 My name is Catherine Cronin and I work for the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and I'll introduce my co-presenters here in just a moment. The topic of today's webinar is, as you can see, developing enabling policies for digital and open teaching and learning and this is the fifth webinar in the National Forum's webinar series which we've been running all this spring and summer. The purpose specifically of today's webinar is to share developments in this particular area of developing enabling policies and to invite your feedback which we'll explain as we're going along and in advance I will apologize, my voice is a little bit hoarse, I'm just recovering from a cold but I have a big glass of water next to me. I invite you to introduce yourself in the chat if you'd like to say hello. The webinar is going to be recorded today and we'll share that with you afterwards. Throughout the entire webinar we really would like to encourage as much engagement and participation as possible so we welcome your comments, your questions. There's a team of five of us who are presenting so we can interact with you in the chat, you know, when we're not actually speaking. We also have a couple of polls where we will be inviting your input and as we will be specifically exploring inclusion and engagement in today's webinar, specifically in the context of policy making. We'd also like to invite you if you wish to add information to your Zoom name to say a little bit more about you. So for example you might want to add to your name your institution, your country if you're joining us from outside Ireland, your pronouns, anything that you'd like to share this is not a requirement but we'd like to again to encourage interaction and engagement throughout the webinar. So if you haven't edited your Zoom name before you can do that simply by hovering over your little profile image in the Zoom meeting and then either right click in to find the rename option or click the three dots in the upper right corner of your image and choose rename. And again anything you wish to add just describe yourself would be welcome but it's not a requirement. So the outline really for today is that we're going to describe briefly at the start a bit of background, a bit of the work that the National Forum has done in this area of developing enabling policies for digital and open teaching and learning work that's been done to support individuals and institutions and to support decision-making in this area. So we'll describe work that's been done. We're going to share a case study of one institution's blended and online learning policy and then we're going to explore some key questions as you can see here. So what are important policy areas for you in your context and we'll invite your feedback on that and what exactly are enabling policies anyway? What does that word enabling mean when it qualifies the word policy? How can we ensure adequate engagement in policy-making particularly at this time and one that often generates a lot of discussion is you know do I need a policy or do I just need a guideline or set of guidelines? We'd like to explore all these questions today. So before we get started though I'd like to introduce the five speakers today. I'm Catherine Crohn and as I said strategic education developer in digital and open education with the National Forum. Chloe Power is also with the National Forum. Chloe is the student associate intern. Neve Brennan is joining us from Trinity College Dublin where she is research informatics program manager. Toni Murphy is head of quality enhancement and innovation and teaching and learning at Dublin Business School and Sarah O'Toole is education developer at Limerick Institute of Technology. So just we're kind of retracing to the National Forum's kind of history in this area of support for developing enabling policies. In 2018 the National Forum published a guide and I think someone will put the link in the chat in case you are aware of this already. It was called a guide to developing enabling policies for digital teaching and learning. It was developed following wide consultation across the higher education sector in Ireland and a review of policies both in Ireland and internationally and it did two things really. It proposed a definition of enabling policies and it outlined eight steps to developing enabling policies. But of course we didn't stop in 2018 in terms of supporting as I said individuals and institutions in this area. Sorry. The National Forum indeed recognizes the importance of institutional policy making especially now to address the needs of students and staff and to guide decision making. So since 2018 we've conducted a series of regional workshops with collaborating with colleagues across the sector. We've had conversation and continuing consultation across the sector and we've shared what happened and what was learned at those workshops at various events. Most recently probably was the EdTech Winter Conference just a few months ago. I presented there with Javier Atenas and Leo Havenman who are doing important policy work in the open education space. But I suppose what's most relevant today is that we recognize that there are specific needs in this space at this time in so-called post-COVID context where institutions are necessarily developing policies in areas where they didn't have them before because of our changed context or redeveloping existing policies which didn't meet the needs of our changed context. So we have this small cross institutional team which is your team of presenters today that's been collaborating for the past several months on designing a new guide updating that 2018 guide. That guide is due to be published in September 2021. So we've done a lot of work through this engagement as I explained but we also know that we we really would like to wider consultation and we'd like to use today's webinar as an opportunity to draw from all of your experiences and ideas to make this guide as good as it can be to support the sector. So the first area is that we based on discussions across the sector feedback from national former associates we know that there are some key policy areas in when we're talking about digital and open teaching and learning and these are things like lecture recording policies, virtual classroom policies, blended and online learning policies but also more broadly online assessment policies perhaps learning analytics policies and even OER and IP policies. But obviously that's not a complete list and we would like to know what's important to you. So we'd like to share you to share your responses in the mentee meter poll to enter you know these policies if these are key policy areas for you or perhaps something that's missing from this list in the area of digital and open teaching and learning that's an important policy area for you. So sorry now I'll just there's can you see the mentee slide there? Okay great so if you go to mentee.com you can use the code that's at the top of your screen. I think there might also be a link in the chat and we just invite you to identify what you see as key policy areas for you in the area of digital and open teaching and learning perhaps it's lecture recordings perhaps it's online assessment perhaps it's something else entirely and I'll give you about 30 seconds or a minute to do that. Okay very interesting academic integrity data protection online learning high flex learning student success OER assessment teaching allocation whoever entered that you can you can add something else if you wish if something is missing data protection universal design for learning blended learning academic integrity again GDPR very interesting. If you would like to qualify what you're entering on the word cloud here please feel free to add some additional detail in the chat we will have time for Q&A I should have said at the end so we'd like to explore what arises in the context of the first 40 minutes or so of the webinar we'd like to kind of dive into that in some more detail but I will say that all of your responses here are going to be really important to us as we as I said develop the new version of the guide so thank you for this. Okay before I leave this I just want to identify the top themes seem to be academic integrity data protection learning analytics accessibility recording contact hours assessment okay great. I'll return to our presentation and what I'd like to do now is to hand over to my colleague Sarah O'Toole from Lemur Institute of Technology and Sarah's going to present a specific case study of blended a blended and online learning policy. Thanks Catherine so I I'm just going to give an overview of the process that LIT went through back in 2018 around the development of the blended and online policy so the reason it was developed was because at the time the recently published strategic plan prioritized the need to enhance our flexible model of education and include new online and blended programs and also the recently published teaching and learning strategy at the time also had kind of key goals around the development of a set of best practice principles for blended and online delivery and it was also highlighted the importance for the integration of technology enhanced learning across programs so then on the next slide I just want to kind of give you an overview of maybe kind of how the policies policies are developed within LIT so for example in LIT there's several you've got an academic council and there's several subcommittees which report into academic council and it was the academic quality teaching and learning subcommittee that was tasked with developing the policy so from this subcommittee a working group was set up so the working group was set up in October 2017 and there were 16 members from LIT staff and the students union were also involved and they made up the working group and basically the timeline for development was from October to May so we met five times over that kind of six-month period and the policy was then developed and brought back to the subcommittee for approval and then went back to the academic council so that's kind of how it was I suppose that's kind of the process that we went through for setting it up and on the next slide then I just wanted to kind of point out or kind of highlight like what the key aims for the policy were so one of the first things we needed to identify was what what is the purpose of this policy what's the aim of it and really the policy outlines what the guiding principles for the development and delivery of blended and online programs should be within the institute and it was really it was developed as an enabling resource to facilitate the provision of blended and online programs across all of the campuses within LIT and the policy specifies the relevant quality assurance and enhancement measures that are required to adhere to best practice and to the relevant quality standards so I suppose it was those guiding principles and those quality assurance measures that we really wanted to get across in our policy so on the next slide then we kind of I suppose the first thing we did as we started looking at the data we kind of did an initial kind of gathering so there was a review of sure the area of blended and online learning was kind of conducted by the working group and this was you know kind of at three kind of different levels you had I suppose at an organizational level we had our strategic plan our teaching and learning strategy and then also the quality assurance policies that we would have to adhere to and then at a national level it was great to be able to access the reports and all the work that's been done by the national form and then also the reports from QQI and they really did kind of help to inform the group about look national developments across the sector and then finally we kind of we looked at an international level kind of we looked at the various reports to kind of help identify look what direction is blended and online teaching and learning going and where do we want to fit in with that as well so on the next slide then what we kind of felt was that look the policy QQI had released a quality assurance guidelines for providers for blended learning programs and that was published in March 2018 so we felt that the guidelines were a great kind of opportunity for us to maybe kind of organize the policy or the the principles or the priorities of our policy around this so these so we organized our policy under organized within an organizational context a program context and a learner experience context so at an organizational kind of context this was really about look ensuring that the provision of blended learning programs aligns to our institutionals policies and strategies and that there's also a standardized support and induction for staff that are going to be maybe teaching in a blended or an online program maybe looking then at a program context well what does that mean and I suppose really it was for us to kind of say that you know we need to look here to ensure the programs have been implemented you know with a learning design model that's reflective of online learning that also active learning which will be our signature pedagogy has been implemented into the program and so it was really more looking at the kind of design issues and then again looking at online assessment and validity and making sure that those kind of issues are addressed and then also resourcing I suppose the final area then which is the learner experience context really looked at you know what do we need to put into our document to ensure that we're giving students the information around the time commitment what technical skills they might need to have and then also what supports can be put in place and are available to students who are going to be participating in an online course so that's really so we use the QQI guidelines to structure our policy and then on the next slide I suppose it's the next slide then really kind of just kind of I suppose it kind of what we did is we did all this data gathering we had our aims and then we kind of felt you know what we reviewed the content and we had a lot of additional information that was really useful for supporting staff but not necessarily suitable for a policy document so we kind of agreed that look the best thing to do was to create a number of supporting guidelines guiding guides and these really this kind of helped us to maybe kind of see where the line was between what goes into a policy and what should go into our guidelines so for us our policy an example of this would be you know we needed to have our institute definition so what do we mean at an institute level when we say blended what do we mean when we say online and that had to be part of the policy also then key principles around assessment and the learner experience and then we also had developed a set of templates and these templates helped staff to kind of design and structure their programs and we felt that these were really important and needed to be part of the policy then we had other information such as learning design frameworks you know more kind of informational information kind of resources technical set of guides so if you're setting up if you're doing recording at home these are kind of suggested things to do and really we felt these this information is enough long in the policy but still really useful so we set up those three kind of supporting guides for staff as well so I suppose on the next slide then where are we now 2021 and I suppose so the policy was approved in 2018 and I suppose just from I suppose an implementation point of view the mapling templates have been very useful so all new program guidelines and have them included in the documentation we've ran a number of cpd initiatives and that have kind of come out from the policy and there's also kind of a training room and a dedicated kind of recording room for staff so when we look back we're now at a stage where we're actually rewriting the policy and we can kind of look back and say okay what was good with the policy what we want to change and I suppose two huge things have happened since we initially developed that policy the first one being the covid pandemic and the shift to emergency remote teaching so a lot of the knowledge and skills that we might have put into the documentation document really could be taken out now at this stage we feel that you know the baseline of staff's digital history skills has just gone up so much that we really don't need to be explaining it and even when you look back at the document from 2018 we're maybe kind of over explaining it but at the time it felt relevant whereas now we're feeling like we can actually move that into more kind of supporting documentation and then also it really highlighted the need for additional initial policies such as the lecture recording policy and then of course we have been designated LIT and NAIT have will be merging and we've been designated as the next technological university so on the 1st of October we're going to become the technological university of Shannon Midlands Midwest so as a result of that all of our policies have to be updated so it's a really good chance for us to kind of evaluate the policy and just on the next slide then I suppose and it's just a kind of a summary of kind of where we are now so again there were several working groups that were set up with staff from LIT and NAIT and these working groups were originally set up as part of the TU application process and this work is continuing now with the development of some of these policies so we have a working group and we're currently going through the steps trying to see are we making the policy enabling and also you know what are we doing and some of those key things you know the language the amount of text that we have in it and we're trying to see look where is the best place for it is it in the policies or is it in the guide is it in the policy or is it in our supporting guidelines and I suppose as well we're also just trying to identify what are those key principles that we want in our policy that align with our teaching learning and assessment policy and also align with the other new TU and institutional strategy documents so then my final slide I suppose really in summary is just to kind of I suppose for me it's just to highlight you know it's in your policies and guidelines it's the kind of continuous evaluation and it's a continuous process where you need to kind of ensure that the information inside your policies is relevant and in line with the current context that that that you're kind of in and key to policy development to this process I think really is identifying what should be included in your policy and what should be placed in your supporting guidelines and I suppose in the context of this it really it came back to two things the guiding principles and the quality assurance measures that are needed for the development and the implementation of the policy so and it's in key that they are put into the policy rather than a support document or a support guide if they are to be implemented consistently across the Institute so I suppose that's just a quick summary of a kind of case study of the policies the blended learning policy in LIT and kind of where it's going I'm now going to hand you over to my colleague Tony Murphy who's going to talk about enabling policies thanks Tony. Thanks Sarah so as Catherine said at the outset the purpose of today really is to take this guide that was published in 2018 out for a walk and maybe just kind of test it a bit slap it around a little bit so over the next five minutes what I'm going to be doing is reflecting on the guide using Sarah's story from LIT as a case study to kind of test the guide and see to what extent test to what extent the guide lived up to the practice of developing a policy for digital teaching and learning so to look at what the guide essentially did was laid out these eight steps and if we reflect on Sarah's story while I'm reflecting on Sarah's story what I'd encourage participants to do is to get involved in the chat I'm going to pick fault with the guide using Sarah's story look at what we're trying to identify what's missing where the where the guide can really be improved and I'll be using Sarah's story to try and draw out some of that and what I'd encourage you to do in chat is to either use Sarah's story or use your own personal experience from developing policies inside your own institutes and maybe reflect on these eight steps and the nature of the guidance pick a little bit of fault with it so when I listen to Sarah they're the first thing that kind of that I identified really as being missing from the guide was this idea that the LIT team stated the aims of the policy of the policy development work upfront front and center and they had a very clearly defined set of aims that we're trying to achieve which I thought was very useful the second thing that the second thing that I thought was interesting from Sarah's story was this idea that they defined the working group and the roles that need to be represented on that working group I think the 16 roles on that working group and the guide would necessarily go to that level of detail in terms of you know defining who should be involved in this and where you should go to draw on the resources within your institute which I thought again was another very useful thing that I think served LIT well in terms of the data gathering and the consultation that they engaged in. Again this is something we're going to touch on a couple of times this afternoon but this idea of how wide or how narrow do you go in terms of consultation and what does consultation really mean in terms of developing a policy my own personal experiences that I've gone when I've been involved in policy development I've done both I've gone too wide and I've also gone too narrow and the policy development process has suffered as a result so that idea of trying to define what we mean by consultation I think is very important and the guide doesn't really touch on that too much and I think there could be some clarity from the guide on that. What Sarah and the team in LIT had was they had the advantage of looking at of being able to draw on the PQI blender and guidelines to develop their policy in step four of the guide to drafting and enabling policy. There isn't a benchmark or a mapping exercise available so what occurs there is a series of questions are posted to policy developers in the guide depending on the topic and the idea being that if you ask and answer those questions you'll be able to develop policies relevant for that area but that exercise is just kind of finding something to map against I think is very valuable. In Sarah and LIT's case they already had PQI blended learning policies but for example PQI do not have an online learning policy just yet so we don't have something to map against there. The next thing that kind of struck me as being really important that's not covered in the guide and Sarah has stressed is this idea of once you've gathered all your information together setting about by saying what is relevant for the policy and what is relevant for guidelines and what is relevant for procedure and being able to make that distinction between the detail it needs to go into a policy which is essentially just a series of principles to guide decision making and what needs to go into the guideline and what needs to go into the procedures and I think the guide for developing and enabling policies could have could have maybe fleshed that out better and done more on that area. I'm not actually looking at chat at the minute but I hope that people are throwing contributions in there and maybe highlighting some of the areas where they feel the guide could be developed in order for it to be more reflective of their practice of developing policies in their institutes. I might just move on to the next slide please and so what we're going to do now is move on to that second aspect of the guide which is this different definition of enabling something we struggled with when the guide was being put together in the form back in 2017-18. So someone's going to post a link I see it now going to chat to a Mentimeter and what we're going to do is ask you to add in some characteristics that you think are essential to make a policy enabling. In the next couple slides we're going to move on to look at the national forms definition of an enabling policy but before we do that if we could really start to see some contributions from yourselves in one word or a short phrase to say what you think is about a policy that makes it enabling. So I'm going to leave that for about 30 seconds and hopefully we'll see a cloud emerging. Just to say that Catherine Cronin put this out on Twitter the other day and a couple of things that came back in terms of what people on Twitter were saying were characteristics of an enabling policy were the idea that it promotes inclusiveness and inclusive practices and also that it supports collegiality. So what is it so inclusive accessibility yeah clarity yes nothing like nothing like a modeled policy to disrupt you. Broad principles accessible coming back again inclusive is a big aspect I'm wondering to what extent we're talking inclusive there maybe that's in terms of the consultation process ensure that everybody's voice is represented easy to understand yeah there's nothing like a policy wonky language to destroy you okay I'm just gonna give another 10 seconds okay um so the the headline information there I think is this idea that they're easy to understand inclusive is just big and bold there's no getting away from that and and and I think my colleagues Chloe and Eve are going to touch on some more of that later on in this presentation this in this webinar but practical accessible simple easy to understand inclusive basically things that make our lives easier I think is what's key so if I if I if I move on to the next slide there please so as far as the um as far as the national forums guide to developing and even policies to come up these three categories implementable situated in practice and reflective of HEI priorities and if we move on to the next slide we'll see a breakdown of the those three areas into these 10 characteristics and I think the the words inclusive the words easy to understand are not appearing there so that's interesting um but for me for me what I'd like to highlight um reflecting on Sarah's story is um I suppose the characteristics that I think and I've seen some conversation uh in chat about this I think they asked the characteristics of an enabling policy that are most difficult to to get right or to to to get a handle on is this idea of it being situated in practice and specifically as I referred to earlier this idea of how do we define consultation and how why do we want to go and I think that that probably keys into the idea of um of inclusivity and also how can we test at an operational level how do we test policies and make sure that they're situated in practice I think is is also kind of very tricky and difficult to manage aspect of developing policies to ensure that what we've got is really going to work in and I think as Mark Brown referred to earlier in chat policies with a small p um so they're the they're the kind of many many areas that that that kind of come out of it out of Sarah's story for me when I think about making a policy enabling um but to there are many other gaps and there are other areas in which this this this definition of enabling policies can be developed and and for that I'm going to um to help identify more gaps I'm going to pass on to Chloe and to Neve and to thank you for your contributions into the Mentimeter and also your contributions into chat so Chloe I think you're taking over from here. Yeah thanks Tony and so I suppose what myself and Eve are going to talk about is the kind of um engagement and partnership element of policy making and really what can be seen there from the Mentimeter is the the word inclusive was was really quite large there in in terms of what was coming out of what an enabling policy looked like so in terms of inclusivity I suppose the real question for this section for me is what should we mean when we say engagement in relation to developing policy or in fact engaging with students in general so when it comes to engagement and partnership there's a spectrum of engagement you know from name only engagement to actual partnership so to begin today I have some relevant sorry findings from some recent research the first thing the one on the screen there the which is from the index survey findings from last year which notes that 27 percent of students and 14 percent of staff who teach agreed that they were given the opportunity to be involved in decisions regarding digital services so that's pretty stark when you think about it they're not they're not wonderful numbers so in terms of the context that we're discussing engagement and partnership here it's important to consider what's changed over the past year and how that's going to change policy etc so on the next slide we have some of the things that's changed so you know digital policies were tested in many new ways along with people in general and more students and staff who teach gained first-hand experience of digital and open practice and there's been an increased interest and investment in the policies structures and decisions underpinning digital teaching and learning now there may be a preconceived idea that students don't want to be involved in policy development or decision-making that's probably not something that you think the average student walking around on campus is uh invested in but in my experience this is not the case students I found are always willing to discuss and share their perspectives and honestly sometimes they can have the most nuanced ideas and opinions in the room but the problem is with policy making etc but they aren't always given the opportunity to be in the room to give those opinions so uh recently for me at a regional learning teaching conference I said when I was asked about student partnership that there should always be people who teach and people who learn sitting at the same table now while this is true I'm not going to argue with myself obviously uh student partnership can and should be a lot more nuanced than this for example as part of my role as the student intern with the national forum I was involved with the recruitment of the student associate assembly which is over 40 students from over 30 HEIs in Ireland so through the recruitment of these students we set out to be intentionally equitable so what this means is basically because this group is going to be giving feedback on both national and local issues it needed to be diverse because not only to ensure that the kind of feedback we were getting was broad enough but to ensure that we were really hearing and really looking at what types of students we were recruiting so you know this then led us to having here and there students postgraduate and undergraduate students international students but then also we have students who are parents mature students students with disabilities and they all bring something different to the table now that kind of considered approach which seeks out really meaningful student engagement can elevate the development of any policy or practice and that consultation and input of students is essential going forward and you know we really need this so if you take for example on the next slide and studentserry.ie recently released its interim results bulletin which contained the results of nearly 50 000 student respondents across 25 HEIs and there were seven questions involved in the student survey this year and which were based around the COVID-19 experience of students so some of the findings of note there on the screen when students were asked what are the positive elements of the online blended learning experience you want to keep when on campus studies resume the dominant response from first and final year undergraduate and top postgraduate students reflected the idea of having recorded lectures even when we go back to in-person teaching etc so we know from studies like this as well as those conducted by the National Forum and other groups such as AHEAD that during the initial months of the pandemic it was found that barriers to learning experienced by students were further exacerbated by the move to online and remote teaching and learning while some students found that the barriers to learning were fewer obviously some students with disabilities found it easier to learn remotely similarly students who found that the alternative assessment methods being provided during the time of campus closures suited their individual learning preferences there's all these different kind of nuances and preferences from students and these are going to need to be reflected in policies etc in the future like on the other hand exclusively online remote learning did introduce new challenges and threw up disadvantage disadvantages that none of us have previously considered for example if you live in a rural area and it's extremely difficult for you to get broadband that's able to withstand you know a zoom call like this with several participants or classmates so this was something that I really experienced this year while speaking with the aforementioned National Forum Student Assembly and I noticed that students from areas of disadvantage for example rely the most exclusively on services that they can access on campus and these students are also the least powerful insisting on that their needs are met and are the most dependent on their school or college for their educational resources so these are the kind of people these are the kind of students that we need in room giving us the feedback to build a policy that is enabling and that is inclusive and that reflects their needs but also you know the needs of the staff etc as well because as we know a lot of staff have also benefited from from online learning etc and have had some of the same challenges you know and there are several of us who work in the National Forum who also live were really myself being one of them that I'm surprised my zoom has stood up this long to be very honest and but you know similarly whilst I was with Catherine recently doing a case study and for for the guide the new guide that Catherine and Antoni and Sarah and Eva are developing it and it was really highlighted that the need for a policy in that particular institution really arose from the needs of students the students were the ones who were asking for it because they asked for it in order to provide them with the consistency and the clarity that they needed which can often be reflected in staff too who also need that consistency and clarity and the student rep present outlined that the model they used to consult with students was really effective they essentially used their class rep system to be able to liaise with as many students as possible and get garner as much feedback as possible on what students felt they needed and what came out of this this was that it allowed students to address the complexity of the issue they weren't just asking for everything to be recorded and to never come to college again you know they were really thoughtful and nuanced in recognizing that you know certain things could be recorded and certain things shouldn't be recorded i.e. you know tutorials or seminars which are often more personal than what people will share depending on the subject matter that they're discussing i.e. if you study social care it will be different to if you're studying something very technical like law or science and these are the kinds of engagements and conversations we need to hear from students and these are some of the reasons why we need to have meaningful partnerships and engagement with students and these are two of the models i think from that case studying from the national forum of being intentionally equitable and having a really considerate approach to engagement of thinking about who are you including when you're talking about having students engage in and in partnership with you and developing these policies because often we can say okay we've got the student union in the room that's tick the box we've got the students there that's grand they'll they'll they'll do almost and but you know for really you know moving forward and when developing policies surrounding both this topic and other topics and as we look to the future we must ensure that you know teaching and learning and its underpinning policies and structures are prepared for new trends but that they're also developed alongside students because without without intentionally inviting them to the table they can't be in the room where it happens so i think i'm i'm going to pass over to me now at this point to talk a little bit more about some of that stuff just on using myself there thank you so much chloe that was a really invaluable perspective and so important for us to to get that perspective from the students and from student survey and and you know on her last slide what chloe showed was this absolutely you know overwhelming number of students who look one wanted to who expressed a requirement for continued access to recorded lectures so that's a something that we could we can think about while we're considering this area during this section i'm going to very briefly invite us all to think about what's involved with the creating an institutional our departmental policy that enables this kind of requirement you know let's say for example continued access to recorded lectures and time supporting this intentional edi internal equity and such as the the likes that chloe has presented when we undertake to make this intentional equity an inherent part of our digital policy making we are instantly committing to doing a lot more work i'm sure we all realize this to banishing our own preconceptions and counteracting our own assumptions to genuine human engagement to commit to personal learning at the level of all of the individuals who are involved in the policy making and we commit to creating actions that are based on our learning and of course that's not easy we can work in higher education institutions that between ourselves and rooted in medieval and institutions and some of them we can admit are still based largely on practically feudal structures with rigid hierarchical delineation of roles and deeply entrenched systems of power privilege and communication that accompany those kinds of hierarchies i come from the university library they have their own arcane caste system and rules deeply involved in digital and decision making policy making but almost destined to almost guaranteed to create policies that reinforce compound and actually exacerbate existing privileges and inequities unless they consciously become engaged in this this inclusive equity so so let's take a look i've got a couple of examples just from my own area of and to to have a look at what's involved in this the first one and on this slide is and yeah thanks a million for clicking no please click through those animations because we won't be able to manage it otherwise i'm quoting liberally from our own wonderful catering coden on this slide who i use as use her work her book on open education walking a critical path her chapter and the references there as a key text in the open librarianship course that i run in them that i teach in double business school the open access agenda is something that's kind of related to this example of you know making recorded lectures available and the openness is an obvious good isn't it you know it's like motherhood and apple pie we all know what it means and clear benefits that arise from it are dewy the current open policies open access policies of universities and research funders in the globe of north are increasingly focused on systemizing the payment of article processing charges to make to academic publishers to make open access publications more readily available it's a good thing but when i asked charnage who may if you would know from the university of cape town are our open access policies on the global north hurting colleagues in the global south and in south africa in particular to reply it on equivocally and to the horror of me and my fellow open access advocates yes they are right so um this deceptively simple term hides their open hides a reef of complexity and we have to consider the context and again quoting from from and from catherine we have to ask these difficult questions when we're developing any kind of policy about power and participation and particular in addition to the questions we're asking about the specific area be it openness be it um engagement or um making recorded lectures available how we must ask who's in our classroom and institutions and why are they there who's not in our classrooms and our institutions and why not who is excluded and who might be silenced by systems policies and practices that skew attention their rewards towards and we're going to name it white male privileged global north experiences and priorities so the first thing we have to do is to own this system of privilege as Audrey water said we need an ethics of care and of justice and not simply assume that open or inclusive or equity is going to just do it for us and cover it for us okay so the next issue that i'm going to quick example that i give you and i go very quickly through this is on engagement so engagement is is an agenda that's um strongly encouraged within our institutions and by internal and external policy makers we've learned that true engagement is not simply an afterthought or a bolt on that's kind of tacked on at the end of an initiative what i'm suggesting here and you can have a look at this later on if you just click um to the to the animation is the extra 10 principles for a citizen science they lay out good practice terms for terms of engagement and maybe we can sit consider that some of these could usefully be adapted for intentional equity and inclusion in digital policymaking so in embracing an aversion of those principles we we would undertake to actively involve our participants to make sure that we have genuine outcomes that everybody involved benefits from taking part and that there are different multiple stages or options our participation that would they just don't come in at the end and that feedback is guaranteed and delivered at all stages and there's that have to be controlled for and and that information is available about this activity that our participants are also acknowledged in their results and in the publications and that there are true participants in that and and that the projects are evaluated correctly and Tony touched on this and and this is an output throughout our our concepts throughout this discussion the evaluation of and of policy digital policymaking and where does this kind of inclusion and engagement come in and the leaders of the projects take into consideration all of the aspects of the legal ethical issues that are concerned with this kind of participation i'm going to leave you with a couple of quotations just to kind of trigger people's i suppose thoughts and first of all and both from nova reed and the first one is that diversity without inclusion is just tokenism and the second one is diversity is a fact inclusion is an action and i go to hand over to chloe again who's going to talk to us about next steps thank you very much thank you very much need that was great so i suppose going from all of this and the question really is what now so now we really have an opportunity for a meaningful involvement of students and staff in decision-making and the creation of enabling policies policies for digital and open teaching and learning going forward so just i've thrown in some useful resources there that are quite recent and the national student engagement program recently released its steps to partnership framework which is very useful and the national forum has a guiding framework for embedding student success which also talks about you know engagement and inclusion etc and there will be a toolkit for that and release later in year as well so i think i'm going to hand back to kathryn now who's going to lead the your name thank you so much um sarah and neve and tony and chloe