 everybody and welcome to the second day of vital week you're all very very welcome and today just to let you know as with yesterday we have our the session will be recorded and made available in the national forum website later on today and I again if you would like to have captions if you just press the closed captions at the at the end of your screen you'll be able to see the subtitles and I'm also delighted to say that as to a blood hose with us again today for graphic illustrations and we'll be sharing those at the end of this week at the closing session on Friday and what I'd like to do now is to hand over to the chair for today and Dr. Leo Casey from the National College of Ireland and also one of the national forum board members Leo it's all yours thank you Terry and welcome everybody again and I'm really looking forward to this session I think there's a lot of very interesting inputs that we can look forward to in the next hour or so in a moment we're going to have the latest research update from national forum teaching and learning research fellow Dr. Brett Becker from UCDM I think that's going to be really interesting his presentation on teaching and learning for the next era of digital innovation and following that we have our Gasta master Dr. Tom Farrelly who will manage and master all of the subsequent presentations we have five really interesting topics from a devolved model of management of OE or to transformational learning through to learning to cultivate empathy in undergraduate teaching and a presentation on immersive reality simulations and also on data analytics processes so a lot to look forward to but to get us off to a very good start I'm going to hand over to Dr. Brett Becker from UCDM and his presentation on teaching and learning for the next era of digital innovation over to you Brett. Thank you for the introduction Leo I'm thrilled to be here and since you gave me such a great introduction I think I can skip over this slide now so we have more time for questions in the end. The background and rationale for my work on digital innovation in teaching and learning is primarily motivated by the fact that the pace of digital innovation is accelerating and is by all measures likely to continue to do so without any stop so I set out to look at how digital innovation is going to impact teaching and learning within the disciplines so for example lessons that can be transferred from one discipline to another in terms of digital innovation in different disciplinary contexts and just to give you a heads up for the next 10 minutes or so we're not really talking about digital innovations that are used by all disciplines similarly so things like edtech and video conferencing things that we're all using fairly similarly what I wanted to look at was the richness and diversity and in the disciplinary contexts and how digital innovation is being used and is having impact there and the aim is to help us all plan for the next digital era from a graduate point of view how can we prepare our graduates to be digitally fluent in their disciplinary contexts and to me the most exciting thing is how can we use digital innovation within our own disciplines to create new knowledge in our disciplines and and that's where digital innovation really can can advance a discipline so interesting stuff my methods included interviewing dozens of educators from all around Ireland archaeology to zoology as I like to say I had to make sure that I got them in there so that I could say that but I did cover all of the top level fields and many different sub disciplines and the interviews looked at topics such as terminology demands for digital innovation in their teaching and learning what they're doing in their current practice and then probably the most exciting part was future planning including the challenges and opportunities that digital innovation brings to us all in our classrooms I also visited several educators to see their innovations and action which I'll discuss in one minute here and then coming from myself and the forum in in the next year is an open professional development course focused on identifying those discipline specific digital innovations in terms of opportunities and challenge transferring best practice from one discipline to another and applying digital innovation in teaching and learning practice within your disciplinary context whatever that is as an example of current practice right now down in university of limerick equine science and equitation they're exploring seriously about a dozen new possibilities in terms of what digital innovation can bring to their discipline they're looking at using kinematic sensors and software the top photo there you see there's rain tension meters on the horse there so they look and feel pretty much like normal tack except those sensors are wireless and they feed data to a phone or a computer and that can allow a horse and rider for instance to work better together the rider can see what pressure has been applied and what the horse did in response so there's an exciting opportunity there where we're looking at an animal and a human working better together because of digital technology there are parallels here to other disciplines which is one of the things that I looked at everywhere I went so for instance here we could see parallels in physiotherapy and choreography to name only two there are of course some challenges terminology which I already mentioned was a focus of my interviews poor interfaces general usability is an issue here but these things will be solved I mean that's a hallmark of digital innovation almost is that it's a little difficult to use at first but there's plenty of opportunities for instance they have tons of project options that they have now available to them because of all of this data there's new angles to safety and performance and they report that the student interest and engagement is fantastic another example of current practice that I found to be really exciting is digital technology bringing authentic learning experiences into the classroom so here we're at the national maritime college of ireland in ring of skiddy and they have dozens of simulators there that that bring authentic learning experiences to students without leaving the building so to speak so they can simulate engine rooms radio communications so many different things the challenges here certainly would be cost these are not cheap but they can be so authentic and so immersive and I'll have an example in 10 seconds but I have to say first that the reports are that these have been outstanding successes in the classroom that drive huge engagement that they accelerate teaching and learning dramatically and can really really facilitate mastery learning so we're talking about students learning to do dangerous very expensive very time-consuming tasks like navigating a ship across an ocean in the classroom and the monetary cost of doing that in the real world is not even worth calculating so I have a short video here that I hope plays and this is their 306th re hip bridge simulator and this is me holding the camera so those windows are real glass they're real windows I can I could go touch them and knock on them and beyond those real windows is a screen that's several several meters away so this is inside a huge room in terms of no lecture space fit 200 students in this room but it's essentially one room that is this bridge here that I'm in inside another room and that outer room holds the screen so I'll just let you watch the last half of this video here I do have to say that it actually felt like it was okay oops I stopped sharing my screen so I will go back to sharing my screen sorry about that there we go okay and the final example of current practice is making new knowledge so this is super exciting stuff I'm really going to dive into archaeology here for less than a minute as a real context-rich example so there's a tension in archaeology in destructive testing right archaeologists look at things that are rare by definition but sometimes you have to look inside things to learn more about them so destructive testing do you do it do you not do it when do you do it and this is where digital innovation is is stepping in at this real tension in the field to allow things like 3d scanning software that can produce analogous proxies through pre 3d printing generating authentic physical copies that allow us to explore in this case physical objects in new ways but you can bring that one step further in terms of making new knowledge so there are examples where delicate ancient objects don't exist anymore because they all went away but the molds that were used to create these objects were much more durable and we have these so using 3d scanning and 3d printing technologies we can recreate these molds and in the classroom literally in the classroom for a couple hundred euro oops that advanced sorry you can create molds that are copies of molds we have but use those molds to make the objects that the molds once made and these objects don't exist but students are making analogous copies of them in the classroom and the reports from the classroom there are that we can teach more better and quicker with physical engagement this is not just faster better cheaper this allows us to get straight to the teaching and for students to really be creative and to me creativity in archaeology I have trouble reconciling that but it's also extremely exciting so this is the stuff that digital innovation can bring when you when you allow it to to grow inside a rich disciplinary context so initial findings terminology is a challenge I actually have a paper published at a conference a couple months ago on this almost everybody finds terminology to be a challenge it turns out that different disciplines use things even words like the word digital very differently many disciplines face challenges that are similar to those faced by others so there's also an opportunity here for us to learn from each other the drivers of innovation vary from discipline to discipline going from regulatory and industry down to students themselves another thing is that there's a there's this digital innovation gap between different disciplines if you pick any two discipline pairs you're likely to see a gap there are some that have been truly revolutionized by digital innovation for instance geography has been really revolutionized by geographic information systems but other disciplines have been impacted less so to date but artificial intelligence does pose incredible opportunities that really is going to be my final point but there are many more challenges here and these are worth noting uh they're in fact more than noting they're they're worth not forgetting because they're going to come to every discipline over reliance on technology bias security issues ethical moral legal economic implications all of these things are very real uh and and they exist now and when these technologies come into the classroom those those challenges come come with them so what does this mean for uh education now I would say tackle digital terminology head on if you're going to be using technology in the classroom uh talk about how you're going to talk awareness is very important who's doing what if you face a challenge it's likely that other people have have faced it before so don't reinvent the wheel um and ask yourself how can digital innovation enable new knowledge creation in your context um so like I said I'm gonna have an open professional development course coming out early next year that's going to tackle terminology explore how digital innovation can impact your discipline and your teaching and learning transfer opportunities and lessons learned from other disciplines into yours share best practice and explore new knowledge creation within your disciplinary context and as a parting thought here don't dismiss artificial intelligence AI will affect every discipline in two ways one I say I call it from the outside across all disciplines so for instance AI is likely to allow personalized mastery learning to scale efficiently this decade this will change all of our teaching and learning it will also affect your discipline from the inside it'll affect each discipline uniquely and fundamentally so for instance uh digital innovation in arts and culture is at a pivotal moment um AI can now compose music and write poetry but there's a shift happening here um this isn't the robots are taking over anymore this isn't you know students are gonna write poetry with software and not be creative there's a real shift here AI is turning into tools that humans can use to do more faster better and even more creatively and I think that that's almost like that new knowledge creation thing digital technology allows for creativity that we didn't have before so keep your eye on that space and I'm looking forward to questions thank you Brett that was a really interesting overview of the state of art of digital innovation and teaching and learning in across the sector Brett just one thing that occurred to me and I wrote it down when you said it and you mentioned that there's innovation that like maybe changes aspects of the way we do things but there's innovations that allow us to create new knowledge and you gave some examples of that would would you maybe just elaborate a little bit on what you think the implications of that new ways of not of knowing uh are yeah I think that this really is going to fundamentally change the way we we teach and the way that students learn the archaeology example for instance I mean it's it's very easy to to see a student being given these tools and doing something that that the instructor did not see coming at all and has never seen you know literally do doing new combinations of things new ways of expressing creativity or using these tools where the the teacher really will learn from the student for instance so that's just one example but I really think that that that new knowledge and that creativity those fronts are where what digital innovation allows is is going to advance our own disciplines and on that point and just to remind everybody that if you have questions for Brett now we have only a few minutes but if you can post them in the chat I will I will see if we can be able to pass them on and but I do think as also in your presentation you mentioned it I see it coming in on the chat this um idea around the impact of digital technology as you said outside of each discipline meaning across the institution but also within the disciplines again would you just maybe comment a wee bit about that how maybe different disciplines are progressing to to a greater and lesser extent with the application of new technology yeah so there are going to be some equalizing technologies for instance we all have heard of mastery learning a lot of stuff have used it a lot of us would like to use it but there are these challenges and costs involved right now it's largely a human cost it's it takes time and and if you're going to you know really utilize mastery learning in the classroom with a hundred students you need to keep track of where all these hundred students are and and tools are going to allow us to do that and that will largely affect all disciplines kind of equally it it it will allow us to to use very fundamental pedagogical principles and apply it to our own disciplinary context kind of regardless of what that context is right then there's these other more fundamental shifts like geography and architecture i mean architecture revolutionized by digital technology architects have to produce plans now that that are our 3d moving in many cases and this is all driven by regulatory government you know mandates energy efficiency is all modeled before a plan is approved literally fundamentally changed the discipline so that's something specific to architecture but there are lessons there that could absolutely be used by other disciplines who haven't yet felt that real revolutionary impact yet and we do have to be mindful of that gap there are absolutely in in different ways there are different disciplines that are that are doing more and and impacted more and some that are doing less and that that's not the fault of anybody you know it may just be a fundamental thing about what you do you know for instance creativity it's really just creeping in there in terms of the creative arts but it's coming thank you and just to mention that there's a lot of very positive comments coming in on the chat and people are finding your your both your commentary and your presentation extremely interesting and engaging now we're going to have to move on because we have the big gasta coming up in a moment but just a final comment because a lot of people are welcoming this this open course that you've mentioned and have you any update on when that might happen and where people will go obviously to the forum to find out what when it might be and so it'll be added to the to the forum's schedule of PD courses in in 2022 I'm hoping early in 2022 first I have to have it done and and then second I'm sure there's some logistics in terms of you know with the academic flow of the year when things are released but I do you know if there's demand I know our aim is to meet it so this isn't going to be a one offering and walk away everybody who wants to do it I think the aim is to have them do it the first offering you know they're like every time there's going to be some teething problems and probably some limited capacity but it'll come so just keep your eyes there wonderful and Terry says it's in the spring 2022 open courses so again thanks again Brett and just checking is Tom and online at the moment so I'm going to hand over to the staff part Tom I'm hovering in the background Leo I'm hovering in the background you were very disappointed yesterday you didn't get to exercise the big stick enough I didn't know and I mean hopefully now a couple of people here now hopefully they they they've slipped today so well done Brett Brett really really really interesting piece there and thanks thanks for that Leo I'll be handing back to you at the end of this I'm delighted I'm in a new room today which shows off my Movember a little bit better it looked like I looked like a 12 year old boy yesterday trying to grow a moustache anyway I won't delay because I said we're already oh my god we're three minutes behind time anyway our first person who a good friend and collaborator Angelica Rizquez from University of Limerick and she's going to be presenting towards a devolved model of management of OER the case of the Irish higher education sector I think anything to do with OER is an open access somebody knows me is a is dear to my heart so you know oh she's looking really well sorted out here now that's almost we're ready to go okay everybody um best of looks to Angelica and being a good friend you know if you want to go over the five minutes by all means feel feel that way like that because I think people are looking for a bit of blood today I know that I just get myself my stopwatch is ready to okay so we're all ready we start off nice and easy today we won't be doing any swaying juice yet but we get the blue flowing in a little while are we all ready get the hands up get the hands up get the speakers on knock on your mics are we all ready yep thank you Tom and the timer is on so thank you for the opportunity to present on this good morning to everyone my presentation is titled towards a devolved model of management of OER the case of the Irish higher education sector so my name is Angelica Risca from UL this paper was published last year on the international review of research in open and distributed learning and given here uh very much thanks to all my co-authors Clare McAvenia, Yvonne Desmond, Catherine Brun, Deidre Ryan and Anne Coughlin the focus on OER in these came to the fore during the pandemic period because of its impact on access equity and inclusion but also its impact on the on the achievement of learning outcomes however the most recent horizon report places the question that since OER have such obvious benefits for higher education in terms of adaptability and cost savings why are they not more widely created and used what are the enablers and constraints for their uptake so in answering this question perhaps one of the possible directions is to look at management of OERs we know that sustainable management of OER is crucial for their wide implementation and we can we've traditionally looked at different options from conventional conventional national level repository systems repositories are created ad hoc for OER creation courseware platforms VLEs adapted for open access for example in Moodle web2o services and many more the likes of youtube slideshare and so on choosing a storage model in any case it's dependent on a specific context on motivation intended outcomes institutional priorities digital capacity of everyone involved and so on so from this perspective we look at the Irish sector and in Ireland a decoration of a open research outputs has been dealt with through the re-improject and institutional repositories which are basically an curation of all open research to be shown in a in a professional way so there was a subsequent research project a number of years ago which was published and it it was a wider scope to study open education in Ireland in marginal terms but one of the questions that we investigated as part of that was to the potential of using existing institutional research repositories for the purpose of ingesting managing and discovering OER produced by academics so in order to investigate that we went with a multi mixed methods approach through an online survey with academics a number of focus groups in a number of higher education institutions and also focus group with the institutional repository managers so what we learned is that there was a balance to be struck between opportunities and challenges yes there was an opportunity to be recognized of institutional repositories to ingest open educational resources and even to help to achieve that parity of esteem and that link between research outputs and teaching resources but many challenges were also identified mostly that it was a clear institutional purpose to do so that they were appropriately resourced and there were also concerns around intellectual rights about quality management of all those resources and the model for this to happen so that's basically where we left it and Tom this may be the first time in your GASTA that a speaker has finished before the time but if you want to learn more obviously the paper is already published and up there for all you so I just acknowledge you my references here and GASTA Angelica you most you're supposed to be a major you're supposed to look at the program bang for blood it's not me it's not me I'm happy for you to finish early but at least the Ken McCarty and all the rest of them became here now honestly well done a great pace I actually put up the the link to the paper in a row that's really a great place look and as I've said to everybody and I'll do every GASTA session please reach out to the people that are great work here so listen if we're not to get in the head of time I won't play any anymore we have Trevor Plahasi so we're moving from Limerick we're going to go up the coast up to GMIT are you Tom how are you keeping brand out okay so if we're all ready now as I said we'll we'll start off limbering up a little bit I love your background by the way Angelica so we um okay so everybody get the hands up here we're going to go to the left to start this one off here like that because I said we're going to woke up a dinner here ready are we all ready Hi everyone my name is Trevor Plahasi and today I'll be presenting my research on transformational learning in higher higher education and this research is by myself and Dr. Mary English from the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology and I suppose you know over the last 10 years as an educator you know you know students come in learning and again the new process of new understanding knowledge new behavior skills values and attitudes and you know I would teach in the technology sphere and throughout the last decade I've noticed the students they get stuck on specific topics and it's just they get stuck in they can't get out of that position and it causes them trouble across their academic career and also when they go into the workplace so I suppose I began to delve a bit deeper and I came across this concept of threshold concepts now threshold concepts represent conceptual gateways and they're kind of an approach which builds on the notion that there are certain concepts or certain learning experiences which resemble passing through a portal for which a new perspective opens up for the student allowing things formally not perceived to come into view and this enables students to think about a new topic in a manner that was previously inaccessible so in other words a transformation occurs within the students frame of learning and from my experience of teaching I guess you know there's definitely threshold concepts within the curriculum that they get stuck on students can move quickly and become on and stuck but there are students who will get stuck into these concepts and they will cause them problems and so you know the theories of learn so I adapted a case study approach where I interviewed students from four chairs who were in the studying information systems and I also interviewed lecturers and I used four theories of learning threshold concepts which are discussed and troubles to knowledge so this is knowledge they get stuck on within the threshold concept itself I also looked at social cultural development so learning occurs at higher education with a knowledgeable other usually a lecturer or a teacher and that knowledgeable order is important but learning also occurs in communities of practice so whether that community of practice is within their own groups within the college or within work placement and so on so the framework I used was this framework by Landon Meyer so I won't spend too long but there's three phases the preliminary phase is all about students encounter with that troublesome knowledge they didn't you know they try to get over a liminal space and within that liminal space they're given new knowledge they try to assimilate it they go under going on to logical shift and hopefully they can come out of the post-liminal stage where they've developed new knowledge it's irreversible and then it can apply in the workforce and so on and I suppose you know these are the results of the case study I did of four chairs I identified specific threshold concepts and within those threshold concepts so for example they're delineated there at the preliminary phase the start of their learning journey and they're delineated there in black font database design business process modeling and social systems and within each of these threshold concepts there was troublesome knowledge which was causing them which had caused them large difficulties and challenges and in terms of the liminal space crossing the conceptual boundary to get to the post-liminal phase they found peer learning peer support practical application independent learning lecture support and experience work-based mentor support and work-based place-based learning so critical to overcoming the troublesome knowledge allowed them to get experience in the threshold concept and the just what a minute to go the main conclusions that came out with the research was a student's ability to traverse through the liminal space varies you'll have those students who'll encounter those special concepts they'll sail through that troublesome knowledge there's some students who will when they enter the liminal space they'll go back to the preliminary phase back to the liminal phase and they'll never reach the post-liminal phase and practice and repetition of threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge is very important the applied nature of these theoretical concepts exposure to environments where the threshold concepts and knowledge can be teased out and questioned is also important so in simulations and in workplace environments exposure and refinement skills within a community is important also and the impact of COVID-19 had a huge impact on the learning they've gone from traditional learning to online learning and this results in the new threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge and I suppose the last note 15 seconds language is important having a glossary when your student intros and first year and say look you're going to encounter these threshold concepts you're one or two you're three or four here's how we're going to get over them and thanks a million for that Gasta oh Trevor Trevor man you're all breaking my heart here you're all so well organized I never used to see this level of organization I mean this is one of the things I love about being Irish we have this such blatant disregard for time keeping and and suddenly I don't know what have I actually done to people that I've changed the limits well don't know that it's a really really good piece of work I'm just going to move on because I am very very mindful of our time so we've gone from Lybric to GMIT we're going to sweep right across the country over the Trinity College children to Svetlana and Ashok kind of virtual education there and he cultivated empathy and undergraduate teaching very interesting thing the position and certainly and I think it would have always been an interesting topic to look at but I think given the experience of the last year and a half I think it's certainly even the more all the more interesting hopefully people are if someone give me a thumbs up if it's to sound a little bit better than it was I believe it was coming in and out is it uh is there any better excellent that's good to hear okay so Svetlana are you ready to go once I give you the count in you okay doke right are we all ready I won't even ask you to sway we just I'll keep the swaying and open down for the last two are we ready everybody get the hands up in the air wait wait wait the hands wait the hands excellent I agree I hate yes hi um so I'm Svetlana I'm from dental and school location in Trinity College Dublin and so we had a quite a good team there so our issue was due to COVID obviously as you know all the delivery shifts are to online and due to COVID the clinical placement were unfortunately were very limited so we had this idea I work in special care we had this idea with our team that we need really to get to the students and show them the challenges of being empathetic in the special care so the empathy as you know is an essential part of the patient center and healthcare approach it positively benefits to clinicians to the patients but there's very little agreement in their literature how to best design and deliver training for healthcare trainees as for the empty so we had this a huge task and we actually joined with some George University London they had the MOOC course already there for the clinical empathy but we had to design specific content material that actually would suit our dental students so we had the dental hygienist students we had the dental nursing students and we had the dental science students so our course was so we had the we want to measure if if the virtual learning model is effective as intervention and we want to see if the empathy will actually increase after the model so our model was e-learn e-learn model we had two elements a synchronous element was delivered through the MOOC and we had synchronous elements that included two hours had introduction main body discussion groups and we had the specific to dental cases video recorded play roles scenarios so we wanted to transfer those general concepts of empathy into the specific dental scenarios special care so we found very interested first of all the empathy actually has changed and improved so we we measured that with the Jefferson scale of empathy it's quite robust questionnaire so then the second part was quite interesting we want to see how students perceived and enjoyed the e-learn module so was more or less expected they all liked video scenarios either dental or medical scenarios they quite enjoyed us but oh actually what was interesting to find out on their feedback that they found the discussions in small groups and communication and contribution to discussion groups but actually find very useful and then unsurprisingly they didn't find a reason resources very valuable and helpful for them so and what I want to say then so our virtual learning did demonstrate that actually it worked and we increased the empathy we only matched the students that agree to take into the study so we had this pair matched participants and and we found that actually worked and then but the the the downside is that we don't know if the empathy can sustain for long term so this is something that we would like to do maybe to take a bigger scale and see if actually how can we sustain that empathy with our e-learn module because we find out the short terms it works but we don't know if the long term works so I think that's the main findings from our study so I don't know sorry it was my first time um talking um sorry not at all Svetlana well done well done um well under time um yeah so 40 seconds on the time well done not easy and segue when you know when the clock is running uh so uh well done and a very very interesting piece of of of work okay so from Trinity I'm gonna shoot down to what some people would regard as the real capital I know some of my Cork friends and colleagues there Ken McCarty's probably still sort of making the sound for Cork we have Dr Jerry Rean student partner design of immersive virtual reality simulations hopefully he might be able to write something that's where where Cork actually winning all Ireland might be a very good uh might be a very very good but that probably would take too much uh software programming power to to actually walk out with the algorithm where Cork could actually win an all-earn but there you have it anyway there just throwing it down Jerry not at all okay I certainly wouldn't be heartbroken I'm across I'm in Cork but from the other side of the county bones the Kerry side so I tend to deal pretty well with Cork classes and I'm like Rean yes you're definitely a good Kerry then okay so well from from the the kingdom down here we'll do we'll do another count here like that um I think it said now yeah people are backing in in the humour over there that we're gonna finish up and up and down but our second last one now we start it off go to the left we're gonna go to the right there and I want everybody hands up Kerry I'll leave you out of this count because you have to get ready here now I know the Kerry man here your shop will be absolutely buying on there it's like they're torn down in 2002 that's it are we all ready get the hands up everybody okay we're gonna go to the right here Catherine Crown and I'm watching you here I can see you okay go to the right thanks a million so student partner design of immersive virtual reality simulations and I'm presenting on behalf of the Elevate team here at University College Cork over a number of years I've asked students this is a painting from the Gluckman Art Gallery at UCC a blinkered view of it to a very narrow lens so what are you looking at and these are science students invariably they will say something biblical or certainly something from an older time based on the dress what they do tend to agree on is it's nighttime show a bit more of that image and all of a sudden well okay it's not biblical anymore that was actually cactus and it looks more it looks more South American and Central America but I still agree that this is nighttime is what we're talking about reveal a little bit more and all of a sudden that was a river it's not nighttime and the point being is that when it comes to challenging concepts like molecular biology most of the a lot of the students are actually blinker in this the lens that they see molecular biology through does not show them the full picture because it's abstract it is invisible to them and this was our entry point to the study which was funded by the National Forum and the Elevate team said about developing methods grounded in subtle and pedagogy but how to deliver a real learning experience for students in this space to enable them to explore so interactive learning learning by doing 3d model simulations working in either groups or individuals and using virtual reality as a form of self-directed learning we wanted them to experience their learning so the idea of developing micro modules around digitalization giving them multimodal entry points and here at university college carc using the connected platform for a grounded education put that together and we should have an enlightening experience for students giving them the opportunity to achieve deep learning giving them an applied understanding built around a performance of understanding a capstone experience which through all of that we believe will unlock the course potential now the important thing here is that students were placed at the center of they weren't participants they were partners and with them we designed several virtual reality simulations I'll just show you a snapshot of one here where you can enter in a fully immersive space and you're in with a plasma the piece of molecular DNA that a lot of students find quite difficult conceptually to work around this does a number of things they can spatially work with the plasma but they also have to construct the plasma so there's an element of prior knowledge each of the components then has theory built with it and an assessment that's built into the simulation it's just one of several simulations that we developed and the students can progress through this either in a desktop or fully immersive if you're wondering what's the relevance of plasmids in today's world I think AstraZeneca are sputnik vaccines without plasmids we would not have them now as I said our focus was not the technology per se it was developing a roadmap how do you build and use these technologies and moving to AI eventually but how do we build a roadmap first so that we take the right path so we see as an introductory experience has been key you need to be aware of the prior learning of the students and you need to link your virtual experiences to that learning then the virtual reality experience itself lends towards the final performance of understandings you're building knowledge and skills development and we see it very much as an iterative process where the performance feeds back to the introductory experience continuously upgrading continuously enhancing always having students as partners as part of that roadmap we think it's important that you have an entry point to accessing knowledge that has to be universal and you need multiple entry points to to reach the class that you teach we want to move beyond the test and score principle and foster deep learning and apply knowledge in other disciplines our modules across disciplinary it's also important that mental models are challenged and rebuilt and we can do this using experiential learning and again really important that it's udl oriented there are spatial aspects here that we cannot be delivered in a 2d platform and it is student-based it offers them student-based learning and we see it again as iterative and it doesn't replace the teacher it's teacher led teacher guided it is active finishing with a capstone experience so how do we get there we need the building blocks so subtle expertise disciplinary expertise technical expertise put that together you can frame your abstract concepts you need the scientific technique you need the virtual reality technology to go with it what does the plasma sound like what would it feel like to touch we have no idea all of that together can offer a digitalized experience for students offering them access to these challenging abstract concepts and what we believe is giving them the full picture thank you very much that was brilliant well done really really good you took a lot of complex stuff as I said anybody can take complex stuff and make it sound complex you took very complex stuff and made it very accessible and I loved your finish there so yeah okay as I said I am mindful of you know everybody getting their their their growing on time so we're going to shoot back up to gmit this time to dr karma quickly developing data analytics processes to inform and enhancing learning so if karma is there already it's okay we're going to finish off with our last one here jerry I let you off the last count which are doing this one I want to see you all up like that so um so um anyway we're going to be going up on the one this time so we're going up out of seats Alice I can see you're doing to get up and jump around oh yeah I'm telling you I take of all of those boring conferences of content well that's no one can ever say that that's just a marathon I tell you you'd be fit at the end of this if you've joined in for holidays you'd be fit are we already here get the hands up then we're going to go up on the one down on the two open the tree down on the car open the kooing and then a big loud gossip big shout out this way I want to see you up out of your chair as well I don't want to see anybody sitting down there okay here we go I hate I don't even I'm watching you I treat hey hey hey hey hey hey hey all right thanks everybody thanks for that so uh this is a very quick talk about developing some data analytics processes and it's supposed to start you can give an hour to what analytics means for a whole lecture course but for us we're trying to look at analytics from an institution level and from a course level rather than you know we spend a lot of time looking analyzing different objects within the course or maybe just modules and the team that we are we're trying to map those data flows that we can actually present it to all levels of the college so not just lectures but also uh middle management and then potentially upper management and so to do that it's not just myself and Etaine and Garrett there's actually a whole team of us working away so you can see it's been a while uh there's a few giveaways that it's been a while this is a pre-covid picture and we've had a few more team members join us but it's a really diverse team there are academics there are technical staff and then we also have a research student who's joined us this year and and within that our project has really focused on building up in-house skills and in-house knowledge because what we are trying to do is establish a system that is not just based around one platform like Moodle not just based around you know coming at something that sits inside Moodle because you can buy a buy something if you're looking for something like that and but as around being able to individually query different systems bring that together through some kind of presentation there layer and then present that layer in a way that is secure and safe so that we can present it to the people who need to see it and only the people who need to see it we want to be get away from this you know what so much sharing still happens through excel sheets and we want to get away from that we want to get into dynamic sharing so that people can be given access access can be taken away and selected data can be shared and so as soon as you start to think about well can I query data from Moodle initially where we're using SQL queries which anybody who knows too much will say well if you're SQL querying a live database you're likely to cause harm if that gets any bigger than just a small query so what we've done is by you know this is based on a saddle funded program where we spend a lot of our funding on developing in-house skills we work at Microsoft and Spanish Point and we spend a lot of our time at boot camps and now we have an ability to query Moodle take that information store it in Azure and present it out through Power BI and then that can sit within Teams and once you're in Teams well then you can actually join any other information you like into that and when you do that then all of a sudden you get a picture like this and everybody looks at that picture and say god that picture doesn't make a great lot of sense to me well let me simplify it for you in these circles you have different cohorts or different groups of people be they academic staff or access office staff or maybe science office staff or academic office administrators and each of them have their own data inputs and they also have the things that they need to back out again so the easiest way to have a look at this is actually to just go and see what a dashboard might look like and I will say that we are not so lucky in GMIT that all of our students have a literate of names so none of these students are real this is all and creative data but I just give you a quick one minute tour around what this might look like so you can see we have a list of students and we have scores generated based on their access of how their how their class scores are going but also based on how long it's been since they've accessed whatever particular service we're interested in we can join that then with attendance scores and we can use that to evaluate which students we think may or may not be at risk and of course this is a general dashboard for a large student cohort of two or three hundred students you can narrow that down to individual course cohorts or you can narrow that down to different students who might be at risk and having the ability to present diverse sources of data in a single place but also streamed by who you need to see is then really powerful in terms of informing lecturers on the program board so we can keep a holistic view of students but also heads of department it's not really too much good though unless you have a back and forth data flow so one of the things that we have set up then or one of the best ways we find of getting information is to have a SharePoint list and again totally furious data but you can see that we have a list of students and any lecturer can go in sorry any lecturer any appropriate staff member and they can input the information they need so if the student is registered with the access office the access people can put that in and then that can be shared out to the dashboard and then if we go back to the dashboard we can see that that information is all going to be collated in one place so you can break this down in a little bit more detail and you if you're interested from a class assessment or from an institutional point of view look at different reported difficulties or people who have withdrawn or deferred and why they might have done that and then from a lecturer and functional point of view you can replace your excel sheet with lists of students who are certified as absent or who are registered for an access office and have specific learning needs and so that can be tailored in such a way that you know the only things that come out are the things that are appropriate to the person who is supposed to see it because second because it is all controlled through single sign-on so it is as secure as GDPR will have you need and so with that I would just say thanks for listening obviously we can spend hours talking about it but no I've been a soap gaster that was super impressive that was really really good and as I said I think you know with any of the gussets if it sort of stimulates and kind of goes you know I must chat with that person I must find out more that was it and I suppose that's the great thing about doing it live you know it's just about there it was brilliant to see how well you all sort of handled it all and this can everybody just give a sort of a virtual sort of round of applause to all our presenters please as I said they came in as presenters they've left now as gosseteers and and marathon runners as well now so it's a great a great feat all together so listen to me I I want the lay because it's it's it's 1425 we've caught up most of the time people have done absolutely brilliant I'm now going to hand back to Leo and I'll see you for tomorrow's gaster thank you Tom and round of applause to you as well for that's two days in a row now you've kept this thing really spot on so great achievement and I'm just going to hand over now to our student members of our student associate assembly for some reflections on on what we've encountered in the last hour we have Megan Griffiths from hibernia we're going to hand over to now and in the in chat and I see she's been active already Chloe Decahal from NCI so Megan over to you now for your reflections thank you and first foremost I just want to say thank you to everyone I'm about to drive home now and I'm I had been pulled a million different ways and it's fantastic be it's so fascinating to just know how much research has gone on in all of the different areas so thank you I think for me there's just kind of some of the key points I guess from the different bits and pieces and apologies bread sorry it's the open PD course I'm so excited I'm so ready to do it but halfway for spring 22 but one of the big things I really said I was actually the sensors on horses so it's using the sensor on horses to allow for a better understanding between rider and horse and how you said there's parallels physiotherapy and I wonder is there parallels there's a possibilities of using it and patients are in on verbal and actually improving their care and it's understanding more about them so it's it is really it's it's within education yes but it'd be fantastic to see it through healthcare and as well as the terminology used it it brought me to Carl Neyes as a father of taxonomy I am by nature and it's just it reminded me of the importance of how are we supposed to collaborate and share ideas if we're all using different language so I think your real points on terminology and the fact that we need to kind of be aware of the different terms used for all of the different resources it's it's it's pretty huge but thank you um sorry now I took down notes there's just so much going on um Angelica it was we're in such a tremulous time specifically in regard to education and accessibility and access to research the resources is very much priceless I know at the moment there's massive protests going on over housing and affordability but resources is an area that's often forgotten so OER would not only support a richer educational experience for many students to improve our understanding across all disciplines the notion of gatekeeping research conflicts with the core aspects of research which is to share and learn from one another it doesn't make sense to me um so Angelica it's fantastic now about the work being done to explore OER and boost its use so thank you and I hope it continues to grow um apologies oh Trevor troublesome knowledge is a fantastic term um and personal context perfectly describes the breakthrough moment I strive for as a teacher it's that moment where students they grasp that concept that's been it's asked them for ages they haven't been able to get their head around and it's that breakthrough or they're like ah it's clear as day it makes perfect sense so having terminology and also having a framework and and key terms that could be given to teachers to help them understand these students and understand what they need to aid their understanding it extends beyond simplifying explanations and activities providing an alternative approach and I'm looking forward to actually reading more with it with my cup of tea later on as Felana your presentation was fascinating and I'm well versed in virtual education boss I'd never have imagined virtual I'd been able to actually teach them a skill such as empathy which for me would be very much an in-person and learning experience so this is fascinating it really highlighted the benefit of small group teaching peer learning some things are things that are often missed from higher ed classrooms and lecture halls um I do hope the empathy can be sustained and I wish you the best of luck in the future development of this program and I really really hope it gets implemented across the board because that would be huge uh Jerry is there any way I can get a crash course on the molecular biology via VR it's the most avoided area in biology for me but I now want to return to my undergrad to do it should I be able to do it through VR and I applaud I applaud sorry the inclusion of students in opinions and experiences in its development it can be forgotten in designing new tech and practices it's just we we run away with ourselves like this is fantastic we love this but we neglect the fact that the people we're teaching have had no input so I applaud that I think it's the way forward when it comes to improving teaching and learning I really hope to see this roadmap implemented on the use of VR in across the board but specifically science is because to me that would make it more accessible it would improve understanding and it will create those 21st century learners that we're hearing an awful lot of that thank you I would be lying if I said I truly understood that understood that analytics it's just yes but your presentation really gave me an insight as to how it could improve teaching and learning one thing is the core role collaboration plays in ensuring and monitoring student progression so it's quite reassuring to know that this could possibly mean that students less and less students fall through the cracks it's very easy for a student to slip through the cracks when staff aren't communicating it's oh they might just be doing bad in my subject oh they might just not be showing up to my lectures or they might not be interacting with my content but by having all of their analytics in one place it means that any staff that like any appropriate staff within the institution can see this it means that we can monitor student progression and we can make sure that they don't fall through the cracks completely apologies I feel like I could have myself talked about all of your talks for so long but thank you and yes just thank you so very much Megan thank you what a wonderful summary and you packed so much into your reflection there and I think also it's noted that you give proper meaning to the phrase that students should be in the driving seat for teaching and learning so well done for that too thank you so look we're just coming to an end and the great news is lunch will be served and it's in a location of your choice with the menu of your choice made by you wherever you want and it only remains for me to thank everyone for such a great inputs and insights in today's series of presentations from Brett through to all of the GASTA presentations just a heads up tomorrow where the journey goes on next steps the launch of next steps a variation as well on the theme and that tomorrow we're going to be looking at poster presentations and please keep going to the national forum website for the latest updates and information and also for those of you who haven't experienced it on the other side of all of these events we have a team from the forum putting all of these components together and managing the chats etc and things like that and I'm so grateful to them for putting this event and all of the events throughout this month together thank you all enjoy your lunch and see you soon bye bye