 Gentlemen, I suggest we start. It's one o'clock Central European time, well, five minutes late. I think that most of us now managed to get into this webinar. So, welcome to this webinar. This is the last one in a series of a whole week webinars in the European Business Learning Week organized by Eden. My name is Wim van Beethoven. I work at the University of Leuven. My domain is Learning Technologies. I'm an engineer and I'm supervising a couple of PhD students for the moment. I used to be Vice President Research in Eden and so it's my pleasure to moderate this webinar for you. Christina, can we have the next slide please? The topic of this webinar is how can the Eden Network support PhD students and research? After successful PhD symposium at the latest, the last, sorry, Eden Research Workshop in Barcelona, I think that this is a very nice continuation of the discussion we have started there with PhD students and supervisors. And I'm happy that we could have a very strong panel today that will give their thoughts and ideas about this very important topic for the Eden Network. We have Antonio Texera, who is from the University of Bertha from Portugal. He is the former president of Eden and of course an Eden senior fellow. We have Albert Sangra, who is from the University of Bertha, Catalonia, where the PhD symposium took place a couple of weeks ago. He is also supervisor of many PhD students and as he mentioned in the chat box, he is currently the director of the UNESCO chair in education and technology for social change at his university. We do have Margarita Teresa Viciene from Vutotas Magnus University in Lithuania. Also she has some PhD students. Her topic is adult learning and technology enhanced learning, so she can bring in that perspective as well. We have Deborah Arnold, who is also very familiar to many of us as an Eden senior fellow and very much involved in the Eden organization. But she has been specially invited for this session as a PhD student herself at the Open University in Catalonia. And last but not least, we also have Nilsa Costa, who is trying to connect. I think she is connected. She is from the University of Aveiro and she also has in supervising PhD students in Portugal and in Portuguese speaking countries all over the world, especially in Brazil and Mozambique, Angola and others. I think so we have a very strong panel for today and we will tackle five questions. First, we would like to start with addressing the needs and aspirations of PhD students themselves. Then we will try to see how we could help and support them in achieving their goals in general. And then we will focus a bit more on how our community as an Eden network, we could empower them while they are executing their research. And then we would also reflect on how the Eden network could be used as a platform to test new ideas or to share the findings that these PhD students have with their research. And then as last question, we would also try to think about how the network can benefit from the work that researchers are doing. And especially as this is an open and distance learning week, we will reflect on how that could fit in the theme of this week as well. And by the end, we will have our president, Irina, explaining a little bit how research is very much on the agenda of the Eden network in the coming years. So I will not speak too much. We will introduce each question by one of the panel members. And then the other panel members will have some time to react on that introduction and give their viewpoints. I invite all the participants to write their questions in the chat box so that they can see the questions coming in. Depending on how many questions we will have, I will interrupt at a certain moment and give some time for questions. Or we have questions at the end of the session that will depend a little bit on the interactivity that's going on online. All in all, we will try to finish in time and we have this scheduled until 2.30. So bear with me that we will make it a very interesting session. Thanks and welcome to all the participants. I see now we have 12 participants from different countries. I'm very glad to see that we have PhD students involved. So I think that, well, for these PhD students, this is your webinar. Take your chance to also raise your voice and ask questions or give suggestions how we as a network could become better and more supportive for you as important researchers. Okay, I think we can start then with the first question and that is thinking about the needs of PhD students and thinking about what are these PhD students thinking of a network as Eden or what do they expect or what are their ambitions and aspirations in general. And as I said, I'm very happy that one of the panelists is a PhD student herself and so I would give the floor to Deborah to introduce this topic and as I said, I will then go on with the other panelists for reactions first. How can we address these considerations of PhD students? It got me thinking that, well, there are very different types of PhD students who are going to have very different needs. And so we can be following on from master's degrees and be quite young or like myself we could be coming into doing doctoral studies in later life after having had a certain amount of professional experience. I think there are challenges relating to that. PhDs can be part-time, full-time, residential. We're talking about distance learning PhDs as well. Gender issues, I think, come into accounts in defining the needs, socioeconomic background and there are many other aspects. So I think it's not a case of one-size-fits-all as we say in education very frequently. And thinking more about this, there are also different types of PhDs but we won't go into that here. I think we're looking at the different types of students. So some of the thoughts that I'm going to be sharing with you here come from personal experience and reflect my own reflection on that. Also from my participation in two PhD symposia now, including the recent one in Barcelona organized by Eden as Vim said a couple of weeks ago. So conversations with peers that I've had during those events. And I also went to look at the literature on needs and aspirations of PhD students because we're researchers. And because there's a whole subfield out there dealing with this with identity, experience, engagement, disengagement and so on. So I think we could perhaps share some links relating to the literature on that afterwards. Okay, so I thought the focus here would be looking at issues beyond what a doctoral student addresses or should address with their supervisor because we're looking at what a wider scholarly community like Eden can provide by way of support. So if I can move on now. I looked at different types of needs as I said from my own experience and from the conversations and from the literature. So in this part while I'm talking I'm just going to focus on the needs. I've suggested some solutions here but I'll be inviting the other panelists to come in and see whether these are feasible, reasonable from the Eden point of view. I think what a lot of us feel is that we have a need to gain confidence as a researcher from the content side, from the methodology side, but also just becoming part of the community. And I think that there is a lot to be offered by a community such as Eden. On the academic side there's also the need to refine our theoretical knowledge and methodology over and above as I said the in-depth work that we're doing with our supervisors. And of course we already have this very, very strong academic need to get published and I'd like us to discuss later ways that Eden can support us PhD students in getting published. If we move on we also have material needs as PhD students especially well anybody needs to have some kind of income while they're studying. I don't know if this is a question for Eden but it is definitely an issue. It's a long period of our lives where we're devoting all or some of our time to studying and so we need to meet those material needs. There's also the very, very concrete aspect of attending conferences. If we want to get out there confronting our research with the rest of the community and hearing about the state of the art and what's going on and making those networks then we have to be able to attend conferences. And here we can raise the issue of virtual conferences which are very, very good webinars like this for reaching out. But from experience we know that these do have limitations in that the whole social aspect of making connections and becoming part of the community is not necessarily addressed to the full by virtual conferences. And another thing that I've been confronted with myself is having access to specialist tools, survey instruments, data analysis software and a lot of the stuff here has a cost. Not always supported by the host institutions, the institutions where we are enrolled as students. And so here I will make a concrete suggestion for Eden which I think is also within the philosophy of Eden. And I thought why doesn't Eden support, further support the development and dissemination of robust open source solutions in terms of research tools. That's just an idea that I'll put on the table for us to perhaps discuss later. So we've looked at academic needs, we've looked at material needs and I thought that there were also, and this is also covered a lot in the literature that I mentioned earlier, past what I call pastoral needs. The whole motivation, self motivation aspects, there's a lot published about depression among PhD students but I think putting here maintaining motivation, overcoming loneliness. And some of us have talked about imposter syndrome. I know it happens at any stage in one's career. But I think that's something that PhD students are very, very conscious of, that do we have our place in the community? Are we solid enough as researchers to join this community? And I think a lot of us need a lot of reassurance here and some coaching and so on. So I haven't dealt with the more serious aspects as I said here because I don't think that is something that we would actually ask Eden to provide. But the supportive community I think is a very, very important issue. And the last point here is on the possible aspirations because the question was on needs and aspirations. And here I was very, very pragmatic. I think for PhD students the main aspiration is getting a job. It can be in academia or it could be outside academia. We continue to need to get published of course and looking at the big picture. How do we deal with our aspiration to change the world? Okay, so I'll close here and let the other panelists address the other questions which I hope will serve in some way to answer some of these. Thank you very much. Thank you, Deborah. Very interesting and inspiring ideas. I for myself summarized them as a need for networking a lot. And so I'm pretty sure that the other panelists can elaborate on that as well. So if you allow me, Albert, can I ask you because you're a Deborah supervisor, maybe you could give your first comments on Deborah's thoughts. I'm pleased to collaborate in this Eden event. Do you agree or do you have additional things to say? Well, I agree and I must say that it's just in case that in this webinar both Deborah and myself are together. In the sense that she's a very, very, very good PhD student because she's a very good teacher too. So I could not be in any kind of contradiction with what she has said because I agree mainly on all the elements and the clear approach and picture. She has had, she has done. I probably only would distinguish or consider a fact that is, if we look at, so I fully agree on the aspirations. And the only thing is that regarding the solutions, I think that there are two kinds of big blocks of solutions. Those to which we will need some funding, some money and those that we probably will not need it. So the thing is that sometimes those solutions that are related to some particular funding are usually more difficult to be developed and we know that, we know that. And probably our association does not have a lot of money to allocate to this end. But at the same time, I think this is a very good idea in the sense that maybe further developments of the association could go in the way of finding partnerships or sponsorships that could facilitate or that could help the needs that the PhD students have regarding this need of funding for some particular activities. The other part, the one that, sorry? Right, right. So no, I think that the ones that a PhD student can have. We will certainly come back to the solutions later on in the webinar. So if you would allow me to ask if you could just focus on the needs and aspirations. Well, thank you very much Vim and let me also say hello to everyone now in a more formal way. And thank you for the invitation to be part of this. Okay, thank you very much. Antonio, would you like to add something to this list of needs and aspirations? You think that PhD students have? So I can more or less follow Deborah's remarks and what has already pointed out. I would say probably, well, in relation to what she has already stated that an organization as Eden, because of its large outreach and its large history as well, represents a legacy of the field. And in that sense, it is so broad that it can support the students and the supervisors and the community in that sense. And the institutions themselves, the institutions that award the PhDs can assist in the different stages of the process. So starting from identifying what is the best university to enroll in, for instance, what is the best program to conduct my research. Also to select the topic. And additionally, in the phases of development of the research, to find the people to conduct surveys, also to exchange ideas, to test these ideas. I'll come back to that later on. And also the part of the dissemination, as Deborah has already pointed out. And finally, also how these can be transformed. These can be uploaded, in a sense, to the knowledge cycle and can be the output of the PhD research can be useful for the community, can be used by the practitioners. And can in that sense, influence the improvement of the practices themselves. So in all of these elements of the knowledge cycle and all of these moments of the process, an organization as Eden can contribute. How just to be as brief as possible, because it provides a large network of contacts, a large network of actors and players and practitioners and academics. And also, because of that, a large repository of ideas, also theory of practice that can be used in the research process itself. On the other hand, just to finish up, there is this element that Deborah pointed out, which is the cultural element in a sense. So to feel as being part of a community and of a legacy and of a certain cultural environment. And the element of scalability that an organization as Eden can give to the students themselves and the supervisors is very important. Also to overcome this feeling of loneliness that can be sometimes a little bit difficult to tackle with. Thank you. My experience is different from previous speakers because, you know, our institution is... Okay, thank you, Antonio. I will quickly go to Margarita if she has something to add or if she simply agrees with what has been said so far. I have participated several times in the conference and research workshops, you know, and also my doctoral students. So I found that really it's a great opportunity to be there because of the partnership, because of ideas and several things that the needs, the aspirations that Deborah already mentioned. Yes, it could be solved in different ways. You know, not only the proposed ways, maybe, you know, in some other possibilities. But when we use partnership, when we see how many potential of research is coming to this conferences and research workshop, it's really the power for young researchers. And I agree absolutely that it gives confidence for the students and not only for the students, but also for the supervisors. Okay. Okay, thank you, Margarita. I think I just have now to look at the time. We have had Deborah introducing this question and then three people from the panel discussing this. Dilsa is our second presenter. So Dilsa, the second question we would like to address in this webinar is how can we help and support our PhD students in achieving their goals. So how can we help the PhD students with their needs so that they feel helped with. Dilsa, you prepared a separate PowerPoint set and I see that it's coming. So welcome also to this webinar and can you introduce this question please for us. Thank you very much, Lim. Yes, I'd like to say good morning to all to be my colleagues and thank you. Dilsa, we do not hear you. It's a pleasure for me to be here. It's my first time in this network and I am very pleased. I would like also to apologize for delay of sending my PowerPoint, but I am in a conference and it has not been very. Now we hear you. Just before starting a very quick comment, it was very interesting to listen to the very well structured from my point of view. Intervention of Deborah, the pacification she made about the needs and the aspirations. And I really think that if I had more time, I would structure my answers to the question in terms of the needs and the aspirations of Deborah. So maybe we could do it in the future. Although I think that my reflection covers some of the needs they were referred to. So can you pass to the second slide? Oh yes. I have three starting points. Also my talk, sorry, comes from my experience, long experience in supervising students. I have supervised more than 30 students and also from the literature. So I have three starting points, which have been referred international, which is PhD students is often taken for granted. For example, any scientific content university teacher can supervise PhD students. I have two very recent references. I think that I believe that there are some differences in the field of PhD. I believe that in some fields the supervisors are more well informed or whatever I can say about that PhD education is very challenging. And it should not be taken for granted. The other starting point is that intellectual competencies of PhD students are not enough to a successful journey. Because this was believed in the 16th and 70s. But obviously this does not help us very much if we say that the main reason is the PhD student. Another starting point, which is a complement of the previous one, is that a complex interplay of individual, interpersonal and contextual factors may influence a successful PhD journey. So I have identified also based on literature and my own experience three kind of factors which may influence a successful PhD. First one is at a personal and individual level. For example, initial preparation of a PhD student is on her commitment during the PhD process. Another one is an institutional level. For example, there are some institutions like my university who have a PhD school which is in charge of helping PhD students and supervisors and so on. So there is a factor depending on the institution. There is a top list. There is the supervision role as a very important factor for the success of a PhD student. And I believe the preparation of a supervisor can cope with some of the needs that were referred to. Last one, I just made a table referring some examples of ways to support PhD students taking on board factors, the factors I have referred to before. For example, at personal and individual level, maybe there are some universities or some PhD programs. Maybe they need to review PhD enrollment requirements. This has happened with us in Aveiro, with some students mainly coming from other countries. And I think we need to be more to review the requirements. This is one. Another one is that we have been identifying in literature that there are some needs, formation needs in the PhD students when they enter and even when they are developing their PhD students. One example is academic writing. There are some PhD programs which have curricular components like in my university and also encounters with Tato's university. And we give a course in the first year to PhD students about academic writing. So this is probably a way to overcome some of the needs, some of the weak aspects of the PhD students. Institutional support and I have this experience at my university. It could be, for example, the definition and negotiation of what is expected from a PhD student, a kind of learning agreement. And also the duties and the rights of a PhD student. I think this is also very important. This is an example. We have an agreement letter, for example, at my university, which will be signed at beginning by the PhD student and supervisor concerning these duties and rights. The other factor, which is supervision support, and I believe, and I have been working on this as well, that supervisors need to develop content for this task. It's not enough to be a researcher to be a good supervisor. And for example, nowadays it is quite common that PhD students need to be very good in their research topic, but they also need to develop transversal content. And I believe that some supervisors don't have sufficient information on that. So I think we can organize and there are many examples of this in many universities workshops for to develop supervision competencies. Another one, which maybe is problematic in some institutional cultures, but we have it in Aveiro, and I think it works a little bit, is that at the end of each year of the PhD journal, there is an evaluation of the supervision process. The PhD student has to write a report. The supervisor has to write a report, and then there is a commission which analyzes the report of both actors. And if there is a need to think about ways to overturn some problems, we do it. And when I say we, I say the PhD school of the university. And obviously the evaluation should not be only at the end, but when we have solutions which may improve the process of a PhD, I think we should monitor it along the years. And that's all. Thank you very much. My contribution. Okay. Oh, thank you, Nilsa. Yeah, that was a very interesting contribution. And it gives us an interesting view on how we could support students in the PhD students. And I very much like the three levels that you indicated. Personal, individual, over-supervisional support to the institutional support. I wonder what our other panelists are thinking about your ideas that we can keep your slide here, I think. Maybe Antonio, you can start and give your first thoughts on what Nilsa just said. It would be helpful in all of them. In fact, for instance, regarding the first ones, Eden has already thought about in the past and I believe that it's developing plans for providing workshops on academic writing as well, academic writing specifically designed for the submission of papers to international conferences, for instance, which has a specific technique, or to submit papers to international journals as well. So these kind of things could be also helpful when provided in collaboration with institutions that are providing the PhDs themselves, or at least can be complementary as well. Regarding the institutional support, well, there are things that, for instance, could be shared amongst institutions, new emerging topics as ethical ones, for instance, ethical issues related to both support and the research itself, that could be also shared and some support from the part of Eden could be provided as well. Apart from it, there is also something that I'll address later on in my part, which is the capability of Eden to support institutions by providing a possibility to compare different techniques that are being used, different practices, and also different solutions that are developed in curricular wise, for instance. Regarding supervision support, NUSA is suggesting the idea of having some kind of training for supervisors, and this is something that could also be shared at an international level, mainly in the European level, but also broader than that, and we have here in our webinar students, for instance, participating, which are not coming from European universities and European countries, which is a very good indicator of the outreach of the organization as well. So I would think that this would also be a quite interesting field for Eden to work with, to provide support to supervisors sharing and creating, for instance, within the fellow's network or other activities that Eden could develop on this aspect as well. No, no, no, it's okay. No, I mean, in order not to spend a lot of time as I did when you asked the first question. Thank you, Antonio. Albert, do you have some thoughts that you'd like to share with the one that Deborah presented at the beginning? Probably this perspective is much more macro or meso, the one that Deborah is much more micro in the sense that he is much more involved in their very personal particular problems that a PhD student can have. So the only thing I would add here is this idea of probably we should or we could. We do that in some extent at Eden, but looking for more partnerships or sponsorships to foster and funding PhD students' needs in this sense, I think it would be very welcome from the students. And on the other hand, considering what in at least in our country, the PhD schools the universities are doing is to support also the supervisors in the sense that giving some tools to the supervisors in order to make the job easier. Absolutely. Thank you very much, Nino. So it's very, very complementary to, as Albert said, the micro personal needs approach that I took. Okay. Thank you, Albert. And the final panelist, Deborah, would you like to comment on this? Would you feel helped with the suggestions that Nilsa made here on this slide? It was so useful. And one of the things we did there was actually academic writing groups where we were exchanging pieces of writing amongst ourselves without the instructor's support. And that's one of the things that I think Eden might support is helping groups of students who are focusing on similar topics or who are at similar levels in their research to participate in an academic writing group. I know it sounds like extra work for us, but really the benefits are well worth it when you want to explain your research clearly and get it in a publicable format. I think some of the things that Nilsa mentioned, and I think Albert also touched on this, as did Antonio, I think we need to distinguish, and here I'm putting my Eden hat on rather than my PhD student hat, between the things that the institutions should be doing and how Eden can support the institutions. And as Albert said, the doctoral schools are already or should already be providing support for supervisors, but maybe within Eden there's a scope for workshops for the professional development of researchers who are taking on supervision activities. So yes, all of these are very, very useful. And thank you. Okay, thank you, Deborah. I think we can now move to the next question, which is in a way a bit similar. Cristina, can I just ask you to upload the original PowerPoint set, please? Actually, we are now into the third question. I made a mistake here. We should now be at the question number three, which is how can we as a community talk? Yeah, but it's okay, it's okay. Yeah, that's the question. How can we as a community empower our PhD students in their research process? One of the levels that Nilsa was addressing is the larger institutional context, but we could also enlarge that context to a network like Eden, I think. So Margarita prepared a couple of slides to introduce that topic, and I will move back to the start of her presentation. Margarita, can you introduce us to this part, please? The networks are much more broader, and Eden is already doing something, not something a lot. It's a platform where research and good practice already meets. And I like when participating in conferences and research workshops, that it's very much multidisciplinary approach. That here comes doctoral students, researchers, scholars and practitioners from different disciplines, from psychology, informatics, education, sociology. This is very great experience, and that they are coming from different countries, with different experiences also from all over the world. So it gives the broad field for our research in this area, in the distance and learning area. But what can we do more as a community? Of course, when I also like Professor Albert told to separate finances from the ideas, and when thinking that reality, every organization has quite limited resources, and with resources that already exist, it's easy to do something or to think on this idea. I think it would be worth to have some pool of summaries of doctoral dissertation thesis in the field, so that the new doctoral students, future doctoral students could find them. Also, it would be very useful to have links of ongoing research. Sometimes we don't know what's going in the field and try to do something very similar, but it would be useful. And also there is going a lot of research, a lot of new dissertation, so maybe mapping thematic areas in the field also would be very useful for researchers. So, empower researchers in the research process. Also, not only doctoral students now, I think, but these supervisors, because supervisors also like PhD students, they need support. They need support, and this support could be from not only discussions with experts from the world, from the peer students, but also from the co-supervisors. In our country, for example, we are very open to have co-supervision for doctoral students, and this is very valuable because of different point of view on these things. And in this technology, digital age, it's very easy to communicate using technologies for doctoral students and the co-supervisor and also supervisor. I think we can help our students and ourselves through collaboration of different doctoral schools because sometimes this cooperation, what happens in research workshops, it really raises some innovations and cooperation of all doctoral schools would be very important. I would stress methodological innovations in research because they are coming almost every year new innovations. So, this methodological innovation, they could be somehow stressed or somehow provided into the scope of even network. And also, it's very important, it looks for me, very important new competencies who I needed for future students. I didn't see now my slides, but I hope you can see. I didn't, okay, okay. So, what is the new competencies for future research and research for future researchers? And I think it's important for Eden for maybe future Eden activities and already one year ago European Commission declared the new document about the providing researchers with skills and competencies they need to practice open science. So, this open science represents an approach to research that is collaborative, transparent and accessible. So, a wide range of activities comes under the umbrella of open science including open access publishing that usually doctoral students say stress. Open data, open network, open peer review and open education. A driver for open science is improvement and transparency and validity of research as well as public ownership of science particularly that which is publicly funded. So, and this document from European Commission gives us this perspective where to go, recommendations, how to introduce open science. So, when we're talking about Eden network, I think it would be very good space to promote this idea. To promote awareness about open science. So, it means policy initiatives, institutional and funded agency guidelines as well as broader value of open science practices at the personal, professional and societal level. And the next one, training of researchers, training of doctoral students, training regarding open access publishing, open data and data management, professional research conduct and broader citizen science skills. This could be, you know, new lines to help researchers. I do not say only doctoral students, but every from us need this such training. So, it's my idea. Okay, thank you Margarita. That's a very interesting contribution. Both on, well, first of all starting at the support level in general and then giving that particular focus on open science and everything that is related to that. So, thank you for that. Can I ask Nilsa if you would like to give a first reaction on what Margarita just said? Yes. Thank you Margarita. It was from my point of view a very interesting contribution. Myself as an outsider of as Eden. I'm sorry, but it's my first time here. I can see a very, very big potential of Aiden to deal with the topic of this web seminar. I just want to reinforce by giving three examples of the initiatives that I think Eden maybe has already done, but when is the consents the micro level and I have the opportunity to thank Albert about this macro measuring micro and talking about for instance pastoral needs. Since when I did my PhD in 80s in the United Kingdom and we had meetings sharing only PhD mainly at the beginning where we were sharing our problems. And at that time it was very important for me when I was defining my research problem to realize that the PhD students in the last year also had this problem and could overcome it. So maybe Eden can organize the kind of these forums for sharing PhD problems and to overcome this loneliness concerning the academic needs. I don't know if you do it. I'm sorry, but it could also be important for example to select some research topics, PhD research topics and ask PhD students of different universities and countries to present their work. And I think this can help also overcome loneliness and also to get feedback from a greater community. The other one is obviously Eden can organize seminars about this methodology, innovations and so on. So I really believe in Eden. Contribution to this team. Thank you. Okay, thank you Nilsa and thank you for your belief in our network. So happy to hear that. I think we have to move on with the next question. Time is flying unfortunately so I don't have time to get all the other panelists to react on what Margarita said. But in the next intervention you can certainly come back to some of her thoughts. I apologize for the time. The next question we have, well third question we already tackled. We are moving to the fourth question. How can we offer a platform within the Eden network to test new ideas or to share findings of the students? I think this is more about how the concrete action, how to involve the network Eden as a platform for our research PhD students. And the one who prepared that subject is Antonio. Antonio, can you start sharing your ideas on this question please? Well, thank you, thank you Vim. And I would like to start by apologizing for not sharing with you a PowerPoint presentation. But the topic was a little bit difficult to put in one of the organizing areas into a PowerPoint presentation. I think it's best based on what we have already discussed in the previous questions to elaborate from that. I would divide here the answer to this question into four different perspectives. So from the perspective of the PhD student and their needs and aspirations as Deborah started to present. From the perspective of the supervisor, which has already been addressed both by Nielsen and by Margarita as well. But also I would add two additional perspectives, the perspective of the institutions starting by the Eden institutional membership. So by the institutional members of the Eden network, but also by institutions at large. And additionally, what I would call the academic and professional community. In Eden, apart from institutional members, there are also individual members over 1000. So there is a very large community represented within the network that represents actually the actual practitioners and the actual researchers. And so starting from these, well, four different perspectives. Well, Deborah has already mentioned that from the student perspective, there are a number of elements which are in a way needed. Some elements related to support in terms of dissemination. Some elements related to support in terms of funding of material support. And also elements related to what we could call a kind of a cultural environment. So the integration within the community itself. When I commented on Deborah's presentation, I already mentioned that from my point of view, here what the students can benefit from the Eden activities. Is this holistic approach that the association can bring to the whole research process. So starting from before the research, it really happens. So starting from the point in which a student selects the university, selects a program. And tries to find the best, the best institution approach to organize its own research ambitions. On the other hand, when it starts its development. So on this need for sharing ideas with other fellow students or international students in this case, but also national from institutions. Also the need to test if their own ideas are innovative, if they're really falling the emergent topics to have a grasp of what is the development of the field. These can be done in the midst of the Eden activities, being the conferences, being the research workshops, being additional activity. Well, this many activities at Eden presents also the possibility to publish to publish on your order to publish in the conferences itself. But apart from it, there is also these emerging activity, which is this network related to the support of young researchers to the support of PhD students themselves. So Eden has a way of addressing different needs within the research process. One additional need is also how it can, the research can have an impact. And on that sense, for instance, when conducting surveys, it's important to find people that would like to be able to respond to the service. This is a very material need that sometimes we have to address within the supervision or the conducting of a PhD research. Well, having the access of such a large network as the NEP or the fellows with the network, so within the Eden community, this can be very helpful. Also, the possibility to conduct, which is something that we haven't been addressing so far, which is the possibility for a student to conduct a research or an experiment that can be also replicated in a different environment than the one that is controlled by the student. So to have, for instance, two or three experiments being held simultaneously in different countries because the Eden network would allow for the student to test it in such a way. Or to share with other students developing similar research in different countries, the findings and results. Well, Margarita has already brought this issue of the open science movement. We have to reorganize, as I see it, reorganize the entire understanding of the research process and also, in this case, more particularly of the production of the PhD research in this broader framework of open science. Well, in the case of Open University of Portugal, we just developed a new PhD program, which exactly focused on this, on the combination of open education, open and network education with open science, the open science methodology. So in this sense, the possibility to share and to conduct not just open research, so internationally shared research, but also to be able to test the ideas to share the data and the findings. This is really important these days. Another important aspect for the students is the possibility that has already been addressed for getting access to funding, getting access to some kind of financial support. Of course, it even matter can not necessarily provide it on its own, but well, organize the response for that, of course, to work with in collaboration with additional institutions, with other associations, with foundations that could help achieve this goal. From the supervisor's point of view, have already addressed it in the previous question. How can we actually use the network as a platform for testing of new ideas and sharing findings? This can be done from the point of view of the research that is being conducted by the student itself, but also in terms of the supervisor. How can they improve their supervision techniques? How can the end methodology? How can they share their own experiences? Learn from each other to compare internationally at the international level, to compare their own practices and to improve them. And also to conduct something that we haven't been addressed so far, which is international mobility. This is really crucial at this stage as well. So the open framework that we're being discussing from the point of view of the student should also be applied from a supervisor's point of view. Getting now, because time is short. Yeah, I think we have to do maybe one final thought, Antonio, because we have to move on, I think. Just very briefly on the institutional level and on the academic professional community. Regarding the institutional level, it's very important for institutions also to have the possibility to share their own experiences in terms of how their own models for the organizational PhDs are working. And this is very important also as a platform to disseminate its own provision and to be able to recruit students from different countries and from different regions as well. Well, I would say more than this, but anyway, just to be brief. As for the community itself, how can the community also use even as a platform, in this case for the testing of the ideas and findings, because it's important and this is a critical element that the research and specifically the research conducted in the framework of the PhD programs should be transferred. And so that the transfer of knowledge and innovation is assured. And so it is very important that this cycle is completed and the research actually helps is helpful to the transmission of the practices. And so in order to, for this research to reach its target to be able to transform practices to improve them, it's important to have associations or organizations that can put together the community of academics and professionals in this case the community practitioners with the findings of research and even can of course do it in different ways. Could be about, could be of course in terms of dissemination, but more than that also of sharing findings and data from the research itself. Well, this is just in a kind of a brief way. My understanding of the response to this question, which in just to finish up, we have to also to address it from a multiple perspective point of view. Thank you. Thank you very much, Antonio. There were a lot of ideas in your intervention, not only how you didn't could offer a platform to students, but also to supervisors and to the research community in general. That was very rewarding. Thank you very much. I think we have time for one intervention. And I would like to go to Margarita and just ask if she has some comments on what Antonio just said. Margarita. Yes, you know, thank you for giving me the floor, but and I agree with Antonio completely, you know, just to see that Deborah would like to something, something so better give her a word. I thought that Deborah wanted to intervene with. Ah, yeah. Okay. Right after Antonio's intervention. Okay. Sorry. Deborah, please. Okay. Thank you. And thank you, Antonio and Margarita for your suggestions. I'll be very brief here. But the, the, the thing that came to mind was hearing about open science. And I think open science and PhD research is a whole topic in itself. And in fact, at a previous PhD symposium, we did a workshop on open science and it was an eye opener. We were invited to ask ourselves questions on how open we were about our research, the issues relating to opening up our data when we're PhD students and we want to be in our niche. We shared horror stories about PhD students having had their topic and their data stolen and published by other people. So I think it's definitely something to put on the table and discuss. And what was interesting there was that our positions as doctoral students evolved throughout the process of the workshop and we gradually opened up and we identified very clearly where we could be more open and where we still needed to be quite protective. And the other issue was about collaborative research, again, linked to the open research. And again, I think this is a challenge because the PhD is a very, very individual exercise. So it could help the whole loneliness aspect. And I know some doctoral students are doing PhDs as part of a wider project where they are collaborating with other more established researchers. And that helps the publication side. So I'd just like to put that on the table, maybe for a specific topic of conversation that we could have. And thank you. Thank you, Deborah. I think it's a very important question or a very important topic you raised. And as you already said that in itself it's a research topic. So maybe while time is flying, unfortunately, so maybe we could address this issue in the next occasion if you don't mind. But it's a point that's very well taken and I think that you raised a very important question here. But I am afraid that we now have to go to the very last question of this webinar, which is a bit reversing the viewpoint. And rather than we as Eden offering a network for our PhD students to support them, we are thinking what can we learn from our PhD students? And how can we benefit from the findings of their work? How can we grow as a network and call it an organizational competence, let's say? And I think that Albert will be the right person to address that question. First, Albert. Thank you, Jim. Well, I would like to highlight that we moved from very first level initial needs at the very beginning to very complex issues in the last intervention. So I think it's very clear that we are coping with a very big or big range of needs and developments. So we probably would need to identify which is the stage in which we are currently in order to be really aware about the fact what we can do at this moment and what can be done later after several activities and policies on that. Well, regarding the question about how can our network, Eden, benefit from their work, I think that the first thing to say is that good news is that we are talking about them. So they do exist for us. And I mean that in several associations regarding education, regarding any kind of topic, usually they don't look at the young people who are researching in their particular fields. And they consider those kind of people that they will come later when they will become researchers, adult researchers and so on. One of the reasons is that probably some of the researchers are already adults. But if we consider not the adultness on the age of people, but on the experience on the research and how they have become researchers, I think that they are young people in the field of research. So this is something that should make us reflect on the fact that they are potential people that can improve our work. So what I think is that I have tried to summarize in five words what I think that we can benefit from them. One is knowing, knowing about what they are doing, which is the research they are doing, what are the problems that they are facing. And then we can identify this kind of research all over Europe and other parts of the world. So knowing. And the second one related to this first one is mapping. So to have a great idea on knowing what they are doing, we can map what are the trends in research related to our topics, related to online and distance education, how they are evolving, where they are situated, in which institutions who are the supervisors, so how we are working on research. The third one is suggesting. When we know and we map the research that has been doing, we can suggest new ideas, we can suggest new problems to be faced, we can suggest even collaborate with them, we can provide our support if it's needed. The fourth word is acting. So what can we do? Could we co-supervise some research projects? Could we participate in such a kind of awareness as today in which we can provide some experience at least to the research students, the PhD students and so on. And then the fifth word is collaborating, not only with the research, with the young researchers, the PhD students, but also with those researchers that are supervisors, the research groups that are working. So at the end, and summarizing these five words, knowing, mapping, suggesting, acting, collaborating, I think that the summary is advancing. And all this can make even advanced, advanced in research especially, especially showing how quality and leading age research can be done online at a distance too. When talking about the needs of the students, the PhD students, we said or Deborah mentioned to try to overcome loneliness and so on, for instance. When we are talking about creating platforms for supporting this, we are talking about giving the opportunity to the students to not to be alone at a distance. This is something that we always say when talking about distance education or online education, but we can also contribute to this from this point of view to research, in particular to PhD research. So showing the others, showing the community how quality and leading age research can be done online or at a distance. So at the end, a benefit that we can have from this, from the work of the PhD students is that we need people working intensively in research projects. They will provide prestige and reputation to even and also capacity to have influence on the future of the society. So, for instance, and related when we talked about open science, I think that we can even create a kind of open database with data from the PhD students for further research. So they can provide new data to which we can work over that in order to advance on the research. The overall summary is that the PhD students are our future. If Eden would like to think on the future and overcome people that are currently in the association as me, as all of us here, we should think on the PhD students that will be our future. So maybe thinking on this, we can define much better a policy for research in Eden that will include, because I think that this would include a policy for PhD students too. It doesn't mean that Eden is not doing a lot of things for that, it is. But to think on a policy for research could probably make us able to integrate the different kind of activities we are doing and to lead them or align them to a final goal. And I think that this will be also a contribution of the PhD students' work because they will give us the opportunity to do this. I think that in order not to be longer, these are the ideas that I would like to share with all of you. Thank you very much, Albert. And in a way, you're already sort of starting to summarize this webinar for all of us. So I'm very glad that we were waiting for your contribution to the end of this webinar. But as we started with Deborah as PhD student and then I asked her you to give comments as the first one. Now I would like to ask the opposite way around Deborah to react on what you just said. Deborah, do you have some remarks on what Albert said? Okay, well how can I disagree with my supervisor? I knew that this was a difficult one. No, I very much like the way that it's been framed in the five key words of knowing, mapping, suggesting, acting and collaborating. And I do appreciate the way of looking at it from both ways. I think that the future agenda is the most important one. And I think that is very much linked to mapping the trends and supporting PhD students at all stages of the journey from finding a topic, finding a supervisor, finding knowing what the future agenda is. I would also like to make the link with the Eden Fellows Council, which I know has just started. And this might be something for the Fellows Council to look at as well because we are looking at future scenarios there. But I will leave the floor for winding up because I think that there's a final conclusion to be made to the webinar. Okay, the next slide in my presentation was lessons learned. And originally we had the idea that every panelist could contribute and at least share one lesson learned. But the time is flying and we would like to give the floor to Irene in a minute to present what Eden is actually doing or wants to do what is on the research agenda for the organization as, let's say, a conclusion of this workshop. But if I may, I would like to just say something here as the moderator of this webinar. But we were preparing the webinar and defining the topic. We phrased it as a question and it was how can the Eden Network support PhD students and research. And it was striking to see for me that all the presenters, all the panelists, in a way they answered the question but in a very, very research-minded way. And so I'm very pleased and I would like to thank all the panelists that the question which was on the table has sparked some interesting even research-minded ways of thinking and reflecting on it. So thank you for that. And having said this, I would give now the floor to Irene, our president, to tell us a little bit about Eden's research portfolio. Thank you very much, William. Thanks all to all of you. Actually, your reflections, your ideas are absolutely appreciated. The context when we thought to have such events in European Distance Learning Week as concluding and summarizing but one of the key focused events, virtual events dedicated for research and how Eden can support PhD researchers, PhD schools and supervisors. This idea came from preparation in Eden Governance, the research portfolio. And Joseph Maria Duarte, Eden Vice President for Research from the Open University of Catalonia, he unfortunately is not able to join us today but we walk in the team very closely and I will present very briefly this slide prepared by himself in three items. So this is actually the steps that have been taken before Barcelona Research Workshop already and all your contributions, reflections will be taken now to feedback these initial ideas and to update them with new actions and planning. So three main areas, Eden members, current members and future members research support, analysis of research trends and the thought item communities of practices. So just as it was shared during today's webinar, research trends. Sorry, I think we skipped the first slide. So Eden members research ongoing... Marina, we do not hear you anymore? ...in research must be supported in Eden platform. So research events in... Yes, we do hear you again. Can you hear me now? It's okay. Okay, so PhD symposium for students. See the first line which is actually already implemented action in Barcelona, but we also think we should have sessions in annual conferences. We started them with the topic on how to develop good research papers and I think this will be feedback into the needs also indicated today in the chat that one of the challenges is to publish good research papers and Eden community has experts and researchers who are able to support them. Eden has a platform for doctoral students. We think about collaborating with Eden members on the levels of PhD schools, PhD programs. We think to organize short online courses, short courses during events and also webinars. And I also was very happy to see the note today here in the chat that such webinars are very useful for PhD students in terms of discussing how to support them, but I think we should go also for automatic webinars. Eden has a journal, your order, but also works with other research journals and organizes sessions with them. So PhD students will be invited to these sessions. And the global network and collaboration with other doctoral schools and consortia definitely is on the agenda. Research trend analysis is acknowledged as one of the most important activities in research areas and doctoral schools networks today. So we think Eden really should be responsible for identifying the most relevant e-learning research trends and internal qualitative research to define these trends already has been initiated by the Council of Eden Fellows as today we heard from Deborah, Albert and Antonio as well. And we think that PhD symposia together with Eden events and meetings with PhD students might help them and support them in topics definition and research areas definition. We also think that a lot of initiatives also identified among your remarks today. For example, collaboration of PhD students in methodological workshops in empirical research in, let's say, academic writing sessions might be organized under the idea of communities of practices. We think today network has a new concept, the concept of 21st century when we call it networking, it is more open, it is more flexible. But we would like to choose the name for this activity developing and supporting communities of practices within Eden and promoting new communities of practices according to research trends and topics. And we think to open the debates and disseminate the results of research of open debates in the network. So these are three very, very brief strategic actions that are suggested by Joseph and they will be implemented and promoted but as I told you, they will be updated also with your reflections. And this is a very nice picture from Barcelona. These actions have been kicked off very successfully. I'm sorry not to see all these people today in the webinar but I know why because they are all very busy and I think at least part of them is here. And my last slide is that after every event we think we must come with some kind of summary statement like we did after Barcelona but I'm sure you have received them. So this is all from me and actually it's... Okay, thank you, Irina. I think that our time is up now. This was a very interesting way I think of sharing ideas on the topic how Eden and PhD students and research can help each other. It was a pleasure to be the moderator of this session. Thank you very much for giving me this opportunity. I was very pleased with all the panelists introducing a certain aspect perspective on the topic on the table. Thank you, Antonio. Thank you, Albert. Thank you, Margarita. Thank you, Debra. Thank you, Nilsa. And thank you, Irina, of course, for your final words. Because this is on the agenda of the Eden Network I'm pretty sure that we will continue along these lines and with all the ideas raised today. I think there is still a lot of work ahead of us but I'm sure that we will make it. And as Albert said, our PhD students are our future. So we are very much looking forward to all the PhDs that were participating in this seminar to see their work, to see how they are growing as researchers and to see them in our network of Eden. Thank you very much. Have a nice Friday afternoon and a good weekend to all of you. Thank you for the moderation, Deem. My pleasure. See all of you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye, everyone. And thank you, Deem, as well. Bye-bye. Thank you, everyone. It's been a pleasure.