 A really warm welcome to this second day of the AltWinter conference. This is the first of our parallel sessions this morning and I'm delighted to welcome Jade Kimberley who's joining us from the University of Nottingham International College today to speak to us about professional development and learning technology, what lies ahead. So without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Jade and please do enjoy the session. Thanks so much Caroline and good morning everyone it's great to be here and to be kicking off day two of the AltWinter conference. Had a great day yesterday, some great sessions and lots of fun as well so hoping today will be just as good, I'm sure it will be. My name is Jade and I'm an academic leader at the University of Nottingham International College which is part of Kaplan International Pathways. So the college provides pathways programs for international students to progress to the University of Nottingham. I was awarded Senior CMole earlier this year as I lead on technology enhanced learning and learning technology innovation at the college. I also run this college CPD program and so I'm here to talk to you today about professional development in learning technology and to discuss what lies ahead after the last 20 months. So I work in HE and this so this presentation is from an HE perspective but I hope that everyone will be able to take away something from the session today and I'm really happy to take questions and comments at the end so too please contribute throughout my talk in the comment box. Okay so to start with then so the areas I'd like to cover today fall broadly into four stages. Firstly where are we now? So following the last 20 months in March 2020 our world changed drastically and for us online delivery was approached with varying levels of familiarity with and confidence in using learning technologies but this led to a really big leap in engagement and skills development with our staff. There is still a spectrum of engagement with learning technologies at one end you've got people who have done it to survive and done it because they've had to engage. I'm thinking of a training course I went on a few weeks ago where it was on teams and we had quite a few issues joining the session and the first thing the leader said when we managed to get in was I can't wait to get back into a training room so there's that sort of end of the spectrum where it's been a necessity and then at the other end you've got people who are already really engaged with learning technology before the pandemic hit and they have led the way really and inspired others and continue to develop which has been wonderful. After 20 months we are tired we are burnt out we need a break and it's obviously it's still going on so it's we don't really feel like we've had time to reflect and appreciate what we've achieved in this time but I think when we do get that chance and it is so important that we do that and encourage reflection in others we'll really appreciate just how much we've learned and how much we've achieved in very trying and difficult circumstances and we need to do that in order to move forward. So in terms of what comes next what does staff want what do they need from their professional development program is learning technology still a priority for them or a staff desperate to return to old ways how much do teachers value learning technologies in their practice now versus 20 months ago. So it is really important to ask the educators at this point how they feel and we do that throughout our CPD program it involves the tutors a lot in the process and I'm going to be talking about a research project that I'm that's currently underway that I'm working on with some colleagues and I'll present some initial findings from that later. Moving on finally to what lies ahead I'll be talking a little bit about the next part of our project disseminating the findings and the importance of involving the staff in what comes next. So to provide you with some context in my working environment I've mentioned that I work in the UK Pathways College we have around 500 to 600 students around 50 academic staff and a mixture of part-time and full-time staff and a mixture of online and face-to-face delivery so when we had our periods of lockdown so March 2020 January 2021 we were completely online apart from those times we've had a mixture of face-to-face delivery for students international students who are in the UK and then students who for different reasons would be online so they may be in there they may have returned to their home country they may have started their program and continued it in their home country they may be quarantining they may be isolating so different delivery modes that has been the transition between those and keeping up with the changes has been probably the most challenging part of my work I would say in the last 20 months. To help with that we run a weekly CPD program so I took that on in January 2019 and obviously everything went online in March 2020 including the CPD program and what I watched over the first few months of lockdown was how much my team were engaging with with learning technologies and using them in their practice and I wanted to showcase and celebrate that I think that we wanted to grow and develop and and share those ideas but primarily I wanted some way of acknowledging all that work that my team had done so we put together an afternoon session called tell talks and that ran in July 2020 and staff came for 30 minute bite size chunks and they delivered a demonstration of a learning technology they were using and how they were using it with the students and then there was a Q&A session at the end to discuss possible development and ways we could use the user technologies further in the classroom that went down a storm it went really well so a couple of months ago we ran a part two tell talks 2021 and we collaborated with our college in London Kaplan International College London and we had some colleagues who came and ran some discussion sessions around the e-intel the enhanced part of tell we also ran discussion sessions on inclusivity in learning technology and barriers and what what prevents us using tell and where it isn't not where it is appropriate and when it isn't appropriate to use it so again that was a really popular session and kind of highlighted how far we'd come because we had some advanced sessions on different technologies as well and then alongside that this year having completed my senior CMOL I really wanted to encourage staff to go for those recognition opportunities for the work that they've done so I run mentoring groups for CMOL and for advanced HE fellowship to encourage that reflection to encourage that appreciation of the work that has been done and I think I can say with conviction that throughout the last 20 months we've seen an enormous increase in engagement with our CPD and positive feedback on the programme and that has been borne out in the literature as well do please let me know in the comments if you agree if you've seen that at your institution as well but I think it's it's been really really significant the the amount of engagement that we've had compared to our face-to-face sessions which were at fixed time every week Wednesday at two o'clock and we would always get some attendance some attendees and some participation but it's really increased significantly since it's been moved online very important and I'm really interested to find out more about why that is so in terms of what comes next then the questions that I'm I'm interested in finding out answers to would be what should be retained and or developed from our pandemic professional development offering how much appetite is there for continuing professional development specifically in learning technology does online delivery remain the most desirable and inclusive mode and the reason I ask that is because we ran this makes me laugh to say we ran this we ran a session called working in a post-covid world and of course we're not really in a post-covid world and we won't be for some time but it was a good session because it highlighted some feedback on what worked well and should be retained cpds easier to attend online and watch the recording if you're not able to make it lots of agreement with that and that was that was the first thing people wrote about on the first the most agreed with topic that they really wanted the cpd sessions to be held online and then but we also need to think about what kind of sessions should be run face to face my assumption would be if we're demoing a tool that is used in the physical classroom that we would do that in person in college but there may be other sessions that potentially leaders of sessions and participants might want to attend in person so worth exploring that one too so the research project I'm currently undertaking with some colleagues is a follow-up to a paper that we had published in the journal Perspectives and Applied Academic Practice and Caroline if you'd like to pop the link in the comment box that would be great if anyone would like to have a read of that and that was that was on early adopters driving digital literacy among staff in terms of adoption and experimentation with learning technologies and the study is underway now it comprises questionnaire and then some follow-up interviews with teaching staff and the areas that we wanted to find out about work how staff feel about the shift from face to face to online cpd delivery how they perceive their competence with learning technologies now versus at the start of the pandemic and what they attribute that improvement to and how staff feel about further cpd opportunities in learning technology in terms of motivation to attend them and the desired format or content that they would like to see so we've had some initial questionnaire findings I've looked at those and I get very excited when the data all starts coming in and so I'd really like to share some of those findings with you just gonna have a quick glass of water before I carry on so when it comes to online versus face to face delivery then it's undoubtable that the engagement has increased so we asked staff why they thought that was and the top answers were zoom sessions can be joined from anywhere so as I mentioned that the cpd face to face program was always in college on a Wednesday afternoon at two o'clock so if you were in college at that time you could attend but we have a lot of part-time staff with other commitments who wouldn't necessarily be in college at that time through moving the sessions online we were able to say to them you can join from wherever you like so we had staff joining from home you know they'd make a cup of tea grab some biscuits and there they'd be at two o'clock ready to join we had staff joining from their car it was parked don't panic they weren't driving um from the library so opening that up made a really big difference also significant was the fact that tutors are encouraged to suggest session topics so that the program is built by a staff it's not a top-down program there are some compulsory sessions that senior management do include a couple of sessions every term but predominantly the sessions are suggested by and led by the tutor the teaching staff and the college services staff and then sessions can be watched on catch up this was the number one response and I like to call it catch up because it makes it sound like Netflix or something fun rather than work but sessions um yeah they're available online for all staff so that they can watch them when they are free to do to do so they don't have to watch at the time that it's live we do still say that if you're involved in the discussion it's quite nice of you to be there but failing that they're always available and we've got a really healthy bank now I think 30 to 40 sessions that tutors can watch also great for new staff to come in and join and see that there's so much available for them as well one thing that was not cited as a reason for increased increased engagement this is so significant was that tutors felt they had more time to engage with professional development and that really has made me reflect and think about things in two different ways one how much I appreciate that they carved out time to engage with it even though they didn't really have the time to do that but also how can we I mean professional development should be an option it should be part of our of our working week it shouldn't be something that we have to make extra time for so how can we tackle that issue of sort of increased workloads because of the pandemic how can we make time make sure that our staff have time to engage with professional development so in terms of the future delivery 57 requested that it stay online and 29 requested both depending on the type of session both face to face and online so we need to explore what kind of session they would like face to face and 14 don't mind so there's room for exploration of lots of these points I think and then so in measuring competence in the use of learning technologies then we asked staff to rate themselves from a score of one to five one being not all competent to five being very competent in the use of learning technologies at the beginning of the pandemic their average score was 2.6.5 versus now or a month ago when we asked them the average is 3.9 so really pleasing to see the increase there were a couple of tutors who already self reported higher anyway so I think they were around the four and they they didn't feel that they'd quite gone into the five yet they were still a four but for the majority there was a sort of one point or two point improvement which is just really great to say great to say but the the question is what was that improvement attributed to and the findings are really interesting here and then there's a clear pattern so learning from peers was one of the factors that they they said was important sharing ideas and practice with peers you can see the pattern emerging independent experimentation now whether that be without the learning or the sharing or whether it be after they've learned and shared we need to explore a little bit further but certainly that going away and experimenting with different technologies in the classroom and different techniques and different activities is there and then finally engaging with the college cpd program was also considered a factor too two things that weren't really included or weren't rated highly were completing company produced training so there was a huge amount of work done to produce self-access resources and webinars that were run for staff throughout the the last 20 months but that wasn't really considered a factor in how staff improved their competence and neither was attending external cpd events and i guess that ties in a little bit with the time issue as well and also not a factor but it seems then that staff feel that learning from each other and sharing ideas with each other plus experimenting on their own had a greater impact on their competence than learning from people they didn't know or accessing resources from made by people they didn't know and i wonder then and this is something to explore further if the circumstances we were all working in had an effect on this in terms of a need or desire for connection and belonging at a time when we were all locked down and able to see each other in person so certainly our weekly cpd sessions provided a space for staff to check in with each other and catch up briefly before the session started and engaging with the college dpd program is is cited as having an impact on improved competence there's quite a lot going on there and i really i really want to explore that further so in considering whether there's an appetite for continued pd in learning technology 87 7.5 a resounding yes there is they imported it as important or very important to continue that professional development and the reasons again at several folds so it's relevant to online and face-to-face practice so they recognize that they'll still want to use learning technologies in the classroom when when and if we go back fully to face-to-face teaching it's important to start today i like this one because it's one of the all core values but um yeah a recognition and we all know from our sort of weekly downloads of zoom updates that the technologies are constantly being updated but they recognize the need to start to date with that and to look at the developments and and keep yeah keep keep up with them and use them in there in their practice um a chance to share ideas with peers again talking about working with other people and sharing with other people so the themes running through there and it's appreciated by students so the students engage with it they enjoy it and so that that also gives them motivation to continue to develop in this area which is great to see so in terms of what lies ahead then there's definitely a chance to explore all of these ideas and thoughts further through interviews and then to share the findings with the college staff and with the wider network we have a wider network of colleges that I think would really benefit from this information but then also hold a session open to all staff to discuss the findings and decide on implementation so rather than just say well this is what the interviewees and the participants said open it up and discuss it further to get more ideas about how students feel about the future of professional development provision what is so key is to involve prospective participants in all stages of the process we know that from the the initial findings that involving the tutors in the sessions and making there making it a staff led program has boosted engagement so we need to continue with that and make sure that staff are acknowledged and encouraged to take part not just in participating but also in leading sessions to develop them professionally as well and finally this idea that we need to have a culture shift away from staff having CPD done to them they are active in the CPD process they're active in their learning and we need to make sure that they feel included and certainly I found that are in in running the CPD online in this way we've we've managed to achieve a much more accessible and inclusive program so there are my references I've also included my email address and my Twitter handle so I'd love to to connect with anyone who's interested in the research and would like to know more and I'm really happy to answer any questions or comments now if we have any Caroline. Yes we do thank you Jade that was a great session it's been lovely to see such positive feedback from your colleagues on the the CPD opportunities that you've provided to them and yeah we've got a couple of comments coming on the chat so the first one is from Anne C who asks could this be more about peers and college understanding the context and I wonder if Anne means more about that in terms of when I was talking about the company produced training I think yes sorry that came up at that slide yes yes possibly but then what the the people so the department that produced the training they actually did a few sort of month-long project where they came in and observed a lot of online lessons and talked to tutors so they could kind of understand what was needed in terms of training so they didn't just produce it cold if you like they came in and talked to us and observed lessons so they could see what might be needed which I think was important but I yeah I don't want to make too many observations about why because I really want to find out more through through asking questions and interviewing but certainly the context may not have been fully understood but there was an awareness of context certainly that kind of leads into the second question a little bit so Sarni Gonzalez asks could you describe the company produced training and why do you think that might not have been popular so yeah I mean it was it was certainly it was carried out it was attended but I just some of it was was delivered it was self-accessing there it wasn't as maybe interactive or didn't provide the opportunity for much discussion face to face so there were kind of discussions online that happened but I wonder again whether it was that opportunity to come together and discuss that that was really needed and that's what we did a lot in our sessions there was just a lot of a lot of just talking about how we were feeling and what we were doing and I just wonder if people are more comfortable sharing that with their colleague their direct colleagues rather than people that they haven't met before yeah it's a really good point I think we've heard a lot of talk at this conference and other conferences about the you know benefits of social learning and those opportunities to just quickly check if your colleague if you've done something right or you know and it might be a bit intimidating perhaps to do that to someone who's coming in as an expert or you know already understands a lot about the field yeah um there's not any more questions at the moment there's some comments about a great presentation from Nick I'm just going to check if there's any more questions or for Jade on this presentation please do share those in the chat with us um beyond discord there as well so I'll pop my slides in there and if anyone anyone wants to chat further then I'll be available wonderful and we do have another question now from Matthew Moran who asks I wonder if pre-pandemic we undervalued the social and community aspects of training and learning yes that's a really good point isn't it I probably yeah probably and I probably did the same um but it did really kind of it felt like it was something that brought us together every week um and there were times when that was really really important I did run additional drop-in sessions that were non-necessarily work-related people would just come on and have a cup of tea in a mode or a cry or whatever they needed um but also to share good news and good progress and just we ended up talking about all sorts of things um what we were watching on TV so it was more of a social side of how we got together but for some reason the the cpd program also attracted a lot of that um connection as well great and um and one more from Sarnie Gonzalez who asks do you have self-paced study options on offer e.g via a vle that you will be looking at too yeah so we do have something by we have a Moodle vle and we do have um again it's it's network-based rather than college-based but there is a lot of material there that's self-paced um and and tutors can engage with that at any time so there's quite a lot that's been developed throughout the pandemic but it just seemed that when they were considering what had an effect on their competence it was more the things that we were doing as a team together that that had an impact great thank you um I can't see any more questions coming in so I'm going to be cheeky and ask one of my own if you don't mind um I'm curious uh if you had a kind of top session that people you know uh really enjoyed you know was it was a technical session or was it one that was maybe more about a strategy that you got you know positive feedback on more so than than any of the other sessions two things one um and this is really fascinating from a kind of social perspective as well we we've run a couple of five-minute thesis sessions where we've asked all staff to come and deliver um insights from their research and that could be master's level phd level any level um research that's ongoing research has been completed and so we'd have an hour and maybe five people would present and then their bqna afterwards and that gave us this it kind of made us see each other on a completely different light because we were learning about something that someone was passionate about and we didn't even know so that was lovely um and you know we had all sorts of topics we have science tutors we have social science tutors um there's quite a bit of language and applied linguistics in there as well so the the the spectrum was really broad in terms of topics but it just gave us that little bit of an insight into somebody's professional interests um and passions so that was a great session or two of those now the other one was um when we ran a session on using collaborative documents with students so um to replace or to kind of make up the fact that we didn't have flip chart paper that could all scribble on in a classroom or a ball that they could all write on we we used a collaborative word document and they would come in and kind of contribute to that in different ways so a couple of people I think we had three people come and show us how they were using it in class and that just exploded because people were saying oh actually I do that I do use it for this so the exchange of ideas in that session we nearly always run out of time over our sessions but we had to keep on going because someone else would say oh yeah I do it for this and I use so there was a really good um buzzing about that session that there was just so much positive sharing going on and people were learning to use at all they were already using but in lots of different ways great um thank you very much Jade um I'm going to echo the the comments that are coming in uh saying great session fascinating insights um especially the enthusiasm um it seems like you've got a really great cpd program that people are really enjoying and you're obviously very passionate about it yourself um so thank you so much for sharing that with us today um and thank you to everyone who has joined us to listen to the session we hope you enjoy the rest of the conference yeah thank you so much everyone for coming