 Welcome to this session, everybody. Thank you for joining. The title is The Higher Ed for All Project, Design and Delivery of Accessible Inclusive Full-Time Online Degree Programs for Students from Underrepresented Groups. Our speakers are Jacqueline McCormack and Chloe Warner from the Institute of Technology Sligo. A warm welcome to everybody and I hope you enjoyed the talk. Thank you very much Louise for the introductions and so along with Chloe will be presenting on The Higher Ed for All Project and first of all I will give you an overview of the project which is delivering accessible inclusive full-time online degrees which are designed to meet the needs of students from underrepresented groups. And then Chloe will overview the first phase of her research which is happening in parallel to the development of these degrees and is identifying the barriers and facilitators for these students and being able to engage in online learning. So for those of you who don't know IT Sligo is the third down spot on this map down the left hand side. But in a few weeks time hopefully if everything goes to plan we're about to merge with the campuses of Galway Mayo IT and Letter Kenny IT in Donegal to become a new technological university which is stretching down the west of Ireland. It's also important to know that some of the areas that in our region in the west of Ireland are really quite remote as well so I'll come back to that in a moment. So as well as the full-time on-campus students on our on our campus in IT Sligo if we add up the various different types of online students that we have from our full award-bearing courses professional development courses and mix all together we've about 11,000 online students but the vast majority of these students have the same type of profile they're almost all in employment or between jobs and they're studying part-time online degree courses for professional development reasons and usually with the support of their employer but we're well aware that as well as these online students and our regular on-campus students there is another grip of prospective students out there who are academically able but for him coming on campus to do a full-time degree would be very challenging and there'd been very limited options for them to date to be able to study a full-time degree. The group of underrepresented students that we are talking about have a range of reasons why they can't attend and participate fully in full-time on-campus education higher education they might have a caring responsibility have a family business or a family farm to be responsible for they may have some disability some social communication barrier or some other region reason for example being in a geographically isolated area so in the higher ed for all project which is supported by the higher education authority in Ireland we are providing flexible full-time online degree programs which are listed by the CAO which is the iris equivalent of the UCAS system and these are designed specifically for this group of students and this innovative model of learning is about better facilitating quality of opportunity and access to higher education and meaning that these students can complete their course in the same timeframe as a regular full-time on-campus student at the moment we have two of these degrees up and running with cohorts going into their second year and we're developing a third degree at the moment and hopefully a fourth the subjects that we have selected are in disciplines that we know that there are remote working opportunities available for these students whenever they graduate and if for them attending a workplace on-site would also be a challenge the project has been carried out in partnership with the disability federation of Ireland and family carers Ireland and two of our local further education colleges which also have campuses around our region and the inclusion of these partners has been really very important in allowing us to design these programs to meet the needs of these groups of students specifically and it's also allowed Chloe in her research project which will come to you in just a moment to be able to access prospective students who are carers or who have disabilities so article 24 of the UN convention on the rights of persons with disabilities seeks to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from mainstream education on the basis of their disability but as you can see in Ireland and elsewhere the statistics for the participation of people with disabilities in higher education speak for themselves but as well as that access and participation in mainstream education is really critical to achieving economic independence persons fulfilment and equal participation in all aspects of society so therefore access to higher education is very important in Ireland there are also large numbers of carers across Ireland including numerous young people who have caring responsibilities and for him attendance that's at local school is possible because it's close to them but for him going away to college to undertake a full-time degree is just not practical and this is particularly difficult in areas in the west of Ireland where there are some quite remote locations in developing these degree courses we do recognize that these students may have additional challenges and needs so in this project it has been important for us to use an evidence-based approach to try and identify barriers and facilitators for people in these groups and been able to participate and succeed on our full-time online degree programs so we decided alongside developing the degree to undertake some research and I'm going to pass over to Chloe to describe the first phase of her study which aligns to the development of the degrees so Chloe over to you thank you Jacqueline for that introduction so the rationale behind my research is to identify potential barriers and facilitators to access in higher education and effective support services available and desired by students it's important to understand the underlying mechanisms of online student participation in order to identify risk factors so a comprehensive understanding of risk factors regarding higher education allows institutions to offer the appropriate support to students at risk of dropout so I thought it was important to acknowledge that my research had been planned and funding had been received before COVID-19 had begun so it's been important to IT Sligo to widen accessibility to higher education even before COVID-19 however COVID-19 has highlighted just how important accessibility to higher education is and although the aim of the current study was not to look into the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education and online learning data collection started in the first national lockdown of Ireland back in April 2020 therefore the majority of the participants mentioned or reported the experiences or apprehensions that they had of online learning throughout COVID-19 so I felt that it was still important to report my findings regarding COVID-19 for future research so this research is part of a larger PhD research project with two additional studies however the aims of the current study were to identify and explore the perceived barriers and facilitators and to explore what the perceived impact of these barriers and facilitators were for potential online students and also to determine the appropriate pre-enrollment tools and online processes beneficial for online students so who are these underrepresented groups where there's a variety of reasons for why an individual may find it difficult to attend on campus as mentioned by Jacqueline earlier and also on the screen there so the current study utilized an exploratory qualitative approach in order to to collect in-depth and detailed data as it was concerned with individuals experiences feelings and perceptions towards higher education and online learning in the current study I managed to interview 16 participants and employed semi-structured interviews to collect data which meant I had questions to ask participants but they were free to talk about topics that I hadn't anticipated and the participants were recruited by the partners of the project that we mentioned earlier and support and organizations finally I used formatic analysis to analyze the data collected by the interviews in order to identify themes and patterns of meaning across the dataset in relation to the research questions so regarding my findings I found that each participant had a very different experience of education some had to studied at higher education level before and others had never been and this was also the case for the format of their education which also differed some had attended on campus some online and two of my participants had experience with distance learning and this was the same for the length of course quite a few of my participants mentioned that they did a lot of short online courses but participants reported a mixture of both positive and negative experiences and I found that in turn these experiences shaped the perception and the participant that participant had of higher education in addition to this I also found that individuals attach certain emotions towards higher education such as anxiousness and having a sense of being overwhelmed with certain aspects of certain things of higher education but others especially towards online learning felt at ease and comfortable with that type of format so I thought it would be important just to share a quote that highlights a negative experience of higher education especially for those who are carers a quote from Jenny a family carer illustrates that from the beginning individuals are being told that their circumstances do not meet do not suit the institution so in addition to the barriers that carers faced because of their care and responsibilities they also face barriers regarding how others react to their circumstances now following on from this there may also be barriers that individuals face when accessing higher education I found that the barriers to higher education could be personal for example some participants reported that their age may be a barrier as their it skills or academic skills may not be up to date there's also the strain of having young children or caring responsibilities as well as financial issues and it's also found that there are specific barriers to family carers regarding their carers benefit or carers allowance now there's a government policy in Ireland if a carer is working or studying over 18.5 hours a week that they are not able to receive carers benefit so this is down to higher education institutions to be aware of these policies so that we're not creating an additional barrier for carers to gain access to full-time education however online learning also has its barriers whether some participants stated that technological issues and having reliable internet connection was often a worry for these participants and then there were also barriers to the individuals learning for example a lack of support especially regarding unforeseen circumstances often carers will have emergencies and these can last up to a couple of weeks or even months and as a result of this they may miss information and the participants who were carers stated that it's vital for carers to be able to pick up where they left off this means having lecturers recorded and information available to them so that they can catch up in their own time so in regards to facilitators of higher education online learning itself was seen as a facilitator to access in higher education some of these individuals could not gain access to higher education without it being online especially due to its flexibility financial support was also seen as a facilitator and in addition to this there are facilitators to individuals online learning such as socialization within the course participants stated that socialization increases an individual sense of belonging and this could also be achieved by allowing online learners access to clubs and societies not just on campus as this may not be feasible for all online students but also have an online clubs and societies for example a book club or a student forum to share cooking recipes with one another it was also found that having a mentor and a rapport with the lecturers excuse me sorry was key to online learning and possibly before enrolling onto a course to have the opportunity to attend refresher courses building skills that they would be required to have on the particular course that they've enrolled on was also found that having a realistic expectation of what is required from the student before enrolling onto the course was important regarding knowing whether they can commit to the course or not okay when it came to facilitators of learning participants stated that they needed to be aware of the academic support services available to them some of the participants stated that they just need to have the opportunity to ask for help where whereas others stated that they preferred face-to-face support so this introduces the idea of blended learning and have an optional on campus days participants also reported support services they desired as well as the importance of Hammond family and peer support participants who were carers mentioned that one of the support services that would benefit them was having an advocate or a representative for carers because often that they're not able to represent themselves and therefore their voices don't don't get heard career guidance was also seen as a beneficial support service however it was more valuable for these participants to have career guidance before they enrolled onto the course instead of whilst they're on the course so i found in the literature that often barriers are just seen as barriers and facilitators are just seen as facilitators but what my study found is that these factors or elements of education can fluctuate between being a barrier or a facilitator and that things can change and things can improve and this can fluctuate with each person with each institution and over time and it's influenced by the quality of this factor for example if the aspect in question is positive it was often seen as a facilitator however the same aspect could become a barrier if associated with negative circumstances and this could be for either personal factors or institutional factors for example regarding personal skills having a high level of awareness of technology or academic skills or study skills would be seen as a facilitator to their learning however the opposite can also be true for another individual who may see that having a lack of knowledge and awareness of these skills is a barrier to their learning and that's where institutions and support services can help individuals improve on these skills and this can be the same for institutional factors for example attributes of the course such as course management and communication for example if the communication between the lecturers and the student is poor this can become a barrier whereas if there is good communication throughout the academic year this can be a facilitator it was also found that there are negative impacts of higher education for example the stress and pressure and information overload related to higher education it was also mentioned by participants sorry it was also mentioned by participants that the isolation of online learning was seen as a negative however the positives of higher education where the individuals were able to progress in their career or get better job opportunities or a higher salary and some individuals said it was for personal development or enjoyment that they would undertake an online course it was also found that dropping out from studying was due to nobody checking in with them and missing information and a lack of support however the positives on an individual's learning was due to the accessibility and the choice of resources and assignments there was also the disadvantages of education for example participants stated that there are minimal suitable choices of online courses but with these new full-time online courses at IT Sligo and the impact of COVID-19 we're hoping that will change and other institutions will have more resources and experience in creating online courses there's also the advantages of education gaining new skills and the flexibility of online learning so the current study also found that participants gave intrinsic and extrinsic reasons for why they chose to study a course an intrinsic reason would be for enjoyment and an extrinsic reason would be for a job progression the participants also mentioned that their engagement on the course would be improved by having quizzes that were not graded by the lecturer and they could just test themselves before and after the module and also having the institution checking in with them when they had low engagement regards to their learning styles individuals stated that although they did enjoy group work they also enjoyed independent work and felt that online learning was more suited to independent work as opposed to group work due to communication issues and finally I found that before enrolling onto a course individuals would benefit from a live chat service on the institution's website so that they could have instant access to answers to their questions when they're considered enrolling onto a course there's also found that speaking to alumni of similar circumstances to themselves for example a student who had studied online and had care and responsibilities would be beneficial it was also found that after enrollment regarding induction day it was very 50-50 years to whether the student would want this to be online or if they would like this to be on campus but what was consistently found is that the individual would like the option of both now in regards to the participant's perception of the impact of COVID-19 and what the impact on higher education a lot of individuals said that the perception of online courses was changed due to individuals working from home the emergency shift from on campus to online learning and the increased interest in online courses for example one individual stated that online courses before COVID-19 had the reputation had the reputation of being lesser than an on-campus course however this is not the reality some of the participants also mentioned that they were positive impacts of not COVID-19 where they got to improve on this IT skills regarding video conferencing apps to enhance their online learning and they actually preferred working from home as they had more time to spend with their loved ones however the negative impacts of COVID-19 were courses being paused the lack of access to resources for example some households had to share a laptop between their family members and some individuals didn't have a study space so in conclusion the findings from the study can be used to use by course planning teams and learning technologists trying to plan online education opportunities from those from underrepresented groups and this would encourage and give these groups more confidence to consider undertaking a higher education course so just to tie up my presentation I found this quote from one of my participants really relevant to the rationale of the study so Olivia who is a family carer stated that we already have a difficult situation to deal with and that shouldn't impact our want or need to grow in our education so I've just left our emails there for anyone who has any questions about our presentation or if anyone's interested in my research please feel free to contact me or you can write in the chat box and I'll get back to you thank you for listening thank you very much Jacqueline and Chloe for a fascinating talk with so much information there've been some positive comments in the chat for example good to recognize that the experiences are dynamic and changeable several other very very positive comments and I found it very interesting indeed so I wonder if there are any questions that there is one from Nathan really in who says really interesting talk thanks oh sorry it's not really a question it's a comment but you might want to say something have never thought about the barriers facilitators being interchangeable in that way yes I actually thought the same thing so I wondered if you wanted to say anything more about that Chloe yeah like as I was doing my literature review for this study I was just coming across that the barriers are kind of just seen as barriers on their own and also the same facilitators but there's no acknowledgement of that but they can change with each person over time and I just felt like I had to address that in this study because a lot of people said to me one of my participants is that they had these challenges but then they met up with a support service and then those challenges became a facilitator to learning and the same with assistive technology they have a barrier and then the assistive technology can then become a facilitator to their learning thank you very much um we also have a question from Eleanor who uh who who says um did the students mention a preference for how they would like to learn i.e synchronous or asynchronous wonder if you'd like to um so they they preferred to have so some of them it's more with the carers the carers have time issues so sometimes they might have an emergency or doctor's appointments so they they could attend a live lecture but they might not be able to attend all of it or they can only do the last five minutes of it so they they would like to have the option of both so they have their times uh which they can schedule around but if they can't make it it's recorded as well yeah but we do that for for all of our classes are taught live but they are all recorded as well so often students want to go back and look at the recordings anyway just to reinforce their learning and take extra notes and things but they have the option of both things so there is a fair bit of flexibility in it thank you very much and we have a we also have a question from t-time uh did any participants comment that they wanted less communication or felt that they were being motivated too closely um there was there was that worry that they were being monitored um but it's when they kind of drop off the radar and then they're not the like if you if a lecturer can see that there is low engagement um the participants that I spoke to said they wouldn't mind the the odd email just to say oh by the way we haven't noticed everything okay at home we're aware of your circumstances um here's the recorded lectures um just it's more about knowing that they're part of the the college and they but if they do drop off the face of the earth that that the the college does notice that and they they provide the support services in place for them um because obviously being a carer things are different every day they might wake up one morning and it's um they've got to go to the hospital so they're not going to be thinking about I need to tell my lecturer um that I won't be in today that their child or the person that they're caring for is more important to them in that moment in time we have an online student advisor who's there to provide mentorship and support not like academic support that would be provided by the program team but the online student advisor is there you know just checking that they're um you know submitting their assignments and engaging with the class and logging on and all that and if if there's any kind of thing that they're concerned about that person there is to provide mentorship and support as well and to direct them to whatever literacy support, numeracy support um you know whatever it is that they're particularly needing support for. Thank you very much um and thank you for the questions I think that's all we have time for so um thank you very much indeed Chloe and Jacqueline for thank you thank you for having us. Fantastic presentation as Matthew has said I think loads to loads to think about there so um big hand and uh for the presenters thank you very much. Thank you.