 Hello. I'd like to welcome you to the European Open Distance Learning Week EODA LW 2020 webinar. We'll be starting in just a minute. We're just going to give a couple of minutes for people to enter in the room and become virtually comfortable, whatever that means. So the title of today's session is we are all in this together, raising to the challenges. Because if there's one thing we've got in common, international level is having to adapt to the pandemic and try and support the education institutions and the teachers and students we've had near to it. So this gives us the opportunity to share some experience and also give you our feedback on this. The panelists are going to give you their feedback on it. I'm not going to. I'm just here to prevent fighting. So if there were any. Okay, so please say hi in the chat. Tell us where you're from. And later on, if you want to ask any questions, please use the Q&A tool for that because sometimes it's hard to pick it up in the chat. Okay. Great to see there's a wider participation. Slovenia. Okay. I think we can begin now. So the aim of today's session is to understand how four leading professional bodies have supported online and distance learning during the COVID pandemic. And I'm fortunate to have with me today representatives of EDEN, the European Distance and E-Learning Network, the U.S. DLA, United States Distance Learning Association, O-D-L-A-A, the Open and Distance Learning Association of Australia, and Flans, the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand. So I'm going to very briefly present our speakers to give them some chance to talk. So firstly, we have Sandra Kutina Softik, who's the president of EDEN and the Assistant Director of Education and Use of Support at the University of Zagreb, the Computer Centre. Then we have Lisa Marie Abelashkin, who is a former EDEN Executive Committee member, an EDEN Senior Fellow and a Chair of the Board of the EDEN Fellows Council. Then we have Rhonda Blackburn. Rhonda is the president of the U.S. DLA and U.S. DLA Hall of Fame inductee. She's the past president of the Texas Distance Learning Association and past chair-elect of the National University Technology Network. We have Reggie Smith III. Reggie is the Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of U.S. DLA. And in his current capacity, he provides leadership to the association members and partners. We have Marcy Powell, who's the president and CEO of Marcy Powell & Associates and has been at the forefront of many pioneering achievements in the workplace for the last 25 years. And lastly, by no means least, Mike Brown, who's the Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning at Dublin City University, and he serves on EDEN's Executive Committee and is an EDEN Fellow. He's also an Executive Committee member of the Open Distance Learning Association of Australia. So I think I'm going to hand over to Sandra to start the presentation. So I'm just going to share my desktop with you. Hopefully you can see that. Okay, Sandra, over to you. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Tim. Just let me... Thanks, it's full screen. Yeah. So hello, everyone. Warm welcome to one more session in the European Online and Distance Learning Week. This year, we have really, I would say, outstanding sessions, more than we thought we would have, but very, very high quality session. And I'm very happy that today we have a joint session with other bodies working on online and distance learning. So I'm very happy to have Ronda Regi and Marci with us today and Mark representing Australia in New Zealand. The title, as you can see, is, I would say, challenging for our thoughts to think how can we all rise to the challenges. And this is the idea, what we should talk about today, how all of us can contribute and make that education is better and that all educators, educational institutions benefit from our work. So if you can move, Tim, to the next slide, please. Let me just briefly present to Eden and what we as Eden have done so far. So I'm going to do some slides and Lisa will help me in that. So Eden Association is celebrating 30 years next year in June. So we are, I would say, young in hearts, old in existence. So we as the network, as association exists to share knowledge and improve understanding among professionals in distance learning. And as you can see, to promote policy and practice across the whole of Europe and beyond. I would say that with our engagement, we have attract number of educators, not only from Europe, but worldwide to join and to collaborate and to make some moves, some changes what is going to be with education. And next slide, Tim, please. Here are the numbers which are characterizing the Eden in 2020. You can see that we have almost 200 institutional members, almost 300 individual members. That this is a network of 1000, more than 1000 individuals from 55 countries and actually over 140 institutions from Europe and under countries. Next slide, please, Tim. And also we have very good collaboration with European Commission, who is using our association as way of communicating channel to the educators for their messages, and also they're using us in another way that our knowledge and expertise are heard in European Commission when some documents and policies are prepared. I stressed in this slide two things which I find very important within Eden. This is Eden Network of Academics and Professionals first and the steering committee as the body working on this. We have quite a fresh elected new nubstring committee elected in June this year. And their aim is to support network of these individuals and to help them to gather and to communicate more effectively by within our organization. So far in this year, for example, we had 10 Eden and up webinars and you can see that number of participants is quite high. Another body is Eden Fellow Council which is chaired by Lisa and they serve as advisory role in Eden. They are kind of our think tank, the people with really great expertise and knowledge who can be who is here to benefit us all. And I'm happy that Marcy is also Eden Fellow so she can as well contribute in her work to the Eden community. And now I'm going to give the slides to Lisa who will maybe I'm certain say a few words more about Fellow Council but continue with our activities this year which we did in order to raise the challenges of COVID-19. So Lisa, Laura is yours. Thank you, Sandra. One of the things that Sandra has mentioned is the Eden Fellows Council and we really did, we've had the Fellows around for a very, very long time for a couple of decades and a couple of years ago we realized that we weren't using the potential of the Fellows and so we created this Fellows Council and identified some really key Council projects that we could work on in terms of using the synergies within the organization and across the organization not just within Eden but outside of Eden and so we identified a couple of projects that the board members are working on together with the other Fellows and these are on looking at the current and future open education trends and looking at those within a specific context and then looking at the strategic development of Eden where do we want to be by 2030 and how are we going to get there and what role will the different people play of the different parts of the organization play in realizing those strategies and then of course we've got our Eden community how can we strengthen that community and what kinds of roles are there, what kinds of responsibilities and what are the values of our members and how can we really build that community and as I said create synergies across the organization. Next slide. One of the key ways that we did this when the pandemic hit in March the head of the Napsteria Committee Antonella came to us and she said we need to do something we have to do something and this was something that I think was in the back of the minds of all of us what can we do, how can we help and so what we decided to do was to hold webinars and these were really very practical webinars where we were providing input to those who were making that pivot into online and so we sat down it was the members of the steering committee the Fellows Council, the Napsteria Committee and we started to look at what are really the pain points of our community, what are the things that people are really struggling with at the moment and each week we would meet to identify what were the key topics, what were the things that people really need to have addressed first and so we did this every single week and each week we would come up with a new topic based on what the current situation was because as you know as the pandemic raged across the world there became new issues and new challenges that people were facing so we were trying to reach them where they were at at that particular point in time this required us to perform a pivot as well within the organization and identifying people that would be able to speak to different topics and it was really exciting for us because people responded very quickly everyone wanted to support those who were moving from traditional face-to-face education into an online environment so these webinars were really to provide practical ideas, practical suggestions practical guidance for how to survive and to really succeed in the online environment and this was as I said focusing on the day-to-day challenges that educators face, there were 11 webinars all together leading up to the the Eden conference we had over 3,500 participants worldwide over 120 countries and what was really interesting we also had over 9,100 views of the recordings and so people were not just engaging synchronously but they were also engaging asynchronously next slide after the Eden conference we sat down and talked about how do we want to move forward with the current webinar series and we decided that we wanted to kind of reframe it, rename it and so we called it the Eden initiative education and time of the new normal what are the issues that we have to address what are the things that we really need to deal with and these were things on a really high leadership level in terms of how can we strategize what kinds of leadership issues are we facing how can we transform our institutions to really adapt to this new normal and then we went into a little bit more of the how do we create communities of support for our teachers what can we do within the organization to support them and to support our students and we ended with the digital education action plan from the EU setting education and training for the digital age having them come and present this plan which had a number of attendees there were over 1064 views of the recordings, 800 participants and just so many speakers 26 speakers and moderators and that led up to our research workshop in the fall next slide please we had a number of different conference activities as we were talking about before this session started we made the decision very quickly to shift to online to move our conference into the online environment which was very challenging but despite the challenges of moving it into the online environment we still had 309 participants from over 40 countries there were 511 live streams 4 web streamed plenary sessions where anyone could attend by watching YouTube sessions 44 papers, 12 workshops a synergy session which included 8 different projects 11 posters, 2 demonstrations and all of the conference proceedings were published electronically so even though we had to pivot ourselves very quickly to moving into a virtual online conference I think we did this quite successfully next slide from the lessons that we learned from the annual conference we were able to apply these within the research workshop and to really expand upon our virtual presence even more here we had about 200 participants present from 43 countries again we streamed our plenary sessions live and free to the public over YouTube and had 48 paper presentations, 7 workshops 16 posters and there was also an integral part of all of our research workshops a PhD symposium where 14 PhD students presented their the status of their PhDs and then received feedback we also had a very rambunctious Oxford style debate and roundtable discussions next slide now I'd like to pass this back to Sandra thank you Lisa you see that we did a number of activities online actually this is my first year of presidency and I can tell you that I was quite scared to do it online so much challenges I thought it would be so easy to take over my colleague Irina as she did very well and when I came I thought okay now it's going to be smooth easy, nice time and then we had COVID then we had Brexit and things like that and so I wasn't sure how we are going to do it but nevertheless it just showed that we are quite strong community and this is the team effort and this is why we did so well and also what we did is that we joined the UNESCO COVID 19 global education coalition because all we are doing is open is free and it is there to help the education community to use all we produce all these expertise we produce in way to enhance the education and everything they need at the moment so we are very happy to become the member of UNESCO initiative and for our last slide Tim yeah I just put in one slide the resources which are there available and I'm certain that they can be of good use so we have where you can find that all our sessions are recorded and available meaning the webinars, the proceedings for the annual conferences and research workshops we have the European Journal of open distance learning so it is also available we have monthly newsletters, we have blogs and even YouTube channel which publish all the session so definitely a number of resources and I'm very happy to see that for example in the time when the COVID struck and I have to say that Croatia experienced quite heavily her earthquake in March this year in Zagreb so in all these situations which quite hard for us when I shared information that Eden is doing something and it is there to help people in everyday situation in education lots of people from Croatia joined and I think that was very good way to see how such organization as Eden can help the educators worldwide so this is our first part so Tim we are back to you Thank you very much Sandra I'll share my screen now and hand over to Ronda if you can give us an introduction so actually we are going to hand it over to Reggie Reggie is going to start it then please welcome everyone and here in the states my name is Reggie Smith on behalf of the United States Distance Learning Association and really enjoying the opportunity to have a chance to talk to everyone worldwide audience with Eden and our partners and so the association was interesting as we had a discussion prior to this webinar now the entire world is connected in a space that we have expertise many many many years of expertise and research backing the value and the rigor behind online and distance education so the association was the first association here in the United States in 1987 we have members we have national members and we also have state chapters and so every state does a little something different little different flavor and so they are really on the ground and the grassroots and so for example our Texas chapter has a wonderful online accessibility program accessibility came up as a big item when COVID hit we were leveraging those state chapters we also have we also publish a journal newsletter blogs and anything else and so we have a ton of research and I will defer to Rhonda on some of the COVID response but one of the things that we did do really fast was stand up a web page on our site with a lot of resources dealing with COVID the one question that was quite interesting as schools and institutions reached out we created all this new stuff come from and I said a lot of this stuff there is new stuff but there is 30 40 years of stuff and so we just repositioned it so we make sure that you can find it and so we have been here and we will be here to come but I will pass to Rhonda to really go into our response on the pandemic and what she has been really kind of spearheading Thank you Reggie I think just like Sandra in terms of USDA I never anticipated that we would go into something called COVID I don't know and having to switch and change everything one of the things just like Eden did at the moment that we went to shut down in the US in March we started a Friday webinar series and that Friday webinar series was looking at distance learning resources how can you get started quickly and pivot if you need to and we have continued those Friday webinar series all the way into today every Friday we still have a webinar one of the things with USDA is that we look at all different constituencies so obviously we have higher ed in K-12 but we also have corporate non-profit military government homeschooling so many different constituencies that deals with distance learning or distance training and so we really try to focus our webinars on different parts of our constituencies to make sure that they are getting what they need and like Reggie said along with that we post all of our recordings onto our webpage and any resources that that particular person had that did the webinar or the panel and we put those together so people can very quickly find them along with all the other resources that people submit to us and we find and we restructured a little bit just so people can find things that they need a couple of other things that we wanted to focus on was you know the people that didn't have access what did that look like and though we knew about that going into the pandemic that there were lots of people in the U.S. or around the world that don't have access but it really came to awareness at that time and so we had an HBCU, Historically Bight Colleges and Universities forum in May to really kind of help those schools address trying to pivot and move online and help their students but this fall we also had a legislative forum to really focus on broadband and equities across everywhere there are times that you're like oh but you can get on the internet oh no you can't because you're in the middle of nowhere or you don't have internet at home or whatever the case is really trying to focus on that just like Eden we had we always have our face-to-face conference in like the May timeframe and we had to not have it face-to-face because it was in Nashville and Nashville was shut down at the time and so we moved to July so we had like two months and I'm sure everyone on this panel is probably going yes we understand that had to move everything online to an online conference we had 285 participants at that conference and we had sessions but those sessions were very targeted we went through all the different sessions that were supposed to be at the original conference and we had some of them that were perfect go ahead and do those but others that were like hey can you redo this a little bit and make it a little bit more relevant for what's going on right now and so being able to work with those presenters make sure that was happening but we not only did we have the sessions but we also had keynotes to really help people understand how to find those resources so how do you find educational open educational resources when you're not sure where to go so we had a panel or we had a keynote on that and really trying to help people find where they were going but we also had networking times and so how can you know who to reach out to and that's one of the things that USDLA prides itself on is being able to help people find those networks and really to be able to do that one of the couple of the other things that we did obviously with national distance learning week in the US is next week and we're going to hopefully address some of those issues that people are still facing and but we also are looking at putting together a student survey where are students right now feeling all the way from social emotional which amazes me that people are saying oh people need social emotional help now and it's actually they probably always have but really trying to focus on where the students right now and what are they facing to make sure that we address that and get that information out there so those are some of the things that we've been doing to help address people having to go into online learning very quickly and I think more see is our next one and it's going to kind of follow up with all of that. Thank you Rhonda it helps when you unmute so you can see how fantastic Eden and USDLA have risen to the challenge and part of what is most near and dear to my heart having been former president and chair emeritus of the US distance learning association as well as a blessing of being installed as an Eden fellow along with Sandra president of Eden at the same time back almost a decade ago the blessing has been that we realize it's a global need it's a global movement and we've been there as you can see for 30 more plus years but that collective collaborative spirit that has been among the global institutions even the European distance learning week that we've started together with the national distance learning week in the US and then became the European distance learning week as another one and then Mark will talk to you in a moment about what's going on down under the point is that another great benefit of joining any of these associations is that global presence and understanding all of us many of us have international students many of us serve constituencies worldwide in various areas and so that collaborative and expertise and sharing networking is such a great value for these organizations for whether you're a member of USDLA Eden Enflans plans New Zealand I'll let Mark clear that I see or any of the other organizations is that you're going to see the same people networking and sharing and growing off of each other professionally we were talking just a little bit earlier about Don Alcott who has been a major mover in each one of these organizations because he's so global and so we're all connected and we're thrilled to be part of the family so I'm glad that all of you are on and that you can see all these valuable resources and that you'll be able to share them across your networks throughout your country and throughout your sphere of influence with that I'm just going to say thank you to Eden for having USDLA on and to Lisa Marie for running the Eden fellow council for getting to be a part of that and to share there's just a lot of love in this family and a lot of fun Thank you very much Wanda, Reggie and Marcy that was very good very positive information. Okay Mark over to you, can you give us the Down Under perspective I'm muted I'm unmuted am I? but look at it yes well I did just put a few slides together because I'm sort of wearing more than one hat here actually too many hats to know which one I should be talking from I really just wanted to give you a little bit of an insight into the experience Down Under as we would say it I'm actually in New Zealand but I'm living in Dublin and Ireland and a member of the Executive of Eden just to kind of show you the different hats I did want to just kind of put into context I'm sure we've all seen these sorts of stats from UNESCO or other agencies the scale of what we were facing this particular slide comes back from April and of course not a lot has really changed for me in Europe what's interesting is in the matter of the first day really of shutdown in Ireland and pretty much across all of Europe we joined with Eden the group that I lead the National Institute for Digital Learning in Ireland with Eden and also the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities to offer a webinar on the first Monday we were overwhelmed by the demand some European countries were just going into lockdown and at the very same time the reason I just wanted to show you this slide was again to indicate a level of demand that we are still dealing with or trying to respond to within 10 days of that webinar we put together this course a number of future learning partners on you'll see over 85,000 educators around the world participated in that MOOC and we all know MOOC completion rates are an issue but around 25% completed that course and then I just wanted to alert you to the fact that since we are taking a global perspective this is one of a handful of publications that have come out now this particular one has 30 case studies from around the world that came out back in I think it was around June so these are going to obviously be historical in time to come but useful to be aware of and then before I switch down under I think it's useful for us because we've already mentioned how these professional bodies that we represent have got a wealth of experience built up over decades not just years but decades actually but looking into the future the demand for higher education is not going to get any less and so beyond COVID-19 we need to be thinking about the role that professional bodies can play and this is just back of the envelope calculations here but if you can see this slide it's estimated by 2050 there will be another billion I'll round it up post-secondary learners that we need to cope with. Well if we were to build one new university every day every week for 365 days a year for the next 30 years calculated on 30,000 students in a university that's still only going to give us about 330,000 million students capacity so there is no way that we are going to be able to meet the demand currently with the bricks and mortar type solutions that people might want to return to and long to return to post-Covid-19 so it's not that we are just dealing with a problem right now and responding to a crisis this is something we have to think about beyond COVID. So switching down under and if you can see this actually those of us who come from down under tend to think that we look at the world the other way around and everyone else is down under this is how the world map should really be I want to just touch on briefly two associations that I've been involved in and continue to have some association with and how they responded Firstly, AUDLA AUDLA has a very long history over 40 years it's been publishing the journal of distance education over that period for 40 plus years and this is the first year that AUDLA in a partnership with Flans whom I'm going to talk about shortly we launched what we're calling in the inaugural Australasian online and distance learning week to coincide and work in partnership with Eden and also the US body so we're delighted to be able to be part of the events over the course of this week I happen to be an executive member committee member of AUDLA so that's how I'm wearing those different hats we're a much smaller professional body so we're going to really put into context given the scale of what Eden did in particular from my knowledge the size down under isn't quite the same although the importance of distance and online learning is just as important given this geographical distances and locations I've mentioned distance education because distance education is one of the highest ranked journals in the field and distance education has produced a special issue a couple of articles just on slides here to give you a taste some of you will be well familiar with those two authors Curtis Bonk on this last one Distance Ed then hosted a webinar just a few weeks ago on this special issue so AUDLA by and large has really tried to tap into its existing community and through its existing publications we did have a webinar this morning very early 7am this morning my time because I moderated that webinar about 6 o'clock in Melbourne or Australia in Sydney and anyone who knows Australia in particular today is known as the day that stops a nation it's the race that stops the nation because it's the day of the Melbourne Cup very famous horse race a bit like the Kentucky Derby and first time I think in its history that the horse is raced with no people in the stadium moving to Flans Flans is very much similar to AUDLA it has a long history it actually used to be called Deans the Distance Education Association of New Zealand many moons ago I used to be president of that association Flans looks after a small community of New Zealand educators it has quite a strong institutional membership most of the universities are institutional members similarly it publishes the journal of open flexible and distance learning so if you're looking for somewhere to publish your work it has a high quality editorial board from around the world and like other professional bodies it's produced a special issue related to COVID-19 the situation in Australia and New Zealand when interesting I think experience and I should generalise this more to southern hemisphere countries where the academic calendar is different from the northern hemisphere that in itself had quite a bearing on the challenges that faced universities in Australia and New Zealand in particular crisis really came in at a time when international students were about to arrive in the country and really challenged the higher education systems in good and bad ways to be truthful because in Australia and New Zealand international students generated a very large amount of revenue for universities and that really cut off a revenue stream so they were really starting their new academic year whereas here in Europe we were already well into the academic year in fact entering the second semester so I think we had a very big bearing on how we responded in the academic life cycle in the case of plans just a little advertisement for the webinar that they are offering on Friday time zones are a challenge here but as we saw from the statistics the figures from Eden the uptake of the recorded webinars the echo from this I think is something we shouldn't underestimate and hopefully that's a case of this week's activities as well and then I thought I'd just end somewhat hopefully on the note that New Zealand's a great place to go, it's the home of the Lord of the Rings and all the other wonderful things that are good from down under and plans is offering its conference of April 2021 maybe we'll be allowed on a plane by that stage so if you've got government money you haven't spent perhaps you should place this conference on your to-do list actually I have one last slide which is slightly self-promotional I think one of the other takeaways we've heard about the importance of emotion we're hearing about the pedagogy of care the importance of the affect of the side to learning that has come out and it's not something that's new again but I think it's been raised in profile my own university with some special COVID-19 funding and we're now actually collaborating with Eden with fingers crossed a European Commission Erasmus application basically to support learners to learn how to learn online so this particular course we got up and running quite quickly it was off about a month ago 5000 learners participated in this course over 50% completed the course which I think is evidence of the success of the way that we in particular had a course that was designed for learners by learners with learners students co-facilitating and co-designing the course but I'm just flagging this to us because we often are talking to our colleagues as educators but I think we also need to be reaching out more to our learners and the professional bodies that represent learners European Student Association Institutional Student Associations and the like so I'll stop on that note Kia ora is what we would say in New Zealand and I'm not going to give a bad Irish for thank you Thank you Mark you did a great job on that okay so we're moving over to the discussion part of the event what I'm going to do is ask a question and I'll ask it to one of you from one association and then I'll leave it open at the end in case anybody wants to add anything to what your colleagues have said I think you've given us an absolutely amazing perspective of your institutions I think we have all been doing a good an impressive amount of work there so I guess the first question really is about expectations and how they meet reality because they often say be careful what you wish for because it might come true and I sometimes get the feeling talking to people in higher ed and professional roles that they think they like to have a more visible role in shaping society and the way things work now the pandemic has come along it's not something we would have chosen for a lot of reasons but it certainly thrust us into the limelight so what I'd like to really ask you is what's your reflections on how this has changed you know what you were doing before the pandemic what you're doing now how is this process of adapting to the change actually gone and how you see your association responding once we go back or go on to new normal and let me start with Rhonda please so I think some of the things that we do now are things when we should have been doing along but I think what's come out of it is the awareness of what's not happening and so being able to really see that kind of we were talking about earlier that broadband and equity across different areas you know who doesn't have access when you're going to school you're going into a building sometimes that is not obvious that people go home and they don't have access or and it's not just in the K-12 or higher ed it could also be you know corporate people that are now working remotely or they're supposed to be working remotely but they don't have great access and so I think that that's part of it the awareness of what is not happening I think is coming out more so you know I hear all the time especially in the K-12 arena of this shift to having everyone being able to being online many of the states inside the United States made all of their students in their entire school district do online for the first like and that brought out the idea that what does it mean to be isolated from people I mean all of a sudden yes we thought about kind of we were talking about social emotional learning but what does it mean to really be isolated what does it mean that if people don't turn on their cameras or have to or what is the etiquette of being online so I think there are some things that we're finding as we're going through this that we probably knew in the back of our head at least we did but I think the rest of the world is starting to realize there are things that we haven't thought about that we need to be thinking about because when someone goes into quarantine what do they have to do well they have to be online and if they're walking into a school one day and the next day they're not what does that mean we need to really shift that so I think there is a lot of things that we need to still figure out and help them and so as associations being able to put out if it's a webinar if it's a recording of a webinar if it's the resource to say this is how you need to get your students online this is best practices this is how you engage I mean these are things that we've known about for years but people haven't talked about them and I think that that's just something that we need I think we've been trying to help them with this really giving those resources to them but I think that's going to continue to go as we still deal with this every day that's a great answer Ronda thank you okay Sandra would you like to come in now yeah thank you Mark I would just say that Reggie and Ronda already said we have been doing things for a number of years but I would say that now we somehow become much more appreciated in our work because that expertise and knowledge we had we had it 30 years ago as well but we were more seen as exotic institutions doing something online you know like a hobby mostly because in Europe there are still a number of countries and I think that traditional teaching and learning is something which is real and should stay as it is and that online is okay here it is here and it will go somehow but it has it's still here but now I think that in the time when this pandemic struck we realized that collaboration is much more important now we now appreciate much more this online collaboration because we cannot go anymore to conferences to meet with friends to talk about issues so now we much more appreciate collaboration and I think in this time it is very important and this is our role to gather people to enable this networking and sharing our expertise and practice also all our expertise we have to now in another way offer to people they are needed because somehow we are taking the role of I would say trainees of the educators training the trainees because in high education the training is not compulsory so it depending on the teachers mostly if they would like or not to do it and somehow now teachers are looking at us as associations to get this information how to do something as a focal point where they can find information I think that it is very good that such association as U.S.D.L.A. even as AUDLA, ICDE and EIDTO are existing because now it's their time now this is our moment this is our five minutes of glory because we have been waiting for this for 30 years that something happened and we needed COVID that things actually happened so let's take all the benefits all the advantages of this situation and help people to shape the education in the way they want it to be in the 21st century and it doesn't necessarily mean sitting in the classroom thank you thank you Sandra that was a great answer as well okay Mark over to you one I think segue from Sandra's last comment is our contribution might not just be to other educators but our contribution not just to other educators but policy makers leaders and policy makers here in Europe we're pleased to have been able to make submissions to quite a sizable fund a COVID-19 response fund for digital education that also links into the digital education action plan 2021 to 2027 I think it is which was only just released about a month ago so for me I think the independence at the professional body spring in sifting through what I put in the chat box there the fact that there are people now who claim expertise in online learning that I don't necessarily think I would be listening to and I'm sure those of us who have had a long history in the area do know that we've learned quite a lot from the research over the years but yet we are still seeing questions like well is online just as good as face to face can we go back to face to face because it's so much better these are questions that have been answered well and truly in the past and I think we have a role to play to nudge the policy makers and by implication that means the educational leaders in a direction more akin to what I was trying to capture in that if we take a far sight horizon beyond COVID-19 online has to be part of online distance open solutions have to be part of the new global higher education ecosystem. Thanks Mark I couldn't agree more with what you were saying. Would anybody else like to add anything to this question or what our colleagues have said? This is Reggie from USDLA I do and it's wonderful to be here with all the colleagues now that everyone is an expert I think Mark you noted that in the field I think we have to you know we found that we've had to try to balance that the K-12 school systems just threw everybody on Google and Zoom and said this is distance learning and sometimes you look I have a third grader and looking at the class and the kids you know and really kind of going face to face with the school systems and the higher ed here in the states to provide the evidence that there is a better way than just trying to cut and paste the traditional classroom into an online environment and keep kids in school from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and so we also see see that and also I heard you talk about the policy piece that's why we pushed out Rhonda mentioned the policy form I somewhat think this you know out of a boom of distance education and some misusing and throwing everything onto a video we may have some bad policy so we will have to be engaged on a global scale to push back with the evidence that we have built over many of our careers and so this is our moment and to really kind of push forward online education and hopefully rebalance the entire planet to do it right. Thanks Reggie. We have some questions coming in the Q&A too thank you I'll start to use those in a minute but I want to make the most of the answers you've given to the first question now perhaps to take the boxing gloves off and ask you a more intense question and I think I'm going to I'm going to ask you this question first Marcy I'm warning you okay then being nice now um okay I mean maybe it made sense I don't know 40 50 years ago to have individual associations because in our countries we're probably printing paper and putting render envelopes and posting them out but we can see that's not the case anymore we're a globalized society do you think it makes sense to have individual associations like this or should we all get together and be a global association Marcy would you like to start please I would love to there is power in individual associations and in global organizations what we have found you know I'm a futurist so I look out at education throughout the world and what the trends are etc and what I see is that every region of the world has their own we have our own commonality globally we all have our own individual personality our own individual needs it's like Sir John Daniel who's a member of EAD and US DLA and several other organizations he wants to he you know started the UK open university and and he was brought over to the United States to start see if he could do open universities across the US and what he found appalled him because you have to work with 50 states that's like working with 50 countries everyone having their own rules and needs and he said it was not anything like it was easy to do it in Europe because there's such a European Union and a collection of joint joint you know priorities and so the answer your question is that there's such individualism among countries and among nations among regions of the world that these individual organizations are priceless but at the same time the true power comes when we all collaborate and we get together and have one voice with all our experience and our individualism of understanding what is the global picture look like and then how does that impact each individual region of the world so that's why I think we're doing the right thing wonderful answer I quite agree with you I'm sure I should have expressed my opinion but I do anyway okay Lisa what do you think well I don't particularly agree with Marcy that the European Union doesn't have its own individualism because I think that their each of the states have their own context as well and each of them have their own educational goals and not everyone is on the same page so I think we're in a lot of ways like the United States in terms of having each country has its own context and I'm really glad you brought up context because context is really so important and within our organizations we put forward that specific context or we try to address that specific context I mean this is why this is European distance learning weakest is to really look at some of the issues that are affecting Europe and how we might best deal with those the other thing that I think is important for especially for the Eden organization is we have a very very strong tradition history that's based within research and so the work that we've done has traditionally been in the area of you know publishing research putting that focus on developing students and developing young researchers to really contribute to the field of online and distance learning and also to influence policy through our involvement in different European Union projects so I think like you said Marcy it's really really important that we bring our individual context but also then to look at how can we work at these global problems together and I think we're doing a good job of that but I think there's also opportunities for improvement Thanks Lisa I also completely agree I think there's some follow-up for Mark's previous comment that there's a lot of people out there saying a lot of things and you're saying oh there's a talk with these experts and you look at them and think they're doing a bell so if you want to know if somebody's worth listening to look at their publisher search I think that helps enormously. Okay Mark so can I come back to you please? It might be what the question is A question I've already forgotten that I'm just joking does it still make sense for us to be individual associations at this station again? Thank you often I say the question is the answer so what probably I segue to is you know when I started the week yesterday I put out a little tweak because I realised over the weekend that it was precisely to the day one year ago since we hosted here in Dublin the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning now whilst not everyone was able to be in the attendance we did have over 800 from 80 countries from I think all the professional bodies here today and so for me if you want to borrow from George Siemens and Co's connective theory, knowledge is in the network there's no one body that can hold all the knowledge can not only hold it or distill it but actually generate that new knowledge but at the same time as I think Lisa and Marcy were teasing out education is a contextual activity and that's why particularly in New Zealand and Australia I'm probably going to talk as a New Zealander here I wouldn't want to talk on behalf of my Australian cousins but New Zealand is a country that's fiercely independent and also very mindful of its heritage and culture in a globalised world and there are forces at work in higher education in particular that are utilizing new technologies to develop global marketplaces and online is part of that so I think our professional bodies have a role here to critique and challenge and again to educate maybe our policy makers about what might be happening because innovation in online education is not entirely neutral or benign so I think that's another aspect to this but I do know that the professional body of plans and oddler without the connections to Eden the US body and other networks that would feel incredibly isolated and so it's a very powerful community to be part of I quite agree it's global isn't it global global but local I think that's good okay would anybody else like to add anything here I've seen the jump rope first all the time right I see the balance here I think the beauty is in the network it's almost like a highway system we have and recognising the individuality of each of the countries in the culture in the context is important but also putting that highway in place here in the states one of our sponsors N.C.Sara has a very good model that they use to deal with state reciprocity across the state borders and how institutions work with each other to really recognise those degrees and institutions and credits to the benefits of the students and so it is a benefit for all of us to come together but also recognise the individual status Texas our chapter Marcy and Rhonda very strong chapter very individual but as a collective with USDLA work together so I think there are common threads that we all can work together and also have some fun in a post-pandemic world indeed thanks Reggie and you're always welcome to jump in whenever you really want to I'm aware of the time that this is the schedule endpoint but I think we're going to keep this going for another 15 minutes or so because we're just beginning to pick up some pace here and there's still lots of questions coming in so precisely that and Alfonso asked the question in the Q&A tool here which I think goes back to what happened at the beginning of the first lockdown I mean a lot of face to face education specifically at schools had to close they went into emergency remote learning mode I think they weren't necessarily supported as much institutionally as they could have been and I think this in a way leaked over on to us I remember when we were getting the online together webinars going we were being contacted by a lot of people in our situation and they were having a hard time of it and I think they did a great job really so the question here is what's your experience of this if you've got any particular anecdotes about that that you'd like to share with us okay so can we start with Sandra please thank you yes I can share stories from Croatia but I'm not certain that people would like to hear hear them because mostly high education institutions in Croatia would like to stand face to face teaching and learning we are quite traditional in that way but anyway for example for this academic year for the full semester the national agency for science education and technology said that the best way for teaching and learning should be in the classroom and that everyone should come back to the classroom and this is their message actually that this enables young people to become full citizens being in the classroom and now with the pandemic rising in Croatia the more and more schools are closing because there are COVID infected children and teachers now we have a situation that high education institutions said okay you have to be prepared for fully online so how? in one month can be changed the policies it's not possible but some high education institutions have been working for whole summer in preparation for the autumn regarding the teacher regarding the infrastructure regarding the policies and now they are doing quite well others I would say in a good position of trying to organize online teaching and learning and what Regi said just pushing classroom teaching into online environment is not online education and more and more students are saying that they don't like this experience and also we have to think that online distance education which has its significance its tradition are now somehow endangered but the bad way of using these terms and using it for teaching and learning so just pushing everyday classroom teaching in online environment is not online teaching and learning and this is why here association as ours can have important role in showing what are the good examples how things should be done and I think that is very good that we have this coalition this good collaboration with European Commission and that we can enhance their messages to the European Union countries regarding the online distance education Thank you Sandra Ronda So as Sandra was talking after the question I mean all of these examples went through my head and one was my son he is in graduate school at one of the universities here in Texas and he actually works at the RAC there on campus, the Recreation Center on campus and he then got exposed now he never got COVID but he got exposed so he had to be quarantined for two weeks and so he didn't get to go to the class he didn't get to go to work he had to stay in his apartment he lives alone and by the second week he was calling us every single day just to have someone to talk to so one of the things I think that is happening is more than just can we get education where we need it to go because I don't think we they have in many situations but how can we also support our students so part of at the university level is not just educating but supporting and I don't think we've even breached how to support our students very well when it comes to if the students need to be quarantined for two weeks and they're all alone in their apartment what are we doing are we reaching out to them is there a way to create I mean I know we're all zoomed out but is there a way to create some way for them to be talking to others and being part of something I know that many universities here and especially in Texas we love our football American football but so many of the teams have gotten quarantined and that shuts down a whole segment of the university because they're touching so many people right it's that contact tracing and so I think that that you know yes education can definitely be done online and it can be done just as well and we're facing that faculty not understanding how to do that very well with all of our support but I also think that we need to think about that support side too there is statistics out there right now at least in the US that the number of students trying to commit suicide in a year has already happened in the first two months of school and that is astonishing and so I think there's more beyond just can we get them in the classroom and making sure we're teaching them but are we also supporting them in a way that they can flourish and still learn because if they're not you know if they're not healthy mentally they're not going to be able to learn it just we just there's so many things we need to address when it comes to that when it comes to the pandemic beyond just just the education part of it I didn't mean to put a downer on that part you know that's a fine one didn't we I must admit as a teacher to a parent I've lived both sides of the question with three kids one in school and two in university it's been an interesting experience okay Mark I saw you nodding at a lot of what Rhonda was saying do you want to come in here well this is a very dear to heart conversation in that one of the motivations for the course that I showed right at the end the free MOOC on learning how to learn online it actually was funded by some special funding research money we had with the focus on learner emotions and we were involved in a survey a global survey of educators emotions because I think that's another lesson we've all gone through rollercoaster rides up and down but if we've been doing that think about the learners so it was quite a really powerful takeaway in the start of the MOOC because there's a research dimension to it but also because we wanted to begin where the learners are we asked them how are you feeling and if I had time I'd bring up the graph that shows or the figure that shows how they were feeling 95% said they were anxious they were feeling uncomfortable even people who had already been studying so not just first year students making a transition for school but experienced seasoned postgraduate learners in the community so that really showed us that the emotional side of learning the effective side of learning was something we need to take a lot more note of and as I touched on in this particular course we employed a group of students to be the co-facilitators and we also reached out through the Irish universities association to have a group of students help us in the design of the course and there was a degree of emptiness we designed quite deliberately for emptiness and oxymoron to think that an institution really knows the challenges that a learner faces or even our educators know so when we asked and reached for the learners to tell us what their problems are but also the solutions for their problems it just showed me how out of touch I personally was of many of my colleagues if you like and in a good way in that we were at least opening ourselves up to the fact if we're willing to reach out to our learners they actually have many good suggestions and ideas for that they can support themselves not that that is an excuse for us not to also be playing a role but actually some of the suggestions they came up with we would just never have considered ourselves so I think the power of the community and if we want to link that back into say the community of inquiry framework that many of us site and over now more than 20 years has been one of the defining theoretical frameworks I think it would be fair to say that emotion presence has not been something that's been particularly profiled to this time Thanks Mark I think you're right I think we've had another a question here spontaneously emerging in the discussion out of support and the importance for our students so I'd like you to move on with this so Marcy can I for your opinion on this Yes I was thinking about how important support was not only from an equity side of making sure they have everything they need and the social emotional side but also for all of us that teach online and the you know many many of us were thrust into working remotely and we're not used to doing that some people like those on this call that have taught for UMUC and many other institutions that have been doing it online not from an office and then sometimes from an office it wasn't as big an adjustment but when you look at that social socioeconomic that's a whole other story of making sure they have not have but that the social and emotional side of things for the educator we not just the learner but that what does it mean to work remotely how do we feel overcome our isolation what support do we have as educators among each other and so forth I think Eden's already done a webinar a little bit about this and USDLA's getting ready to have a one in December on it but I think that's another part of supporting the learner and supporting the educator not only from a how do I teach online and I love Mark that you guys already have a course that's designed for that and we have that accessibility course that USDLA or TXDLA has designed and some of those things are happening a lot of these webinars are addressing that I think we also need to focus on the well being of as educators as well as the students the better off we are the more we know how to deal with isolation and the other feelings and the better we are supporting those in understanding our students I couldn't agree more that's great okay Lisa please I don't have much to add to what my colleagues have already said I mean you really touched on the very important aspects specifically the well being and the pedagogy of care and not just taking care of our students but taking care of ourselves I guess if I were to say anything about responding to this pandemic is I see a real division happening where many teachers are moving toward policing the students to making sure that they're the ones that are doing the assignments so they sit through the lectures that they're there for the entire time period and then there's other instructors that take more of a I guess learner centered approach and they focus on learner agency and supporting the learners trusting them to be the people that are actually taking the class trusting them that they want to learn and really supporting the students in authentic assessment and that leads of course to the next webinar that's coming up that Tim talked about but it's really giving our students more agency giving them more opportunities to develop and to explore to take advantage of the opportunities that online offers and there are many opportunities it isn't a deficit form of education as many of my colleagues have you know have stated today I mean it's really a genuine authentic way of learning and there are many opportunities that are there so I think that we as organizations are here to really to tell everyone about these opportunities to expose them to the research and to provide any kinds of assistance that we can in helping people in really managing this pandemic absolutely Lisa thank you I'm Reggie I always seem to end up with you and I'm really sorry but can you share your views on this it's been an adventure I think what I've learned is that we have to foster folks being able to make mistakes and we've stumbled many many years across this entire body our knowledge base here and what we have done and we have a ton of expertise to really share to really help what I found is that some institutions at least in higher ed that had a premier program that pushed off the online folks and said no don't touch me we make doctors we crank out the best cookies now all of a sudden they're living in the distance education place and just cramming YouTube labs down the throat of students and so it's up to us and our associations to really kind of confront that but also have empathy for the teachers and reaching into the school systems and getting on a leadership and getting into the grassroots through our state chapters to really engage with the teachers and help them become comfortable and really know how to service the students and then also back to everyone here take care and Marcy's point take care of themselves you know I think you know some empathy on a global scale I think we need to learn and that's my two cents like 20 dollars in two cents it's a wonderful tone to finish the webinar well I'd like to thank all of our speakers today I think it's been a very constructive and interesting event I think we've all learned a lot and I'd also like to thank all of you for having attended and as a final comment on my part I'd like to encourage you to come on for our next webinar which is taking place at five o'clock exploring new avenues of online assessment with the speakers on the Power's and Erin S Black well done and it's moderated by somebody whose name is not really familiar with me so now I'm just joking with by Lisa Maria Bleschke so thank you very much everybody and be safe bye