gyda'r cyfryddion y byd hirio y dyfodol, sy'n awdraed o'r drifu hwn. Mae geni'r cysylltu o'r cyfrifiad dim yn ystafell ac yn ystafell, mae'r cyfrifiad bydd eich cysylltu yn festiwyr eich cyfrifiadau. Aeth angen i gyfraedolaeth â gaff Tambor yn ystafell ar y cyfrifiad, sięg ymgynghyn trio'r cyfrifiadau sy'n Support? Ysgrifenni cyfrifiad iddo i iechyd o'r cyfrifiadau, yn fawr i gael i chi i gael i'w cyntafol. Mae'r gwahau erioedd yn diolch i gael i gynghreifftol Pauline Cafferkeyd i ebola o'r 29 deisbeth, ac roeddwn i gael i ddweud o'r sefydliadau i gael i gael i gael i ddweud o'r ddechrau i gael i gael i gael i gael i ddweud o'r ffustif pwydau, ac i gael i gael i'ch gael i gael i gael i'r ffordd, dywedog, gyntaf, achos ddysgu, llwyll, drwng, tragedy that occurred at George Square on 22 December and to the sinking of the cargo vessel in the Pentland Firth on 3 January. I am sure that I speak on behalf of everyone in the chamber when I convey my sympathy to all those affected and especially to the families of those who have lost their lives. The Glasgow tragedy in particular touched all of us deeply and as the funerals of the victims have been taking place. I know that our thoughts will have been with those who lost loved ones just as they continue to be very much with all of those who are recovering from injury and trauma. Both of those tragedies and indeed the response to the Ebola diagnosis remind us yet again how much we owe to our emergency services, including the Coast Guard and the RNLI and to all of the staff of our national health service. We value their professionalism, compassion and commitment every single day of the year, but I think that we do so especially at times like these. I am sure that the chamber will join with me today in thanking them sincerely for the contribution that they make. Michael Matheson has, as the chamber has just heard, already responded to a topical question about the George Square tragedy, and Richard Lockhead has answered a question on the incident in the Pentland Firth. However, given the wider public health implications of Ebola, I thought it appropriate to make a full statement about Ms Cafferkey's diagnosis, about our response to it and indeed about Scotland's general state of preparedness for handling the risk that Ebola poses. Let me start with a brief recap of the background to this case. It was confirmed on 29 December following her return to Scotland that Pauline Cafferkey, who had been working in Sierra Leone to help those affected by Ebola, had tested positive for the condition. Early that morning, she had reported feeling unwell, and at around 8 am, she was admitted to the Brownlee infectious diseases unit at Gartnavel hospital in Glasgow. In early hours of 30 December, following confirmation of diagnosis, she was transferred by military aircraft to the UK's high-level isolation unit at the Royal Free Hospital in London. First and foremost, our thoughts are with Pauline Cafferkey and her family during this extremely difficult and distressing time. My officials have spoken to the Royal Free Hospital earlier today, and they report that her condition remains critical. I know that we all wish her a full and as speedy as possible a recovery. I also want to take this opportunity to thank all the NHS Scotland staff who helped to treat her, including those in the Scottish Ambulance Service, the Brownlee unit and Health Protection Scotland. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the Ministry of Defence for arranging her transfer from Glasgow to London and the staff at the Royal Free Hospital, who continue to ensure that she receives the best possible care, treatment and attention. Our chief concern at this time is, of course, as I have already said, for Pauline Cafferkey's wellbeing. However, her diagnosis inevitably raised wider issues relating to public health, the response to this particular case and to our general preparedness to handle cases of Ebola and it is to those issues that I now want to turn. The first point to stress, Presiding Officer, and it is, as I'm sure all members will agree, an important point is that the risk to the public in Scotland from Ebola continues to be very low. The Ebola virus cannot be contracted from someone unless they are displaying its symptoms. Furthermore, it is not an airborne virus. Even if someone has a fever, the disease can only be transmitted by direct contact with their blood or bodily fluids. In the case of Pauline Cafferkey, she was screened on leaving Sierra Leone and then again on arrival at Heathrow. On her initial screening, her temperature was found to be within the acceptable range and she was clear to fly from Heathrow to Glasgow. However, due to concerns that she may have had an elevated temperature, she was reassessed and her temperature had taken a further six times over a 30-minute period. Her temperature remained within the acceptable range and she was again cleared to fly. I'll come back to this point later on. However, as has already been made clear, because she was not at that point displaying any symptoms that would have given rise to onward transmission, the risk to other passengers on her flights was extremely low. However, given the nature of Ebola, a highly precautionary approach has been rightly, in my view, adopted by health authorities across the UK. It is in this context that a decision was taken to contact all passengers on the flights that Ms Cafferkey had taken from Casablanca to Heathrow and then from Heathrow to Glasgow. I am grateful to Staff at Health Protection Scotland, who have now contacted all of the passengers on the London to Glasgow flight and ensured that they have the appropriate advice and reassurance. Ms Cafferkey had contact with only one other person on her return to Scotland and he has also been contacted and given advice and reassurance. NHS 24 established a special helpline, which was up and running within two hours of notification of the positive diagnosis. The helpline provided advice, assistance and reassurance to more than 100 people on the evening of 29 December. It has received 179 calls in total. Only three of those calls have been received since hugmanay, so the helpline will be closed from 6pm tonight. It can, however, be reactivated very quickly should the need arise in future. The prompt response to this diagnosis demonstrates a wider point. Scotland is well prepared to deal with cases of this nature. We have well tested NHS systems for managing unusual infectious diseases when they arise. For example, we have established three regional units for the management of possible or confirmed cases of Ebola, one of which is the Brownlee unit. We participate in UK protocols around more highly specialised high-level isolation facilities and, where necessary, we fund treatment for Scottish patients at the Royal Free. We have also updated the Scottish Ambulance Services procedures for transferring patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola. A new testing system for diseases such as Ebola has been available in Scotland since 1 December. What that means is that samples no longer have to be transferred as they were previously to port and down in Wiltshire. Test results instead now go to the NHS Lothian testing facility and therefore can be confirmed much more rapidly. All of those systems and procedures have worked effectively in recent days. In addition, the Scottish Government works closely with the UK Government to ensure that we have a fully co-ordinated approach, as well as chairing meetings of the Scottish Government resilience committee on Monday and Tuesday of last week. I participated in a Cobra meeting and was in close touch with the Prime Minister. I am very grateful to counterparts in the UK Government for their co-operation, and I know that they also appreciate the good work done by the NHS and other agencies in Scotland. We will continue to work with UK Government colleagues to review the handling of this case and to see what lessons can be learned for the future. For example, and this is a point that I said that I would return to. Questions have, understandably, been asked about whether Ms Cafferkey, even though her temperature readings were within an acceptable range, should have been allowed to travel to Glasgow given the concerns that she had raised. Those are important questions that deserve to be properly considered, in line with the highly precautionary approach that we all agree should be taken to possibly Ebola cases. Health Protection Scotland is therefore currently working closely with Public Health England to review screening procedures. Indeed, protocols at airports have already been revised in light of this case. The guidance has been strengthened to ensure that anyone from a higher risk group who feels unwell will be reassessed. Advice will also be sought immediately from an infectious diseases specialist and the passenger referred on for testing if that is considered appropriate. Procedures will be reviewed again in the coming days to assess the effects and the effectiveness of those changes, and we will continue to work with the UK Government on further improvements to how we manage the risk of Ebola going forward. I think that in all of this there is a final but very important point to make. I hope that it is one that the whole chamber will agree with. By far, the most effective way of reducing the risk of Ebola in Scotland and, indeed, in the rest of the UK is to halt its spread in West Africa. That is why the Scottish Government has donated £1 million in money and equipment to support the Ebola response there. It is why we are so deeply grateful for the quiet heroism of Pauline Cafferkay and many others like her from Scotland, the rest of the UK and, indeed, from many other countries who make all of us safer by placing themselves at risk. They are not simply helping people in West Africa, although they are certainly doing that. They are also helping people right around the world. We owe it to them, as well as owing it to the wider public, to ensure that the measures that we are taking to tackle Ebola here in Scotland are as good as they possibly can be. I want to assure you and the chamber that the Government will ensure that those measures are robust and that the public continues to have accurate and up-to-date information about Ebola, that screening procedures are as effective as possible and that, when it is necessary, which is hopefully rarely, patients will get the best possible care and treatment. The Government will keep the chamber informed of further developments as they arise, but for now I am happy to answer any questions that members have. Thank you. The First Minister will take questions on issues raised in her statement. I intend to allow around 20 minutes for the questions after which we will move on to next side of business. It would be helpful if members who wish to ask a question were to press their request-to-speak button now. I thank the First Minister for the statement and send the sympathy and thoughts of those benches to all the families affected by tragic events at George Square and, indeed, in the Pentland Firth. I would also like to pay tribute to our staff in NHS, the Coast Guard, the RNLI and our emergency services for all their compassion and dedication. I, too, would like to pay tribute to Pauline Cafferkey. Her bravery is extraordinary. Hero is a word that we use too readily, Presiding Officer, and in so doing diminishes its value. The definition of a hero is someone who risks their own life for others, someone who puts themselves in danger for the benefit of others, someone who does not think what it will cost them personally but acts because they must, because someone must. Pauline Cafferkey is a hero, as are all the aid workers helping to fight Ebola, heroes whose names we will never know. I also take this opportunity to recognise the vital work of UK charities such as Save the Children, Oxfam and Christian Aid, which are doing so much to respond to the outbreak. Ebola has taken hold in countries that are least equipped to cope with it. The outbreak has devastated health systems in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, leaving many unable to receive treatment for conditions such as measles in malaria and thus increasing the death toll. There is a huge difference between the response and care that the NHS is able to provide here and the equivalent in western Africa. I am proud of the UK's international development work and I very much welcome the £1 million that the Scottish Government has committed to that end. Can I therefore ask the First Minister to tell us more about how this money will both help tackle the outbreak in western Africa and guard against another in the future? I thank Kezia Dugdale very much for her contribution, for her question and indeed for the tone in which she asked it. I agree very strongly with her comments about the heroism certainly of Pauline Cafferkey but also of all of the health workers, the aid and charity workers. Indeed, it is fair to say that those representatives of media organisations across the world are covering this issue in order that the rest of us can be updated on its progress. All of them, without exception, put their lives on the line to do that. We hope that they will be safe. The procedures and the protocols are in place to ensure as best as can be done their safety, but they all take a great personal risk and all of us should be very grateful to them and very appreciative to them for that. As I said in my statement and as Kezia Dugdale has echoed, they are not only helping people in the affected countries in west Africa, but they are also helping all of us to stem the spread of that disease. In terms of Kezia Dugdale's specific question, I have already indicated that the Scottish Government has to date donated £1 million in cash and equipment to the effort to halt the spread of Ebola in west Africa. That breaks down to £500,000 that we have made available to the World Health Organization, £300,000 in medical equipment and a further £200,000 that we contributed to the deck appeal not long before Christmas. All of that money will be used by those organisations and those individuals on the ground to make sure that the facilities are in place with the right equipment, that the right staffing expertise and skill is there to do what needs to be done on the ground to do everything possible to halt the spread of that disease. I should say that, although that is what we have done, I remain as the Government remains very open to anything more that we can do, not just to prepare in Scotland for any further cases of Ebola but to make sure that we are playing our part in what is a co-ordinated international effort to do everything that we can to halt its spread. Finally, on 29 December, I telefoned all of the party leaders to update them with what we knew on the Pauline Caffer case. That is very much the spirit in which we will continue to deal with it and I would be very happy at any time to give either the party leaders or the health spokespersons and I know that Shona Robison will be to any briefing on what we are doing to help in west Africa or, indeed, our preparedness here in Scotland. Can I thank you, First Minister, your ministerial colleagues, officials and all those in the emergency services who went about with quiet dignity whatever their role faced with the various traumas that we have been discussing this afternoon? I think in the way that we and they face these matters, it still creates a great sense of quiet pride in Scotland in the face of really enormous tragedy. I do wonder on this social media age if the First Minister would agree with me that, while it can be a useful information tool, it would be better if those who know nothing say nothing and those who have no need to be in the vicinity stay away and I think that that would be a useful lesson for the wider public in the future. In respect of Pauline Caffer, can I say her thoughts are with her and I know that that trips off the trunk so glibly, but it shouldn't. She is deserving of nothing less than the support, love, affection of everyone in this chamber in Scotland and the wider United Kingdom. She and all those like her who selflessly put themselves in the phase of great hazards in the service of others really deserve our total support and I know that we all wish her well in the fight that she now has back to greater health. My only further question in respect of that would be given her experience as a healthcare worker and I think that the First Minister did touch on this, should the concerns that she herself expressed when arriving in the UK, not just in case of other passengers on the flight but in her own case perhaps have saved her the trauma and the somewhat sensationalist coverage of her return to the Royal Free hospital in London, a more excessively precautionary case would have been given her experience if perhaps that had been taken more seriously and she had perhaps had the opportunity to stay in London and be properly assessed at that point. I am grateful to Jackson Carlaw for his comments and his question, which I will come to very directly in a moment. I am sure that all of the front line NHS staff and indeed the police and the fire services who have dealt collectively with those challenges will appreciate his words of support. I do think that it is important that when tragedy hits, we all try to come together to present the right response to that collectively and I think that Scotland can be proud of itself and how it has done that in recent times. I agree with him about social media as an avid and possibly prolific user of social media myself, as I know Jackson Carlaw. It is a wonderful innovation, it is good for democracy, it opens up our public debate to many, many more people than otherwise would be able to participate in it, but it has its downsides. I think that everybody, particularly at times like these, should behave responsibly and be careful about the information that they are communicating and be careful about their actions. Many people will remain nameless in all cases who would have been better to stay off social media in the aftermath of some of what we have seen over the past couple of weeks, but they are the minority, the tiny minority. I know that in the aftermath of the Glasgow tragedy, social media was very helpful in, for example, encouraging people who were in the city centre to contact their loved ones to let them know that they were okay and take the pressure off the helpline that the police had set up for those who really needed it. In relation to Jackson Carlaw's substantive question, the short answer is yes. I think that that is a reasonable point and I did touch on that in my statement. I think that it is important to stress—as Jackson Carlaw would expect, that is a point that was interrogated very closely by myself, by Government colleagues and indeed by colleagues in the UK Government. It is important to stress that the guidance and the protocols around screening were adhered to in the case of Pauline Cafferkey. The question that arose though is whether those protocols and that guidance were precautionary enough. We did have an experienced health professional here. The question that has arisen and has been looked at is whether there is concern that somebody who has been in an affected area should be treated more precautionarily. That is behind the changes that I have already spoken about and will be very much behind the on-going review of the screening protocols that will be under way in the days to come. That all underlines the approach that all of us are taking to this. The risk is low. I do not think that we can say that often enough at the moment in terms of public reassurance. The risk to all of us right now is very low. The risk to people who came into contact with Pauline Cafferkey last week was low to the point of negligible, but nevertheless the understanding and the learning about this virus is still developing. Given the stage that we are at, we need to act on the highest possible basis of precaution. That is exactly what we will do. Is others done? Can I also pay tribute to the selfless work of Pauline Cafferkey and others and pray that Pauline makes a full recovery? I understand that 25 healthcare workers will return from Sierra Leone in the next fortnight or so with speculation in the media over a range of new safeguards that may be put in place, including when to isolate potentially at risk individuals. Does the cabinet secretary agree with me that additional safeguards should be proportionate based on emerging scientific evidence and kept under on-going review? Finally, that information is vitally important and that families of healthcare workers that are involved in the fuel can Sierra Leone are also deeply worried at this time for their family loved ones that they are given adequate information to reassure them. I absolutely agree with Bob Doris's point, particularly the last point, about making sure that there is information not just for the general public but for those who have loved ones in the affected countries or returning. I should say two things quickly. Firstly, we will keep all the procedures under review. It is important that we learn lessons from the case of Pauline Cafferkey and that we learn lessons from any other cases that might arise. I hope that there are no other cases identified in Scotland or the UK, but it is likely that we will see other cases—a small number of additional cases—and we need to keep learning from the experience of dealing with them. I have already made my comments about the screening process and how we need to learn lessons around it. I think that the only other point that I would make here is that we have robust arrangements in place for monitoring people who come back for the entirety of the incubation period for Ebola, which is 21 days. Depending on the risk category that somebody coming back from one of the affected countries is in, there will be restrictions on travel. In all cases, there will be monitoring of temperature, for example, and in some of the higher risk categories there will be daily contact with local occupational health services or with Health Protection Scotland. We have robust arrangements in place, but we will continue to keep them under review. Finally, I agree with Bob Doris's point, that we must make sure that everything that we do is driven by expert advice and by the science of those who are looking very carefully at this disease. We agree with the medical advice and with the First Minister that the risk is very low in Scotland, but I know that she is as concerned as we are about how prepared our health service is. Guidance for primary care and for hospitals is on the Health Protection Scotland website. Is the First Minister confident that our health professionals in all our communities across the country are familiar with those lengthy guidelines so that they can respond swiftly, confidently and accurately if a potential case of Ebola were to be presented? It is her job and the job of the health service to make sure that that is the case. I am not going to stand here and with any hint of complacency say that there is no improvement that we can make as we learn more about the virus and as we have the experience of dealing with a case, because there clearly will be. I know that all of us who have been involved in dealing with this over the past few days have thoughts of our own about how we improve things going forward. However, what I know from the experience of Pauline Cafferkey's case is that the health professionals in Scotland who dealt with that case did so very professionally and in line with all the guidance and the protocols in place. Clearly, the staff at the Brownley unit at Gartnavel were in the front line of that and deserve our enormous thanks and gratitude. The Scottish Ambulance Service was also in the front line and will be in terms of transporting patients the guidance that they follow has been updated. I am confident that what we saw last week was a very professional and very expert response, but not just those of us in Government, those of us who were dealing with that in the front line will want to make sure that we continue to ensure that everything is as it should be. In all cases of unusual diseases, there is an on-going need to make sure that the guidance is up-to-date and is developing in line with developing knowledge and understanding, but that health professionals are familiar with and conversing in that guidance so that if they find themselves in the position of dealing with a case, they know what to do. I associate myself with a comment regarding Pauline Cafferkey and others by other members. Given their previous comments, perhaps the First Minister can elaborate what discussions have taken place to ensure robust screening for passengers arriving at Scottish airports whose journeys are possibly originated within countries of high contamination or concentrations of Ebola virus contamination? In terms of the issue of screening at Scottish airports, we will keep that under review, obviously, but it is important to point out a couple of things. The estimate is that somewhere in the region of 97 per cent of travellers to the UK from affected countries are captured by the current entry screening arrangements that are in place in England with many of the remainder screened elsewhere in Europe before travelling on here. There are very small numbers of travellers to Scotland who arrive here via routes that do not include English hubs, so that is the first point. One of the things about screening that people have to be aware of is that however important it is—and it is important—there is a risk around screening that leads to false reassurance, because, as I have already said, the incubation period for Ebola is 21 days. Somebody has been screened and found to have their temperature within normal range. That means that they are okay then, and it does not mean that they will not go on to develop the symptoms of Ebola later on. That makes the monitoring arrangements so important. I have already gone into a little bit of detail about them. They are, I think, the most important arrangements in terms of the notification from Health Protection Scotland of expected returners and then the system that kicks in with Health Protection Scotland and local health boards to make sure that people are monitored depending on the degree of risk that they are in. I am confident that those arrangements are robust and that they worked well last week, but, as I have already said in response to other questions, we will keep them under on-going review. Jim Hulme, followed by James Kelly. I joined with others in the chamber in saying that our thoughts are with Pauline Caffricy and her family. Of course, the families and friends of all those who have suffered from the Glasgow tragedy and the one in the Pentland first, and, of course, thanks to our brave emergency services. As we know, Save the Children are currently investigating how Pauline contracted the disease. Clearly, it is crucial that the source can be isolated as quick as possible to safeguard the wellbeing of our overseas brave volunteer staff who are caring for Ebola victims. Can the First Minister therefore provide an assurance that the Scottish Government will support Save the Children in that investigation and, if needed, will provide medical expertise or technical resources to support the charity in doing so? Regarding Health Protection Scotland working closely with Public Health England in reviewing their screening procedures, can the First Minister give an indication of when that review could be complete and reported on? First, Jim Hulme raised the question about how Pauline Caffricy contracted Ebola. Save the children are to be commended for the very swift and rigorous review that they have embarked on, and that obviously has to be allowed to take its course. The Scottish Government would be very happy to provide any support and assistance that they thought was required, and that is an offer that I freely make. Jim Hulme is right to raise this point, because, of course, we can have all the procedures that we want in place here, but we hope that people who are working on the front line do not contract it. For that to be the case, that means that the protocols and procedures there have to be absolutely robust. On the second question, the review of the screening procedures will be on-going, and, as I have already said, some changes to the procedures in place have already been made to deal precisely with the situation in which somebody in a high-risk category is concerned, so that a more precautionary approach is taken. How that revised procedure operates will be reviewed over the coming days and weeks, and we will continue to keep that under review. Any substantial changes to the protocol and procedures in place, I am sure, would be communicated in the normal way, but it is not a case of doing a review, and that is it. It is a case of making sure that those arrangements are kept under on-going review. James Kelly, followed by Dennis Robertson. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I join others in paying tribute to Pauline Cafferkey, my constituent, whose courage and compassion is an example to us all. I am sure that our thoughts are with our family and we wish her a full recovery. The First Minister said in a statement that all passengers who travelled on the flight from Heathrow to Glasgow had been contacted by Health Protection Scotland and provided with advice and assurance. Can I ask if there has been any follow-up to that to ensure that none of those passengers in the intervening period are exhibiting any signs of being at risk from Ebola? First, I agree, as everybody does, with James Kelly's initial statement about Pauline Cafferkey and how difficult a time this is for her family. On the question that James Kelly asks, in terms of the follow-up with passengers on the plane, there were effectively two categories of passengers who were considered to have been in close proximity, which were to cut the short passengers in the two rows behind and in the two rows in front of where Pauline Cafferkey was sitting. I think that there were from memory eight passengers in that category. They have been contacted and they are being monitored. The other passengers who were considered to be not in close proximity were contacted principally to be offered advice and reassurance and told what they should do, should anything untoward be experienced by them. That is the same approach that was taken by Public Health England in respect of the Casablanca to Heathrow flight. A similar approach was taken to the one other person that Pauline Cafferkey had been in contact with. The only other point to make there, which is one that I have already made implicitly, was something that was done on a highly precautionary basis. It was not intended to give any indication that there was any concern about the health of the passengers on the plane. Simply because we are operating on that highly precautionary basis, it was deemed to be the right thing to do and I certainly think that it was the right decision. Dennis Robertson, followed by Richard Simpson. As the First Minister, if she is aware that if all her health boards have the necessary procedures in place to isolate patients who are considered to be potential carriers of Ebola whilst they are being tested? The short answer to that question is yes. Health Protection Scotland has assessed the capacity within NHS Scotland to accommodate suspected cases and all NHS boards have appropriate plans and equipment in place. As I said earlier, as the health secretary said earlier on as well, we have established three regional units for the management of either possible or confirmed cases in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. Across those three units, we have 14 negative pressure rooms and more than 50 isolation rooms. Patients that require high-level isolation will go to the Royal Free, all four UK nations co-operate in UK protocols. The Royal Free is a very specialist facility. In the United States of America, which is a population of 300 million people, there are only four units of the same type as the Royal Free. That is how specialist those units are. Many other European countries do not have facilities of the standard of the Royal Free. It is absolutely right that, where patients need that treatment, that is what they get. Of course, my final point just for the record, NHS Scotland pays for any treatment in the Royal Free that is got by Scottish patients. Richard Simpson and Finlay Stewart-Maxwell? I very much welcome the way in which the Government Health Protection Scotland and all the health professionals have dealt with this issue. The fact that the First Minister has made it clear that the protocols are going to be updated, because I was very concerned about the fact that someone having an elevated temperature, even within an acceptable range, although I have no idea what that means, was then allowed to fly on to Glasgow without further testing. My question is that there are not just health workers going to return from West Africa, but there are constant travellers coming from West Africa. What advice has been given to them or displayed to them so that we can ensure that those who are travelling back to this country are aware that, if they develop a temperature, that could be—obviously, the most common thing would be malaria—but it could possibly be related to Ebola if they have travelled from West Africa. What information has been given not just to the 97 per cent who fly through England, but also to the other 3 per cent who are travelling from other areas directly? It is an important point. Obviously, one of the benefits of screening—I have talked already about the danger around screening of false reassurance, but notwithstanding that, one of the big benefits of screening is the contact that it gives to people who are coming from affected countries to make sure that they have the right information, advice and guidance on what to do should anything of concern arise. The monitoring that I have already gone through—Health Protection Scotland has also worked very proactively with stakeholders so that people who are likely to travel to affected countries—whether that is aid workers, oil and gas workers or students—are registered into the Ebola monitoring programme, which then triggers the notice and the information that is given when people return. They are given information before they leave to advise them on what they should and should not do, and they are then contacted on their return so that the risk assessment can be carried out and appropriate advice. Given that there are information posters and leaflets that have been developed by Health Protection Scotland and deployed at ports of entry to provide information to travel, there is a whole range of work that has been done to raise awareness of what people should do, and that work will continue in the weeks and months to come. Presiding Officer, the First Minister has detailed the work under way in the UK at present. However, given the international nature of the threat, can the First Minister tell me what steps are being taken at the European Union level to co-ordinate a response to Ebola and what response and influence the Scottish Government has in those discussions? It is a very good point, because in order to combat Ebola at source, there is and there is, but there will continue to be a very co-ordinated international response. Public health specialists from Scotland are involved in discussions at European level on the response to Ebola, and they will continue to be so. That includes, crucially and very importantly, participation in the European Health Security Committee, where those matters are discussed. I can reassure Stuart Maxwell that we will continue to play a full part in all aspects of the international response, as well as making sure that we are doing what is required to be done at home to ensure that our preparedness is up to scratch. That ends the statement from the First Minister on Ebola. We now move to the next item of business, which is a debate on motion number one.


Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the third Scholarship Hour on Vital Week. As you can see today we're in a different place, we've just finished the launch of the National Sexual Project, next steps for teaching and learning, moving forward together. I hope you joined us at the launch. Just a little bit of housekeeping before we start, the session is going to be recorded as the other sessions have been and it'll be released this afternoon, later this afternoon onto the National Forum website. If you would like to view subtitles you're able to turn on your subtitles by pressing the subtitles button at the end of the Zoom screen. I'm delighted to say that our graphic illustrator Esther is also with us today and you can keep an eye on Twitter for some of our images later on this afternoon and we'll be looking at them in detail at the closing event on Friday. Today's Chair is Karina McGuire, a National Forum Board Member so I'm delighted now to hand over to Karina. Welcome everybody and thanks for tuning in. This is a very exciting follow-on from the launch earlier of the Next Steps project and I suppose it's fantastic to have another hour and hopefully you'll stick with us for the hour. We have some really, really interesting Gosta talks and also we have our first poster showcase today and later on we will be showcasing our podcast for our fellow who unfortunately can't be with us today and that's Dr Barry Ryan.  So over to you, Tom. So we have Derbly Cullinan from Trinity College up in Dublin so we're starting off today up in Dublin there and the title is reviving the anatomic past bringing new life into historic animatronical teaching tools so I mean oh my god that in itself are you've taken up about 90 seconds of your five minutes already. Okay we're all ready to start and get ready for the Gostas there. So we just started off nice and handy we get the hands up here now we're going to start off here now I can see people on the screen. Colin come on get the hands up here I know you're helping out here in the back but I want to see hands up everybody are we ready to start off? Okay we'll just get oh I need to get my timer ready to go and then we're ready to go. Okay. Ahane.  Ahane. Okay welcome everyone my name is Derbly Cullinan and I am a research assistant here in the Department of Anatomy at Trinity College Dublin working under the guidance of project lead Dr Dennis Barry so I invite you to take five minutes to sit back and take a journey with me into the past as we examine anatomy through the eyes of our yesteryear educators. So the Anatomy Museum at Trinity College Dublin houses an extensive collection of historic specimen illustrations and models that retain significant pedagogical value however due to their delicate nature and rarity these tools are not currently used for anatomy teaching and student learning. So this project therefore aims to rejuvenate these teaching tools by incorporating them into an online platform which showcases their typical and normal perspectives of the human body and through the inclusion of case histories and information about the anatomists of the time we take students on a journey into the past to learn from this exceptional value or content rather. So why well in the words of Scottish anatomist Frederick Knox he who attempts to teach anatomy without museum strictly deserves the name of imposter. So in 2010 a call was made to anatomists to develop strategies to rejuvenate these tools and basically prevent them from disappearing altogether. So other than funding that enabled museum upkeep there has been a lack of innovation in terms of utilizing these specimens for modern teaching. So by digitizing them we are incorporating them in online platform and the contemporary student can then learn from the students of of the past. So this short snippet here is an excerpt from our tool and it showcases how students can hover their mouse over anatomical structures and to identify them and then on the right hand side there is also some supporting information for students and these illustrations here that I've just taken an example they are from Joseph MacLeese's Atlas of Surgical Anatomy and that dates back to 1856 and MacLeese was Irish he was a surgeon anatomist and evidently a very gifted medical illustrator and then this section here is just a who what when where why section which gives the the specimen or the tools a bit of provenance in place. So to exhibit another example here is a specimen which is accompanied by an exceptional case report dating back to 1896 and this specimen is that of a female infant who was born with a congenital malformation and in the report we learn that Dr. Kidd performed a treatment in an attempt to save the child's life and while unfortunately it was unsuccessful we learn on post-mortem examination that he was only a mere one sixteenth of an inch away from successfully performing surgery. So what did the students learn here? Well a few things firstly the existence of congenital malformations secondly information about historical treatment approaches and modern treatment approaches and most importantly the importance of radiological guides which now make a very simple procedure like this successful in up to 100% of cases. So we argue that specimens like this with an accompanied case report are completely unparalleled by modern teaching tools. So how does this enhance a scholarship amongst students and teachers of anatomy? Well firstly the online platform aligns with existing curricular elements at Trinity College Dublin and therefore consolidates learning and enhances the student experience. Secondly by developing faculty approved information the transactional distance between faculty and students is reduced and then the third thing is that it mediates the overaligns of students on online platforms to source on hematomical information and lastly because it's online it increases the capacity for self-directed learning. So our tool invites students to experience the anatomy of the past and by breathing new life into this historic teaching tools the educational merit proposed by the past anatomist is revived. To once again quote anatomist Frederick Knox without museums the profession of anatomy would be in the state of a man without a language and with that gasta. Well done Derbly I know the person who's going to break my heart today and finish bang on time you're all doing superbly good job I do actually love the quote from Knox I think that's really really good so well done and just a virtual round of applause for everybody there for Derbly so very well done. As I said we have a lot to be to get through today because we're doing four and then a video break and then four afterwards so I won't hang about we're going to stay in in the capital although I'm sure court people might disagree where the actual capital is but there we have it. We're going over to University College Dublin to Sandra Nicholson and once again keeping the whole anthropomorphic thing going on. Sandra's presentation is authentic teaching on interpreting animal emotions so once again I say I mean the titles themselves are certainly interesting. Okay so as I said one thing I just want to remind people again don't forget as I said these are a very useful shout out and showcase for people so please get in touch with people if they've done something which is exciting or stimulating and that you want to get in touch with them please do okay so we will just get back again for a little bit of counting here because as I said I know we could be sitting here and say I want people to feel part of the community and if I'm going to be up counting I want to see everybody else counting there. Katrina as I say I love you there vision of the campanoil in the background there so get the hands up here excellent okay get the hands up excellent are we ready Alice Charles come on that's it good girl I hate you I don't know I treat you I can't I can't Hi everybody I'm Sandra Nicholson I'm lecturer in veterinary nursing at ECD and I'm both delighted and somewhat nervous to be here today as a first-time guest here but I'd like to tell you about how I designed and delivered some authentic teaching for veterinary nursing students on interpreting animal emotions and how studying the teaching and learning enabled me to gain new insights into the student learning process. Veterinary nursing students need to be able to interpret animal emotional state to stay safe in their interactions with them but also to better cater to their patients needs obviously the most authentic way to teach this would be by using real animals live animals in real time however apart from logistical and ethical barriers to this there's a couple of other big problems the first is the dog in school effect I don't know if any of you remember when we were younger in primary or secondary school and a dog got loose in the school and how wonderfully distracting that was well turns out that has an impact on veterinary nurses students too because losing live animals and teaching sometimes distracts them from learning the knowledge and skills that they need to learn the second problem is that emotions can pass quickly and students need time to process the body language signals that have been given off and to make their evaluation and unlike the images on this screen animals cannot be paused in real life therefore I decided to use creative common images and YouTube videos in my teaching I embedded these images and films in a teaching structure that aligned with the authentic learning principles as described by Harrington and Oliver in 2000 firstly in my lectures on animal behavior I described the body language and behavior of each emotion in each species then I talked students through my own process of how I interpret the body language and behavioral signals to determine the animal emotional state I created a series of discussion boards and strongly encouraged students to post images to analyze and describe the body language and behavioral signals and to make an interpretation of emotional state this gave them a chance to reflect and practice the skill and I could give them feedback on it I designed an online aligned quiz on bright space and which involved images and multi-select questions and was worth 15 percent of the module grade I decided to study the teaching and learning as part of the UCD professional diploma in university teaching and learning and I particularly focused on student engagement in lectures and in on discussion boards the contents of discussion board posts and student performance in the online quiz and I found it some really interesting things in particular I learned more about how process of how students could be learning this which is really important because there's very little that's that is known or in the literature about this so subjectively in lectures I noticed that students often missed important body language signals and sometimes incorrect interpretations by the time they were using the discussion boards however they could always identify the predominant emotion in an image they often missed second emotion and mixed emotion cases this was independent of the species involved and of the emotion in question so this is gives me a little snapshot into what the students learning journey could be I'm not sure what the next step is yet because we haven't got to that yet another interesting thing that I found was that anthropomorphic language was used at times by students for dogs and cattle but not for cats for example one student described a dog as having sad anxious eyes when really they're dilated people's attention over the brow however it didn't seem to interfere with them being correct in their interpretations finally performance in the online quiz was excellent with grades exceeding 70 percent which seemed to suggest that my teaching strategy was successful however I would need to test the student with live animals to be sure that the learning would transfer I need to thank a number of people for helping me in my research journey people involved the UCD professional diploma in university teaching and learning as listed here and the student participants of the research project without whom I wouldn't have gained this information but I'm now able to channel back into my teaching and thank you to all all of you for listening and that's Gasta very well done but once again Sandra someone else who is determined to upset me today and heading in well on time now it's some really really good stuff and I'd certainly like to hear the next stage of that particular research and I think also it's really nice to see something there from from your own professional development kicking off and leading them to that to that project there so I think that's lovely here to see so our next one is a colleague of mine and as I said in our in our new university Tom Bradrick and as I know you know there you know Sullivan and Jim Omani so this is the be active framework for active learning so it's a lot of activity down down this part of the world so as I said I think that we started off nice and handy we'll do a bit of left to right there and swaying around there people looking very very comfortable they're looking a little bit stayed and so as I said we get the hands up again they're clear on all the area but see you open the open there like that and we're looking a bit more relaxed in the last time we met online but I'll mention that in the next one okay are we ready everybody here get the hands up here all right you can stomp your feet as well if you want are we ready hey okay hello everyone my name is Thomas Bradrick I'm representing the teaching and learning unit here in monster technology university I'm really looking forward to today for the next four and a half minutes so all you need to do is disguise you just need to be like the nodding dog here and say oh yes time that's very interesting for the next few minutes so thanks good see somebody nodding there when we talk about the be active framework we're not talking about disguise so you don't need to worry about standing up and do any jumping jacks so just relax and listen because what I do want to talk about is this be active framework the be active framework is a I suppose it's an exploratory framework based on the the acronym be active and it's there to support staff and students to hence teaching and support i can student engagement and deeper learning as a result so it's important to suppose it is based on research as is active learning strategy so I think in the talk like this we won't go into detail but it's nice to have the big words like retrieval practice and cognitive load theory and short term to long term memory so it's nice to have them in the in the power point and to be active framework and this is what I want to talk about because this is available as part of the vital district this poster so you can access this at your own time and spend a bit more time in it I do want to kind of highlight some areas and that is if you look at the right hand side there is an activity section on the poster so that will allow you to click into the activity and will give you something to work on in that space and also as part of this we've developed kind of an animated video that will give you two or three minutes that will help you find out more information about the be active framework what I'd like to do for next kind of three minutes is outline some of the key points of it to give you an idea to entice you to engage more after this talk so first of all when we begin looking at our context to be of the be activists to begin looking at your context and think about what you're currently doing that's working well and maybe look at areas that you could potentially improve on and maybe active learning might be part of that strategy and also if you're in the in the space of scholarship of teaching and learning this might be an opportunity to say look I'm trying something new in my teaching can this inform my research we can inform my scholarship so maybe talk to someone in your institution about ethical consideration if that's where you're at the A for the active framework stands to analyze and assess and I think looking at what you teach who you teach and where you teach is that online you know what level the students are at and what do you want the students to be able to do or know so within this be active framework the A allows you to analyze your context and see what works or what you might want to address and then we would recommend that you assess some active learning strategies and maybe engage further and we recommend the KP cross academy there to to develop further to find out some active learning strategies to see for the active framework is to choose the active learning strategy that works best for you in your context and that you're comfortable delivering and you can see a list there on the screen from simple to complex and then communicate why active learning is important for you and sell it to the students and if anyone wants to see a good video about selling a product that dollar shave club is excellent nothing to it active learning but how they sell it is very engaging and worthwhile the tea then guys for you as opposed with when you've tried and that new active learning strategy and you decide I'm going to do this but maybe think about how you could build trust around this new way of maybe teaching and looking at teaching and learning so test this new strategy and see does see how it goes for you and build trust by by bringing the students on this journey with them with you and sharing why you're doing this and what they will have to do and then take this start take this step further the audience to maybe investigate and and ask questions like well where are my instructions effective was the timing the sequencing of this active learning strategy wasn't inclusive and how I can improve on it and that takes us to the V which you might be familiar with gives reflective cycle we ask you to think about how can I validate this active learning strategy with my current groups and how do I add value to it and do it better than next time and I think that leads on lastly to the last step which this is looking at your overall practice again about saying how can I evaluate enhance and engage my students further so you might first of all evaluate did that work is that strategy worthwhile doing again how could I enhance it and do it better the next time and look at your overall practice of teaching and learning and maybe engage in further activity and further research around that so I know what you're thinking guys where do I find out more I've talked a lot there so we'd ask you to check it out the poster is there for vital as part of this touch a own have a look at it and engage with it and also as part of national seminars ships national forum and generally the 13th we've an active learning to engage students to enhance learning workshop so please engage further I want to finish by thanking the active learning team and empty you myself Dr. Leary, Linda O'Sullivan and Professor Jim O'Manny that's the email address if you want to contact us further so I'd be finished by saying thanks for listening thanks all the national forum and thanks Tom let's go Gusta oh my lord well I'm not surprised Thomas absolutely wonderful round of applause you're talking about absolutely four minutes and 58 seconds he gets in all the contact details shares them all gets in the the thing with the seminar so you know look if you had a mic Thomas I'd be expecting you to kind of just go boom and just sort of drop it that was an absolute great one no pressure on Kiran O'Leary he's going to be coming up next there like you know but but there is a lot of pressure Kiran sad to say Thomas has really put down an active marker but no joking so it's really good and Thomas if you want to put up the link to the to that seminar in January it's really useful so as I said from from MTU we're going to shoot back up to TU Dublin to Kiran O'Leary shore bites introducing research to force chair students so open from the the shore network so Kiran if you have your presentation ready to come up and then we do our counting then yep thanks very much excellent right okay so we're all ready now as I said we just in the counter we're going to go left to right we start off on the hand to the left so to the right are we all ready I don't know I can't see myself I'm sure somebody can see me anyway here we go but then we're going to go to the left on the head I'm ready I hate I don't know a tree a tree a car a car a cooie got that got that uh hello everyone and uh Gerval got Tom uh for the introduction it's uh very nice to see you again and it's a pleasure for me to talk to you all this afternoon about the shore bits project which has been run by the shore network the shore network is a it's a national network of higher education institutions that has the objective of enhancing the integration of research into undergraduate science programs and just based on the idea that by becoming more actively involved with research students undergraduate students have an opportunity to develop key graduate attributes including critical thinking communication problem solving and so on but research can also be a wonderful motivator for students as they develop their understanding of their awareness of how their discipline area connects to the world of discovery so to build these connections over the past five years the shore network has run conferences you know going back to 2018 and we've run an undergraduate journal as well and that's gone through a number of issues and but these are primarily focused on a final year final year projects and the work that students do towards the end of their only graduate studies but we recognize within the network that research is not something that should be restricted to the final year of um of undergraduate studies because throughout their undergraduate studies students should be developing their knowledge of their curiosity towards and their skills in research and so with the help of the national forum who generously funded our project through the network and discipline fund the shore network has implemented this project called shore bits and it's specifically and and directly aims to engage students from across all years but particularly first and second year students to engage them with research so a shore bit is a 10 minute video made by a researcher is designed to be played in class for undergraduate students in particular those first year students who may never have considered that research is an important activity that takes place in higher education and who might not be aware that higher education is not just about the acquisition of knowledge but it's about the journey of discovery so playing a shore bit video in class takes just 10 minutes and within the video the students will meet a researcher so an academic or a post grad and they'll get to consider a problem posed by the researcher then during a pause in the video they'll be asked to consider the solutions to the particular problem and then they'll listen to the researcher explaining the solution at the end we developed a rich suite of shore bit videos we have them all here online and we've begun to use them in class this year where they've been very enthusiastically received by first year students all across Ireland students have engaged with the problems and they've engaged with each other and several students have sent emails to the researchers that they watched and we're delighted to have got the reaction so far that we were looking for so all of our videos are online here they're all in different categories and they're all directed towards the sciences of course and so if we take for example if we go into biology just as one example and we see a number of videos in here so the first one or the second one listed is by my colleague John Butler Dr. John Butler and he asks the question what is the most important sense for walking and he gives three solutions to students so when this video is played for students John speaks for about five minutes then during the two-minute pause the students consider solutions that John has presented and then John comes back on screen in the last few minutes to explain his solution if we go to environment and sustainability obviously extremely topical this is one of my favorite videos that we have is from Kira Davis down in Limerick and Kira has put together a video that asked the question how are we going to feed Martian colonies which I think is a wonderfully engaging question that is really going to stimulate interest among undergraduate students certainly got me thinking about Kira's research and there are many many more videos all available up on our website and at shorenetwork.e forward slash shore bits we've a promotional video there as well that explains how shore bits can be used in class so all that remains is for me to issue a call to all of you because we're looking for people to use our videos in class so if you're a student or a graduate and considering further research you can navigate through our videos as well and learn a little bit about research in that way if you're lecturing students please do consider using these videos just taking 10 minutes from a class to play one of these videos and let us know that you're doing it because we'd love to involve you in our evaluation and watch as your students do you know learn to appreciate the work that takes place in universities in research and to those of you who are researchers we'd love to hear from you if you were interested in making one of these videos so all you would need to do is get in touch with us and we'd be able to guide you through that process but regardless of how you want to get involved or if you want to get involved and you can just get in touch with myself or anyone else on the project team and I'll put those links into the chat so that's it for me that's Gasta I think Tom. Perfect timing absolutely brilliant to hear on and can I just say to congratulate I mean as someone who teaches research matters undergrads I think sometimes the relationship for undergrads they say there's something very distinct and remote activity and that's something that they necessarily aspire to so I think that's actually a great great resource and I would echo I think certainly that all I'm looking for now is maybe some people in getting involved with social science stuff but yeah I think it's definitely brilliant and this is the sort of stuff that I suppose this is where I think Gasta really comes into its own a little bit of crowd sourcing and sharing information so absolutely well done a round of applause for Kieran and the virtual room for all our Gasta tours we're going to take a pause now in the Gasta's and I'm going to hand you over now to to Karina McGuire and she's going to introduce some video scholarship posters the showcase event so I'll see you all in a few minutes I'll hand over to you Karina. That's great thanks a lot Tom and thank you so much to the timekeeping of our Gasta speakers I think Tom's reputation precedes him so what we want to have a look at now is something that's actually quite important in our teaching and learning environment because a picture can tell us an awful lot as well particularly when there's so much data floating around so as part of the scholarship the teaching and learning focus on scholarship as part of the vital week we did put out a call for contributions to poster showcases and fantastic response 70 contributors to that particular call so what we're going to do now is we're going to have a look at the first 35 of those posters showcases and the second series of the 35 the remaining 35 will feature on the scholarship hour this Friday so have a look out for that and also all of these posters and resources will feature in the National Forum Hub which can be found on www.teachingandlearning.com so have a look for that after the week is complete and share with your colleagues so let's let's roll that video now on the posters please stick resources in there folks so please try and go back to that beautiful gallery and congrats to the National Forum staff for creating that so the second batch of posters will be released at the Friday scholarship hour so please do not miss that and take some time to go back into that lovely gallery and peruse those posters with lots of transformational learning for everyone so back to our gas to master now Tom over to you to introduce our our next batch of gas to talks thank you very much Korean and yeah I'd like to echo some some great work there and certainly encourage people to to Korean and have a look at all those great resources we're now moving back down to MTU to another colleague there this stage here it's Noel Fahy so presenting presenting on his talk compliance is the key I see I see Mary Fitzpatrick is here as well so as I said I expect Horde to be doing some counting and Ken McCarty here the the the younger version of me he likes to think the younger better looking version but I don't know whether that can be improved upon but there you have it as I said it's just it's just a little eating I think makes all the difference for the moment anyway right so we started off going to the left we're now going to the right ground I see you there as well and you're there here to support Noel so I expect to see you know a big a big level of gusto with the counting in to give Noel a fabulous counting so we're all ready get the hands of we're going to go to the right are we already a bit more shouting a bit more energy here Ken I'm watching you particularly are we ready here on you have to follow that up it's on a great gust and they'll do a great count are we ready thanks very much Tom and so yeah my name is Noel I'm working in MTU in the technology enhanced learning department I'm just going to be talking about scenario based learning and if using that can improve students knowledge retention in online learning so I suppose brief background to the study that was I was working with pharmaceutical manufacturer on redesigning their GMP compliance training so in the pharmaceutical industry compliance training is very important from a lot of perspectives such training is typically tied to mandatory regulations and other legal requirements it's also needed for companies to the sector to maintain a manufacturing license the training over is often viewed as a nuisance and as something that needs to be got through the emphasis tends to be on the transmission of information and the learner ultimately passing an assessment so an auditor can be shown the site is compliant the company however wanted to ensure compliance training had an actual impact on learners and improve their critical thinking so this was hoped that we allowed them to react to situations in their day to day work and not impact production schedules rather than just being able to pass a one-off assessment and the focus therefore was to look at active learning theories which promote the benefit of benefits of learners being actively involved in the learning process so the relevant literature here and related studies underscore the need to put learners into scenarios where they have the opportunity to apply the knowledge being learned in a meaningful and engaging way the study explored the use of scenario-based e-learning to improve good manufacturing practices compliance training so the study participants were randomly divided into two groups one group completing an active scenario based e-learning course and the other undertaking a more typical passive e-learning course covering the same learning objectives so participants completed a pre-test to post-test upon completion of their respective course and seven days later then they were required to complete a retention test to evaluate by evaluate how much knowledge of the content they retain from their perspective course they completed so each participant was then invited to take part in an unstructured interview to identify their experience of the course did they enjoy it were they engage with the content how they felt about their learning and did they feel their retention of the information was improved stayed the same or was made worse by the approach they undertook the content for the scenario-based approach and started to learn into real-life situations where they encounter which they may encounter whilst carrying out their duties on site following the approach outlined in the research meetings were arranged with various subject matter experts across the organization to create realistic scenarios based in authentic learning settings as will be experienced by the learner in their daily work life I suppose at the beginning of each scenario the module the learner is presented with a map of the site which highlights the scenarios and areas of the site where they could occur the learner then is actually in control and they choose which order they want to complete those scenarios to ensure then the credibility all the options presented to learn to solve the scenario had to be viable as the consequences presented the learner is provided with a real-world consequence for the action they've chosen immediately which indicates if they've gotten the scenario correct or incorrect once all the scenarios have been completed the learner then is presented with a summary of their performance and the scenarios giving feedback on correct and incorrect selections based on prior site instance to further reinforce the learning and so in terms of findings I suppose yes compliance training is really boring and I know obviously I just about that but it is participants completing the scenario based approach it is shown had a 64 percent improvement between pre and final test with those in the passive roof only showing an 18 percent improvement for all tests carried out those participants who completed the scenario based approach had a greater improvement in their attention and knowledge when compared to the group who took part in traditional passive compliance training in the unstructured interviews then 80 percent of participants that took part in scenario based approach felt the approach had actually a positive impact on their knowledge retention whereas only 20 percent of the participants that took part in the traditional approach felt that it had positive impact on their knowledge retention an unexpected finding this was obviously was learning pre-conception most interviews had negative feelings towards the topic before actually attempting anything so it disqualified we could impact then and actually how much knowledge they retained so past experience had certainly attained to their perception of the training ever before the learning had had begun and so it's an unexpected finding from the study it does appear to be a natural outcome from the traditional passive approach often taken corporate compliance training and it's probably something that's true across the board pre-conception going into a course can also can sometimes I suppose impact a benefit of the scenario approach is the creation of a hook or reference point that a learner can recall at a later stage when attempting to retain information in their interviews several participants acknowledged this stating they found themselves recalling some of the scenarios when attempting the final test so building and forming these links is only possible by creating learning environments which the learner can apply what they're what they're learning making connections and the knowledge being learned and real-world situations participants in the scenario-based approach had this link with each scenario being tied to a location on a map of the site which they could select a point which participants mentioned was beneficial was this link from the map of the site to the realistic nature of the scenario so they're going back to that and think of that when they were trying to answer questions in closing it must be noted that the results are some of a small sample size there are limitations so what can be taken from them however these results suggest that knowledge retention is likely to be improved with a scenario-based approach if the context of the scenarios are well-designed and implemented effectively thank you that was impressive from the time I said 10 seconds you completed it in three seconds so that was seriously seriously impressive but uh and you're really I suppose yeah compliance mightn't sound the most interesting to stop but it certainly it certainly needs to be done and these are strategies which I think can be translated across a wide range of teaching and learning situations so so well done and so we're now moving from MTU up to UCD Dr. Kira Duygen presentation on student partnership in a well-being research sorry in well-being research and scholarship now just looking there Ken McCarty is looking a little bit too you know relaxed and sitting down he's hiding down there so I wasn't going to do it for the last one but I think you know do you know what look it we're at the midpoint of the Gusta marathon and I think people are starting to flag so we're going to be doing the up and down not for the last one we're actually going to be doing it for this and we're going to be led by Ken on this case here I want to see him standing up here Ken so my sort of sort of you know uh doppelganger there like that so Kira's going to go what the hell have I signed up for here but I can tell you Kira if you haven't done a Gusta before this is certainly your infiltrate but as I said the only phone that I really have is calling a stop and everybody is impeccable in their toy but I better sort of get moving on here so we're going to go up on the hand down on the dough up on the tree down in the car open the quick and the show to Gusta we are ready and I'm watching particularly Rowan and Bray Kira now and Erie Alice and Rowan and Bray who I can all see here so there's nowhere to hide I don't care you know if the rest of you are not participating but the rest of you are all they all can train immigrants there so we're all going to be there I want to get one of those masks as well okay are we all ready we're going to get to the hands up force and then we're going to go ready a hey a dough come on show to us a tree a tree a car a car a cooie Gusta no I have not done a Gusta before but it's definitely a great experience so thanks very much my name is Kira Degnan I'm a postdoctoral researcher in UCD and in the inside SFI research center for data analytics and I'm representing an insight team listed on the slide here who are working on a student well-being research and education initiative called Flourish and Flourish is an acronym for fitness for life in our universities realizing informatics for students to thrive so a bit of a mouthful there I'm going to briefly highlight today why student partnership was so central to the development and evaluation of both the research project and the module how we did that the outcomes and some of the challenges we encountered and if you're wondering how I'm planning to do that in five minutes well I'm not really but I am going to invite you to attend a vital event that we're hosting next week um on embedding well-being um in the curriculum so student well-being is a significant concern for us in higher education um research tells us that only 42 percent of young adults in Ireland are within the normal range for depression and anxiety um and college finances and the future are the top three stressors that they report students live in a digital world and we wondered whether we could help them to better harness their digital experiences and data to support their well-being through things like growing their self-awareness and enhancing their ability to self-manage but we knew that for students to be able to do this they needed to have underlying knowledge and skills about their health development and well-being so what I mean by that is for example being able to understand why sleep and exercise might be beneficial for the well-being understanding how to reflect on their current behaviors understanding how to set smart goals um and how to be successful in trying to change those those behaviors so that they might better utilize digital tools in our current world like mobile applications for example that could help them to initiate and monitor those changes so we created a new module on exactly that with students and other stakeholders around the university as partners in the design the module is called sort your life out and thrive um it's an elective and discipline agnostic module and the content features everything from physical and mental health to time management and goal setting to relationships with communication skills um and it's all in the context of the digital world that we inhabit to evaluate and iterate the module over time we scaffolded several ways of understanding the student voice throughout so we did entry and exit interviews to understand why students registered for the module and what their experience was we did class polls so that we could meet the students where they were every day and so picture here is a one word check-in for how the students were feeling using the poll everywhere software we used a modified crystalline questionnaire after personal development seminars we ran world catholic style discussions and finally we used their assignments which included personal development plans group work uh which they were co-designing digital tools to support well-being um and finally their final reflections on their growth in the module without its challenges like for example getting students recruited for entry interviews before the module started to unregisteration and ucd for example stays open for the first four weeks of the semester um getting research ethics to run studies where the students are also part of a graded module and also communicating about the research on top of all the emails and correspondence the students already get um especially when they were learning remotely that was really challenging but we did learn how to improve the module while ensuring it remains student-centered and meets the students needs so for example in the last run we found that time management and self-management skills were strong themes in terms of students needs and so we've emphasized that more in our current offering of the module the findings and the student needs also inform parallel research that we're doing on developing digital supports for student well-being moving forward so we believe that the time has come for evidence-based approaches to embed well-being in the curriculum and we're not the only ones so if you're interested to hear more about this and many other initiatives happening across the country I'll invite you to join us next Tuesday morning for our online event on embedding well-being in the curriculum where we'll have case study presentations, audience interaction and we look to create a community of practice um and a panel discussion on what the future of student well-being looks like in higher education so you can scan the qr code here I'll also pop the link in the chat if anyone's interested to hear more and that is Gasta. Excellent well done Kira and if you're fourth time out well done to our round of applause for Kira and never easy so listen I'm just mindful of the time here so we're going to move from Dublin up to letter Kenny Institute of Technology where we have Krina Odonehu presenting the UNIQUE creative process I didn't want to call it unique I think it's actually spaced out you no it is unique or is unique yeah you're safe enough yeah oh yes I'm sorry about that I was only going to call it or else you need you okay moving along quickly here I mean just get the hands up here we just won't even actually do up and down but straight out and then we're going to relax you you know after that okay so if everybody's ready we're going to start off hey thank you hello my name is Krina Odonehu and alongside my colleague Dr Tina Patton we've developed a custom creative process for use in education and enterprise we're obviously very fond of acronyms in this group and we're both lecturers in the Department of Design and Creative Media at letter Kenny Institute of Technology and for the last four years have shared delivery of module entitled communication and creative process and it's delivered to all first years across our undergraduate programs and rather than a eureka moment that often people think is a creative creativity um as Picasso famously said inspiration exists but it has to find you working and a creative process gives you form to this working it breaks the challenge down into manageable chunks helps counteract the creative equivalent to a writer's block and importantly for creative entrepreneurs gives a model to help structure pricing so many of you may have heard the term design thinking this is one of many processes that exist and even those who think they don't follow a specific process naturally go through many common steps when we began teaching the communication and creative process module we looked at all the different models that were out there and we adopted the established d-school approach originally developed by that developed at Stanford University and it is empathize define ideate prototype and test and although this is really useful we felt like the very important stage of reflection and having consulted with our students it was felt that this language was quite alien to them so as I say having researched the other models we developed our own acronym for our students and we called it unique so that stands for understand needs ideas quick prototype use and evaluate so I'm just going to briefly bring you through this now central to successful design is an understanding of what you're being asked to do and who you're doing it for this applies to the end user who's going to use your product or service or enjoy your movie or whatever it is that you're your creative endeavor but it's also stakeholders involved and the understand stage explores and examines this in the second stage need this is where you really bore down to the kernel of the brief the true challenge of the project and you identify what really needs to be done this might not be the the brief you're actually given then it's on to what is for many of our students their favorite stage ideas without the previous stages however this can be a hollow exercise authenticity is key and placing the end user at the center of all decisions is integral unusually I will use the eureka moment here because surprisingly it's often when people are at the quick prototype stage that they have that moment this is the making state the materialization of an abstract thought before now and making the pitfalls and assumptions are often on earth in every brief we stipulate the need to consider universal design and the environmental considerations of our student solutions these become really apparent at this stage and in many ways having unique the queue and unique gave us a really great reason to emphasize the prototype it's quick it only needs to be at a level of detail that in the next state use someone ideally your target audience can interact with it and give you feedback and this is a really invaluable state of the process and that's followed by the evaluate state where you reflect on these comments and you adapt or you know adapt your solution accordingly if you agree with the people so not only do we utilize this process with LIT students and other departments have incorporated it also but we've been really fortunate to receive HTA funding and we have delivered the DICE Academy which sees 100 transition year students to stand upon us each year from skills across County Donegal and each year they're given a different brief and they come up with a product service or experience to that theme and the images here are from the very first iteration of that project which was linger longer at Malin Head and of course as with everyone we've had to adapt and this year we actually delivered the program online. We also work with community groups so this is one of the projects that we would let a County Cathedral quarter and we've been really fortunate by this partnership and including that some of our students ideas have been realized which is really great when a live project oh sorry and I guess just you know we apply it in different ways as well with social enterprises as well so that's me I guess that'll do thank you guys and apologies for almost running over. Well done so round of applause and it's not easy so as I said I'm mindful of our time so if people give Crane a virtual round of applause we move from letter County back down to Dublin to Maria Morgan from the Royal College of Surgeons on rapid implementation of a hybrid converged teaching model with a large class impact on student performance and satisfaction ratings so this time I won't ask you to move up and down but I will ask you to go instead of going kind of three hands. Cooing we'll go Cooing quarter three dough hanging and then show gusset so we're set now a little bit less let's just mix it all over get the hands up so instead of the hands coming up with one finger we're going to five fingers straight up from the start Gero that's it okay are we all ready we're going to start off Cooing Cooing quarter three dough hanging and gusset. Thank you very much for the opportunity to share our recent experience of implementing a high-flex teaching approach for our year one medicine program and so as was experienced by everyone in higher education last year brought a lot of unprecedented challenges in terms of delivery of our program first semester one we had all of our students who are mostly international students based in Dublin and we were able to retake their attendance on campus however for semester two the start of semester two coincided with the third COVID wave where we had a massive spike in in COVID cases and many of our students had traveled home for Christmas and so were overseas so a decision was met at the time to send the message was sent really for students to stay in place wherever they were it was taught to be the safest so not to travel so international students to stay where they were if they were in Dublin to stay there and so that resulted in me going a little bit gray but also we have 50 percent of students exclusively online so that was mostly our international cohort and 50 percent of our students could still avail of on-campus blended approach attendance so they could avail of socially distanced face-to-face teaching and we managed that by designating their time on campus through specific learning communities which didn't mix so we implemented this high-flex approach so when this was first muted there was a lot of interesting discussion and WhatsApp messages about it but essentially what this involved was faculty simultaneously teaching online and in person and this allowed us to facilitate the students to engage synchronously either exclusively online or via an on-campus blended approach now in reality what this looked like for us is you can see here we were fortunate we had a designated lecture theatre that only our class could use and it's very large so this allowed us to comfortably accommodate 80 students at a time with the two meter social distancing and then the remainder of the class engaged synchronously online so never once to waste a good crisis we thought we will look at this now and investigate what is the impact of this converged teaching approach with our two cohorts the exclusively online and the blended approach and we looked at academic performance and student satisfaction so first of all if we looked at the outcomes academically first of all we could say that we were able to deliver the curriculum successfully and I don't have scope here to go into all the modifications we meant to do that but in terms of performance we've seen a comparable overall performance with previous years so no significant change there was also no difference in overall exam performance between the two cohorts those that attended completely online versus those that availed of the blended on-campus approach as you can see here so all students had the same experience during semester one and so I've just designated them into the two grouping so you can see there was no difference in the academic cohorts as it were but then in semester two they had the differing experiences and there was no difference in terms of overall performance however where we did what was interesting was students self-reported satisfaction levels with the modules at the end of the semester so the students who availed of teaching exclusively online actually reported lower satisfaction levels compared to the blended learning approach and that's probably not surprising to us as educators but nonetheless it's important I think to be aware of so in conclusion we can say that we successfully transitioned to this high flex and blended learning approach and it mitigated risk for our very large class size while allowing us to engage with these students a lot of whom it was their first year of college they were international students on their own and so on so it was important and I suppose high flex is a very attractive method to address student demand for flexibility but I do think we need to consider the impact that it has on students satisfaction levels and I suppose really you know what we want is not always what's good for us so I'll leave you with that thought Gasta. Excellent well done well done another absolutely bang on the money presentation so now absolutely brilliant well done listen can everybody just give a virtual round of applause to all our guests here today we've got through a lot we had eight really good projects check in the chat a lot of people put up links and really get back onto the website because I really think there's some superb work I'm mindful of the time so I'm not going to hang about I'm going to hand you back to Karina and I'll see everybody again tomorrow for tomorrow's lunchtime sessions. That's great thank you Tom and we are up against the time now all right although this last piece is actually quite important to us a critical success factor for all of us is to get that student perspective and we're going to ask our one of our associates as student assembly people to come along and give us a few insights and reflections now I'm just mindful that we have Melissa Bergen in Limerick in the chat backing up student reflections and thanks for that Melissa but on camera here we have Eleanor Ronan from UCD and Eleanor is going to provide us with some key insights on our presentations today over to you Eleanor. Hi so hopefully everyone can hear me I'm going to jump straight in since we're a bit short of time and starting with the talk by Jerobla Cullinan and I think was really brilliant and the resource created is really interesting I had never considered I suppose as an art student but just generally how important it is for students medicine to learn from the past but when it comes from learning from different illnesses then are perhaps less common nowadays and also learning from mistakes made in the past as well and how medicine has improved since then and especially when Jerobla mentioned how close the surgeon can be to success and how those little details make such a difference and also I think the fact that it allows for self-directed learning is fantastic because I think students really enjoy that and it allows them to learn and ask me online which is very important in a COVID-19 situation when access can be a little bit more difficult so then Sandra Nicholson's presentation on animal emotions in veterinary nursing I found this really interesting and I have a friend in veterinary nursing so I'll certainly be asking you more about it but there were several points that I thought were really good in terms of interaction between students and the content and the fact that I suppose in lectures students often miss signals and then after they go into this process of discussion boards that they slowly develop this and as well I suppose the fact that veterinary students are also human that you know they can get distracted in their learning when an animal is used in this practice and even use different language for certain animals other than that's different to others so it's really interesting and I think it's definitely a valuable resource in terms of them helping them to develop these skills I suppose more generally and then active framework as well I think is very important especially because I think it's the best way for students to learn it's true active learning and especially the poster seems to be a great resource and I hope I'm that certainly going to have a look at it later on and I also found it quite brilliant that it was the poster itself is also a very good example of active learning so it's active learning about active learning in a way and it's great that building trust is a really important part of it and that students and voices are being taken into account and that through this I think it will make sure that they really value the resource because they're given a chance to get to know it and they'll see why it's important that they use it and so yeah and then the workshop on January 30th which is around that and here on O'Leary's talk as well was brilliant and the shore bites especially looked really good and I could see these in terms of second level students as well and getting them involved in sciences I noticed a big push especially to get girls involved in science and getting them involved in real research that they can see around them is probably the best they're doing this and as well I could see it working in other disciplines like the arts as well and just getting students engaged and more and things that are really relevant to the world random I think it's it's a great idea and how are we going to feed marching colonies it's like it's a question that anyone I think would be interested in regardless of how and how much knowledge they have in the sciences and and then now if I could talk and then to you I think this is really important as well and definitely the realistic scenarios I think would help learning for students because they'll if they experience those scenarios and in real life their training will come back to them so I know I've done and kind of training in this regard with and safety training and that means that if you come across those scenarios you remember oh I've seen this before and I know what to do and so I think it's really important and it's great and and it's kind of ties in as well to the talk about the active learning and that really shows that there's a movement now towards getting students more actively involved in learning and that developing those learning hooks that they can remember later on and then and curious talk on and student well-being I think is really important I think the title of it is also fantastic because I myself in UCD and the title of it caught my attention on campus sort your life out and try to think of something that students it's not the mutual name for module and it really does catch people's attention I was surprised to see the student well-being only 42 percent were in the normal range for freshman's are you so it really shows that this is kind of something that's very much needed and I thought the class polls on how students were feeding are actually is actually something that could work in other modules maybe because it would perhaps indicate when students are more likely to be able to engage the module and explain maybe why when they're not doing so well why they're great maybe aren't reflecting enough their their true ability so the online event next Tuesday morning would be great stuff for that and then the unique ideas talk was fantastic especially I think the idea of using creative process to show the value of creativity as well that if you can see oh this artist has gone through this process and to create this and it really shows the value of what they've created they put this much time in their country this process and I think the dice academy looks great and it really gets and transition your students involved in creativity and hopefully as well open their minds up to maybe the possibility of going to create and create a future which I think sometimes their people are in the periphery to go into when does this process through the process I think it'll make it easier for them to see there's a possibility and quickly I'll go on to Maria Morgan's talk in RCSI I think it's a fantastic insight into the you know we've had I was actually quite surprised that students and performance didn't drop and over so it's a reality it shows the hard work that RCSI has put in and it really shows and that a lot of the high-fetched teaching model better it was a great success I suppose but then also the difference in satisfaction is a real indicator I suppose that we're always better in person and working together and on that note I suppose it's been a great year different talks and it to learn from each other and I really enjoyed the guest talks thank you very much that's great thanks for those reflections great summary there Eleanor thank you so much and sincere apologies folks for the overrun today it's all good stuff though I suppose it only leaves me to remind you that we have two more scholarship hours to go for the rest of the week and we have professor Chris Lynch tomorrow as a research fellow from UCC thank you so much to all our speakers and also poster contributions today and thank you for sticking with us if you're still here and maybe just a little thing to look out for today I believe there's a little video of Tom Farley going to be floated on social media later so that should be good for everyone to have a little look at there thanks Tom for all your hard work as gas to master and look forward to everyone tuning into the next two hours over the remaining vital week thank you so much