 So I suggest we start. So welcome today to the event session, Supporting Educators and Education in COVID-19 Crisis, Eden Perspective. This session is part of the ICD President's Forum 2020 as a satellite engagement event. And we are very happy that we could contribute to ICD President Forum. My name is Sandra Kucina and I'm Eden President. And in today's session, we will share our know-how about how an organization and associations such as Eden can support educators and education in time of pandemic when we have faced this crisis. The speakers today are Timothy Reed, Eden Vice President for Open Professional Collaboration from UNED Spain. Diana Andone, Eden Vice President for Communication and Communities of Practices from Polytechnica University of Timoshera, Romania. Elisa Mari Blashke, Chair of the Board of the Eden Fellows Council. And she's working at the Center of Live Long Learning at Oldenburg, Germany. And Antonio Teixeira, former Eden President from Universitate Aberta, Portugal. And before we start with our session, I kindly ask the Secretariat to share the video message from the ICDE. Dear ICDE partners and colleagues, my name is Turin Jelsvik and I'm the Secretary General of International Council for Open and Distance Education, ICDE. It is my pleasure to greet you through this video on the occasion of today's satellite engagement event for the ICDE President's Forum 2020. The ICDE President's Forum will take place virtually on the 25th of November and will address the topic on how we can recalibrate educational leadership for resilient education. On the day, presidents and rectors of ICDE members will reflect upon educational challenges accentuated by the pandemic and discuss leadership actions and steps that must be taken towards a more resilient education system where open, flexible and distance education must play a greater role. The difference between flexible and distance education as a planned and pedagogically designed program or course to emergency remote education is crucial. During the crisis, we have seen that educators and societies that already had planned systems, proper infrastructure and flexible learning concepts in place were much better equipped in order to secure continuous learning than the ones that did not have these systems in place. At the same time, it has been clear that already existing inequalities related to lack of connectivity, social injustice and the digital divide has been accentuated during the crisis and the targeted measures must be taken. These and many other challenges will be discussed and addressed during the next ICDE President's Forum. Through our partners, satellite engagement events and other pre-forum activities, we have invited all ICDE stakeholders and the whole global community of online, open and distance education to contribute and feed into the discussion. Check out the events page on icd.org that is populated with introductory videos, keynotes, blogs and blog posts related to the topic. Through today's event, which you as a valuable partner to ICDE is invited to host, you now have the opportunity to contextualize and concretize the leadership challenges that are most relevant for your organization and stakeholders. How should educational leaders respond to the challenges addressed? How can we as a global membership organization facilitate for stronger collaboration and partnerships across borders and continents? Again, thank you for engaging in the discussion. I wish you a successful event. So you have seen the video from the ICDE. And let me start with Eden. Presenting Eden Association in a way that as Toran already says, how can we as a global associations contribute to the situation we are facing today with the disruption of education and the society in global, the biggest one in the history and the issues how to enable educators all over the globe and also education to continue and to respond to the challenges we have faced this year. In our session, we will present how Eden responded to this crisis. What measures and steps did we take so far? Let me just remind you that Eden Association is almost 30 years old. And as we like to say, this is smart network for professional community and professional community for smart learning. And our idea and our aim is to contribute to education and educators by talking and tackling the most present and important topics relating to digital learning and teaching by bringing Eden community and all interested to discuss, to exchange ideas and know-how and providing ground for collaboration and joining of efforts to foster digital education and digital culture for better life and well-being in today's and tomorrow world. And my colleagues today will first share our activities which we have taken in this year so far and how we cope with them and what was the feedback of the community on them. And so I will ask first team and Lisa to share our initiative with which we started immediately after the crisis has begun. And to show our leadership and our strength as a community to support educators and education. So team and Lisa, I'm giving the floor to you now. Thank you very much, Sandra. Okay, so we're gonna talk about our Eden webinar initiatives, the two blocks, Education in a Time of Pandemic and the subsequent block on Education in a Time of New Normal. Can you move on to the next slide, please? Now, Eden has a long history of giving our webinars and engaging with our community. So we really decided that this was a way we could immediately contribute to supporting the teaching effort that was going from face to face to emergency online teaching tool to distance learning. And you can see the team of people who actually worked in this initiative because it was quite an intense period. We had weekly meetings and we tried to stay up to date with the feedback and information we were getting in the preparation of these webinars. They typically lasted about an hour or an hour and a bit and you can see the first block of 11 webinars. It started at the end of March and went through to the beginning of June. So, I mean, if we skim over these very quickly, we were very fortunate to start in our first webinar with a wonderful presentation by Tony Vates, helping people get their hands on there. In the second one, we were talking about the implications of this new online environment across the board, really, from academics, administrators, et cetera. And that was an interesting talk given by Eva Ossi, Neil Insan. The third webinar, it was our attempt to catch up on all the questions that we'd received during this period. And there was a very good Q&A session held by Don Alcock Jr. and Donella Apothia and Lisa Maria Blaschke. In the fourth webinar, we really looked about design and assessment for online learning. And that was our webinar in which Alfredo Soreda, Lisa Maria Blaschke and Orna Ferro participated. In the fifth webinar, we were really looking at engagement, how to actually really relate to our students in an online environment. And the webinar was given by Alan Tate and Simon Paul Atkinson. In the sixth webinar, we looked at the notion of community and how to build it online. And this was given by Steve Wheeler. In the seventh, we looked at the question of information overload and fake news. And it was a webinar given by Irving Katz and Francesca Aminduni in the eighth webinar. We were looking at some practical tips for learning instructional design, how to give structure to the classes between online and online. And this was given by Joyce Senginger, Gerald Evans and Julie Simon. In the ninth webinar, we were looking at open educational resources and practices. And the webinar was given by Martin Wheeler and Catherine Cronin. In the tenth webinar, we were looking at how we can actually plan for education after the pandemic. What sorts of things we'd have to take into account and what types of problems we'd have to face. And this was a webinar given by Antonio Teixeira, Neil Fashini and Binay Makore. And finally, in the eleventh webinar, we were developing 21st century skills for teaching online in general. And this was a webinar given by Parthiti Irving Senginger and Ulf Daniel Ehers. Next slide, please. So then we had the summer recess. We weren't really sure what was gonna happen afterwards. But when it was clear that things were gonna carry on in a similar fashion at the middle of September, we started again and we carried on with a series of six webinars. The first one, the first part, the first one was really divided into two, looking at this online transformation of universities and the sorts of challenges it would actually imply. And so in the first part, the first half, we had a presentations by Sir John Daniel and Antonio Teixeira. In the second half, the presentations were by Mark Nichols, Christian Andres Schumann and Allison Littlejohn. In the third webinar, we were looking at the next phase of online. How can we actually improve or carry on improving in the most cases? And we had presentations by Alexandra Mahai, Marthi Paol and Richard J. Paol. In the fourth webinar, we were once again looking at the idea of communities at this time in terms of how to support our teachers. And we had presentations by Mahavali, Mia Samora and Autumn Kynes. In the fifth webinar, we were looking at the role of research and how we could use it to actually support and improve learning with technology. And we had presentations once again by the ever-president Antonio Teixeira, Gio Ceptuat, Ulrich Bernath and Sandra Luchina-Sovcik. In the sixth and final of this series, we were lucky enough to have representatives from the European Commission who were talking to us about the digital education plan 21 to 27 and such in the education and training for the digital age. And with us was George Dimitrov, Veronica Morilito and Yves Prune. Can you move on to the next slide, please? Okay, how did we actually do this? So we had a weekly meeting. We prepared the topic. We got our speakers together. We set up a webpage and we had the event. We enabled people to participate with us within Zoom, but at the same time, we had a real-time transmission on YouTube. And there was always one of us picking up the questions in Zoom and somebody else in YouTube. And once the event was over, we left recording and also the presentations that were there for people to go back. And you can still go back and watch those. And I encourage you to do so if you haven't done so far. Sandra, next slide, please. Okay, webinar philosophy. One thing we didn't want to do was get carried away with the theory and philosophical reflections on the nature of online learning and distance education. We tried to be as far as possible, hands-on. Although, to some extent, reacting to those types of questions that were being asked, we adapted as we went along. And really, at the same time, trying to create synergies right across the organizations because if there's one particular feature of online teaching and learning that's important, is that it's a team game and we all need to be pulling in the same direction. We also tried to reach out to new players and people who may not have participated in our webinars previously to bring their valuable experience and interesting perspective to the distance educational field. And also begin to sketch out what we might think this idea of new normal might actually be, which I think we're still discovering now at the moment. Sandra, next slide, please. How do we decide on the topics? Well, I think I've given some insight into that already. And also, we tried to make use of the results we picked up from the feedback and also the demand that we were picking up in the weekly meetings. So without time, we'll do. On the next slide, I'll pass over to my colleague, Lisa, to carry on, please. Thank you, Tim. I'm just gonna present to you the results that we got from the webinar series that we held. And there's a lot of data here, but I'd like you to most specifically look at the totals that are at the bottom. This is from the first webinar series that we held education in time of a pandemic. We had overall 6,263 registrations. And then we had a total of 3,552 participants and we issued 52 contributor badges and 2,028 participant badges. And so altogether, since that time, we've had nearly 12,000 views of the webinars since holding the webinar series this spring. Next slide, please. One of the things that we looked at for this particular webinar series were the number of participants by country. Croatia ranked number one in terms of participants, then came Germany, Portugal, Romania, Italy, the UK, Spain, Latvia, Ireland, and so on. And so there was quite a diverse number of participants and most of these are from the European Union. However, we did have a number of participants from around the world, Canada, from the United States, from the Philippines, South Africa. So we really were able to reach a wide, wide breadth of people. Next. This gives you an idea of where our participants are from. I wanted to include this so that you could see, we hit just about every country there was in terms of participants. So it really did, we were able to reach out and to really support people and to meet the need and the demand that was out there for information about how to survive this initial transition into online. Next. Here's some of the results. As I mentioned before, there were the top five countries with participants. So we were visited by over 120 countries worldwide and then here's the top five. The topics that were in the greatest in demand, the first was the Moving Online, which was our very first webinar, which was with Tony Bates trying to get what are the things that participants needed to be aware of as they transitioned into the online environment. The next was Designing and Managing Assessments, then Practical Tips for Learning and Instructional Design, and then what would this mean, this transition for students, academics and administrators, and then how to engage and support students online. And you can see from the topics that these weren't really investigations into research or into theory, but they really were hands on what do people need right at that moment in order to successfully survive within this new environment. Next slide. Some other results that we had, there was a really high number for badges. We aren't sure whether it was because people wanted to have recognition that they attended or they wanted to show that they had acquired a specific set of skills that they could then show to their employer about moving into the online environment, but it was very clear that there was demand for that recognition and specifically in the areas of assessment, information management and what it would mean to moving online. We did notice that there was a decrease of participants over time, and this is completely normal because they were moving from an emergency phase into a more streamlined phase of moving into the online environment. Topics were not as much in demand and it could also be that participants just didn't have the time in order to attend. We did notice that there were more views of the recordings than there were actually live participants. And this is a good sign because it shows that there was still demand that was still need for these topics and for these webinars. Next. Now the next webinar series that we gave was after the Eden conference and here we wanted to focus on really education in this phase of new normal. And so these are the topics that we looked at. We had 1,600 or 1,688 registrations and then we had 923 participants issued over 700 badges and there have been close to 2,000 views since we have started this particular webinar series. Next slide. As with the previous seminar, we looked at how many participants that we had, how many speakers and then how many Zoom and YouTube participants. And here we had 89 countries that participated and these are countries from Europe as well as non-European countries. And so that's what we did and those are our results. And now I'll hand it back to Sandra. Thank you, Tim and Lisa. I think that this shows that at the moment when it was needed, Eden showed that it can offer a variety of topics which were at demand at that moment but also that it can gather the community to share expertise and know how. And this was, I would say, our biggest challenge at that moment together around and to communicate and collaborate and to organize such session. Next, we will share with you the challenges we have faced in this year as well. These were that we planned our biggest meeting annual conference. It's always face to face and it's time to meet, to greet, to collaborate, to meet friends and so on. And we had to do it fully online. So now I'm going to give time to Diana to as a host of the Eden annual conference this year to share which challenges did we face in organizing the conference fully online for the first time. Thank you, Sandra. So indeed we picked up directly from the webinars and we tried to move that experience which we gained during the online webinars running 11 webinars was quite a challenge for the whole team of Eden and also spread even wider the Eden community. So we had decided quite early in means in April that the Eden conference annual conference is going to be fully online. And that means quite an intense preparation of being sure that we can also support it technically but also instructionally. So we will really give back something to the community. The theme of the conference was picked up before the, obviously before the COVID era. So we've been focusing more on human intelligence and artificial intelligence and our involvement into the STEM, into the science, technology, engineering and math education. We adapted this with digital education. And the image which you can see here is the image coming from the end of the conference from the closing session where we were all happy because we consider also based on the feedback which we received live afterwards and also during the feedback survey that it was quite a successful conference and well appreciated by the education community which participated into it. I need to say that it was a joint team effort also from the Polytechnic University of Tinshara which was officially hosted the conference. The Eden secretary and the Eden leaders, the Eden vice president. And we used also quite a lot of other Eden community as technical chairs, as chairs of the sessions. And we needed to train quite a lot of people on how to use a virtual conference because this was quite early for a lot of us. We were not really being part of too many conferences. So that was the biggest challenge beside of the technical one. To be sure that all of us, we have similar competencies to be able to run a conference with multiple participants from all the four continents and with four or even five sessions simultaneously. Next please. Because the committee pulled on together, we had more than 300 delegates coming from 40 countries covering all the areas of expertise from education technologies, from higher education, but also from the K-12 or the pre-university education system. And quite a lot coming from companies and from the general public. So this was very welcome by us. As you can see, we'll be mainly European but also spread out around the world. And quite a lot of people followed the sessions online because the planning sessions were live broadcast also on YouTube not only inside Zoom and into the virtual conference. The planning sessions which we planned was had a very large breadth of views coming from digital education because we were lucky to have the first introduction from the European Commission of the new digital education action plan. We were also lucky to be able to have the learning analytics teams being presented quite powerfully with two presentations coming from this subject but also the artificial intelligence and the use of the artificial intelligence in the wider spread of our lives but also quite focusing on the use of artificial intelligence with chat booths and so on into the education. We also introduce assessments and how assessment will be done into the planning sessions and open educational technology with the use of the new technologies which are supporting education nowadays and the micro credentials which were also run through a special workshop. We also, you can see that the keynote speaker were coming from Australia to United States going through Europe. So again, it was proven that it's a global association which can lead and gain also from the knowledge which is globally provoked. Next slide please. And we had several papers. We had 44 paper presentation, 12 workshops and training sessions, 14 posters and demonstration all included into special sessions and other support which we gave during the conference. And I need to say that we continue the, how to say the custom which was in Eden in the last two years to have also a PhD symposium during the annual conference as well as it was during the research workshop which followed. So we managed quite well to bring the young researchers into the Eden community and to have very valuable mentoring and also feedback and information to our young researchers. We were lucky because with the Polytechnica University we managed to pull up a virtual conference tool when this was not possible. I know virtual conference tool was ready in June to be used either commercially or in other format. This virtual conference tool also allowed everyone to upload their papers, their presentation and it was seen as a main network hub as a nexus of information and communication among the participants and also included the links to the live sessions for everyone to be accessible and usable. And it was quite well-valued by the participant. Next slide. But as Sandra also said, a conference is also a time when it's not only knowledge and information and projects to be shared but also friendship to be shared. And this was the most challenging bit which we tried to somehow to present as we had also some social cafes from networking sessions. In all the breaks we had the open sessions where people will join and just chat and network. There were forums where people shared information and projects and established meetings. And we also tried to put up together a social program somehow to bring the community to Timishara, to Romania. Also virtually with a virtual tool which we done live into the city and with a virtual dinner with food and wine from Romania. Unfortunately, only to be tasted by the Romanian for the moment. And also with quite an interesting session of bringing local activities and regional activities in STEM education. So things from which we can all learn and share. Thank you. Thank you, Diana. So you can see that it was definitely challenge for us to go fully online. And I would say that it was very successful challenge taken that results were really great. And based on so good experience with having online conference and the really high response of participants and collaboration. We decided to have the research workshop online as well. The research is very important part of Eden activities. As Diana mentioned, we have this PhD Symposium initiative but every second year we have Eden Research Workshop and this year the research workshop was in Lisbon virtually hosted by Universitate Averta and our host was Antonia Teixeira. So Antonia, please tell us why do you think this research workshop was special? Not only because it was virtual but because it also brought the results from on the present issues which we are still facing today. Well, thank you, Sandra. Actually, this was the challenge. In fact, when we started planning the event similarly like Diana has explained for the annual conference we were actually the event started we planned two years in advance. So it was a long preparation and it's interesting that the insight we had on the topics proved to be right which is the first interesting conclusion. So our approach was actually as the title in a way represents we tried to look at the experience of learning with technology from a human perspective. So of course, focusing on the use of technology especially of course on the emerging trends artificial intelligence and others as Diana has also noted but trying to in a way to also focus and in a way to actually to bring back the human part of this experience. It's interesting because that was possibly probably one of the major conclusions that people felt while researchers felt from this experience during the pandemic times. So of course, this was the topic and has human experience of learning with technology new challenges for research in digital open business and network education and we've folding up on the explanation that Senator has already shared. We had this issue, this discussion on whether to to keep the conference or during the session of the conference as it was a shadow or to make some kind of adjustments or even to postpone it and the decision was the right one in the sense that we had to redesign the event but using some solutions that were slightly different from what we had tried in the annual conference. So as Diana has already noted one of the major challenges has to do with the balance between the scientific component of the event and the networking aspects of the event as well. So differently from what has been tried in the annual conference, we tried to streamline in the sense to focus the attention and focus the redesign of the program on the content part and to use social media to actually to account for the networking part in the sense. But this was combined also in a very dynamic way and what was also a good experience was the fact that given the very high density of the program the actually experience was really intensive and these allowed for well also a very great atmosphere amongst the participants. So the first probably one of very important aspect to highlight was the fact that opposite what we had feared, the participation was much higher than expected. So these was most probably the highest attended research workshop ever from organized by Eden and the numbers are there to attest it. So we had over 200 participants from 43 different countries representing all regions of the world. We had close to 50 full paper presentations, also posters, workshops and all the PhD symposium as well with the higher tennis. The keynote speakers as you can see from the left were very well high and important speakers I mean, great experts from Allen, well from Allen Tate, Tony Bates, Terry Anderson, more established keynote speakers and experts. Also Antonia Nova, who brought a different kind of perspective from a more traditional approach to education but it was really interesting how we combine it with the research that is going on and also the contribution from Allen, new research, well, younger research in this sense, new generation of research from represented by Alan Ellsberg or Mahabali and Mark Pedestan Agustin, Christina Costa and Dinesh and Martin Waller of course. So in this sense, it was also interesting to note that we had already seen in the research workshop and not just a combination of different generations that were conducting research on open and distance, open distance and new learning but also a new generation that has started to conduct research as a result of the impact of the pandemic and it has already been seen in this workshop. So there is, and we can now go to the next slide please. If you can. Okay, thank you. So as Allen Tate, well, very, as summed up in the end, in a very beautiful sentence, this workshop has been a triumph of resilience for the community in a number of ways. First of all, it was, it represented the fact that given the impact of the pandemic, which also affected all of the institutions, how we could, and also how we organized conferences that remind us, as Diana has already noted, that reorganizing a conference that has been planned for a physical scenario is quite difficult, quite hard, but these has been done quite successfully. But apart from this, there's a new sense of vitality from the eating community that was clearly shown and also a widening of this community as well. So as a result of the impact of the pandemic, not only the field of practice has widened, but also the field of research. There are new researchers coming in, bringing new perspectives, bringing new focus of attentions, and this has been very interesting. So the first conclusion I would draw from this is this one, right? There is a new generation of researchers that is coming to the field and bringing new perspectives. This has also been seen as one of the most important aspects, one of the most important highlights after research workshops are usually the awards. The best research paper award was received by a young researcher, a very promising new one, and also new awards were given, which represents the vitality also of these new perspectives. Another aspect which is also important is that the researchers are exploring a wide array of topics, both traditional and new ones, as already noted, but in a very holistic way. So this has been very clear also in the program as well. Diana has already noted a number of topics, I will not repeat them, but from aspects linked with inclusion and the social impact of the use of technology and education to how institutions can be changed, and so topics related with strategic planning and transformation, topics related with teacher training and capacity building, topics related with assessment, which is clearly a very important topic these days, also with accreditation, with the feedback and how students can be supported. All of these different kinds of aspects have been researched with a new vitality. Also new emerging topics as the ethics and the issues related, ethical aspects involving issues related with data management, with privacy and all of this. I would say that there is a very clear focus on the quality, the integrity, and the equity of the online learning process. This has been a key element in this research that is being conducted and has been presented at the workshop. Finally, there's a very interesting aspect as well, which was noted by Baxim Jean-Louis at the end of the workshop, was one of the conclusions as well, is that we are living now in a time where evidence-based decisions and access to quality data are critical for decision-making. And this has been not only relevant in the case of, for instance, health-related issues, but also in education. And so there is an understanding that is emerging of the need to base our decision-making on research. So research-based decision-making is critical and is more important than ever. And in this sense, I could say that one of the biggest outcomes of this workshop has been not only, of course, the vitality of the hidden community and the research community as a whole, but the clear understanding of the community itself, the community of researchers that is being, that its activity, it's only important for the sake of research but to inform decision-making. And this sense of connection with what actually is the reality of the field and the changing process that is being conducted at the same time that we're researching it has been also very highlighted during this event. So just in a brief word, of course, this was an important event for all the reasons that I've tried to show, but mainly because it was, as Alente te stated, a clear triumph of the real resilience, but more than the resilience of the relevance of the hidden community and of course, of the research and practice community in this field. Back to you, Sandra. Thank you, Antonio. Very, very nicely said. And I think at this moment in such situations that we are facing today, research is very important part because decisions should be done based on research, not just only based on the impressions and feelings. Although we do like to do that, it's work sometimes. Well, here are the events we have presented so far. I will stop sharing my screen now, screen now, and I would like to invite you to ask questions to panelists and me as well. Why do you think that our activities are good or can be better? Or do you think that such associations as Eden could have done some other activities or some other initiatives in order to support educators and education? I see that, I'm sorry, I see that you have had some comments in the chats already. I mean, while you think about questions, I would like to ask my speakers, my colleagues here with me who are working on Eden as well, shaping our activities and our policies which we are preparing. In your opinion, how did we do so far and did you miss anything as a member, as the educator and the researcher? Did you miss anything that would be very helpful to you to help you in organizing your work and to feel as a part of the community? So maybe we could start with Tim here. Thank you, Sandra. I don't really think I missed anything directly because it wasn't necessarily just the topics we covered at the conference, the research workshop and in our webinars. It was all the rich interaction with all the people there, the speakers and the people who are actually attending these events. And I really think we touched on to a greater or lesser extent most of the actual problems that we were really looking at because at the end of the day, this is a wonderful opportunity because we've been preaching for so many years about how to play this online game and all of a sudden people are forced to do so. It's a great your own dog food situation. And I think we stepped up to the mark quite well and I think you can tell by the positive feedback we've had and the large number of people engaging with us. And also it's not been like a ballistic process. It hasn't been like a shell that's fired as a cannonball fired out of a cannon that just moved straight. We've incorporated people's feedback in as we've gone along. So I'd like to think that we've tried to adapt to people's needs. Thank you, Tim. Yes, Lisa, maybe to end to you, you are doing mostly online as educators. So you are accustomed to be fully online all the time, you know. But taking into this, do you think that there's too much online at the moment or are we becoming Zoom zombies, as someone says? Yeah, well, I know I've become a Zoom zombie. I don't know how everyone else is feeling, but it just feels like there's just a lot of... There used to be a show in the United States it was called Zoom and it was Zoom, Zoom, Zooming around. And that's how I feel. I'm Zooming from one meeting to the next. And I think one of the things that, and we did actually do a webinar about this through Eden, is really concentrating on our well-being and the well-being of our students and trying to support them as much as that we can. And for me, from my perspective, working within the Eden organization, it was such a positive experience, bringing everyone together and really capitalizing on the experiences that we have had. I mean, there's so many people that think that online just happened with this transition, with this big pivot. And as a result of the pandemic, when in reality, we've had decades of experience that we're now drawing from. And we're not just drawing from it, but we're sharing it with the community. And that to me is such an exciting experience because we're now able to really apply so many of the things that we know. But as I said, well-being is really important. So it's important to be able to close your computer when you need to. Yeah, I agree with you. Yes, Diana, you have been working with the community all this time since the beginning of the pandemic, trying to help teachers and students to get around the online environment. How do you think that the case studies and know-how from Eden did contribute to your work and the way how you can help the educators in your country? Yes, I think it was for everyone. It's not only for us in our country, but I think for everyone who would be part of the Eden community in the last years, even but more predominantly in the last eight months, it became quite evident that being online and gathering all of this information through the webinars and not only the presentations and the speeches, but also what the community was sharing in chat and in questions like it's now, people sharing links and ideas and their experience, which is a very, what to say, valuable resource for everyone. So I think everybody gained, but probably quite a lot of us, it's not only the case of us here in Romania, but a lot of others had done regional events or national events. From us, we started immediately, I mean, in April, also a series of webinars called Online Together in Romanian, Preuno Online, which gather a huge momentum in Romania, but not only Romania, I gather the Romanian community across the globe, I can say that because we had people participating from Romanian, speaking on Romanian, because I always thought that at least in Europe and not necessarily everywhere, we need to focus also on sharing the knowledge and experience in other languages, not only in English. So people who are not so accustomed or they don't know the special language which we use sometimes on English for different terms to be able to access the information and also to have a sort of national or regional perspective on it. We organized these webinars together jointly with Eden with a lot of contribution of Eden, also by delivering and sending open badges which were validated also by Eden and IEEE police. And there were very, as you Elise also mentioned about the Eden badges, there were very much sought after. Even now I have people which are asking about those badges during the webinars and we are now at the webinar number 18, which is I think quite valuable and quite good. And also through the training, we train more than 6,000 professors from the high schools and different other universities in the last month with a lot of resources and information which was shared by Eden. And I encourage also the other participants to this and to the ICDE or to USDL or to ODLA to share your information, your knowledge through resources either on video sharing platform or on your website. So creating as much as possible open educational resources for other communities to include into their trainings or into their resource sharing websites. Thank you, Diana. Although I have a prepared question for Antonio, I see that we have question in chat from Hannah Granger. She says, as Antonio says, gathering real time evidence is hugely important. Eden has certainly contributed. Question is if there is a bias to higher education since growing interest and evidence from school education would be great to improve higher education, school education evidence sharing. So what would be your comment, Antonio here? Well, first of all, let me just also give a short reply to one of the questions in the Q&A which was related to the cost efficiency of all of these initiatives. I think it's important to make a brief reference. In fact, and it was proven, for instance, with the research workshop, we were able to gather a tremendous amount, I mean, a tremendous selection of experts from around the world of very high quality that it would be very difficult to actually have them physically if we had, well, a traditional event. And this has happened also in terms of the online initiatives that were conducted, well, the webinars that were organized by Eden and other organizations as well. So the amount of talent and expertise and that was able to be collected and shared in a very open and easy way with everyone from around the world has been a tremendous experience and it has a tremendous value. Well, in the case of our conference and the webinars and all of these, they were done with no costs attached in terms of inviting experts. These has to be noted as well. So all of the community from the highest expert to the just a practitioner that is just starting out everyone was sharing their experiences openly and in a very, how can I say, in a very healthy way. And this generosity that was shown by everyone has to be highlighted as well. Regarding your question, the question that you've just asked me, Sandra, it is true. I think that Eden in this sense and the other associations as well, but Eden has a very special place because it has 30 years archive in the sense of the best research available in the field regarding these topics. And this has been widening in the last couple of months with all these experiences that have been shared. I think that the collection of best practices or practices by Eden should be while a target for us. These, of course, regarding association as Eden, this has not to be done only focusing on higher education. It could and it should also include the other education sectors. And one of the things that we also have to note is the fact that this pandemic or the impact of the pandemic has brought a new interest and has developed a lot research on distance and well and e-learning for younger kids. There wasn't much research on this and now there's important research being conducted, important expertise that is being gathered and can be shared. And this represents an important aspect. Well, if we're all happy with the fact that we've been able to develop a number of vaccines in such a short notice because well, there was a lot of investment. We also need to have investment in education. But independently from the public funding investment, the community should invest on this. And there are simple things that we can do in order to upscale the research and expertise. And of course, collecting evidences is a very important aspect of this. Thank you, Antonio, for a very good answer. You have summarized really good the important issues. And before closing the session, let me just add that my experience is that at the moment we were faced in Croatia, for example, with the pandemic and the crisis, my decision was that we were not going to do our own webinar session that I would direct the high education community to Eden's webinars. And you have seen that in the results on Eden webinar series. And these, that high number of creation teachers has attended these webinars and feeling that they can go somewhere, find the information, collaborate with people. And this was at that moment very crucial for them to be able to get immediately some kind of support and reply to their numbers questions. I have last question for each of you. And it was not prepared questions as some of them are. Well, in two sentences, what would be your thinking, the most important issue in education next year? Whether or not we managed to get over the pandemic. So what would be the most important issue you think next year, which will be talked about? While you think about this, I'll give you a minute or two. I will just give some info that at the beginning of this November, we had also another one activities. And this was Eden European Online and Distance Education Week. And here we show the full strength of the community collaborating with another associations like United States Distance Learning Association like Australian Association of Distance Learning and Flexible Learning Associations of New Zealand, showing that we can go higher, that we can aim wider working on the global level. And I think that is very important that at this time we collaborate, we communicate and we share among us the best practices and know-how. And I hope that you will find Eden as association where you can get all this information that are important to you. So let me go back to my speakers, my colleagues. So I will start now here with Lisa. So what do you think, Lisa? I think that the biggest issue facing us will be two issues. One is the wellbeing and the support of our students and our learners. And the second would be finding a way to create designs for online and for the face-to-face classroom that can shift and transition back and forth. Okay, great, great. Thank you. Tim, what would be your answer? I think it's clear that we can't get the genie back in the bottle. I mean, we've now got this move to online. So the big issue is how are we gonna establish the equilibrium when we move forward from this and what role will the different actors and students have in this process and how can we move forward together? Great, Diana? I think I will pick up from where my colleagues have said and maybe also from the question which was raised and I will say that in higher education, blended learning and digital education was here for some time. Quite a lot of us were much more better prepared but in the K-12 and in the high schools and gymnasium that was the biggest shift. And I think the biggest challenge will be how to support, how to integrate digital education and blended learning at all levels. So even in rural areas for so to be able to have or to say a fair education and access to everyone in the future. That's probably the biggest challenge which at least Europe we are going to face. Good, and Antonio, I give the last word to you. Well, I will agree with everyone else before, but also with that because I had to add something and you were not fair with us because you've arranged questions that you didn't ask in the end. So, okay, I would add that a very important issue that we should tackle is of course to have a more inclusive and in that sense and more also a better quality learning experience, well, digital learning experience in the next year. So I think that the basis are here. As Tim has said and also Lisa and Diana, the journey will not get into the bottle again. So what we have to move is forward but we have to improve the quality of what has been, what has been delivered. And that implies from improving the support to students, improving the support to teachers as well, to improve their training as well and overall to have a better quality and also also improve the equity of this experience to have it more inclusive in order for not to widen the digital gap but also to do exactly the reverse. Thank you all. We have some here comments in the chat. For example, Joseph, I said that online design is a paramount performance and 2021 is year of to support teachers, trainers and lecturers in how to upskill. So something we already mentioned in our answers. I see that some say, Edwin contributes to facilitating and fostering research and development in distance. Any learning, thank you. We'll try to continue. And Mariam Cartagian says for me, the biggest issue is the lack of equipment for distance learning in all parts of the world. How is it possible to find sponsors and support them? Well, not an easy questions. I'm not certain that we have an answer to this one. Is anyone would like to comment on this? If I can add something very quickly, in terms of also software, you'll need to look onto open source software. The open source software community has pulled up immensely in the last month and quite a lot of them are going out into the market. And in terms of the equipment, there is also equipment quite cheaply now designed even with simple Raspberry Pi's and so on, which can easily support people. And I think the solutions are there and they're coming up together also for those which don't have so much access to possibilities to access very good quality equipment. And if I can add Sandra, one of the challenges which I was hoping that somebody else will pick up, I think it's going to be assessment and credentials, which is also following from Antonia's quality thing. I think we will need to focus much more on this, including in higher education on how we validate our degrees when it's partly online and with full blended learning because in higher education and in traditional education system, we have no model of that in Europe at least. And it's going to be one of the huge challenges for the policymakers in the future. So thank you, thank you all. I'm going to conclude now our session. Thank you for all your contributions in chat. I thank today for my speaker for being attending this session. Certainly Eden will continue to work to share, to collaborate and enable everyone to become a part of the community because I think today, especially today, it's important to be part of community of practices, to be able to get information and to network and exchange experience and practice. And all our activities in the next year will definitely be shaped in a way to go in this way. And I just see that my secretariat colleagues are saying that the next Eden session will be on, but it goes too much too so quickly. On December 2nd, it will be an app webinar. So please follow us on our web pages. And this is the end of our session, our contribution to ICD forum, which will be in the next two days. So thank you again and see you soon. Bye. Thank you. Bye. Stay safe. Bye everyone. Bye.