I'd like to welcome you to the closing plenary sessions of the Eden annual conference 2021. I think we've got a nice final session prepared for you and I hope you'll enjoy it. And in fact, I hope the whole conference has been very enjoyable. So without more ado, I'll pass over to DeSandra, who's going to moderate the keynote session. Thank you very much. Thank you, Tim. So welcome to the closure plenary of Eden conference 2021. I'm certain that during all these days, you have found very interesting topics to follow, whether it was the presentations, keynotes, workshops, some other sessions. And for the last keynote, I have asked my dear colleagues, Mark Nichols from Open University, Polytechnic of New Zealand and Antonio Teixeira from Open University of Bertha, to do something a little bit different, not just giving the speech, but to engage in dialogue. And to talk about the phrase, the buzzwords, which are very present at the moment, about digital transformation, about emergency remote teaching, about new normal. So all these words, which we are using quite often for the last year and a half. Before I gave them the word to start with their plenary, let me just briefly introduce them to you. So Mark Nichols is Executive Director of Learning, Design and Development at the Open Polytechnic of New Zealand since 2019. He is Executive Director of Technology Enhanced Learning at the Open University UK, and Executive Director of Open Polytechnic of New Zealand from 2010 to 2016. So he is just moving across the New Zealand and UK back and forth. So maybe in the next few years, we will see you again in the UK. He has valuable experience in executive management, professional team leadership, change management, organizational design and research. He is a PhD in distance education from University of Tagore, New Zealand. He is the author of more than 29 publications in e-pedagogy, and he has recently published the book, Transforming Universities with Digital Distance Education, The Future of Formal Learning. And Antonio Teixeira is even Senior Fellow and former Eden President. He is Professor of Education and Distance Learning at Universitate Averta, Portugal. So he is at the University of Averta Professor with tenure since 1991. He is a Member of Department of Education and Distance Learning, which he headed from 2016 to 2020. He is also Researcher at the University of Lisbon Centre of Philosophy and collaborates with the University of Roma Trey, as well as the Distance and E-Learning Lab at Universitate Averta. He was visiting scholar at the Korean National Open University as well. From 2006 to 2009, he was Prorector for Innovation in Distance Learning at Universitate Averta. And in this capacity, he conceived the strategy and managed the university's successful and speedy transition process from the speed-based distance learning institutions to the fully online one. He was also responsible for design and initial implementation of the University Research Lab on the Distance Education and the University Open Access Scientific Repository. He has numbers of papers, books and everything else I could read for the whole hour, your CV, Antonio, so I shortened it, I'm sorry. As I already said, he's a former Eden President before he was Vice President from 2010 to 2013 and before the Director of 2008 to 2016. He is currently serving as a Member of the Council of Eden Fellows. He was also Director at IBSTIBE International Board of Standards for Training, Performance and Instruction and is currently their scholar. So definitely the people with very hard and very good background in education in the topics which are very important to us today. And now I would like you guys to start the show as we can say, give your introductionary speeches and then start with dialogue between you. So please, who's going to be the first one? Mark will start. Mark, so you can start. Because he's late in the day. Yes, it's currently midnight here in New Zealand. Can I just confirm that people can see my slides? Yes, we can see the slides. Just before you start, I have to say all the questions you can, for keynotes you can post in the chat. Definitely I'm certain there will be a number of questions, but so that people know that they can ask them. So Mark, please, floor is yours. Thank you, Sandra. Kia ora. Thank you. My time will be spent explaining why we are unlikely to see digital transformation in education and why the changes from the pandemic are not likely to blossom into the educational practice people in the 21st century might reasonably expect. So we know technology is an incredible enabler. Over the past 20 years, our consumer experience is completely different thanks to the internet. So we stream our media rather than purchase it. We buy directly from travel providers rather than going through an agency. We seldom visit physical banks. We think nothing of buying online rather than through a retail outlet. We've got an incredible amount of consumer power available through the phones we carry. We watch and listen to anything we want to anywhere anytime. So where's the disruption to education? So why can we not make any course available to any learner anywhere in the world at any time through our universities? Why are we limited to semesters, lectures, essays, exams and ever increasing costs? Why is quality sustainable education not on demand and flexible? So digital transformation in education is clearly not inevitable. Otherwise, it probably would have happened by now. I think the pandemic has also failed to disrupt education along the lines I've mentioned. So I believe there are five key reasons why we're yet to see education transformed in ways we might think obvious. Firstly, there's the dynamic of the qualified specialist. We treat higher education as if it's limited to the productivity of an individual. In reality, academic knowledge is now very scalable. But our universities are designed as if it isn't. So lectures remain a main feature of this thinking. Second, there's no crisis of demand. Enrollments remain high as demand for university education continues to grow worldwide. So there's no immediate incentive to attract more students or improve flexibility in the system. Third, there's supply side adoption. Technology is applied to higher education, but mainly in ways that suit the university. Our approach to technology adoption is to harness it within how we currently work, not use it as the means of rethinking everything. Fourth, there are high barriers to entry. It's very difficult for new competitors to develop the brand and quality reputations they need if they're going to disrupt incumbent practice. In the university sector, reputation counts for a lot. It takes a lot of time to develop a quality reputation and a research culture that will attract students. Starting a university also requires significant infrastructure and a major outlay to start. And finally, I think of systematic inertia. So achieving all that might be achieved requires changes to funding and operating practices that are very complex and difficult to change. We all operate within a system that's largely immune from disruption. So the dynamics and incentives of the private sector are not available to us. So I think there is plenty we can be doing and should be abdicating for even within these five areas. I also think there's every value in parts of what we already have in higher education. We have qualifications, we have credits, we have enrollment, we have accreditation. There's something to the quality outcomes we work to that makes education valuable. The assignment work students do is a valuable part of their learning. Courses provide logical stepping stones toward qualifications. Now these, I think, are the sorts of things worth continuing in higher education. A bachelor's degree, master's degree and doctoral qualification, they need to continue to stand for something. Now the recent pandemic did not challenge any of these five points. All the pandemic provided was an immediate crisis of distribution. Once face-to-face classes can continue, we'll see this problem with distribution disappear. So lectures will again be scheduled, even a few students might choose to attend them. To achieve true transformation, I think we need to address these five barriers. So I think we can have a quality, accessible, scalable and personalized higher education system through digital transformation if we start by challenging each of these five assumptions. Firstly, the dynamic of the qualified specialist. What if we assumed the qualified specialist was part of the education system rather than the focus of it? So what if we began with a genuine debate about what it means to teach and learn in higher education and how these might best be facilitated? Secondly, talking to no crisis of demand. What if we sought to meet all of the demand through a new education system rather than assuming it should support our current ways of doing things? So what if our starting point was the convenience, cost-effectiveness and the value-add experience we've seen transform all other product and service industries? Thirdly, for supply-side adoption, what if we thought about the education experience from the real-life learner perspective? So instead of starting with how universities operate, what if we started with how learners might best be educated? For higher barriers to entry, what if we sought to compete with ourselves from a true student-centered focus? So if we really challenged ourselves and tried to be the university technology might enable us to be without compromising our standards, what approaches would we take a fresh look at? And finally, looking at systematic connoisseur, what if we had ways of changing ourselves such that we better worked within existing quality and funding systems? Well, this last part I think I can help with. My book Transforming Universities with Digital Distance Education contains a practical vision and a description of how the sort of change required to bring digital distance education about might take place. So in my thinking, education is the starting point and it serves to engage, enlighten and empower. Education is like training for the brain, not to fill it, but to help it think differently. So as a result of education, you don't just know more, you think differently and hopefully you think better. Any transformed education system must still have this as the outcome. A graduate who is confident with knowledge and able to think beyond it. Now, I'm no expert on the sort of change required here. I've been involved with two large scale institutional transformations. One failed and one though successful is still unfolding. I've been involved in multiple other changes in higher education institutions and I can tell you as most of you will already know, transformation and change of any kind is extremely difficult. But if we're going to determine what a digital transformation and education should resemble, we should first start by thinking about just what education is. Unless we first consider education will not be successful in applying digital transformation or doing anything that's truly different with technologies. So I think we do need to think transformatively. There's so much demand for higher education and it's becoming ever more expensive and inconvenient for learners. There is no reason why through effective digital education approaches people should not have immediate and cost effective access to quality education. So let me close with these five points, which some of the main parts of my brief presentation and perhaps I can leave these on for a few questions or comments. Kia ora koutou, health and life to us all. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Mark. Interesting points already to think about. Now let's move to Antonio to see his introductory speech. Thank you so much, Sandra. Buon dia. Bua tarde. Buenas tardes. Good afternoon, everyone. And good morning and good evening in the case of Mark. It's really good night, almost. I would like to start by thanking the kind invitation to address the closing keynote session after the conference this year. I'd like also to congratulate Sandra for the 30th anniversary of Eden and also team and the colleagues at UNED for this another successful, very successful and memorable conference, Eden conference. Well, following up on this first address by Mark, I'm going to now share my slides. Okay. I think you can see them. Okay. So I'll start already on the title. The title that I've chosen for this brief presentation is reflecting on the digital transformation in higher education. So much more than the transition. This was the title that we've selected for this shared keynote. This is also an experiment that we're conducting. And basically, I would start by addressing the topic from the point of view of what is really happening at this moment. So after the pandemic, now what? And we have already, and this is the interesting quote from Karen Wetzel from Educause. We can already see some evidences that digital transformation is being embraced by the field. As she said, institutions that haven't been considering digital transformation to any significant measure are now faced with shifting in that direction out of necessity. As we look toward a very uncertain future, we are already seeing evidence that institutions that are prioritizing efforts that bring the greatest value and most tangible results in a deep and coordinated fashion. And in this way, she concludes, they are in effect embracing digital transformation intentionally or not as a matter of survival. And I think this is the first point that I'd like to make. Obviously, when just I and Mark talk about this transformation, we should clearly understand that this is the result of a pathway. This is the result of a road that is being crossed. In this sense, there are different phases and the famous 3Ds are clearly important in how we can assess the status of this process. So there's a first phase in which is called digitization, which is basically the process of changing from analog to digital format. There is a process of digitalization in which the processes are already re-engineered in a way. And then there's the digital transformation in which there is not only an optimization, but there is a transformation of the operations of how the directions are strategically taken, what is the value proposition. And so it's a more cultural approach. And so it is in this line that my point is that we are already starting a process of digital transformation in many higher education institutions across the world. So we can look at the field and already see that regarding the first phase, most higher education institutions are already digitized. From learning materials to administrative documents, everything is produced in digital format these days. Of course, there are still some variations according to region, but when talking about regions as Europe, this is more or less mainstream. Also, many of the manual and paper-based processes have been automated and this has also been the result of this accelerated change due to the pandemic. In this sense, also most higher education institutions have engaged in the process of digitalization. In the sense that they are using digital technologies and data, not simply as a way of moving activities online, but also generating integrated digital environments where information is at the core. Of course, COVID-19 and the massive experience of emergency remote teaching and learning has expanded and accelerated dramatically this trend across the field in my view. But I also see that the shortcomings of this experience have also led or are leading stakeholders, and I here include, of course, from policy decision makers to institutional leadership, to teachers, to students, to communities, families and communities, most of them are realizing the need to conduct a deeper cultural change. In this sense, this is the realization that is also inspiring this move towards digital transformation. In the case of Europe, in particular, there is also the element of policy. And here, European policy is playing a critical role also in supporting this strategy. And it's not just supporting in terms of, well, directives, broad directives, but also it's also producing tools that are available. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, or the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, we have already in Europe an European framework for digital content educational organizations, which is a very interesting reference to how institutions can transform and should transform, and in this sense, how it can be used as a reference for the digital transmission processes. And since the approach is an holistic one, there is clearly an updated and relevant reference to this process. On the other hand, the new Digital Education Action Plan 2021-27, which was actually presented at one of the Eden conferences, or one of the Eden events, online events, is also a remarkable tool in respect to pushing forward the field of digital transformation, not just the field, but society in general, and these holistic approaches are very important. But how can we anticipate these digital futures of higher education institutions? Well, first of all, my first point would be that the digital futures of higher education institutions are not about building teaching machines in this sense as in the past, but basically the purpose of digital transformation is not necessarily automating processes, but adding data intelligence to these processes and how they're managed. Also, another point is that institutions are going to reinvent and redesign themselves. And this is a critical point for enabling digital transformation. They will learn bundle and re-bundle services. They will specialize in only certain of their current functions. They will share resources openly in collaborative networks. They will reorganize not only the way they operate, but also the way they work and their organizational culture in this sense as well, trying to rethink their mission values in the framework of exploring digital possibilities. Also, they will evolve to a hybrid format. And I think this is a very important aspect that we've learned from the pandemic. It's not either fully online or face-to-face this dual, the old duality. It's not even a blended format. As we saw in the pandemic, much more diverse, complex and flexible learning scenarios in which all of the different possibilities are used to design very specific learning scenarios in this sense. So this hybrid format is much more complex, much more rich than a traditional blended approach as we've traditionally learned to apply it. Also, they will further enrich the living experience of learners. And digital transformation is an enabler of this process. Students will have increased participation in designing and assessing their own learning experience, which themselves will also become more open, authentic, flexible, differentiated and personalized. The institutions will also change the way they assess and certificate learning achievement. This is also a critical point. And I will not get into details, but basically we will be moving from traditional diplomas to new open formats as micro-credentials and others. But at the same time, as teachers will continue to change their role, there will also remain a critical element for the sustainability and the quality of higher education institutions. I strongly believe that machines will interact with teachers and students. They will assume some of the current learning support tasks, but the pivotal element will remain the human element. Well, this is an example of what is already happening in non-formal learning institutions as museums. These devices are used in a very interactive way, and people interact with the machines in a very simple way and very natural way, but this is not replacing the human element as we know it. What can prevent us from getting there? Well, first of all, the lack of integrated policies and holistic institutional strategies. The lack of public investment in infrastructure and resources, as we've seen during the pandemic. Also, the possibility of forgetting that the decisive element is always the human. And so this transformation has to be have at the core also move to open a digital scholarship or building up these elements. Also, an increased divide between research and innovation and educational practices. There is a clear danger that this experience of emerging remote teaching and learning may lead to a disregard of what is research-based expertise, and this is a critical element that should be advocated by institutions or institutions as even. Also, another danger is the sole focus on technology or methodology as a drivers for digital transformation. If any, its ethics and safety should be also taken as co-drivers in this transformation, especially when we're talking about artificial intelligence and its integration into the direction to teaching learning processes. Also, another danger is the lack of openness and networking. This is clear. We are not alone and we will not be alone in the future. If anything will be ever more part of networks and institutions, will also be solved in a way as part of these new smart cities knowledge ecosystems. And also, as Mark has pointed out, the importance of traditional and systematic inertia as a possible danger. Just to finalize, as Mark also mentioned, the case for digital open and distance education. Well, he made the case for digital distance education also at open. Looking at this more fluid and also hybrid landscape, what is the role of specialized distance education institutions or specialized digital universities? Well, they are not obsolete and I'm talking specifically about the traditional open universities, but they have to differentiate in this emerging new landscape. There's still a lack of higher provision for groups at risk as we've seen during the pandemic. Also, the pandemic has also proven the high level of inequity of digital access and participation. This can only be addressed by specialized institutions as well open universities. And in this sense, they should be also in the forefront for response to rapidly developing social needs and complex societal challenges as the pandemic proven us. Challenges that require an urgent, flexible, personalized, as much as scalable approach. Finally, higher education institutions or specialized ones need to implement more and more organizational models that are highly responsive to environmental change, and that's holistic and organic. And I believe that the final goal for digital transformation of higher education institutions will be also or be very much to make them more responsive to change in the environment and also very much more adaptable to this change. And thank you very much.  Thank you. Thank you for a very interesting and provoking introduction. And now I hope you can engage in conversation or do you need me to facilitate? So please let me know. Well, I mean, I can start with one question for both of you and then then we can continue. So it was interesting to see all the obstacles possible obstacles why digital transformation did not start or is not happening in spite of pandemic. On the other side, it was good to see what can be the benefits and what are the needed steps to be taken. In your perspective, do you think that digital transformation is crucial for education to remain as such? Can we have education without digital transformation? And why is it needed that we move and that we evolve, that we expand and that we transform education process? So maybe Mark, you can start first. Yeah, thanks Sandra. I think in response to your question, can we continue education without transformation? I think that is the case now. I think we're yet to see a true digital transformation in higher education. When we consider how other parts of our lives have changed, how other industries, other sectors are completely different now compared to what they were 20 years ago. You don't see a similar shift having taken place in higher education. I think that the reasons why we would do this, there's every possibility for us to improve the accessibility to education, the scalability of education, also the personalization of education through technology. And we get to really express how that might work in the higher education system. And some of it, I think, is because our universities and ways of working are just too ingrained, they're just too firmly entrenched. It's very difficult as an individual academic to be truly innovative in your practice because you might find yourself working against the university you're a part of. So there's some very complex issues here that restrict us from being truly transformative, from being truly disruptive, truly accessible for education for our learners. Well, picking up on Mark's point, I would diverge on possibly a more optimistic mode. When I say that it is already happening, it's clear for me that two important factors must be taken into consideration. First of all, change takes time. And so you can change the technology, you can change methods quite easily and much rapidly, but changing minds, people's minds, changing people's ways of judgment, their culture of work, of living, that takes much more time. And so transmission is only sustainable in the long term when you complete this third element as well. So that's why when we, even in a traditional setting, when we're talking about transforming an institution, we have to also establish different stages of transmission which are connected or linked to the different layers of this transmission within the organization structure. In this sense, I think that we are already seeing some elements of this change, but of course not all the change is happening and it's happening at the same time. And so my point, my perspective is not entirely different from Mark's. What I see here is a differentiated process, a more complex one, and Mark is looking at a broader perspective regarding the total completion of this change process. In my, I would also add that sometimes change does not happen because of a reason, a very straightforward reason. Sometimes it happens because everyone is changing around you and you have to adapt as well. And in that, in that perspective, I would also restrain from comparing directly as Mark is doing the education sector with other sectors that were subject to digital transformation, because it's a different environment. If you look at higher education institutions in particular, there have been studies from many sociologists that have proven that the more stable, more conservative institutions in our society are universities. And I'm not saying this in a bad way. They are conceived to be stable. And that is why they are so conservative in this sense. So changing universities is not, is not as easy as changing a business. And I do not see universities as typically a business. They are, there is also business involved, but they are not typically a business. And so in that sense, I would also say that the pandemic was a driver. I agree with Mark that mostly what was at stake was distribution. But on the other hand, there was such a high impact experience of change in the way people actually practiced education, teaching and learning. And that this has generated also some kind of internal reaction that is leading in many people, many of these actors to start questioning their own practice. So, and as we know from educational theory, this is a stepping stone for transformation to have people reflecting on their practice and starting to see, I could do this differently. This could work better. This makes more sense. And the, but in order to have a clear glimpse of that impact, we also need time. It doesn't happen overnight. People have need time to think. And that is the time that we have an award in them still. But even so, I see, of course, I mean, most of these data is very much empirical. We haven't reflected a lot. There's not many, there's a lot of literature, but not many reflection on these impact of the pandemic. But I do see that it has not only driven in a way a change in the modes of distribution, but it has also set new perspectives on what is educational about and how should we conduct it. Well, I don't know if you agree with me, Bart. Yeah, we have really good questions in the chat. So maybe to take away from you, I will start with the one which was asked by Alfredo at the beginning about teacher preparedness for teaching in this way. But also to think about, you can remember that we had the teacher centered model of teaching and learning and we said, OK, we do not want this model anymore. We now want to shift to students. We want student center model and everything is about students. But in the end, now we are concluding that without teachers, there's no good education and that teachers need to be prepared. They have to be innovative. As you Mark already said, we want actually to be them the superheroes, you know, who has all the possible skills and competencies to provide our students for the future. So what do you think? Why did we not prepare our teachers for new ways of teaching? So why do they like some skills and competencies needed to have? Well, I'll start. Alfredo's question was initially directed at me and I'll give the photo to Mark then. Well, I have been talking for so long about this point that possibly I just didn't award it now, the importance that it has. Of course, teachers, we have been putting students at center and this is all right. I mean, it's still all right. But of course, teachers, as it has been proven during the pandemic, have a critical role, still have a critical role. Someone in the chat talked about the importance of resilience. Well, if any teachers have proven the importance of resilience and how it is fundamental to the sustainability of the education process and the education systems as well. However, we should look at this from two perspectives. First of all, about digital complexes. There's a need and the EU new action plan is very rightly identifying this need. We need to reinforce digital not just on the digital capacity, but the level of digital competencies of our population. We now have a digital citizenship that has to be in this sense, which people have to be educated for. And so this is not just a problem of teachers. It's a problem of society. Our students are not digital content as well. It's something that has been clear during the pandemic. So we need to train the teachers. I mean, first of all, we need to educate teachers in developing their digital competencies. Clearly, but also regarding teacher training, which was more clearly the point that Alfred wanted to make. I think that what this crisis has also proven is the inadequacy of the teacher models, the teacher training models that have been used. They are completely obsolete if they are not putting teachers in the authentic context. So most of the people of the teachers have been trained, the ones that have received this training have been trained in face to face context. They were not prepared to interact in an online environment. They were not even prepared to use digital tools because they never use them in a proficient way. And besides that, they were not also aware of simple things as the importance of silence in online communication, the impact of lurkers. I think that for us are so obvious for most of our colleagues that it were not because they were never experienced such a process. They didn't have the experience of being first online learners before being online teachers. And without that, it doesn't work. So I would respond to Alfredo saying that I fully agree on the critical importance of teacher training but using a new model, a new approach that is digitally based. And in this sense, I would also share here something that is a concern of mine and I have been sharing also in other forums, which is teacher training as a whole needs to change. Digital teacher training should be at the mainstream of that every teacher training program. So we should be training teachers for an hybrid environment and that implies preparing them to work in fully online mode or blended mode or technology enhanced mode, whatever. But the digital teacher training in this sense should be at the very center. Mark. Yes, Mark, your turn. But to reflect on what Antonio said, then I'll just add something to make it more spicy. Digital transformation is not completely new. We had it for a number of years already. Technology is also present where why training is not already shaping in a new way so that we have skilled teachers. Okay. Let me pick up on Alfredo's question first. I don't think we do prepare teachers well for online education or for transformation. But I think we need to be clear as to what we mean by transformation. It's one thing to prepare teachers to take what they already do and facilitate it online using the likes of Zoom or something like that. It's another thing again to rethink the education system and teachers preparedness for that. Just to give you an example at Open Polytechnic, we are moving towards what we call 365, which will enable any student to start any course at any time and also work flexibly at their own pace. Now, that's a real transformation in my view, a much bigger transformation than taking what you currently do in a classroom and facilitating it through Zoom. Now, there's a whole lot of context around that transformation at Open Polytechnic, which I don't have time to go into. But I think one thing we could do to prepare teachers for a transformed world is to encourage them to start thinking about their role as part of a team. I'm yet to meet a teacher who's a very good learning designer, a very good researcher, and also a very good authority in their own subject area. I think as we consider transformation and how university education might change, we need to think more about the ecosystem of teaching and the teacher's role in that ecosystem. So I think that's where I would take the question of preparation for teachers. I think it needs to be more than just extending what they do into the online space. I think we need to rethink entirely what it means to educate online to transform our education systems so that we can be really student-centered. Any course, any time should not be outrageous for us to think about other parts of how the world operates. It already happened that way. And it's very possible to maintain the quality of education that we currently enjoy under three to six, five environments. So my thinking is a lot more than how we can take what we currently do and digitally transform it. I'm thinking there's much more that's possible that we don't get near because we tend to be constrained by how universities currently operate. I also agree too that teachers have the key for transformation. I think they're a very important part of what a transformation might look like. But teachers work within an educational system. And I think that system needs to be transformed before we see any real gain and how education operates digitally. Well, if I may just add something, that is why it is so important, in my view, to reconnect research with practice. And this is possibly one of the biggest dangers that the emergency remote teaching and learning experiences may have. It's to generate this idea that, I mean, you just experiment and see what happens. No, it doesn't happen that way. So this connection between research based, we said, validating in a sense, knowledge and expertise. It's really important, but it's also important. And this is something that should be addressed by digital transformation to focus on the transfer of knowledge and innovation from research to practice to actual practice. And of course, that should be a part of the digital transformation process. As Mark has also pointed out, the teacher profession and the teacher methodology should also be subject to digital transformation. I mean, the models have already been designed. In most cases, there is sufficient expertise on this, but it is not reaching the practitioners. And it's not just because of lack of information, information is available. It's also because of lack of involvement from the leadership, institutional leadership in caring for this connection. Okay, let's have another question. Tim is saying there's a saying that I like, vote with your feet. In our case, when students start to walk away from some higher education institutions to other who offer more flexible and suckable offerings, then change will be forced if survival is desired. Do you agree on that? Who will answer that one? I can probably go first. Yes, I do. Okay. Well, I agree to, although we should also be cautious about these because students don't think about education in the same way that we think. So what we think is very innovative, very advanced, very effective, not be the same for them. And sometimes they just want to complete the process, have their marks and get on with it. But I agree that on a broader perspective, this choice will be fundamental for pushing institutions moving forward regarding this. But in this sense, I think that the question is a little bit even wider in the sense that higher education institutions are already starting to compete with non-formal education institutions. And so this is a new territory that might speed up this transformation as well. Actually, just to add to my response, I'm assuming that Tim is saying that in the context of existing quality standards and existing outcomes in terms of a degree is still a degree. A graduate from a master's program is a graduate from a master's program, so no compromise on quality or anything like that. The educational quality should still be the same. Good. The next question is from Denise. She says, which disruptor is on the horizon to change the status quo in the universities? If pandemic didn't make them changes, what else can be on the horizon to maybe to start to shift the possible changes? So Antonio would like to start. Okay. I can start on that one. I do think that the next battle will be the dissemination of the use of artificial intelligence in education, and especially in higher education. So in some way we have already seen during the pandemic how institutions were totally unprepared. Not just institutions, all the stakeholders were unprepared to cope with the amount of data that was generated and how that data was retrieved and will be used or is being used. That has already been clear that not much has been talked about this, but this is probably one of the consequences with the higher impact in our field. I would say that clearly in the next few years, the impact of this disseminated use of artificial intelligence, while I would even say Internet of Things and all of this will clear be a driver for that change and that transformation. Okay, Mark, you would like to add? Yes, I think there's actually an inevitability toward more flexibility in education. I think learner expectations are only going one way and that is towards their own convenience. I think eventually the disruptor on the horizon will be just sheer competitiveness and keeping up with the way things change over time. So I think eventually students will come to expect any time enrollment. I've worked in places where students might have to wait three to four months before starting the course of their choice. I think in the 21st century that's going to become less and less acceptable to students where more flexible options are available. So I suspect over time that the disruptor will really prove to be the student expectations. I think how to change the status quo in universities, we are in institutions and in a context where there's significant inertia. There's a lot of reason why change won't happen because of the way things are done, because of the way systems are designed. In New Zealand, for example, students are funded based on 120 credits worth of learning in a year. There's no reason why that should still be a constraint, but the system is such that students are only funded for 120 credits worth of tuition. So it means that in New Zealand at least education isn't incentivised almost to have a semesterised approach to provision. Now there's that sort of inertia I think that we all work within that will make change transformation difficult, but the disruptor will eventually be student expectation. Well, if I just may add something that I was reflecting upon, I was just seeing some of the contributions in the chat. Mark a while ago talked about his definition of education, the importance of getting back to basics and see what is educational about. For me at the very foundation of the idea of education and the tradition of education is building one one one. Autonomy is at the centre of every notion of education and what these new technologies that we're talking about, digital technology that we're talking about enhance is this possibility of improving that autonomy building process. And I think that the pandemic has also accelerated that trend. And so in that sense, I think that people are much more aware of the importance of their educational process being closer to their authentic context and actually be effective to build their own autonomy, more effective in building their own autonomy. And so in that sense, it might be also an important driver, this notion, which is usually not addressed in these kind of keynotes and all of this, but this is probably at the centre. And digital transmission is also pushing us to reflect again on the foundations of education on the basics of the process and what is actually the value proposition if you want to use a more kind of a different language, a different terminology. So this might also be important. Okay, I'll take the next question. Looking at the digital transformation in education on a global level, definitely we see differences in what's going in Europe, in New Zealand, in America, in India. So in your perspective, why there are some such diversities that some countries are quite ahead and some are still lacking behind. And does the digital transformation of education is an isolated process within the institution or the impact of the environment and the culture is very important in that process? So who would like to go first? I can make some brief comments. I think every country does have its own education system, its own legislation, its own ways of funding education. So I think in many ways the sorts of transformation we would expect to see should reflect those incentives. So a lot of behaviour of universities and institutions is driven by the conditions that their funders place upon them. So again, my constant message is are those mechanisms in place, are those incentives the right ones in order to encourage us to be transformative in our thinking and practice? And I think in many cases the answers probably know that the systems and funding processes tend to reinforce the current ways of doing things. So I think that would be my response. Sorry Sandra, not much more to add there. Okay, Antonia? Well, there are a lot of differences but there are also similarities and we have seen them during the pandemic. If you look at how the first national governments conducted during the pandemic, there are much more similarities than differences. And why? Because they were confronted at the same time with more or less similar challenges for which they were not prepared. And so they clearly started learning from each other. And this is something that has happened at governmental level, at teacher level, all the other levels in the education sector. Even families, I mean we had parents registering for webinars on how you teach online and things like that, which is really remarkable. A lot of very important interesting new things happened during the pandemic and because of the pandemic that will reflect positively in how the education sector will evolve. But you address the problem of differences. I think that in Europe there is a clear difference which is the rule of the European Commission. Sometimes it might be a kind of a break to change. Some of the times it will be a driver for that change. I'm talking about positive change in the sense because change can also be negative. And you can change for worse. It's also that possibility. And change is not always positive even if in the end the process is a good one. So there are always problems, there are also constraints, there are also difficulties, there are also risks. Well, it's all just a kind of a Cinderella story. Anyway, the European Commission clearly plays a very important role in also assuring that at least in Europe, most of the national governments, how they act, also the national regulations and regulations, and regulations, these frameworks that Mark was talking about, funding schemes and all of these are much more, are very similar in a sense are much compatible. These generates also a larger amount of exchange of experience and also shared inspiration in a sense. There are the regions in which it doesn't happen in some way. For example, just a good example in Latin America, the difference between national governments is much more clear than in Europe. They have very different approaches. Also reality is much more different and diverse that in Europe. This is an example we could use other regions of the world as well. So change and these transformations processes will not happen at the same time. They will not happen at the same pace. They will not happen with the same conditions. But as we've seen in during the pandemic, everyone will start doing something not exactly the same with the same resources with the following the same solutions, but they will be sharing a similar route in a sense, or the same route in a sense. So this is also something that we have to take into consideration. This transmission of a higher education and digital transmission may have different models, different facets according to which region. Mark also pointed out something which for me it's very important, which is funding. I mean, in order to change, you need funding.  It's not an absolute need. You can change even if you're not funded for it. I'm talking about institutional change, but it's much easier and much quicker to do it with the right funding. And so it involves also national regional authorities, institutional leadership, the actors in the field and the practitioners in this sense. So everyone should be in a way articulating, I mean, articulated in their interaction, integrated in the same strategic move. But there's bound to be change. And I'll give you an example. I mean, for us in Europe, Internet access is very much based on the cable infrastructure. In reasons as Africa is based on mobile infrastructure. But it's the same. However, the way it is organized and should be, well, in a way driven is different. This is the kind of differences that we should also take into consideration. If I could just add one more thing. So it's very remiss of me to not mention in New Zealand the current reform of vocational education. So the Minister of Education has launched a fresh look at the vocational education sector in New Zealand and legislation is being changed. So we are having to transform as a sector. There are currently 16 polytechnics in New Zealand. As of the 1st of January 2023, there will be one. So there is a lot of transformative possibility there, which is actually very genuine. We do need to rethink how vocational education is offered in New Zealand. And it is leading to some very innovative thinking and I think to some innovative practice as the whole system changes and is redesigned. But Sandra, if I may, there is also another important thing that we should take into consideration. These digital transformation of vocational institutions will speed up their internationalization. And what happens is that your institution will be operating in different regions. Which are ruled by different regulations, while funding frameworks and all of these. So the scenario for institutions is also changing. And in this sense, it's becoming more complex and multiplied in this sense by different approaches and frameworks. Okay, we are over an hour now. We have to start. It has passed so quickly. I have a number of questions in my head and I'm certain the participants as well as well. But the last question to summarize in the end would be is technology effectively changing education or not? But from the perspective of the researchers, researchers we have been collecting over a year and a half, which have been significant number of research. So how would these researchers, if certainly you have been following the research before, they were much more technically oriented than a pedagogically oriented regarding the implementation of technologies. So do we have with this research results now? Good ideas and good knowledge to implement that technology is more effectively changed education than before. Or if technology didn't change education at all, what would be your point there? If I can go first, I think my point would be there is a lot of research on education. There's a lot of research on technology. There's a lot of research on technology enhanced education. I think the missing element is really a critique of the systems in which we operate as universities and as educators. Because I think that's really where the inertia for change, the inertia for transformation really rests. So I don't think there's been enough work critiquing the systems in which we operate. So I'm not sure if the research has actually been adequately done yet. Well, if you think back of what would be a typical research paper on digital education, well, 20 years ago, the typical article would be a study comparing an online class with the traditional face-to-face one and see what worked best. This was a typical article back then. Nobody's doing it. I mean, very few people were doing it before the pandemic. And because of the pandemic, this sort of kind of first approach was re-initiated once again. But the learning curve has been quite dramatic in this sense. And I think that we had a tremendous massive learning experience in the field. And that has reflected on research as well. For six months, one year, we had a tremendous amount of new research conducted by new researchers in the field as well on how technology was being used in education because of the pandemic or due to the pandemic context. Now we are starting to see that output transforming as well into a more qualitative approach. What works best? What has been the lesson to learn? What could be improved? Well, this sort of questioning. But the pandemic has then had that consequence. It widened dramatically the number of practitioners. But it is also widening the number of researchers on our topics. Which means that these research sometimes, I mean, at first looks a little bit as old in the sense that while they're trying to reinvent the wheel, they do not have in a way the right knowledge regarding tradition, the legacy of the field. And so they are well starting as if we're just initiating it now. But we should also be looking at what are the new topics that have been addressed? What are the new innovations that have been also identified? And what is the new contributions that are being received as well? And if we look at it closer, this production is rather rich. There are a lot of important and valuable things. And what we can conclude as well is that the amount of research is much higher now than it was two years ago. And from that increasing quantity, it's bound to happen also and increased in quality. And so a higher number of researchers, a wider community of research in this sense, is also bound to produce scaling up in the quality and the impact of research in our field. And I think this is very important for us to be looking at. It will bring also change to open distance and digital learning in this sense. The learning field will empower the field, will also increase the quality of what is being done. And this is something that is critical. I mean, the widening of practice has of course decreased the quality level. But now it will come back again. But it will come back to probably the similar quality levels that have already in the field of practice, but with an increased outreach and an increased field as well. And I think this is very significant. And it's a very good consequence of the pandemic crisis. Nevertheless, I think we all also should be paying attention to some changes that will necessarily occur. I think, for instance, one of the things that probably will affect the theory is the fact that now the use of synchronous communication and video, for instance, video conferencing will probably be higher in the future than before. We have to look at it more carefully. We have to also try to rebalance that with new importance given to asynchronous communication and the ways in which we can rebuild this possibility for reflection, deeper learning that would in a way improve the quality of this experience. But to sum up, I'm positive about this. I'm optimistic. I'm not a fool, so I know that there are dangers, of course. But if looking back at what happened in just over one and a half year, I think that the impact has been tremendous. We're still recovering from it. We still don't know exactly what happened. We don't have a perfect picture of what this represented to our field. But we can already see, we have already evidences that it changed dramatically. But as a driving for quantity and quality in this sense. Sorry, thank you. I know that Tim will be angry with me, but I have just one small question, Tim. Can I have two more minutes, please? So, last, I would like to ask from you what will be your message? What is the perspective of digital transformation in higher education? So you have one minute each, please. So, Mark, maybe you can start. Okay, I think we need to think bigger. I think we need to consider again what education might look like if we were able to start again now with what technology is capable of. I'm optimistic too, actually, about how we are using technology at the moment. I don't think anyone wants to make education less accessible, less scalable, less personalized. I think that we do need to take a careful look at the systems and models that we are a part of. Because they are the insidious elements here that do constrain us from being all the transformative educators that we can be. Hopefully that's within my minute. Okay, thank you. Great. Antonio, you're one minute, but one minute only. Yes. I think it will, well, to be very brief, all things considering, I think that the digital transformation of higher education, which was the topic, will improve the quality of higher education, making it more accessible, I mean, more accessible tool or for a higher number of people. So in the sense that it will make it more accessible, more personalized in a sense as well, more appropriate to which one needs more dependent on the learners control as well. And in that sense, I think it's summing up, it will enhance the building of autonomy that is at the core of the educational process. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Antonio. Very interesting discussion, very thought-provoking insights and things to think about over what we can do ourselves to make things better. Thank you again for being the keynotes in this session. Over to you, Tim, so please now you can take your time. I'll step out. Thank you very much, Sandra. And thank you, Antonio, Mark. You, I think you've really left us with a wonderfully constructive and high end of the end of the conference. Thank you very much. Okay, so I'm going to now pass over to our conference rapporteurs. I'm Kobodongo Rodriguez, the chair of the Digital Inclusion Lab at UNED in Spain. Mark Brown, the director of the National Institute for Digital Learning at DCU in Ireland. And please make yourself comfortable because I suspect that Mark might have a filibuster prepared for us. Okay, so you have to admit that at first there was a bit overwhelmed with the great responsibility of this mission. So, but, you know, I tried to be as transparent and accurate as possible, but, you know, I was just stuck by the fact that I could not duplicate myself and the Zoom technology didn't allow me to participate in parallel sessions. So anyhow, thanks for the aid of all our colleagues from UNED that were, you know, acting as technicians and the backwards. And so I started to listen, you know, to as much of your interventions as I could. So just trying, sorry, during my brainstorming, I was confused with the term rapporteurs. So I just started to do some self-based online training, like voice imitation. And I started to play with the Google translator and the different accents, you know, the French accent for the rapporteur and the English version. So, okay, team, I think that the French one is much more fashion and nicer. So I will take that. And then for the narrative, I had the chance of listening to Manolo Castro and then he flipped everything around and his keynotes. So I thought to myself, okay, I just tried to do my best and I think I have messed everything up. So, starting from today's opening session, Ulva was there too with you with my espresso. Okay, here there is the cloud of the words that were mentioned by all the participants there. And it was very important, you know, to highlight all the meaning of this sense of community and also the idea of being the authority for fostering the rest of the stakeholders in this environment. So the sense of legacy act as incubators for new institutions. So it was very important. And, you know, I think even though it was this morning, I think it was the first idea I wanted to share with you all these opportunity knocks that we listened from this morning. So, thinking on the on the ideas that were brought from different people. Joe highlighted that the pandemic helped us to overcome the prejudices of distance location. And, and, and Christian address that we are in a strategic moment, and we call this hybrid isn't this a possible of developing regularly learning in knowledge networks that I could select like the quote for for day one so we have high potential, you know, for complementary learning theories and again this idea of cooperation of wide range of experts that may produce the combined forms of education was on the floor. Again, the idea of the how this new means or ways like we've heard about blended before now, as Antonio mentioned we are moving into hybrid and all the other kinds of of mixtures so diversity equity and inclusion where you know very key points in our work. So, if we develop it well online hybrid education could be much more inclusive and we could address all these three main points and there is also an important issue on democratization and the openness and inclusion features for the future are based on the transformative power of open data as rank I mentioned, and then also the, the consideration of diverse needs that were saved by we've included accessibility aspects and all the backgrounds of all the students that we think that we help to create an online and face to face experiences where all the students could feel more but valued safe and and also have a sense of belonging. Okay, today we also get a deep look on this digital media literacy and the problems that the teachers workload and how they feel it's true that it's quite different the view from the teachers and the view from the students so we are very perfectionist. I'm not sure that we tried to do our best but you know, not always the context that help us to do that so, you know, it could be an important workload for the teacher with a negative impact or some cognitive overload or the sense of the quality of the learning and teaching or the very limited methods that that could be applied. So, I liked the Elena's idea of remind that she remind us the tools of our era, the digital tools how we should all be the device and in today's Mark Nichols mentioned about, you know, the humanistic approach that we have to cover and after, you know, we are educated we think different so we have to go back to this approach and and try to make you know all this this mixture between the technology and and and the methodologies. So, I like the challenge of Diana put the eye on the on the stem. Education and these separate project based learning and other methodologies, but there are some issues regarding the quality evaluation and accreditation of these kinds of methods and and and courses. I really loved the presentation from Diana and Laurie yard and, and where she show us you know how to collaborate to innovate and share our innovations and our the same pedagogies. If we work collaboratively how we could change the attitudes and expand our horizons. We also had some facts that were rather weird thinking on this newly video based campus. Okay, um, yeah, we, we, we already knew that that the videos should be not too long, but a case students want us to just look different right rather like a crazy researcher so I'm sure that I should go to my head pressure you know and for next time and make myself different so okay there is almost a place here you know for for many many things to do the role of the self directed learning is also there, and there were also some facts, you know, that struck me like like the way the women or men how we watch the videos and or how we read the videos and the newer scientific approaches you know for for explaining all that so as today, then what it said, not all the students want to do this self directed learning, and some of them they just follow, you know, tasks and learning, you know, with with with just delivery in in in a very with the very strict strict agenda. Regarding the assessment. It was an important point in many parallel sessions. It ought to be among one of the most challenging challenging parts of the online education. Also during the pandemic. And in most of the teachers they see that online assessments are very time consuming activity. They don't have enough time or competences to prepare properties or even to provide valid and objective feedback to the students and another other side will have the students view where they are worried about the technology the skills the reliability of the software and also they are aware that they they they are concerned about the confidence in the provider and also about the privacy issues when they are recorded. So, as Alistair cream pointed out, the main problem is not that we are and the main problem is that we are unable to quantify or assess deep learning and success nowadays is determined by rather superficial assessment and also Daniels also mentioned this this point and he says that we will have multimodal assessments and we needed an integrated concept of knowledge and competences, you know, for for achieve that. And regarding the data, for sure, the privacy is critical. It is not seen in the same sense in all over the world in Europe would have this GDPR regulation that you know is on top of us so it's, we have to think on this privacy by design or ethics by design tools. And there is a lot of concern about some other challenges from the integration of artificial intelligence based tools such as the biases that could appear in the within the algorithms. So it's a it's a critical issue. And in Mohammed Khalid pointed out that that data is available like never before. So we might have a lot of data to develop more precise learning analytics and, you know, help also not only the academics but also the decision makers. So I like this quote for day two like predictable analytics can bring people with the same objectives together. I think that that the institutions that we are together in this conference here, we have the data we have the data from previous to the pandemic situation. So we are the best ones to to to build analytics on that and set up some strategies for others, the colders. So I loved when when Christian remind us this Chinese proverb with the winds of change blow some build walls while others build windmills so I thought we should build the windmills and education is moving with or without us. And we have to put the eye on the sustainable development goals and also the evidence for quality. And then just finishing, I guess that there are a lot of I see a lot of future a great future for the education marketplace. So there are a lot of professions for for the teacher education. I love the one manual Manolo Castro. I should the teachers are the bus drivers of the education and then Sandra. Okay, but the robots are the content drivers but the teachers are the drivers of the road so I see that it could be other professionals coming in like regulators or supervisors for the proctor exams and there is a lot of work to for policymakers. There is a need for coordinators of the learning designer teams and developers really focused on the privacy by design methods. We might need some ethics evaluators or some extra new new technicians for for developing engaging resources and multimedia and in polka podcasters and so on. And we might need some conductors for for the new standards for lab at home and might also need some blockchain miners for for educator education and credentials. And I'm sure that I will apply for a digital twin for next events that are up until next year. So when you think that we have listened to everything that we have learned everything. Here comes Francesca Pedro and and and talks us about the the job woods dilemma. So, when thinking about the duration and synchronicity of the current degree programs. There is a need, you know, to use more agile innovation methods and that the consumption rate, and we should stop with the traditional ideas and and as it was mentioned this morning by arena. Today's world requires continuous education lifelong is starting from from the very first day of our lives. So to finish, I just make a screen capture of today's stories that were posted in our breakfast. So I loved the the quote for today is Antonio's and as he said, it's fun being a member of Eden. So thanks a lot for listening to me and I hope you the best I wish you the best and hope to see you next year and this event family. Thank you very much cover. That was very interesting, very entertaining and full of information. Well, that's a hard act to follow to be honest. I'll do my best and to compliment what we've heard. I'm going to start off just reflecting for a minute that it is 30 years. 1991 was when Eden was formed. Alan gave us an interesting history lesson this morning very early. And I'm calling these some reflections because it's impossible to get an overview of the entire conference. But what I will say is it's been easier to get in and out of sessions virtually than it would be if I was doing this physically. So that's one advantage. I want to begin by saying that 1991 is known as being a year that changed the world. And it's the year that Freddie Mercury died of AIDS. And I think haven't we come a long way in a more inclusive society, at least in many parts of the world. And one would like to think that education is contributed to that. That didn't happen by chance. So an anchoring point to begin with. But 1991 was significant because in Europe that was the period where there were major changes. Regional, structural, political, geopolitical changes. And I won't linger on those. Many of you lived through that period. But perhaps even more important some could argue with the benefit of hindsight is 1991 is the year that the web was open to the public. I can't imagine what it was like when I was working in a university in 1991 anymore to the extent of which the web has changed. Maybe I could say transformed depends how we define transformed. But how in 30 years that technology has had such an impact on our lives, both in our personal lives, but our professional lives. I think in almost every single walk of certainly developed societies. And then 2021, I think might be known in the future as another one of those years that changed the world. Maybe it's 2020, but more positively this is the year where we are getting on top of the pandemic. And I have the needle there apologies for people who are not take to needles, but balancing viewing all of the presentations that I could. I also had to slip away for my own jab. And I was hoping that I didn't have any issues as a consequence. So that's our framing point of reference. And I'm going to talk you through my journey through the conference very quickly. And this is going to be the quickest slide show you've probably seen in history. So we began with obviously two introductions. One here privileged to have the Spanish Secretary for Education Previous Rector for the university, the host university. So setting the scene with the context around COVID and changes around higher education. Already, we've heard about the big picture thinking in our very first keynote. And I'm teasing out three sort of takeaways for me, which I'll elaborate here on slides, the slow progress or uptake or what it is actually that we've taken up and note the PowerPoint. You know, PowerPoint wasn't something that was being used in 1991 and like it is now, whether that's transformation is quite debatable. Then I thought this was an excellent point that the focus on hybrid learning or hybridization is not new. It was happening well before the pandemic. Maybe that word is taking on more definition in our thinking. And then lastly, my takeaway here was around sort of evidence that we do need to have a much better understanding of the cost benefit analysis. My mouth out in Europe to use the word return on investment. What is it that we get an outcome from for all our efforts? And so I thought that was an excellent takeaway brilliantly connected by Diana to her thinking around learning design. So I picked out three points I want to talk about here. But before I tease those out, I think it's also important to acknowledge that Diana is one of the rare people that's lived right through those 30 years and made a contribution, a significant huge contribution right through her first book on rethinking university came out in 1993. So Diana talked about needing to scale up, put us in the context of the reality. Did you know that there's a huge proportion of the population of the continent of Africa that are under the age of 15? And their need for higher education is enormous compared to some developed countries where actually the population growth is slowing or decreasing. So this growth for scaling up is variable across geography or demographic boundaries. Diana took us back to the conversational framework, a learner designer tool. The group already pulled out and collaborate to innovate. I have their only question I would have for a challenge for our community is how easily these tools really mesh in the everyday work of teachers. Do we really embed these and integrate them into our work, but really importantly, again, following on the theme of cost and cost benefit analysis. Diana asked us to think about what the return is on our efforts because we are all time poor. And then when it came to the breakouts on the first day, I had a challenge. So I chose, I went to a couple, but I want to tease out the one in particular focusing on the student experience, the learner experience. You can see from the word cloud here, some of the focus points. And then this one around workload really stood out for me. There's been a similar survey in Ireland showing this was a very large survey, I think of 12,000 learners worldwide. How much the COVID experience had increased workload, which took me to a slide that wasn't shared by any of the presenters. But I really was triggered to this from Diana's talk that we need workload calculators for students to calculate the learner experience, not just the time that the teacher spends. So this is an example of a learner calculator. And then I don't think many of us would disagree around the emotional aspects to learning. It's a particular area of interest that we have in the team. Unless I'm careful about talking about the pedagogy of care that's become popularised, because that could easily be framed in a deficit way. And I think promoting autonomy and self-reliance is very important as well. One of the great things I wanted to profile from that session was this podcast series of students talking about their learning experience. So it's come across was you can get the session with great resource. And it's a nice segue into the second set of plenaries on day one. Booth really gave us a big picture overview talking about futures, personas and skills. What I really enjoyed in his playful keynote was the way that he didn't talk about the future. He took us to the future. And then we looked back so we were in the future. So I really enjoyed that aspect. And then he gave us these personas. Some of you may remember we began with Florence. I think this is pronounced Niles. Niles was one who was looking for a lifelong learning experience that was much more personalised. And so Booth conceptualised the different futures around these four quadrants or different types. He then gave us a poll to see which one we would choose. I chose the lifelong learning university but that personalised university came through. And then he took us into the importance of skills. Now skills is a theme that's been woven right through the conference. But in the context of skills, he did also talk about with the so-called transversal future skills to use his language of just the challenges of how we assess those and whether they can be assessed in some cases. That took us to the second plenary in the afternoon where Darcy gave a presentation. I want to tease out language quality and strategy. And I do think language matters here. I appreciate for many of you that we're talking a second language in the sense of English. But the terms really do matter. There's a great paper that I've just put on the slide. I just published in the British Journal of Educational Technology giving a theoretical definition of hybrid learning. The terms are not all the same. And then we talked about quality. I've taken the liberty of putting a spray can there on the side. I sometimes think that word quality is sprayed around a bit like aerosol, you know, flyspray or deodorant. What does it really mean? I'm not sure I can explain what it means but I know what it is when you experience it. And sometimes it doesn't have to look good to be quality. And then talking about strategy, I think there were some debates in the chat box from time to time about do you really need a digital learning and teaching strategy? Or do you need a strategy for teaching and learning that infuses digital throughout? Because it could be seen as inherently technicentric to focus on the digital. In the afternoon, unfortunately that's when I had to shoot out to go and get my jab. So I couldn't participate with my colleagues on the microcredential session but I wanted to do at least the call out to them for thanking them to take that workshop and point you to the little white paper that we've produced that's now available in the Eden space and we'll share more publicly afterwards. Obviously one of the big areas, if you like. We just asked to day two beginning with the commission and we heard here about the disruption consultation and then ultimately action from Gori and the disruption has been real. I think it's something we should acknowledge and perhaps I think Antonio made this point in the stability of our institutions that we were successful. We didn't cave in. We actually did have the resilience to respond. The public consultation side I think is crucial because there's been a lot of talk about vision. Visions can be very blinding and visions need to be from the grassroots. People have their own vision so I can't emphasise consultation enough and there has to be space for people to have different visions competing visions. And then lastly action. There is a plan. The challenge will be whether that plan aligns with what's happening in member states. The education hubs we heard about are important. I'm personally involved in the research on the feasibility study for the digital education knowledge exchange. So I think we've got some exciting opportunities and there is a plan. The plan only goes so far. Moving on to the next keynote. I hope I'm okay on time. Cut me off Tim if I've taken too much liberty here. I enjoyed the format so I did want to call out the fact that we had a flipped keynote. And again we were looking at powerful change forces and the importance of redesigning. So working backwards in the keynote I think was a good model for how we don't always have to follow a formula here. And then a lot of what we're talking about in terms of transformation rightly or wrongly is anchored in so-called the fourth industrial revolution. And I do think we have to have a critical lens when we're being told that 65% of jobs of today won't exist in the future. Because there is no solid empirical data to support that. But on the other hand one would not argue that the changing nature of work isn't real. I think it is. And ultimately the importance of redesign and my quote for the day there was the future is hybrid. And the need to rethink and move away from linear ways of thinking. Although that said I'm giving you a very linear account of the conference. Moving to the afternoons sessions again it was a challenge what I could dabble with. I was actually chairing the C1 session. I had a paper in the D1 session that a colleague was presenting. So I tried to dabble and in the E4 digital education system and others were doing a workshop on a project that we're involved in. A big call out for my colleague Auna and her colleagues from our institute for this free online book. It's actually being launched I think next Tuesday. If you haven't come across this hopefully Auna can put the link in the chat box. And then I did manage to get a little bit into the workshop on competencies. This is obviously a big theme and I thought it was interesting about the emphasis on thinking about where the gaps. What is it that we haven't thought around? And I put in there taken the sort of the liberty to put a quote from a piece I wrote last year about that if we want more creative innovative and imaginative learners. Ultimately those are the qualities we need to foster in our teachers. And I don't always see those qualities implicit or explicit in these competence frameworks. And then I wanted to just call out the workshop partly because it's taking an ecological approach a whole of ecosystem. And also the survey is open on OERs right now as part of the on core project. So if you haven't seen that survey I would encourage you to take a look. Yes, it was an early start for me this morning. Especially against I have a webinar that didn't finish until help us one last night. The three words when our former ex-presidents couldn't follow the rules when they were told to give one word or one picture and they bent the rules but I'm inclined to do that myself. But I took the three words opportunities, communities and expertise for summing up the dimensions and qualities that Eden has to offer. Again, a challenge, juggling the day job to manage some of the other sessions. I tried to pop in and out from time to time a bit of a call out for the digital culture project. If you haven't seen this there are a range of free courses that have been developed through this project and I'd encourage you to take a look. Diana is taking a lead role and this particular one stood out in the synergy presentations. I couldn't share all of them. I know there's an Irish case study that will be part of it. So I'll be watching this one in particular because it follows on that theme around teacher competence and how we define that and how we promote it and foster it. So without any further ado, what I'm going to do is just give you my three sort of takeaways since I've given you three from each presenter. Mind hybrid, more of an ecosystem approach. The ecosystem very much focuses for me where that word resilience comes through. If you think of an ecology, actually, you know, backwaters and different habitats that have diversity. I want add to resilience, the opportunity for a species to survive to continue to evolve. But actually things happen quite slowly and in an evolutionary ecosystem sense. What I have done with the third one is we heard a lot about lifelong learning, but I called it lifelong learner because I wanted to shift it to the learner. And we heard in this conference and it's a big takeaway for me from the COVID experience is much more understanding from the learner's perspective, hearing their voice, what it is and what it means to be a learner. So that's partly why I just shifted that focus a little bit. If you're smart, you will have found that hybrid ecosystem and lifelong learning as an acronym make hell. That wasn't intentional. Some might say we've gone through hell, but we wouldn't want to be heading towards hell, would we not?  So hopefully no one takes exception with the acronym of hell. And my final slide, I think if I've still got time is in terms of the Eden community, I like this, whether it's an African proverb or not someone can correct me at some point. But if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And our communities are really, really powerful. And this conference would not be possible without all the people behind the community. Apologies for that canned applause, but I did want to call out Tim and his role in particular, obviously all of the people involved. And you have a shot there, a small photo of the Eden team and Budapest who have kept everything running behind the scenes. So a big thank you and thanks for the opportunity to share my insights, which I hope have been helpful. Tim, you'll have to unmute the mic. Thank you. I had done so, but it suddenly become muted again. Now I was just saying, literally in this case, not metaphorically, I was speechless. I think you've done an amazing job and I really think you've done a fantastic job. And it really shows the amount of time and effort you put into this process. Thank you very much indeed. It really was very good. And I think it reflects what's been a really interesting and fulfilling conference. Just before I pass over to Sandra for the final farewell and closing words, I'd also like to make some my personal thanks here. I mean, firstly, to all of you for actually being here and having participated so much in the conference, to all of our speakers in all the different kinds of session for everyone involved in the PhD symposium, the scientific program committee members for the paper reviews and also the supporters, moderators, et cetera. Dooli Moura-Krenath and the awards panel. A special thanks to the technical support from UNED. You guys have been there all hours of the day and the night and thank you very much indeed. To our two conference rapporteurs, Cora and Mark, and especially to my conference coordinator, Bershith Serrano. I don't think she slept at all over the last few days, and I hope you're not going to pass me too big a bill for therapy after this conference is over. And I think as Mark said, I mean, to the secretary, I think without whom we really wouldn't have a conference. And my final comment, I think, is that I've got this really strong, strong feeling of deja vu, because this is the second year on a row that I've actually been in the conference session online, sat at home in front of the computer, and I really hope that as the UNED family next year, we can be together face to face and enjoy each other's comments, as well as company, as well as our stimulating academic interchange. So that's all from me. Thank you very much indeed. And over to Sandra. Thank you, Tim. You all said all the greetings already. As Mark said, we had living hell from all three, four days. But we enjoyed it. Definitely enjoyed it. Lots of things. Very fruitful, creative ideas, thoughts, expertise that has been shown, researches and research that we have seen. And just let me, at the end, share my presentation, which was presented, prepared for me by the secretariat. They're always on help for everything. So I don't want to take a credit for this presentation. So let me summarize briefly. So we are closing one more hidden conference in 2021 virtual annual conference, which was held from June 21 to 24 and was hosted by UNED virtually we were in Madrid, but in reality sitting in our chairs. This year we are celebrating three decades of serving modernization in education in Europe, Eden 30 anniversary. You have heard this morning about the beginning when Alan Tate shared the photo and some stories from the past. And definitely we are organization, we are association looking toward the futures and to all the challenges we will encompass on this way. So I'm certain that the next 30 years is ahead of us and very fruitful and creative perspectives. And of course, annual conference 395 participants from 57 countries, really impressive numbers. We have over 50 papers, 13 workshops and quite another big number of other sessions and contributions. I think this is really, really good. I wish to thank all our keynote speakers. I have, I have to say that these were really, really good key notes. All of them you cannot say one was better than the other because each of them provided valuable insight and information which we can use in our work and enable us to move forward and make some adaptation in our way we think and work. We had even a student PhD students symposium this year it was on the first day. And I'm very happy that it was successful. And this is something which is now becoming like sort of the brand of Eden, where we try to work with young PhD students and help them to get the best out of what they are doing by sharing the knowledge and expertise from our experts in PhD symposium committee, but also enabling them to collaborate and discuss on the global level. Well, we had really nice session this morning with opportunity knocks reflecting on the 30 years of Eden and looking ahead. I would say that we gave some very interesting replies and thoughts, and I'm very helpful, thankful to all for organizing the shaping this session and finding the good questions for discussion. I'm very happy that we have two new members of Eden Executive Committee, Don Olcott and Dylan Van Valkenberg who will join the rest of Executive Committee and continue to work on in Eden in the future. Also my congratulations to the Eden Senior Fellows this year, to Tim, to Diana and to Ulf, and also to the new Eden Fellows Elena, Mayred, Teresa, Giselle and Daniel. We have with this year two rewards for best research paper. One is coming from Croatia and I'm always have to say I'm so happy that my colleagues from Croatia are challenging on the on European and global level with their research as well, and one from United States. We gave the young scholar grant this year to the colleagues, to the young scholars team from Turkey, and we also have the young scholar best paper award. Again, to the, okay, just the three grants from the young scholar from Turkey, from Greece and from Germany, but the young scholar best paper award went to the Turkey team. And I wish to thank my dear colleague, Tim, for surviving all the preparations and conference, and I know that it was a sleepless night and very hard work, so now Tim, you know how it is. Yes, indeed. Well, I'm really grateful for your all support and preparation and for thinking about everything we exchange number of messages via email or WhatsApp. But I'm certain that everyone will say that organization was on a high level and definitely a great thanks to the Ricardo Mayral, rector of UNED, who agreed that UNED is host this year of the Eden conference. Definitely, my big thing to Beatriz, who made this really great virtual tour of Madrid enabled us to have the glimpse of Madrid and to feel like that we are there as well. I have to say special thanks to the principal sponsor, the blackboard and ask my solutions. And for the end, I also wish to thank the secretariat, which was led by Andrzej Zulc, all colleagues from secretariat, big thanks for all support preparations and for working whole days to prepare everything what was needed. For this conference to be very successful again. And so already some next events on the 1st July, we have child central Asia webinar on 5th July, we have online together webinar in the autumn. There is open classroom conference which is where it's definitely more NAP webinars. And for the November, there's European online and distance learning week so we as Eden continue to go and join us as Eden member be part of Eden community in Eden digital learning Europe. I will start to stop sharing because I cannot see any comments in the chat otherwise yes and I have to say that the most the nicest mannequin of all the conference was the Ratona in virtual Madrid store. We all remembered this nice little dog so he he was special I hope he will get some treats for being the member of this video. So, I wish to thank you all to participants to speakers to the key notes to all those engage and involved in organization of this conference, I can say, and I think that all you will agree that it was very very successful conference. And now in the end I got three messages that I have shouldn't forget that we need to take the joint picture. So please, if you don't want that I am on the bed list in the secretariat please turn on the cameras. Yes, so that we have some memories for this virtual online Eden conference and with this picture, I greet you to the next event. So say smile or cheese for for the Eden and for our conference. Okay, I hope I hope we managed to do it. I'm very happy that with smiles we are finishing this conference and let the smile stay on the face on your face in the next days. So, see you. Goodbye.


This article was authored by Shuran Jiz Baranvand, Sema Muhammad Khan Kerman Shahi and Roba Bama Marion.