 So now, I'm going to get a tiny bit more comfortable and sit down on one of the comfy chairs over there so that we can have a slightly more conversational session focusing on teaching for transitions, which is, as I said, the first enhancement theme that many of you have been working so hard on shedding further light on and exploring, and it's an issue of huge concern to all of us. So I'm going to move over, and very soon I'm going to call up our speaker. I feel a bit like Ryan Tiberty or something, but we'll get going on it. So one of the big challenges for any learner in life is moving and changing from one educational context to the next. I think the minister has mentioned that we all remember the times when we had to make big changes through our own learning lives, the first day in primary schools, the move into secondary school is often a really huge step for people. And for us in higher education, the move in and through higher education, we know they are points at which students and learners can feel fragile and overwhelmed and can have to very quickly have to learn a whole range of skills that they may not feel at all confident about. It's heartening to see that this discourse on transitions led by many across the sector and articulated by people like Philip Nolan who's been leading transitions, transformation as well, that there's a renewed focus on underpinning values of education. I'm really particularly heartened to see that the rhetoric is not utilitarian. It's not about forcing round pegs into square holes. It's not about rushing people through a system and ticking all the boxes around their progress. It's much more about engaging in the underpinning values of education, things like the cultivation of the intellect, the development of the whole person, the ambition for every student that we should have that they live rich and fulfilling lives, and the focus on generating in each learner a strong sense of autonomy and agency. And I find it really encouraging that that rhetoric is also underpinned by real belief and it's not just people spouting ideas that sound good. There's something really nice about all of the transitions work that has captured those values and those principles. There are so many important things that we need to consider when we pave the way and create the supports and spot the opportunities to make transitions in and through higher education work as well as they can do. And now to help us to take stock and explore some of the things that we've learned from our focus on transitions over the last two years, it gives me great pleasure to welcome to the stage one of the leading members of our national forum board, Dr. Joseph Ryan. As well as a board member and chair of the Subcommittee on Finance, Dr. Ryan is registrar at the Athalon Institute of Technology and a key leader and champion of a range of national projects and strategies focused on teaching and learning enhancement. And Joe, you're very welcome to the stage. We'll get you comfortable here now on the second comfy chair. Thank you, exactly. So let's begin. And again, I just thought that we thought it would be very useful for you all to hear some of the high level insights. There have been lots of different research projects. Many of you have written those reports and I can see some of you in the room and there's a lot of activity through things like the National Seminar Series highlighting our collective knowledge around teaching for transitions. And so really this session is about capturing some of those insights drawing together, putting the jigsaw puzzle together, as you saw visually early on around one of these key themes. But I guess in the area of teaching for transitions in particular, it's not as if the forum was starting from scratch. There has been a lot of work, particularly over the last decade, Joe, that's looked at teaching for transitions. So one of the things I think was very useful for us in terms of the research projects or that there were reminders and fresh emphasis and echoes of some of the work that's gone before. So we did already know a lot about teaching for transitions. Joe, perhaps you talk a little bit more about that knowledge. Sure. Thanks, Sarah. And good morning, everybody. And thanks for the very warm welcome. I've never been at a conference where I'm more comfortable, I must say. It's splendid that the counterpoint to that, of course, is the established link by Monty Python between the comfy chair and the Spanish Inquisition. As these questions are being fired at me here. You pointed out yourself in the opening remarks, I think we've learned a great deal over the last while. And also we have within higher education across our whole sector, we have very committed experts who've been grappling with transition and with the difficulty of transition. And one of the findings that come from all of that experience is that transition is exactly as you said, Sarah, it's difficult. Students find it difficult. And students find it difficult in very many ways because students are different. The disciplines are different. The contexts are different. So one of the things we realize is that it's context dependent. And because of that, the solutions are not easy. The solutions, too, are particularly difficult. We have, over the last few years, a more coordinated approach, it seems to me, in collecting and analyzing data. The progression reports, the annual from the HEA, certainly contribute. And particularly the study for progression in higher education. I might remember the 2010 paper and the conference that followed. I think that was an important moment in this whole debate. And equally, the ISI gives us some insight into this, although while the ISI is now being recalibrated, the questions are being reduced, et cetera, there might be a conversation around how better we collect some information around the transition piece. So we are now starting to build, and it'll be a longitudinal piece, we're starting to build an evidence base for this. And I think what's important about today is while we move to a new theme for the National Forum, it's really important that we don't lose sight of transitions, that we continue to leverage the lessons that we've learned out of this. Yeah, I mean, and I think also that balance between an evidence base and not relying on anecdote to understand what are the real challenges, while at the same time, relying on that very important moment-to-moment instinct and intuition that really good teachers have when they're spotting the kind of difficulties that students might be encountering in real time. So I think that's really important. And it's really interesting to hear you talk about the non-completion report because that was a real seminal moment, knowing what the kind of skills that students, if students have achieved well in certain areas at second level, that's going to be a really good predictor for their journey through higher education as well as some of the challenges. Tell us a little bit more, Joe, about the role of the disciplines because I know that's something that came out very strongly in our work. I think a second broad observation is the importance of the roles, the disciplines. There's no doubt that in fashioning a transition system, there are generic approaches that are applied by institutions that we've all, all of us have been grappling with that. But increasingly we're aware of the specific and very dedicated role of the disciplines. I'm conscious when a student comes in to a new institution, is there allegiance to the institution or is it to their discipline? Where do they find, what flag do they follow? And certainly some of the best evidences we've had around tailored supports at the disciplined level and I think we have to recognize that. Yeah and that also the one guaranteed place that the students are going to be having interaction in higher education is through the program that they're learning and so the values of their teachers on that program seems to be particularly important as echoed by your observation. So I think another one of the things, one of the paradoxes that we identified was that there are challenges about transitions that are almost perennial, that you know that there are certain things that students are going to have difficulty with and yet also we're operating in this very shifting terrain and one of the areas that is particularly important for us to pay attention to is the area of teaching and learning in a world that has become increasingly digital and we've all encountered some of the hazards as well as some of the opportunities around this digital world where students might be on Facebook when you're trying to get them to look at your face or some of the messages that you have to send or how their digital reputation for example can be very compromised at times when they're really in a very formative stage of their lives. So there are some of the things that we've been exploring but one of the things that has really been highlighted in the transitions work is how helpful technology and digital resources can be in assisting and supporting the transitions. Perhaps Joe you talk a little bit about that. I think it would be difficult Sarah to overstate the importance of digital literacy. It was interesting to listen to the minister the number of times it was woven into the minister's speech. It's interesting to reflect on the fact that the department itself when it talks about literacy it includes as part of its strategy it includes digital literacy. It was interesting to look at the PISA report in 2009 in the study. It found that Irish students in respect of digital literacy they far surpassed the corresponding figure in respect of print. We're clearly having students coming into us who are already within a digital culture who have themselves a digital literacy. And that I think poses a task for us as educators that our response then must be a response that manages to accommodate that rather than to decide that there's a different digital literacy that we wish to impose upon people. So it makes great demands it seems to me of us. The minister referenced the All A Board Project the National Forums Project and the underground map she talked about outside. And I was very interested in her point about continuity and you can see the money that's been given to this nationally in the drive. On our board we have Lord David Putnam and David probes us and teases us all the time to be far more ambitious and he challenges Ireland to be far more ambitious in this particular space. He was quoted in the Irish Times in October this year and if I may he said technology becomes valuable when the people using it are well trained, well equipped, confident and imaginative. Technology is not especially valuable if it's in the hands of people who don't know what to do with it, who don't necessarily believe in it and who haven't actually bothered to ask the children in their class what it means in their life. And then as educators sometimes we think that the medium sometimes can change the message. We've got to be careful about the context, it seems to me, for the way we use it, the way we engage with the digital world. So technology needs to excite learners and teachers to support them, not to alienate them and we need our challenges to manage to embrace that. I think that's so interesting and I think David Putnam's perspectives on the board and more generally have been very useful to help us think through that. I always think that the discourse on technology can tend particularly in the media to be rather polarized. It's either the answer to all our problems or it's on the other hand an Orwellian nightmare come true and of course it's neither of those things because as long as we put the teachers and the learners at the center of everything and I suppose that's my next question to you Joe is it's not just about technology for its own sake, it's got to be in the hands of people who care about students who are focused on learning, who put students and learning at the center of everything that they do so perhaps you could talk a little bit more about the human aspect of transitions and how important that is. The next of the high level insights that you'll see here has the word Sarah connected attached to it and it's an interesting juxtaposition coming out of the digital piece we've just been talking about. Connected has those overtones of technology, et cetera. If you go back to D.H. Lauren's connection, things we're talking about literary things, has a very, very different overtone. Connection here it seems to me has a very clear sense of belonging. One of the initiatives from the National Forum last year was to support Liz Thomas coming across and Liz's report you might remember from December 2013 which was What Works? It was a Hefke funded or partly funded report and it was about student transition and one of the findings that she discussed with us when she came across was at the heart of successful retention and success is a strong sense of belonging in H.E. for all students and one of the findings then was that students best or work best I should say in environments where they feel cared about. So it's essentially about authentic and attentive support. One of my colleagues on the forum had a lovely phrase for this. Transformative teaching at key transition points pays attention to those old fashioned, ever important issues of care, time and help. And I can't anticipate what Joseph O'Connor will say next but I'm sure something will be about the personal. It will go back to what the minister was referencing and again when we think back on the great influencers of our lives I think there was always something of the connection about this. And again one of our own forum insights and I'm quoting again notwithstanding the strong cognitive and academic strengths that higher education teachers bring to their teaching roles the caring role of teachers matters greatly to students. So I suppose in summation it's about not just an intellectual connection but also in some way an emotional connection as well. Yeah that's so powerful and it's something that we've heard again and again particularly from the students at the heroes campaign last year that care, that creativity that knowing that someone is watching out for you. I suppose that raises another issue that all of us have encountered and that is the scarce resources not least the resource of time and that really the kind of busyness that people are involved in and the kinds of how our recent context has squeezed out those moments those softer moments outside class or where your radar is able to pick up on certain things and be able to spot someone when they're falling as we say. And so perhaps the ingenious clever use of resources kind of the right resource at the right time in the right amount, in the right way is something that we need to spend a bit of time thinking about. Whenever you talk to academics something we all talk to one another all the time. The one thing that we realize all the time is that pressure of time. It seems to get more and more pressured. And when we look down at the next two findings on the question of institutional supports what informs both of them is this pressure it seems to me of time. And in fact it informs quite a number of the points we had. When we think at the highest level of how we support students we can divide it into pastoral and academic at particularly one level. I've never been personally quite sure where the border between those two lies. It seems to me that they flow seamlessly one to the other. If we consider our orientation processes that we've all been recalibrating, rethinking the way we orient students and all of us I'm sure all of us have thought sometimes that we're telling students too much at the beginning. Can we reduce what we tell them? Can we feed it in a different way? Can we expose it in a different way? One of the maxims I came across very early in management and not just in the higher education sector is the question that information is only important when it's relevant to the listener. I might know this is really important someday but I'm also reminded of the poor air hostesses on the plane and they're desperately looking for your attention. And perhaps the one time we would give them attention God forbid if the plane started to head in a downward direction. So things are only relevant when they're relevant it seems to me. Small supports at a critical time can be hugely meaningful it seems to me. The challenge for us is that we can calibrate can we calibrate our systems to be sufficiently sensitive to those key signals from students and there are people in the room who can tell individual stories about things like that and how individual students I think myself of individual students who are in some sense rescued at a time because of a sensitive intervention. Yeah that being able to spot that moment and so many times the stories of students some of which you'll see in your packs and in one project in particular tells the story of a critical moment where somebody did something very important either just a word of encouragement or a piece of advice or putting them in the direction of a support that they really needed that seems to make a huge difference but we do need to have the capacity to spot those moments and to have the insight to react to them. You know that's very interesting. One of the very big and recurring themes in the transitions data has been the very short amount of time that students have to adjust from the moment they get their offer to the moment they land in their new educational context and I'd love you Joe to talk to us a bit more about that perhaps also invoking some of the international panel's perspectives on this. I think for all of us this is key. You mentioned earlier on the work on the broader transitions piece that has led to the changes and the leaving certain you mentioned the work led by Philip Nolan. One of the areas is how much time can we give students for adjustment to higher education and I think I still think there is more of a discussion to be had around that particular point. One of my colleagues made a reflection which is really apposite I think and that is that we actually give more time to reflect and prepare and think about our two week annual holiday than we do for students going into higher education. I'm very conscious that as we sit here today there are students, first year students sitting examinations in certain colleges within our country. Four months ago those students didn't know what college they would be in. They didn't know if they would achieve the course that they'd hoped to achieve. Those of us who, admissions officers and registrars and various others who go down to the CAO hadn't traveled yet to the CAO and yet those students today are sitting examinations. We benefit hugely from having a panel of international advisors that you mentioned Sarah and one of them, the comment was really very striking. When he looked at the system that we employ in Ireland he said it was bonkers and it was just the power of that single word that for me crystallized something I've been feeling for a long time. If you think about it, within your life the transition, and this is only one transition but the transition into higher education is one of the greatest gear changes of your life. And we have established a system that rushes people into that. If you think of all of the movement through the CAO, possible changes of mind and you can certainly argue that people have opportunities to change mind. But this is at a time when students are facing in the highest stake examination in their whole lives and these, many of them are very young people. And it's probably easy for us to say this but it seems to me that this particular point demands of us something more than expressions of disquiet and if we have time later on we might just trace back on this. I think we need more time for adjustment. Yeah, and it's been a recurring theme. It's also one of those structural realities that we all sort of live with. And yet it seems that all of the other efforts to assist transitions are undermined by that particular fact that it's certainly something that's worth having more of a conversation about now that we've been focusing on this enhancement theme. We might well try to have some creative conversations about how we might address that structural reality even just to begin the conversation would be useful. One of the other things, Joe, that I think has been very striking in terms of the conversations we've had about transitions and in terms of some of the insights is the danger in our eagerness to support students is the danger of spoon feeding or even disempowering that over-helping, that kind of excessive intervention that might actually prevent them from facing some of the challenges that are an inevitable part of the learning journey. It'd be interesting to hear some of your reflections on that too. Yeah, I think as academics, we always worry about being reductive, about dumbing things down. I don't think this is about making something easier. Transition, going back to the first point, transition is difficult. We have to acknowledge it's difficult. But we have to make that difficult journey possible. We have to enable to support, to be there. We have to assure students. Others have traveled this journey and with support they can travel this particular journey. I mean, the challenge for us is to make the path more navigable. And it might actually benefit from some structural change as well as all of the other pieces that we've been talking about, Sarah. My sense is that this is as much about reassurance and it's not about making a path easier. Yeah. And I think that's another one of those paradoxes that we all grapple with, not just in transitions, but throughout the whole teaching and learning realm. I mean, one of the things we have to be very careful about is that we're thinking about our transition's targets about the issue of retention, for example. It's never appropriate for us to have a target of 100% retention because some people simply discover. And maybe that's an inevitable part of the journey that this program or this context is not working for them at this time in this particular way. So not everyone can make the transition and possibly not everyone should. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. I don't think transitions is for everybody and that's the truth of it. And that gives us another challenge. What's our responsibility to those students then? And that goes back to connectivity, which is something the minister was mentioning with other areas of education. I had concerns when we had that national access strategy, you might remember, with the 72% of the cohort going to higher education. That never made sense to me. Just from a national point of view. And the demands upon the individual students at the very edge of that and upon the institutions, it just seemed to me to be too great. I don't think transitions is for everyone. We have to help those for, excuse me, for whom it is for if you follow my logic. But equally, we have to look at building bridges for those who might be better served elsewhere. Yeah, that's been very powerful finding from many of the discussions and research pieces that have been carried out over the last two years. Let's talk a little bit now, but I know we're reaching the end of the session, but about pedagogies, are there particular teaching and learning strategies, pedagogical strategies that work at times of transitions or that need to be applied at times of transitions? One of the overall findings that came across really strongly is that great teaching is teaching for transitions. When you come down to the specific, we're conscious of obviously the role of the disciplines, but also the general role. And what emerged was things like formative feedback, hugely valuable, peer support. And I know many colleagues here are working assiduously on peer support. Incorporation of experiential learning became a really strong theme. Developing assessment literacy and understanding. And the minister made a point, which I think was really interesting, that where might one start that? Could we build a bridge somewhat earlier so you don't hit a completely new culture in respect of that when you move that gear that I talked about earlier on? One of the big challenges for individual students is that sense of feeling isolated in large classes. So addressing large class anonymity with a scaffolding of peer support, which we mentioned earlier on, and also smaller group identities, how can we establish those? And then going back to the digital piece, using technology to connect and collaborate within larger groups. These are some of the findings that did emerge. So we have, I think, I'm counting nine high level insights and perhaps I could just capture a few of those very briefly and I do want to leave a little bit of time for questions and answers as well. So far, we know a lot about transitions already and we shouldn't leave behind the lessons of the past and we need to use the data that's available to us and that growing database that you talked about, Joe. The disciplines matter. So while there are supports that are generally good for all students and they need to be in place, there are issues to do with learner transitions that apply in different ways to different programs and disciplines. So we need to engage the disciplines and their expertise and their intuition and their insight and their evidence about their particular challenges and I think that's come across very strongly. Digital skills matter, but also that being connected and cared about matters very much too in order to make the transition more flexible and actually, or more effective rather, and actually a sense of disconnection is one of the major things that causes students not to be able to make that transition well and to be unhappy and to not feel like this is supporting them in their journey and so those are things that we must pay attention to. It's not just about putting supports in place, it's also about being clever about the right supports at the right time in the right amounts because resources are scarce and because we need to think cleverly about them. Time is a major factor, both how time is used and how much time is available, particularly that time issue in terms of getting your college place and then arriving fresh-faced and hopeful in this brand new context, feeling rather overwhelmed. Good transitions are not easy transitions. Making things easier should not or at least should not always be our goal as educators. Not everyone can make the transition, not everyone should. Sometimes the match simply isn't right and we should have the flexibility to accommodate that and perhaps more work about helping people to explore their options once they've decided to withdraw from a particular program of study. Good principles of pedagogy, Joe, you've reminded us, are the same principles that aid effective transition. In fact, it seems that our data shows that excellent pedagogy has a disproportionate effect at those, a positive effect at those early stages. So perhaps you can reveal what the 10th observation is in terms of all of this reflection and all of this bringing together of our knowledge. Well, this is brought together by the team and it's an interesting analogy this one did and it is simply that you can't build a bridge from one side of the bank only. Really what we're trying to do is build, I think probably sturdier, more connected bridges. We're very conscious of this, what came through was that link back into other areas. The whole idea of transitions it seems to me is about some type of movement, about some sort of energy, whether it's moving from undergraduate to postgraduate, from the world of academia into the world of enterprise and are indeed coming in into higher education. But higher education working on its side of the bank is not sufficient. There needs to be something on the other side that links into this and there needs to be some continuity that makes that. And I think there's a real challenge. There's some very good examples around the sector of linking to secondary to second level, linking to further education. But that's a conversation it seems to me that has a long way to go yet. And that's one of the reasons why I don't think transitions has finished now. There's a lot that we can move on from there. I think that's very powerful. I think the motif of building a better bridge is probably a really nice one to bring us through some of the other topics and areas we're going to be discussing in more detail today. Perhaps Joe, we could ask you to end this session before we open out to questions on the idea of some of the things that you've talked about, how those things might help us to reimagine transitions to engage more creatively and perhaps even more courageously in an examination of some of the interesting things we might or we could do to really make a difference in terms of the effective transitions of learners in this country. Reimagining is a lovely word. And it probably goes to the heart of what we might do next with transitions. I remember the debate at the forum when we first started to contemplate the first theme as I'm sure colleagues here will have done. And I thought this was an inspired first theme. It's been a really valuable theme. And I'm very conscious when we look at our colleagues in Scotland, when they've gone through enhancement themes and when the enhancement theme has completed, how they have managed to keep that alive, how they've managed to leverage on from that the benefits. And I think for the forum and for all of those who are here interested in supportive of the forum's work and supportive advances in learning and teaching, that's a challenge for all of us. The challenge you give me is the one about the foresight piece is that, you know, what one might consider for the future out of all we've learned. Transitions, we've talked about the piece that's been done at the national structural level. We've talked about our own sport. I'm also conscious of the transition year within second level school. This is not a novel point. But I think we might think again about where that might best be positioned. To have that valuable space for people to mature, to volunteer, to explore. I think it's worth having a conversation on whether it's positioned in the ideal place at the moment. And if it isn't positioned, where might it be positioned? We've talked a bit about the difference between the gap between the CAO and that adjustment into college. Part of the larger transitions piece that went on, you might remember, was the argument came across about 1,400 offerings in the CAO. How can a student get their head around this? And shouldn't we have far more by way of common first year, common engineering, give someone time to find their feet? That all made, that all made for really good discussion. But you talk about being courageous. Could we go another step beyond that? Could we give space to students for a period of time when they could involve themselves in things like study skills, academic writing, honing further, digital skills, that actual question of adjustment. And I can hear all of the counter arguments. I can hear professional bodies be mentioned and I can hear people talking about two year programs and you don't have the space to allow more time, et cetera. But going back to that analogy about bridges, sometimes if you're going to build a bridge you might be better off to get the foundations right, to get the struts right, before you start hastening through this. And we still have within this country, we still have the four year construct in the majority of cases for our degrees. We still have that. It seems to me that these points are that they can be responded to. We have another one of our international experts, Kati Takayama, who was then in Brown University. We had an informal discussion over dinner one night and she was talking about the way students enter Brown. Every student, regardless of discipline, be they medics or engineers or humanitarians, they're all given the one book. They all read the one book and that book could be a medical book, it could be a book of poetry, it could be a book, a novel, it changes year on year. And the initial experience of the University of the Entruses is through the lens of that single book. It's only one method, but some thought had gone into that. Some space, some time for adjustment had been given for that. You wonder too, and I've got registrars here and people who deal with admissions processes, we meet law sheep every year. We meet people who are on programs. And these very often they're very young people and they're on the wrong program. And the answer go back next year and go into the CAO and do it again and get it right. Seems to me an awfully harsh answer when you're dealing with someone at 17 and 18 who's just been through a traumatic time going through a leaving cert. Again, I think that shouldn't be the young person's difficulty. We should have a structural response and we should be talking about structural responses to things like that. I'm conscious that there are high demand courses and limited, and that there would have to be some type of parenthesis around the ability to give people, but I still think the conversation is worth having. And you wonder too whether there might be some taster elements for people. If you did make a bit more space for people to move around. And the final point goes to the last one. Imagine a world, imagine a world where we had a really constructive and consistent conversation with second level. That wasn't just about processes but was about aligning curricula. That was aligning assessment practices. That was trying to meld cultures in a way that there wasn't a shock to students when they came into a different door. Well, Joe, as usual, your insights and wisdom has given me rich food for thought, even just hearing some of the things that you've reflected on. I'd like now to open up. We have a little bit of time for questions or comments, so it'd be really nice if anybody had the courage in this big sea of faces to make a contribution. Yes, I see Bianca, if I remember, is that right? Yes, hi Bianca. We're going to need a mic, so we're just going to rush one over to you so that everyone can hear your question. Thank you, Joe. Oh, lovely. So my name is Bianca, I'm from Scotland, from RGU University in Aberdeen. So my question is, in Scotland there has been talks from students coming from EU countries or even international backgrounds that feel alienated or uncertain during the transition period. For instance, from high school to universities. Universities in Scotland are encouraging students in a kind of like a study body initiative where EU students or international students are introduced to the city and university as soon as they arrive. So has this been a highlight in Ireland as well, and if so, what work has been done to make their transition easier? I mean, I think the peer support, we've seen many examples, Bianca, of how peer support well organized and properly resourced can make a huge difference. And that often, I mean, Piaget talks about the zone of proximal development. You're sometimes better off learning from someone who's just a little bit more experienced than you than somebody who has had a vast amount of academic experience in their lives and a huge ocean of knowledge in comparison to how you feel. And so that study body approach is something that has, we've seen in all sorts of contexts in Ireland has worked really well, and it's something that is associated with some of the excellent pedagogies that Joe was talking about earlier. It's a gorgeous Scottish accent, Bianca. That's what I think. Yeah, you've noticed in some of the forum insights some of this has dealt with around when you get a chance later on to have a look at that. I know from our own experience, it goes back to some of those, those strategies we talked about earlier on, but I noticed from our own international students that one of the biggest bits was the integration and was the belonging. It was actually the social context became really important for those students and it made them feel very, very much at home. I mean, if you got that right, everything else that seemed, Bianca, to me to follow on. Thank you, Bianca. Do you have time for another couple of questions? Jim, please, yeah. Good morning, everyone. Jim Devine, formerly IATT. Joe, I mean, thanks for all the insights and you made the, or raised the question of whether the adherence is to discipline or to the institution when a student arrives. And I'm just wondering in your work, did the wider question of, let's say, healthy lifestyle, sports, the role of clubs and societies, does that aspect of college life come into the mix? I'm thinking more of challenging students in an exciting way beyond their courses rather than necessarily sometimes you get a sense that support is around causating students when in fact they might need to be excited and challenged and that may be beyond the immediate of their course. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a very good observation, Jim. If I may, Sarah, I'm conscious also of the time around this. If I go back to my undergraduate days, maybe this is age speaking now, it seemed to me that we had more time for engagement on a much broader front. There doesn't seem to be the same. I know within our own institution, we very strongly encourage a broader involvement of students in things like sport and volunteerism, et cetera. And I think when students do engage with that, it can be very powerful and it also gives them linkages and also cross-disciplinary linkages, thanks, Sarah, which they wouldn't, which they wouldn't necessarily find in other ways. Thank you, Jim. Do we have time for one more question, perhaps? So, Catherine, yeah. Sorry, I didn't quite see you in the light, yeah. Hi, Catherine. Hi there, Catherine O'Mahane from the Center for Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning down in UCC. The question is relation to the pedagogies that support excellent kind of student transitions. I was part of the project that looked at the scholarship for teaching of transitions. And one of the key things that we found was that, while there's many examples of kind of effective pedagogies for supporting transitions, they often happen at too late a stage in the student's journey. So is there kind of some scope for supporting teachers who are working with largely first-year cohorts to develop and enhance these pedagogies? And would you have any comment on that? Yes, I mean, I think that's really crucial that we've seen again and again how students say things to us and it's reflected in your own work, Catherine. If only I'd known about this when I first arrived, everything would have been okay. Now, maybe that's a trick, a story that learners tell themselves because perhaps they wouldn't have been ready to absorb the wisdom of a particular support. But no, there's also something very true in that. And it's definitely something, the more that is provided in terms of good pedagogy early on, the more forgiving the system is later and the students are later because they've got that really good grounding. So I think that that's a very important observation. I'm very reluctantly now going to draw the session to a close because everybody deserves a bit of coffee, I think, and some more informal chat outside in the foyer. But I do want to say that in preparation for this session, I think both Terry and Joe reminded me that it's in proper conversations, in really nice, good, collegiate conversations that we sometimes get our greatest insights. And while this isn't exactly mimicking one of those conversations because it's on a public stage, I thank both Terry and Joe for giving me the courage to move away from the dubious security of the podium and sit on the comfy chair and listen to these wise reflections from someone who's had such experience in the issue of transitions for many years. Joe, thank you very much indeed. And thanks to all of you. Thanks a million. Thank you. Thank you so much.