 Felly, mae'n drion. Mae'n ddod o'r ddweud yng Nghwyl Llywodraeth neu ddweud yng Nghwyl Llywodraeth, ac mae'r drion yn gweithio ysgrifennu. Rwy'n ddweud ymweld ym Mhwyl Llywodraeth, mae'n ddweud i ddweud ym Mhwyl Llywodraeth, mae'n ddweud i ddweud. Yn gweithio, nes Ion o'r cyffredinol, mae'n cyflawni'n cyfeirio cyflawni eich cyflawni eich cyffredinol, oherwydd mae'r ddweud i'r gyffredinol, The two trendy words that we've been saying for the last couple of years, and so I'll try not to talk at you but being a PhD student means that so it might be very well. So, one thing we do very well in higher education, we cannot agree on the simple definitions of things so I'm going to tell you Y ydych yn rhan o'r llais a chybrin i'r thuniau i ddond i ddod peithio'r treidgau. Felly, y ddond i ddond i ddond i ddond i'r clywed o'r zeithio'r bwysig, y sgwrdd o'r newid i ddond i'r thuniau ei sgwrdd, mae'r ddond i'n ddond i'r teimlo ffioed i ddond i ddond i'r thuniau i ddond i ddond i'r hwn. Mae'n ddond i ddond i'r hwn, bobl yn ymdweud hynny, ond nid o'r ffordd. A dyna'r ffordd. Y Llywodraeth Cymru yn ymddi, yn ffawr, ac ymddi'r ffordd, sy'n dynnu'r ffordd. Yn y ddechynau ar y ffordd yw'r ymddi'r ffordd. Yn y ymddi, rydyn ni'n ddweud ymddi'r ffordd o'r ffordd, felly rydyn ni'n ymddi'r ffordd. I'm not going to go too much into details about the community of inquiry framework because anyone you Google can do a badge of the night, you're not going to waste your time on that. More importantly, this research study doesn't really use the entirety of the community inquiry framework, only use the one particular presence, which is the social presence because it's about being an online community. So, whilst the other two types of presence are important, they're not the focus of this particular study. Okay, so the social presence includes things like engagement with each other between the students, kind of building a safe environment for the students to be able to express themselves freely. Because at the end of the day, for me, a community is about encouraging students to develop their critical voice and collaboration as well, which is something that we do very well in design discipline, particularly, not specifically, but we do a lot of collaboration and we encourage that as well. So, and the intercultural aspect of it, because this is not just about student community, it is specifically about intercultural community. I've chosen to use the Hosted at cultural dimension. Hosted at is was a Dutch sociology, I think, I think maybe. Anyway, he came up with the, the two phrases, individualism and collectivism. And individualism, I, which is company fans of Western society. What do I want to do in my life? What is my life goal? How can you, as my teachers, as my peers, how can you help me to achieve my life goal? It's not about being selfish, it's just about being self-centered, it's very different. Okay. So it's common, it's quite common to find kids in school in the UK, for example, they're encouraged to speak up, which is quite common thing, but as someone who come from Hong Kong, who come from a collectivist culture. I was always very alien for me because in the collectivist culture, it's sort of raised the way. What do we need to do as a group of people? How can I not make mistakes, embarrass my family? How can I contribute to my society? So very often you've found Asian students, even at university, they don't really speak very much. But I use it very often. When I did my MFA at Colsmiths for three years, I barely spoke at work and I nearly failed on the basis that I didn't want to speak. And it wasn't because I was stupid, it wasn't because I didn't know what was going on or anything like that. It was just because speaking in front of people like this was always a daunting thing for me because of the cultural barrier. I find a lot of people and in my experience as someone who's been working in the picture for many, many years, I kind of see this happening, a lot of similarity with students. They are so he'll look like me, he don't really speak and always I understand why. And the more you force them, the more they are sort of not willing to speak, the pressure just make them be really embarrassed. So you're interested, have a read of some of his stuff is really, really fascinating. This is just a quick, just some random country like I pulled out of, you know, in there basically to kind of show you the individualism scores as you can see in China is probably at least South Korea is the lowest. It's only 18, and then obviously in the UK and the US as people who have big ops, as you can see, 89 and 91. So in the UK and US, Canada, so the Western countries, people encouraged to speak to kind of put themselves first. It's quite a big contrast if you look at just, you know, China versus the UK. It's four and a bit times over. So there's that. So I'm going to now going to quickly share some of the findings from my study. And I split it into two halves. First half is the opinion from the students. So I'm going to tell you the facts and then when we're talking about the balance from the staff. I'm going to turn it into a discussion because I don't want, I really don't want to talk to you before five minutes. So it's not in my nature. So it's like any, any research study is quite important to show the, it might not be of any interest to any of you here, but it's important for me to state the sample size. So you know that in this particular instance, it isn't a big study. It is a small scale study. So it's not a representation of the masses, but it is a representation of some small voices that hopefully we can all learn from. So some of the key findings from students specifically with the blended learning experience in the last two or three years are as follow. 43% of students are just under half the student felt that there was an awful or good experience with blended learning developing a sense of community that was down to sort of support from staff like the presentation before creating online communities in health. But 56% over half the students felt that remote learning has affected their peer engagement, because they felt it was important to understand to know the peer's background, particularly the cultural background. But somehow engaging with each other through a screen is something that's kind of affecting that. But they have also acknowledged that the teachers have helped, they have tried, but it's still something not really clicking. 39% only 39% can I say are comfortable, we're comfortable with intercultural interaction online. Despite the fact that they felt online collaboration should have helped increase their cultural awareness. Again, I think is to deal with. Remember one of the quotes I got from other students were like, there was no filter when people were talking online in the online teams chat or Zoom chat, people tend to be more kinder. I wouldn't want to use a braver but they're kind of less consideration would have gone into what they want to say they just basically just tie whatever comes with their mind. It can be quite upsetting for some people. So it kind of people don't want to feel comfortable with that. And then there's a couple of quotes, a mixed race student in the UK. Exactly what I said earlier, they felt the technology and behavioural barriers were not addressed, making the experience almost entirely negative. There were comments about the lack of classroom management. Now, if I were teaching this class, I've been talking for about five minutes, you would come in really quietly at the back and just slip into the back, you wouldn't need to wrap. But in the online classroom, people come and go and say, please, people some time, you know, I'll stuff in their faces with with Chris and both serials. I've done it myself, I turn my camera off and I do that. For some time people forget those things weren't really managed according to some of the students and this is just one example of one of quotes. This was why students said the technology and behaviour barriers were not addressed. And it's something that you don't really see in the physical classroom. So people are more relaxed and sometimes I mean I've seen people turning up to a webinar wearing a bathroom with a towel around their head. Is that okay? Well, I don't think it is, but then what can you do about it, right? Because, you know, it's the smell of respect, I think. Another quote is a student from Hong Kong in the US is more positive. He or she felt that they're more engaged with other people and the learning because they are less intimidated by the sort of confrontation. So it's early, the collectivist behaviour. It's very hard to speak in front of people like what I'm doing now. This gap has taken years to develop. So allowing them the opportunity to speak behind a screen, to literally hide behind a screen helps because they're not really talking to the people they're talking to an object. That's how they sort of see it. And with particularly with asynchronous sort of communication typing messages, you can with her as you can type, you can delete, you can delete upon when you're happy with your message. So it's far less immediate than it helps people from the kind of more collectivist culture or cultures. So I'm going to now move on to some of the key findings from hybrid learning now. It's just necessarily not the same as blended hybrid learning is what we're doing now. Purely synchronous, synchronous sessions that happens both people attending online and people attending in a classroom. 43% of the people felt that it was hard to engage with the classroom from other cultures when they're not online or on campus. Now I have to say, I think I personally found it hard to engage full stop because as you can see today, it's actually an example of how, you know, when we just had a break, it was very hard for the online colleagues to communicate with us in person because it doesn't really quite work. And if you throw the cultures into the mix, then it's even harder. So that was that. And then 56% of the people felt it's created two tiers system. The two tiers is that's online trip. And that's the in the classroom trip. That's a brick wall between us. Because you think if you cast your mind back to the last two years, even though students might have been given a choice to attend in person in a classroom and online, very often is because of COVID, because of family situation, because, you know, they are 2000 miles away, they can't physically come on campus. So, so even though they were given a choice, they weren't really given a choice, they can, they just have to do things online. So the two tier system was a problem for some of them. And only 39% of students fell that the children have continued with blended learning activities. And that's, as a learning knowledge, is to me that was not surprising at all. But it was also quite upsetting because we had a good time doing blended learning. We did a lot of things, putting loads of activities on VLE. We created loads of online spaces. We spent a lot of time designing a lot of really interesting asynchronous activities to kind of bridge the gap, as it were. But as soon as we say, guys, you can go on campus, have a big screen, talk to your students online if they can't attend. Those blended learning activities just seem to have disappeared overnight. Now, it's not a reflection of any of our institutions. This is just a founding from the studies. I did not ask the students at any particular institution. Those information were not disclosed because I suppose in a way I didn't want to know, you know. So that was that. And then there's a couple of groups. Sorry, one more. 72% of the students fell that it's so easy to ignore the classmate online when they can interact with each other. Just think about it. You don't have to tell me. Would you rather talk to someone sitting next to you? Or would you rather go on to a computer and talk to someone online? I know what I would choose as a human being. That's just our instinct. So I guess the question for us to kind of think about is what can we do to kind of, you know, sort of bridge the gap? I don't have an answer, but there we go. Just a couple of quotes and then we'll move on to discussion. An African student in the UK said that, we cannot change people, students and or shooters who ignore international students would do sort of either in person or online feeling excluded even before the pandemic was common. Now the matter is worse. When I was doing my data analysis and I saw this, I was really heartbroken because they were right. You know, institutional racism exists. And with the pandemic, it kind of made it worse in some honours in the world. I'm not saying again, you know, there's no reflection of any of that institution at all, but it exists because if you don't like a student of a particular demographic in a classroom, they keep waving their hand to you know, you can't ignore them because of your job. You just shut them online. Just ignore them for 10. Just pretend you don't see their messages. You can do so much more. You can do that in order if you want to. So, you know, I'm still going to move it back. It's another kind of interest of mine, result interest of mine. Mixtration in the UK of set. The majority of the interaction has been despite the staff rather than through the facilitation. So it kind of goes back to one of the findings early. Only 39% of the student of set blended learning activities have continued. As soon as the government's across the world have said, you can now go back into the office and you can now go back on campus. It's kind of feel like all the hard work that went into making things, making blended learning work. She was going, I don't know what doesn't matter. We'll just go back to how it was. Really, really good friend of mine, Dr. Alexandra Miha. She said to me that blended learning is like a life jacket that we only needed it when, you know, excuse my language and shit was hitting the fact. Now things are back to normal. That's normal as it can be. We don't need a life jacket anymore. We can just throw it away. No, we shouldn't. We shouldn't do that. But that is the reality of it. So I'm going to stop talking at you. I've turned these findings in the colleagues, the five colleagues I interviewed to talk about, to explore the experience with kind of facilitating supporting building intercultural communities for the students. I've turned the findings into some key questions. And I want us to have a discussion. If you don't want to talk, that's absolutely fine. There's a petla board there if you want to contribute there. It's entirely up to you. So I'm going to just lower all the questions up. So the first question, are we simply connecting students or building a community? Do we even know the difference between connecting a bunch of students who just happened to be doing the same course and putting it with each other? Or are we helping them to be a community? Do we know what they actually want? Do we understand what a community is? Do students, and I mean all the students, do every single one of them really care about being part of a community? On a fashion programme, for example, you can easily have up to 80 students per year. Does every single one of them want to get on with each other or do they just want to come here, get a degree, and go to something else? Are we enforcing the ideology of community building onto our students? And the last question is, obviously, assuming they want to be a part of a community. One of my colleagues who worked in the UK for many, many years, a technical manager to move to Canada, he said, have we even considered enough the technical barriers students face? Is there a word good to say, you know, we've got this blended learning activity, we've got hybrid, we've got all these things? Have we just stopped for a moment and thought about how many students who are living below the property line? How many students do you not have a computer? How many students do you not have stable internet access? Because with all the things we are doing, with those stable internet connection, what's left? Remember he said to me, he said to me, some of your students from India who, when COVID hit, they couldn't afford to go home. So they got stuck in Canada. And every day they had to try to travel up to 50 miles to an internet cafe so that they can carry on with their learning. So it was kind of like, you know, they can't go home to travel 50 miles every day to go somewhere to get stable internet so they can go online and listen to a tutor talking at them. But you know, I don't think we can solve the technical barriers problem because it's way bigger than us. Anyway, I'll stop talking. I just wanted to open up to the floor. So any thoughts on these questions? Someone tell me with online. Any kind of comments and quiet? We're referring to first presentation by Sunday digging down to the idea of learning community. I thought that was quite a relevant point rather than saying, oh, it's a community, you know, for the sake of it to be made, but it's a community that will support you in this particular activity, which is learning. And in that that makes sense to me in terms of students would be interested in that in a community for learning, rather than just a community, sort of broad sweep. Yeah. Anyone want to say anything? Or do I have to sort of, Kate. You said that was so interesting. I'm going to go read all your papers. After that was really interesting, especially the framework is within, but I noticed some similarities between your presentations. I don't know if it's just me and you can challenge me if I'm wrong, but picking out that actually synchronicity is is a big barrier to community these days. I think it will be continue to be a bigger barrier as we face things like energy crisis. For example, I have a lot of students in South Africa, most of my team in South Africa and then the highest level of load shedding at the moment, which is nine hours a day without electricity. They, they can't come together to the, it's got to be asynchronous and I think we continue to focus on real time as being the best form of teaching. I've seen fully asynchronous courses that have had really high student outcomes with students being really engaged and brilliant. I'd love us to put more effort into looking at what makes a really rich asynchronous activity, because that kind of supports an unknown future that we're all going into a pandemic, energy crisis, all that kind of thing. People need to learn, they might have what's happening in the world. That's just an observation that I've pulled through. I think asynchronous learning, you know, it doesn't really come natural for a lot of students because, you know, in school, we used to kind of, you know, attending and playing with your mates and listening to your teachers spending another class. But, but, you know, asynchronous learning for me personally, it works really well because I can, you know, I've got a full time job I study whenever I can. And as I said earlier, in terms of the cultural barrier, it really just means that I can, I can rehearse and reshape my messages and how I kind of want to phrase what I want to say before I say it rather than in an asynchronous discussion as I said, going back to my MFA experience. Every single week, every Friday morning, you sit around in a room, in a con, it's like one of those group therapies sort of, sort of setting literally around a con, you know, round it when they circle. And everybody takes 200%. It's been what it works for me. It works for some people who like to talk and show off their work. It doesn't work for everyone. And that's why that's a really good example I always use if I were given the opportunity to contribute to those really interesting discussions asynchronously. I think I would have done a lot better. I think my experience probably applied a lot of students, doesn't have to be a cultural thing, it could be an ability, new one diversity, or just simple preference, you know, yeah. Anyway, I'm with you so I'm trying to say, yeah. And the high has put something online saying collaboration is more complex and acquisition. How much longer does community building take online? What skills does it require from students and from academics? I think that kind of crosses over with the with the comment about the move to asynchronousity. It's more, it's more resource intensive than asynchronous, you know, with synchronous learning or teaching. You've been taught the same class a couple of times, you just rock up and you talk. It's not easy, I'm not saying easy, but it's again, it comes more naturally. I remember one of the academics I worked with in my previous job, as she said to me, she was really interested about the technology. She was really, you know, embracing it, but she was really concerned about not having to kind of control the classroom. She didn't know what to do. Like, she can't. It was a graphic design lecturer, she couldn't walk around a studio and just talk to a student and make sure they were all right. So there's a lot of, I suppose, changing of the mindset because they're kind of walking around a studio and using the airport. You can do it virtually. It just takes more time and understand academics and, you know, work us in this room, under time pressure, we, you know, we all work and all that. But I think it's a, I don't know. It can be done, but it will, it will, you know, I was, I was talking to Don Pace from 60 while back in it was saying, you know, since the analogy he used was that before the pandemic very few people knew how to swim and everybody learned how to swim. Why do we stop swimming now? We can learn how to swim. We can carry on, you know, we survive. We're not drowned yet. So why can't we sort of just carry on? I don't know. I don't know. Anyway. A couple of minutes left. This is meant to be a discussion. It's not meant to be me talking. I guess we can share the, we can share this slide. It's not a problem. Yeah, if anybody have any other thoughts, feel free to contribute to the online discussion asynchronously. I think that there were a few comments on that before anyway. But yeah.