 Okay. Good morning everyone. My name is Patricia Kiran. On behalf of my colleagues here who are with us today and the remainder of our team who are in lecture theatres and labs around the country, I'm delighted to have this opportunity to update you on our progress towards advancing global manufacturing competitiveness through Irish engineering graduates focusing specifically on design simulation for the process industries. Now, just to review our project very briefly, you know that it's a discipline specific project. We're focusing on chemical engineering and related disciplines which are obviously of particular importance to the Irish economy with reference to the very strong and the very buoyant pharmaceutical industry in particular. We're focusing on higher level skills, simulation skills as they relate to these two processes and what the objective of the project is to deliver a suite of reusable online resources housed on a shared open platform and they're focused in four main areas chromatography, fermentation, process control and distillation. Linking the four of these areas is the use of industry relevant design and simulation tools, computer based simulation tools. Our project team consists of representatives from all of the higher education institutions in the country offering chemical engineering programs, chemical engineering or process engineering programs, as well as representatives from cognate disciplines including biological sciences, biotechnology and process control. And we're fortunate to be joined by representatives from across the full spectrum of external stakeholders, employers of chemical engineering graduates, developers of simulation tools and users of those tools to give us a 360 degree view of the project. Now, what have we done since we last met with you in June of last year? To summarize what we've done I think I'd like to just look at the structure of the project. Our project is packaged into seven work work packages, book ended by inception and integration, but the bulk of the work is contained in four thematic work packages on chromatography, fermentation, process control and distillation. And the multimedia development for all of these is undertaken in work package two, which is really bringing the whole package together. What we'd like to do is to review our progress on a work package basis starting with multimedia development. And this work package is led at CLT by Dara Coakley and by his colleague Gerrard Osulawain. And Dara is going to start now by introducing the whole process of multimedia development. He's going to illustrate it specifically with reference to the chromatography resources and that package is led by Carmel Hensie from UCD. Okay, so today in terms of the multimedia work package, 34 digital learning objects have been developed. So these range from a variety of kind of formats from video to interactive assessment to animation to simulations and e-learning presentations. And the intention with the project because the project began in March, the intention is to continue develop digital learning objects until the end of the project. So for the remaining six months of it. As well as this, the multimedia development work package has been focused on the development of an online platform, which Patricia mentioned to house all of the digital learning objects. So maybe just quickly go through the process and using work package three as an indicative example. The initial step for all of the thematic work packages was that all partners were required to develop concept maps, which would outline the main kind of learning area and subsections that they wanted to develop learning objects for. Following on from this specification document or specification development documents were developed based on each of the concept maps. And the idea was these with that they would maybe help identify potential learning objects and also associated requirements that would go along with these in particular learning outcome requirements. Once the specification documents were developed, an online form was provided to partners. So this online form was essentially a way for partners to identify quite specific requirements and to give indicative examples of other learning objects which were out there. So the idea with this was that it would maybe help us communicate with the subject matter experts in terms of, for example, if they wanted to demonstrate the use of real life equipment, well then perhaps video format would suit that quite well if they wanted to try and put across something a little more conceptual than an animation might fit that format better. So based on these templates were provided to the partners. So for video was to be developed storyboards, script development templates were provided. Partners fill those in and on the basis of that then the digital learning objects were developed. So for example, in work package three chromatography, there was a requirement to show the use of real life equipment to a large degree. So video was primarily the, or excuse me, video based learning objects were primarily developed based on that. As well as that, there's a web presence available at kemi.ie, a project branding and visual guidelines have been developed. And as well as that, excuse me, as well as that an online learning platform has been developed at platform.kemi.ie, that's ongoing. And this platform was developed on the basis of work done for a previous national forum project telltools. But during the lifetime of the project as well, we've also the partnership has also gained access to an additional learning platform called Grasp, which is based around developing adaptive learning paths for students. So the intention is to continue development of learning objects and also to pilot both of the available online platforms with students. And based on that to move forward with either one or both of the learning platforms as a way of kind of facilitating student learning. So that summarizes the development process illustrated with reference to chromatography. And just to very briefly overview the key outputs in all of the other work packages since the project started in March of last year. In fermentation, which is led by Brian Freeland and by a technology at DCU. They've completed development of a full database of fermentation trials. 16 very data rich fermentation processes. Fed batch runs have been completed. The richness of the data set is facilitated by access to an offline gas, an online gas analyzer and also to an in situ biomass probe. The sort of process analytical technology that's used very commonly in industry, but to which students normally don't have access. Those path tools have been fully integrated into the system and a DynaChem simulation for the fermentation has been developed using that data bank to seed the simulation. There's a DynaChem tutorial in progress and they're also in the process of developing a Nybert bioreactor tutorial, which is going to use the same facilities as at Nybert as we saw in Carmel's chromatography videos. Process control, while the other three work packages are on very specific unit operations. Process control obviously is an area which links all unit operations or which is applied in all operations. That's led by David Darin at Dublin Institute of Technology. They've developed a MATLAB prototype graphical user interface. There's an illustration shown here on the screen for a very simple but deceptively complex process for heating a tank, which can be explored by the students using PID controller for different conditions of PID control. What's nice about this GUI is that it can be customised to illustrate different controllable processes using Simulink, which is another package produced by MATLAB and also commonly used in engineering curricula, not just chemical engineering curricula. Dave and his colleagues have developed a database of online MCQs relating to a series of basic process control principles, and those are being piloted this semester by the process control class in UCD. Work packages six and seven are dealing with distillation, which is really the classic chemical engineering unit operation, and I'm combining the two of these because a lot of the activities are very closely related. Here this is led by my colleague Damien Mooney in UCD, and this has focused on the development of experimental systems and associated simulation-based exercises for students in chemical engineering. We've developed two entirely new experiments, one a simple laboratory-scale batch distillation experiment, one a laboratory-scale batch distillation experiment with reflux, which represents a big step up in terms of complexity, and this was one that we hadn't anticipated at the outset of the project because we just didn't have access to the equipment at that time. We've also redeveloped an existing pilot-scale batch distillation with fermentation experiment, and all three of them have been designed so that they're using the same chemical system. This means that students will have access to three different systems across two different scales and two different modes of operation. For all three of them, we're using a high-spec refractometer for the analysis that was purchased through the project. We have developed, this is a graphical from a standalone simulation, an online simulation, for a McCabe-Thiel method for analyzing continuous distillation processes, and as I speak, there are two third-year students supervised by the post-graduate student recruited to this project who are analyzing data that they collected yesterday evening from the pilot-scale distillation experiment. They're analyzing the data this morning, this afternoon, they will be working on a batch simulation, an Aspen batch simulation, which is one of five simulation exercises that we've developed supported by three tutorials for these exercises. In terms of impact and evaluation, as Dara had mentioned, we only started in March of last year, and due to difficulties in recruiting students, which we had anticipated but which were far worse than we could have imagined given the buoyancy of the job market for graduates in the area at the moment, the National Forum has approved a no-cost extension to the end of this year. We've already begun to make significant impact, and I think where we can see this, first of all, is in terms of dialogue and discourse and in terms of impact on learning and learners. The project has been characterized by very heavy involvement of undergraduate and postgraduate students. We've had more than 20 interns involved in the project so date, interns or project students, three MNJC students, including one working with Carmel who submitted a thesis last semester, and more than 60 undergraduate students have already been involved in testing or in using the resources. Shown here are three of our interns who are working on the distillation and integration package, shown at the facilities of one of our external collaborators, APC. In an unanticipated development to the project, Federico Orifiche, second from the right, the MNJC student, he's going to start a four-week internship with APC next week. APC had come on board as an external partner who employ a chemical engineering graduates who use distillation, chromatography and fermentation experimentally and who also simulate these processes. Federico is going to work with them with the view to developing more industry-relevant simulation exercises for use in the project. In terms of impact on the learners, again, we're at the early stage. We've already begun to collect quite qualitative feedback from the students who have been using the resources, and this is some feedback from students in our core third year chemical and bioprocess engineering module last semester on unit operations who used the ASPIN exercises and associated videos. It's very early, very qualitative, but the feedback has been extremely positive. These are the same students who as part of the spiral learning approach that we're adopting are currently working on the distillation experiments this semester. In terms of impact on teaching and learning practices and a culture of enhancement, there's, again, two entirely unanticipated developments that I'd like to highlight. In this 10 credit core laboratory module, which our third year students take in chemical and bioprocess engineering, this year we've unprecedented three new experiments and two of them I would really attribute to this project. One on protein purification via cation exchange liquid chromatography, which really came about when we were reviewing our treatment of chromatography as part of Carmel's work package. And this is a project, an experiment that's been developed by my colleague, Iskani Jimenez-Delval, and which will require students to use Carmel's resources. A second experiment on pilot scale mixing, a real workhorse of chemical engineering practice, has been new one allowing students to work with a 50-litre vessel fully instrumented in the lab. In three hours they can export lower, only a very limited range of conditions, but they're going to use dinakem utilities, again in a way we hadn't anticipated, to allow them to understand what would happen if they changed other process variables. Impact and sustainability, we're using these resources already. We know that they are of relevance to chemical engineering students and colleagues in all of the programs in Ireland. We've gotten some additional impact through our external partners. We've been invited by dinakem to give a webinar to their international users group towards the end of the year. But really what drives us is the accreditation imperative. All of our programs are professionally accredited. And what we are doing is we are incorporating the learning outcomes associated with these resources and the resources themselves into our accreditation applications for sustainability through and beyond the life of the project. It's been developed by the chemical engineering community in Ireland. We're not working in competition with one another. What helps any of us helps all of us. It's focusing on key unit operations, key learning approaches which are relevant to a very wide range of students. And most importantly for student engagement, they're really focused on the development of professionally relevant skills. The students can see an application for these. The final topic that we really need to look at is the strategy for the platform sustainability beyond the life of the project. But we're using it. We want to use it. We're committed to using it. I'm confident that we'll find a workable solution to doing that. Thank you very much.