not to course development or something. So for me as a strategic leader in a wider sector thing is how do you allow time for people to realise what they want to do? Because people know that there are advantages to it. They know that they would add value to their own face to face activities. They want to flip that classroom thing into I just don't want to be given this information. I want this student to have somewhere or others try to submit the information and now we're having a different conversation because it's more rewarding for me as a lecturer, as an academic to be involved in that discourse than it is to simply standing there giving information that is freely available on the internet. If I want to give a lecture in electrochemistry, well the Harvard people have it up there. So that's so much a waste of time but it's not maximising the return from that face to face activity if the information already could be similar to the elsewhere. So I think though there is an issue of time freeing up but it's also from a strategic point of view valuing and incentivising the outcomes of that, recognising that as a worthy out pursuit for an academic. Again another really common theme. I think we're really seeing a lot of complementarity to the views that came up. I know we've picked Jim's brain enough as well but I do think there's a really interesting question that arises from his encouragement to focus on these international, not just trends but real potential of things like analytics. And a question has come in that says, how can the gap between the use and awareness of the potential of learning analytics be addressed, Jim? Any just quick insights on that? I know you've already talked about some of the international models and disks work but is there something that we could be doing in an actionable way to start pushing that? Well I mean I'd strongly suggest that the forum would actually maybe organise an event around that. What will certainly put the frighteners on people at the senior level and institutions is that they are very, very attuned to anything to do with data protection, FOI, equality, various other bits of legislation that do tend to and rightly so. Put the wrap around in terms of the data that we are already collecting and holding. But you know this has the potential to just go in all directions you know particularly if you, you know if you, but in another way I mean what educational technologists interested in learning analytics I mean will do. I mean if it's in the context of their teaching practice it's not necessarily different to a piece of educational research for which there would be normal good ethical guidelines already in existence with that. So I think it's a question of actually casting it into that, into that frame. I mean we have the mechanisms to deal with this but it's coming at us very fast and there will be lots of sort of snake oil merchants out there selling apps and this and that and the other that will gather this and analyse that and all of a sudden you know an institution's reputation will be exposed because somebody for very benign reasons starts to collect or do something. Precisely because it's this interplay between things that are highly legal and highly reputational with things that are potentially quite exciting and very beneficial in the most benign way that they are used. It really is as I said at the moment it's like everybody's business and nobody's business and I think we need to just have an event that concentrates the mind and I think that would be the most tangible advice. Great. Thank you so much and I'm very conscious that this has been a rather didactic session talking about all sorts of important innovations that move beyond that but I think it's been really important to have a kind of a reflective attentive audience listening to these different leadership perspectives because they have really added value in a very substantial way to the debate that we're embroiled in right at the moment. I hesitate to try to summarise the wide range of views and issues and insights that you've all shared via social media that our panel members have declared here but I'm going to try because I do want to wrap this up before I hope you'll all be able to join us for refreshments and a bit more informal chat. To Jim Devine for bringing an overview of the leadership and strategic perspectives through the work that it took to produce the report and for being quite I think consciously provocative around the critical light that we need to shine on some of the sectors dynamics while at the same time recognising and endorsing the huge appetite and commitment and orientation to innovation that is out there in all of our institutions. To Larry for inspiring us to see the curriculum. I've never quite seen the curriculum this way but as the kind of connective tissue between the skeleton of our quality frameworks and the heart and soul and flesh and blood of teaching practice on the ground. I think that's a really beautiful and useful metaphor and to see again our curriculum as the opportunity to declare our ideologies and our philosophy and our ambitions for our students. Not the frameworks that support the curriculum which are part of that but the curriculum itself at the heart. That notion of curriculum innovation that does all those things I think is enormously powerful on this broader stage of teaching and learning enhancement and our more specific discussion today on digital capacity and the leadership perspectives that guide it. I'm also hugely grateful to Mark for pushing us to think beyond our language, beyond the digital part of enhancement and ensuring that we recognise the wider context of a morally purpose of vision for education for reminding us of what I think is used in more international settings than necessarily in Ireland that concept of learning futures. But also linking that to concrete suggestions about iterative guidelines that really are pragmatic steps for equipping people, for giving people the tools and the activities that can guide them on the specific part of this broader stage. To Fiona for I think bringing some really intelligent linguistic analysis to some of the work I might be trying to enlist her to do a bit more of that to help us look at what kind of common concepts and terminologies are becoming associated with the discourse of our consultation. Because that's terribly telling. I found it enormously interesting to hear her tabulate that language and perhaps then to challenge how that language is guiding the sector and everybody within it. I think it was really useful to hear the different levels of institutional perspective brought to bear on the discussion and a focus on the skill of the teacher and the concerns of the disciplines. And how I think eloquently Fiona helped us to see that those different levels do lead to a more scholarly understanding, which I think also is at the heart of that, of what we all do. John, for reminding it, the students must take strong leadership and play a collaborative role in building digital capacity and they're absolutely key partners and I think that's taken as a given. And I would hate for the impression to be given that that's not the case but we're shining in particular like today obviously on strategic leadership. I will take home with me diversity bestows stability. I love that that comes from John's own disciplinary background and I think also that we need to hear that message very strongly. I think that when we are talking about, you know, don't forget we stand on territory where we're all, we've all been subjected to unprecedented economic rectitude. And that drives a kind, that does create a sort of an imperative for sameness and for a kind of vanilla icing the way we do business for because of the kind of concerns to do with economies of scale. I think we need to be very careful about that and I think that John's message is, has been received loud and clear in terms of reminding us of that. But bringing research and teaching together also a key message from John. Vincent, who modestly talks about standing on the shoulders of giants and I think also that again that really reflects his commitment to learning from expertise on the ground and within particular, within his own leadership position. But also recognising the pragmatic drivers for change, that this is not just a kind of, you know, change for the sake of it. There are real pragmatic reasons why we have to grapple with the possibilities that digital technology bring to teaching and learning simply because of the changing nature of demand and participation. Not only because of that, but certainly that's a major driver and I think that Vincent did very well to remind us of that. And I again, one of my take-homes, it's not just about flexible learning, but it's also about flexible institutions and there are particular challenges in that regard. And, you know, I think it's been really useful to reflect on all of that. Coming back to Jim, who has raised our collective sites on some of the international issues that are of importance to us all, particularly I think the really interesting area of learning analytics. Again, I think that ties together an awful lot of the more kind of vague notions out there that we could be doing more with technology. There's a perfectly concrete example of work that's ready to be at least interrogated by us in the sector in a way that could be of value to everybody. So, I think that this has been, as I say, a really rich discussion. I very quickly thank the forum team under Terry McGuire's extraordinary energetic leadership for coordinating this event. We promise to squeeze every drop of wisdom out of the day in order to try to help to align these insights with what's coming out in the digital roadmap. And for a risk of a little bit of flowery rhetoric that I know Mark has cautioned against, I think it is a cliché to say perhaps that we're standing on unknown territory, but I think it's also true. And that maybe, Mark is right, we need to start, all we need to start with is a compass and a sense of adventure and a spirit.