 Hello and welcome to this special showcase of the Future of Learning, a program from the Association for Learning Technology and ITN Productions. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic saw an immediate closure of schools and colleges as lessons moved from students sitting in classrooms to them sitting at home learning online. In this program, we'll be exploring the role of digital technology in education, the challenges faced and the solutions to support learning, as well as meeting the people that made it all happen. Digital technology is helping to revolutionise the way in which we teach and learn. It provides us with an opportunity to give students really high quality learning resources and also it gives them the opportunity to collaborate, communicate and learn wherever they find themselves. And while the COVID pandemic has brought its challenges, colleges and universities have embraced technology to reimagine how they can deliver lectures and lessons. And for me, that's one of the real silver linings of the pandemic, because academics and IT professionals, learning technologists are working seamlessly together now to improve the learning experience and the research experience for all. And online learning platforms like this one have helped redefine the classroom. In terms of education technology in the future, it will just be expected by students. There's no excuse really for them not to have access to their resources and their materials and it'd be accessible for everybody. It really is just the case of having simple navigation for students and making it easy to learn. And that's really what we're aiming for with the platform. It's an easy user interface that connects teachers with their students. It's very easily laid out when you go onto it and you can access it through a computer or a phone or a tablet or anything. It was as close to the classroom as we could get without actually being in the class. It was really good. I think the fourth industrial revolution is on us and we have a responsibility to build technology into everything that we teach because it will be in every job that is available over the next 10 years. And in imagining that future, these students are animating ancient battles using motion capture suits to express their creativity in 3D. What we're trying to do at Rosebroughford is provide training for potentially the next generation of theatre professionals who will be working in a virtual theatre sector. This is an emerging sector. It's something that doesn't exist until a few years ago at least and it allows us to produce theatre and live performance in a entirely virtual and digital world. And the technology behind it is changing the way students create and work together wherever they are in the world. Simple cloud is very, very good because all the softwares are in there. It just connects from my laptop. Then that's it. Just if I can connect it and we can use anything like just like we are at college. It's what I've always wanted for the people I was working with. I mean it's freeing the talent, the people, the students to use whatever software they want in real time. Connectivity between peers also enables both growth and learning and JoyFE's Ideas Room is a digital space that encourages collaboration, creative thinking and innovation. Anybody can come to that but teachers specifically come and talk about their practice. They talk about work they're doing with their students and they just think through their ideas but in that they also talk about their challenges. So it brings people together around an affirmative identity, a sense of belonging and joy as a practice is relational. That's what it's about. It's not about commodities, it's about people. And I think it brings that sense of yeah it's belonging, it's shared hope. Study help anytime, anywhere is how this online service supports students with subject specialists and feedback on spelling and grammar, structure, choice of language and referencing. The benefits to our students are the studio service means that anywhere in the world anytime they can submit some work and within 24 hours they've got some feedback on their academic writing and in order to be the speed of that it's really excellent. And here in Exeter this accessibility helps to feed into the university's widening participation program. Widening participation is largely about increasing access to university so helping people who are traditionally underrepresented within higher education to be able to access higher education. But of course once they get here we want to try and help them to succeed as well. They talk about the confidence it's given them, they talk about how it was there in their hour of need, they talk about how they never thought they'd be able to get to that answer or get that question done but with the help of the teacher they did. So it's just amazing to see. Another online learning platform supports students to access crucial course material from publishers and tailor it to their own requirements. Students can go in there and make their own highlights, make their own notes. They can also have additional functionality like read aloud so they can learn and listen to their content no matter where they are both online and offline. It was the perfect solution for this international college and with cutting-edge analytical tools teachers can also track student engagement with their courses. I can access analytics through VitalSource that I can't do with a print textbook that tell me how many of my students have looked at the book today. How many of them have actually spent more than a minute looking at the assignment that I gave them which means I can recognize very quickly and early on who's not reading who might need a little bit more support. With artificial intelligence this learning could become even more personalized to meet the individual needs of students and at the University of Law their future academic model also embraces technology to enhance a more positive learning experience for their students. What we are doing is we're making sure that the technology is at the center of it but it's actually student focused and allows the students to customize their access but they're customized their engagement with others at the same time. Part of the model is the digital academy with its intensive one-to-one support. It enables students to understand their digital capabilities and facilitates deeper learning in readiness for the world of work. I would say that the use of technology has made me much more employable especially in the way that the digital academy has enabled us to find out what our weaknesses are, build on those weaknesses and come out with evidence of how we can use technology in those firms. At the Olympic Park in East London Staffordshire University London's Digital Institute is working with some of the biggest technology companies in the world to prepare students for the jobs of the future. Our course portfolio here is very much along the entertainment and digital technologies so esports computer games design alongside cybersecurity computer science and we have a new portfolio coming on board virtual production immersive entertainment technologies fintech and other professional technologies artificial intelligence and data science. And with the COVID pandemic reshaping the way we learn and work Staffordshire is aiming to become the leading digital university in the UK. Those companies that had good digital skills have thrived been able to reinvent themselves and pivot quickly to a very changing marketplace so for our students making sure that they have strong digital skills is absolutely key. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are joining us. Studying while working can be a struggle but professional organisations like the International Compliance Association are being supported in providing training for their members with this wraparound virtual classroom. The trainers love it for them it's transformational being able to read the room to understand the level of energy and interest from the students by being able to see them very very clearly life size on these screens. And with interactive elements from breakout rooms to stats that show who's contributing it's a truly immersive learning experience. I think it's key that you still have that engagement with your peers and not just with the teacher itself but you know you know that you're in a classroom an active engaging classroom when someone asks a question you know you want to hear that you want to see who you ask that question you want to potentially like their question. Hi there, hi Rachel, hi Richard, how you doing? And this is how GP training is often being delivered these days. What I asked you to do a few days ago was to have a look at the the module on ELFH and looking at vaccines. The e-learning for healthcare platform is one of the ways Health Education England has made information more accessible and interactive. We're talking everything from e-learning delivered over the internet through people's smartphones or over a laptop or other different ways of consuming that to things like immersive technologies or extended reality technologies like virtual reality. All the way to things like mannequins for simulating how you might do some sort of procedure. Emma Hawkesworth is a recently qualified speech and language therapist. Technology enhanced learning has played a big part in her education and she can also see the benefits for her patients. If a child had a submucous cleft palate that would be something that you wouldn't encounter very often so if there was a way of using VR to see that that could be really helpful because then you would know what you're looking out for in the future. And immersive technologies like these can also be deployed outside of traditional educational settings. These children at Edinburgh Zoo are learning more about conservation with both hands-on experience and the latest technology. You can tell kids about sort of deforestation and things but nothing quite replaces using technology to see the forest as it was and then the forest cut down and that that sort of stark shock and actually feeling like you're there really increases the empathy which we need for conservation action. It's really fun because you get to do lots of really fun activities that you don't usually do when you go to the zoo and stuff. If you care about nature it means nature keeps coming to life. It also brings learning to life, enhancing the opportunities to improve our understanding of the world around us. Thank you for watching The Future of Learning. We do hope you enjoyed this program. All of our reports are now available to view on the ALT website. The details are on the screen now. From me and all of the team here, thank you so much for watching. Goodbye.