 Gweithio gweithio, everybody, and we're delighted to be able to present on our project proposal Aligning Teaching and Learning across the technological sector. This proposal has been submitted on behalf of the Learning Innovation Network and is supported by Thea, which is the Technological Higher Education Association, which has recently replaced the IOTI Institutes of Technology of Ireland group. My name is Nula Harding. I'm from the Ethlone Institute of Technology, and I'd like to invite my colleagues to introduce themselves. My name is Gina Nule, and I'm from the Institute of Technology of Ireland. Hi, I'm Helen Murphy, I'm working for the Institute of Technology. Hello, I'm Dr McLean, I'm a letter-canning Institute of Technology. Hi, I'm Maureen Wyrton, and I'm the Institute of Technology. So, just by way of background, the Learning Innovation Network was established in 2006 with SIF funding, Strategic Innovation Funding, and it was specifically geared towards the Institute of Technology sector. IOTs are teaching intensive institutes, and our key objective at the time was to scope the parameters of a professional development programme. But as you can see, we went far beyond that. We were given a second cycle of funding under SIF 2, and we've now come under the auspices of Thea. Also, we're chaired by an academic registrar, and we contribute as the Learning and Teaching Network for that group. So, as part of our work, we developed a flexible pathway to a postgraduate diploma award. And in addition to that, we've developed a variety of supports, APD opportunities, and symposi, et cetera, for the sharing of good practice in learning and teaching. So, in relation to our partners, as you can see, Athlone is at the centre of everything. Literally, et cetera. So, we would have validated the postgraduate diploma award on behalf of the sector. And in addition to that, our modules were shared across to other institutes as well who didn't have that capacity. So, we went through a process of capacity building. Other partners such as Waterford and Dondog, prior to 2011, had established their own master's programmes. And in addition to that, Carlo, for example, would have contributed to the postgraduate diploma and also developed their own multi-program. And then, for example, AIT and Dondog would have assisted letter-ken AIT in the development of their own master's programme and contributed modules there. In addition, we have some supporting partners from SligoIT, GMIT, IADT, Mary Ann is here today, and also from LIT. And they would come under AIT in that. Their modules have either been developed in AIT and have been shared or else they have developed other modules. For example, in student at learning or in RPL, which are now also coming under our postgraduate diploma. So, in relation to rationale for our proposal, we have all evidenced and observed the transformation that can occur amongst staff when they undertake accredited professional training. And in particular, I think one of the key transformations that happens is when they cross the threshold and become students, because then they start engaging from a student perspective and they're seeing the issues around things like assessment, dealing with technology, etc. And so, that's a really key thing for us. Obviously, our proposal is underpinned by current strategic policy documents, particularly in relation to flexible learning and also in relation to competence, etc. I'm going to hand you over to Gina now who's going to continue and focus on rationale. Thanks very much, Gina. So, the broad aim of, like in the rationale of this particular project is to interpret the professional development framework within the context of our existing accredited provision. So, we're looking at typology number four in the professional development activities. And we want to examine and address that these professional development needs under a reflective and very evidence-based approach, which is the approach we've always taken under the Linn modules and has also mirrored them within the framework. So, our key objective is to interpret existing provision. We've been doing this, it's a really exciting time for us, because as a new outline we've been doing this since 2004. We've got very good experience in it. But this would allow us the opportunity to structure and align our provision against the framework in a very consistent, coherent manner across the entire sector. What we want to do is we want to map the existing provision against the professional development framework. So, that would initially involve a mapping exercise using potentially a matrix of looking at what we're actually offering now and how does it fit against the framework. And really what we're talking about is bringing the framework to the fore so that all future development then in this area would essentially map initially against the framework. This would allow us, again, a very coherent structure for the accredited professional development across the entire sector. So, we are conscious of RPL and we're conscious that we already have some level nine modules in RPL on offer in letter Kenny IT and also in Waterford IT. But we want to explore how we might develop these so that we could offer them out to the other colleges and institutions in the sector. This is a very important part of recognition of professional development later for the framework. So, it would be very important for us to explore this. We're going to hopefully use the National Forum Collaboration Space because we're conscious that the RPL network is already there and present and we'd like to collaborate with them on that. And I suppose additionally we want to align provision against the digital capacity framework. And we're very conscious of the importance of developing digital capacity. In all of our modules, we don't just offer tell modules, we also offer all our modules are kind of delivered using either blended approach or taking into account technology when we're designing, developing, assessing. So, we're very conscious of using digital capacity in order to enhance what we are our suite of offerings. We're conscious as well that one of our partners is also involved in project one proposal which is looking at an online forum for managers and we thought maybe that would offer another kind of collection to our suite of offerings. So, I'm now going to pass you over to Helen who's going to go through the accredited provision that we offered to date. Okay, just in terms of I suppose one question that we might be asked is how can so many institutions have a core philosophy? And we felt that maybe putting the Linn values up here and just I won't go through them one by one but one of the tasks and one of the areas that we will be looking to collaborate on is looking at those Linn values which underpin the work of this network since 2006. Values such as learner centredness, I think authenticity and fairness and equity and collaboration are very, very important to us. We've taken the frameworks values as buzzed in the new national strategy and part of this exercise will be us working within the value system that we have and looking at how that is aligned to the framework. Just to give you a sense and Nula and Gina have talked about our experience base across the partner institutions, this experience goes back to 2004 so we've built up, you know, 12, 13 years of experience in the design of these professional development programmes at postgraduate level for people staff, academic staff and indeed support staff working in higher education. I'm not going to go through each programme but I think you can see there it's predominantly level nine postgraduate programmes focusing on learning, teaching, pedagogy in higher education and as well as full award programmes many institutions have special purpose awards or minor awards so we have de-aggregated or disaggregated some of these major awards to I suppose make professional development opportunities attractive to people who can build it up over time and certainly across all of our institutions many of our colleagues have been building up credits that they can do so as part of their own professional development. Just in terms of impact and I think two points here are relevant to this presentation impact in terms of maybe the numbers of people and the numbers of learners, students that we've had across the partner institutions I mean there's almost a thousand students if you like or a thousand graduates between major awards full MA programmes and postgraduate diploma programmes but also minor awards we've completed and there's in and around over 220 current students on the programmes student perspective is something that we're going to engage with and our students like I think one of our earlier presenters commented on our students are our faculty they're our colleagues so we have the advantage of having colleagues who are continuing engaging with our programmes and with elements of professional development modules and then we also have a very very big alumni base which typically can be staff working across our partner institutions but we've also had external people with people working in other aspects of education and further education as well who we have access to through our graduate alumni and their views will be very very important to how this project works so with that I'm going to hand it over to Deirdre who's going to talk about the implementation of the project. Thank you. So this project is designed to run over 18 months so that's from January 2007 to June 2018 and it has three phases and these are broadly around the three semesters involved the first phase which runs from January to June 2017 is broadly project set up and planning and then mapping and consultation and in relation to that then for setup we set up a project team followed by a steering group and my colleague Maura will go into the details of that in a moment we need to audit the existing provision around the supporting institutions and also then agree a mapping framework and an evaluation of that in relation to the mapping framework we don't intend to start from scratch we're very mindful that there is a consultation document from March 2006 a resource for planning and personal professional development consultation document and that would be a starting point for us the next thing in this phase then is around mapping and consultation and in relation to that we need to in the individual institutions complete mapping and find gaps then in relation to alignment and in relation to that as was mentioned earlier would be very much mindful of RPL considerations and also digital capacity Phase two then will run from June to December 2007 in relation to that then firstly there's going to be planning and reflection that's on an overall basis in relation to all parties and also then on a local basis to form plans that will lead then into the interpretation and alignment part of the phase and for that then we need an agreed vision really of how we're going to interpret the professional development framework and particularly in relation to individual programme philosophies having completed that then there's the work of actually aligning the provision and that's going to happen then in the individual partner institutions the final phase then is consolidation and evaluation we are going to have a selection of outputs and the main one in relation to that would be a framework for evidence professional development and then we've various ideas for sharing and disseminating resources which we'll go into in a later slide so we're just going to hand over now to Moran McGuire OK, just very quickly just going to talk really really briefly about our key stakeholders and our consultation strategy has underpinned the management strategy for the project so just briefly to identify them obviously externally and in the sector we have the National Forum, we have Thea, we have Lyn key stakeholders then more immediately are everyone who has will or is currently taking our provision within our institutes those staff teaching on these programmes the wider staff and student body and our institute management so we are setting up a steering group and the steering group allows us to draw on the expertise of Lyn and the wider sector all the partner and supporting institutions will be represented there but we also have a student union representative we have a student union representative who's agreed to join that if it's funded in terms of the more local work I think it's very important to use the structures that already exist in our institutes for example key committees such as teaching and learning committees most of us have those they have staff and student representation and management representation so at the higher level they're important in terms of providing guidance all of our programmes have programme boards with staff, student management representation so these will be key in implementing the work on the ground the student perspective is much more than this and we will be drawing on a wide evidence based particularly our survey of student engagement, local data and the projects that many of the institutions are involved in such as your one feedback project team and so on we'll be consulting extensively with current students and graduates and the steering committee also represents the wider student body the steering group gives strategic direction at a high level whereas the operational level is the core project team and partner institutions I know this may be how you're feeling right now at this stage in the day but for us what was really exciting about this opportunity was the chance for us all to reflect on our provision in a really collaborative way where we can align it in a coherent way for us the collaboration is a really important part of this project for us and it was very attractive about it and just finally I was going to hand back to Nula just to very quickly say a word about impact so we were just asked to consider impact there are some headings that were given to us by the forum around learning and teaching impact on learners I think we've covered those in terms of what impact this could have also we've identified some areas in terms of dissemination we are already currently involved in a publication around APD and then there are other areas in which we can also disseminate and also encourage the dialogue etc in relation to sustainability I suppose the fact that our programmes are already embedded within our institutes is very important and I think it will be a key aspect for us going forward as well as our continued relationship with Lyn and Thea Thank you very much for your time