 which Vincent has been asked to address and that is how technology can be used appropriately to provide flexibility and what kind of learner stands to benefit most. Thanks Jim. Well as you noticed I was at the end of the queue there like you know so by now I should be feeling very badly, very bad. And I should say that not for the first of my life I'm masquerading as an expert in a particular field that I know very little about but I am standing I think on the shoulders of some giants in this space particularly at IT Slego with the form of Brian Mulligan and Karen Tobin and Gavin Clinch who are a part of the Center for Online Learning and which have really spearheaded a lot of the activities that I'm going to talk about today within IT Slego. And I think the Institute has been at this for about 13 years now online like you know so there's a bit of experience built up there. But I should say it was born of necessity. It wasn't born you know of a desire to to actually get into online. It was born of necessity. The engineering courses were going down, the numbers were going down, the science courses were going down and in order to take up that slack and to drive new initiatives, yes, online learning became part of that because we had early adopters there as we said. But that's why we are in the area where they have STEM, engineering, science courses, online courses in particular like you know so. We currently have 1450 online students for the HGA purposes where they're classified as part-time mostly. So hello HGA. But I suppose contrary to some of the perception like you know the breakdown of that is actually well from L6 to L9 but the L6 and entry level is about 24% of that number. The big one is L7 at 42%, L8's at 24% and 10% on the L9 at the postgraduate level which slightly different to what people may think in terms of where that opportunity is. It's grown organically at IT Slego and I should say that I'm so far on the dark side by now that I should have a black cape on me and a black helmet. So my concern as president and head of the strategic team is how do I take something that's grown organically that's had early adopters that has permeated out from that source and grown in a way that you know has become a key differentiator for the institute. How do I now try to formalize that? Taking a vision and strategy now that's coming laterally as Mark says imposing that on organically grown thing. These are key aspects because what I can't afford to do is to kill off that good will, that organic growth and replace it with some structured way that actually doesn't give me the end goals that I predict I want to see. So the question is of course that I've been asked like you know so how can that knowledge be used appropriately to provide a flexibility and what kind of learner stand to benefit most? Well if I take the second part first the type of learner that we have is part time remote international and triggered when we talk about international these are not Indians and Malaysians these are Irish diaspora mainly who are abroad and see they want to continue their professional development through that and are aware of courses in Ireland and come to IT Sligo but they then act as a conduit to others but in essence a lot of these international students that are based abroad are actually Irish in nature. It is about seeking Kenya's professional development, it's about lifelong learning and it's their adults and the vast majority of them are workers. So the learners are employed, they're in industry or they're at the springboard level seeking to get back into full time type of education. I should say that despite this 13 years and online experience in STEM the penetration into the full time courses is probably on a par with anybody else. So there's a big challenge there. We I would say are at the forefront of some of this online activity yet we haven't brought that back into the full time face to face courses in a way that I would have expected it to have happened by now. So there's a big aspect of why is that and a lot of it I think is down to that funding, a lot of it is about the time availability, incentivization, CPD, etc. But there is a big question there as to why that hasn't happened. So it's mostly in the upskilling, it's mostly in cross-skilling even for the pharma graduates getting into the new biopharma where we move from small molecules to large molecules. There's a lot of that going on and we are the online provider of the National Institute for Bioprocessing, etc. On the technology side, technology you know use appropriately to provide flexibility. Of course technology is essential to online so we're you know so that's a given like you know. The whole idea of blended education, the flip classroom from our point of view that does add value. That's where we're trying to get to whatever the percentage of that you know involvement of the blended side of things but whether we're whatever the percent of technology versus face to face. The technology works for us and it works all the way from L6 to L9. It's not in particular point along that framework. It works all across that framework. And we are seeking to get into the second level like you know further back down the line, a MOOC on the transition from a second level to third level is underway through the Teaching and Learning Forum, through the CUA and the Midwest or as is rightly called. So the technology is a problem. Technology is not the problem in this case. There's a lot of technology. It's how you adopt that and what you adopt. And we're going from the search of online quizzes all the way through to online labs and everything in between and the fully online. So there are sectoral issues as to what technology should be adopted. Is there a means of getting a single type of technology or should we have a multiplicity of things and that diversity that John talked about? I just want to talk about a little bit about the flexibility and to maybe flip that a little bit itself. So of course the most flexible learner is they are able to choose the time and they're able to choose the place of their learning. That's in the sense of the definition of the most flexible. So it's the freedom not to be in the classroom, you know, in essence. And it's interesting that what we are seeing in our NIT Slego is our full time students are now feeling that they are disadvantaged even though they've got the face to face. They're feeling disadvantaged because they know that there are online resources available to the online students and they want access to those online facilities. They want access to the lectures that are there that are stored electronically because they feel they're being disadvantaged even though they have the face to face opportunity. So it's another interest in the side. But as opposed as a member of the dark side, from a management point of view, there are other issues about flexibility. So and just like I just want to give six of these as they come to me like you know, but it's in relation to the flexibility of the institutes. Now these are institutes side of things as opposed to flexibility individual learner, which I think we have to get as a given. But it's about the course development. One of the issues we face is the involvement of companies in that course development. Yeah, that happens in the normal face to face side of things as well. So but the level of company input into courses, shared curriculum with other institutions. We're involved, of course, with the connoisseur alliance. We're involved as of last week with the making our presentation to become a technological university. That asks all questions about the provision of courses across all those institutions, not just your own individual institution, but how are we going to provide courses across these clusters, across these wider, engaged institutions? So it's about the building of those programs. A rising out of that, of course, is credits and the credit accumulation and that credit accumulation that could happen across multiple institutions. How do we take that on board? Bologna type of processes as well that come into play. So credit accumulations across institutions. And I think we're already seeing is how we can provide specialist courses in the third and fourth years for generic courses of engineering and science, where the specialism exists in one institution. It doesn't exist in the wider institutions, and that can be brought online and provided as a specialism in that way. And I think this is another issue for institutions working together. The combining of RPL and online learning, a very difficult aspect. We're working now through the CUA in myexperience.ie to recognize that prior learning. And we have examples of where apprenticeships, we're doing an RPL on apprenticeships, giving them credit for that, which brings them into an L6 bridging program, which is then complete online. And then that takes them into the L7, L8s as well, either face to face or online. One of the things that's happening now which is going to happen is learners staying on in companies, work experience, computer scientists going off in the third year, doing work experience. They want to stay, the company wants them. And now we've been asked that they become, they do their fourth year and final year online in the company, online training. What does the HEAC say? They're no longer a student because now they're off your books, they're online, they are not in your organ model. Big issue for the dark side. So that's another point. And I think then there's the disaggregation of learning and evaluation. And it's the evolution of MOOCs. And how we get then from their learning through a MOOC to the competency based assessment that the institutes provide. So they're taking their learning individually, but they're asking us then to assess them. So the disaggregation of the learning and evaluation is another issue for us. So I think as I say, to finish up, it's not just about the flexible learner, it's about the flexible institute, institutions working together, using technology across a wide range of learners, across a wide range of institutes. And I think it's how the institutes themselves can become more flexible in this space and how CPD can help the individual learner, but it should become outcomes orientated. We've had a multiplicity of people doing CPD who never translate that training into real online provision. And next year, you'll find them in the same, have it taken the same course again for the forgotten. So it has to become much more output orientated, much more help in that space. So with that, I'll go back into my space machine. Thank you very much.