I'm delighted to be able to be your chair for this morning's final day of the conference. The conference has obviously been quite different from what we would normally have hosted, but I have to say a huge congratulations to the team behind the virtual Eden conference. This year's conference has really, I think, gone out of its way to try to model what can be done in an online environment with not just the formal academic program, but also the other social dimensions to what happens during a conference. My name is Mark Brown and I'm the member of the Eden Executive. I work at Dublin City University as Director of the National Institute for Digital Learning. We've got a really exciting morning planned. We're going to start with some very important Eden awards to begin with. Those awards are something that we take a lot of pride in. We're going to begin with the Best Research Paper Award and then we'll be introducing the Young Scholar Award, followed by then two really exciting keynotes. Okay, sorry, I did a little talking over the video there at the outset. For those who've just arrived, our numbers are going up, which has been great for the conference over the last few days. So, I'm going to get started about too much further ado because we've got a tight program for the day and so to get things under way, I'm delighted to introduce to you Fesa Denise Whitelock, who's going to introduce to us today our Best Research Paper Award, Denise. Thank you Mark and good morning everyone. It is a great privilege for me to be Chair of the Jury for the Best Research Paper for this particular conference. We had a wonderful jury and first of all though, I'd like to make a special thank you to Ulrich Bernath Foundation for their support for this award, but more especially to Ulrich himself, who is indeed a real gentleman and was a tremendous support. As you can imagine, there is a high standard of papers that come forward for this conference and the jury had a difficult position to make this time, since there were three excellent conference papers which could have won the competition. We finally agreed on the paper which clearly addressed the 2020 annual Eden conference theme of human and artificial intelligence for the society of the future, inspiring digital education for the next student generation. So the award-winning conference paper was secondary school teacher support and training for online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic and the authors were from the University of Turin and they were Celia Fesore, Marina Mashi-Isu and Sergio Rabilino. The project was concerned with the training of teachers of secondary schools with innovative teaching methods and was concerned with the training of teachers during this period in these disciplines and during this difficult period of COVID. And also what's important here is that the paper elaborated on a rich pool of research and theory in form of practice which could be transferred and applied anywhere so important in this particular time. So I don't know if we can do a virtual clap but it would be very good if we did so. So let's congratulate the award winners. I think they might be wanting to say a few words. Thank you very much. My colleague Cecilia Fesore and Sergio Rabilino and I are very happy for this award and we want to thank the jury, Eden, the conference chairs and the conference programme committee. In the COVID-19 pandemic we worked hard to support colleagues and teachers of the secondary schools. We put our knowledge, our competence, our passion for digital education and the service of the community. The research we have done in this period of COVID-19 pandemic told us that this emergency can be churned in a very important opportunity for the future of education. A key point we bring with us after this experience is that online teaching and online learning are a new paradigm. I would like to dedicate this award to all of my research group. It's called Delta Research Group. Delta means digital education for learning and teaching advances and if I can, in memory of my father who died a few months ago. Thanks. Thank you very much and congratulations to all three authors. Also congratulations to all of those that were nominated for best paper awards and I'd also like to similarly extend a thanks to the judging panel in Denise for your role in chairing that panel. For those of you who have just recently arrived, I'm Mark Brown and I'm chairing the session. Can I just remind you that please do introduce yourself and pass comments in the chat box and as we enter into the keynote phase make sure that you use the Q&A option to ask questions that we will pose on your behalf. A number of participants are building up in the morning here early on and we're excited for the program ahead. I'm also excited now to introduce the next part of the mornings program where Eden has been in existence for a long time and it depends on reinventing and regenerating itself through our young scholar network and so it's my delight to introduce Professor Joseph Jurat who's going to introduce to us the recipient this year of the Eden Young Scholar Award. Thank you Mark. Good morning everyone. It's an honour and a pleasure also to me as a Vice President of Research of Eden present this morning the Eden 2020 Annual Conference Young Scholar Award. As you know, Eden has always dedicated much attention to involve and motivate the future generation of stakeholders of the open, distant learning field, at first offering them visibility by rewarding their achievements. For the recognition of the academic quality of papers presented by Young Research, the Eden Executive Committee decided to launch the Young Scholar Award. Since 2015, the award was bestowed to seven young scholars. This year, one junior researchers achievement as well as dedication to Eden Annual Conference has been recognised by the Eden Presidency. The winners research was present yesterday on the PhD symposium. The junior research is also a co-author of two papers, two posters and two workshops. All these works are focused on the topic of the conference, human and artificial intelligence for the society of the future. The Eden 2020 Conference Young Scholar Award is Francesca Amenundi from the University of Rome, Italy. Congratulations Francesca. Francesca, if you want to say something, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. I cannot start my video but I want to say thank you to everyone. I didn't expect this recognition and I am feeling very happy about it. I wanted to thank you everyone for this opportunity. The PhD symposium is a very constructive opportunity for us to reflect on our PhD path. I wanted to say thank you to Timisoara Organization and, of course, to my team at Rome Atria University because all our research are strongly interconnected. We are a multidisciplinary team and our research on critical thinking is strongly multidisciplinary and interdependent. So, I want to say especially to my supervisor Professor Antonella Poche who introduced me to the Eden community. So, thank you so much. Well, I think it would be appropriate for us to also come in with a virtual round of applause. Thank you very much. Congratulations and thank you, Joseph, for facilitating the awards for the Young Scholar. We always debate what we mean by young. Young is not an age but in a stage of career in the context of that particular prestigious award. Well, we're now time to turn our attention to the first keynote that we have, the first plenary today and I'm delighted it's not the first time I've actually had the opportunity to introduce our first speaker. I'm going to hope I get my pronunciation right but you'll be able to help me out if I don't. Our speaker today at the start of the program is Gori Dimitrov and I'll give a little brief bio before we introduce your particular topic of the presentation today. We joined the European Commission in 2008 between 2009 and 2013. Gori involved in various roles in setting up the European Institute of Innovation and Technology, that's EIT. In 2014 and 2015 he managed the launch of HE Innovate, an initiative by the European Commission and the OECD that supports entrepreneurial and innovative universities. I know my own university participated in the pilot at the time. He then acquired experience as a policy advisor to senior management. In January 2000 he said that then Gori assumed the role of deputy head of unit innovation and EIT in the Director-General's Office of EAC where he's now responsible for the EIT, digital education and innovation in education, including business university cooperation. Before joining the Commission, Gori worked in a leading multinational communications company in Germany and prior to that he worked for a software startup for four years in Germany. It's notable that, since Denise was with us in introducing the first award, that he also studied in a number of universities but including the UK Open University where he completed the MBA in Technology Management. Gori's going to talk to us this morning about towards the next digital education action plan. I mentioned that this is not the first time I've introduced him and those of you who are not aware, whilst I live in Ireland, I am originally from New Zealand and there is a connection I believe because your father spent time in New Zealand. So at this time it's quite a good place to be in the context of COVID-19. I digress and the floor is yours to hear about in particular the digital education action plan which is very timely. I'm sure you're going to tell us about the consultation phase that's under way at the moment. Thank you. Thank you very much Mark. Thank you for this very lenty introduction of myself. I probably don't deserve that type of attention but indeed my father is still in New Zealand and I think it's a good place to be right now. In any case I am a true European believer so I will go back to the European Union and talk a little bit about our plans. Before I do that I will just put my screen on and share it with you. The purpose of the talk today is a new genre for me, the digital keynote. So the purpose of this is to introduce you to the next digital education action plan. But before I do that, first of all I would like to start by thanking the Eden Association for the repeated invitation. In particular the President Sandra as well as the Secretary-General Andras whom I have been working also in the past. I would like to thank you also because I believe that your association has never been as important as it is right now and I'm not saying this just because your code is actually a European distance and e-learning network. I mean it's not really about the heaven, it's more about the distance and e-learning that you are actually implementing since so many years and of course I would just state the obvious when I say that this is right now absolutely the key question which is facing the management of the education continuity. I'll come back to that. I also would like to say that I have been very impressed by what the Eden community has done since March. I am on the newsletter list and I received the updates of the network and I am very much aware of the different webinars that you have been putting online and really implementing the spirit of the learning by doing and showing the others how to actually implement what we have been preaching over the last I don't know how many years and I don't really want to put a number because I know that many of you have lots of years in experience in distance and online learning and I think that this is quite important also in view of the topic of the conference which is of course human and artificial intelligence for the society of the future. So first of all thank you very much to the community for continuing this work and in particular for mobilising yourselves in these very difficult times. Then what I would like to also say is that I want to congratulate the young and the other winners of the research papers that you have just introduced. Congratulations from myself. I'm trying to keep up with what you are doing. I don't think I'm always very successful but this is a very important work and congratulations and finally I want to congratulate of course the host or the physical host of this conference which is the Polytechnica of Timishuara University which celebrates its 100th anniversary. So now let me come to the point which is the next digital education action plan and of course I would like to start by saying that this is a continuation of something that we have started I would say in some modesty two years ago notably in 2018 and we started the digital education action plan as one of the initiatives that would lead to the creation of the European education area. Of course our purpose has been to support member states. You all know or if you don't let me state that that the European Union has very limited competencies in the field of education so there is not much that we can do. I believe we have done great things nevertheless I will just mention Erasmus here and our role is to support member states and education institutions and with the digital education action plan of two years ago we wanted to do that in particular in the ongoing adaptation to the digital age. The scope of the last action plan has been on formal education that is primary secondary and tertiary education and we have chosen a focused approach with 11 actions across three main priorities. First it is about making better use of digital technology for teaching and learning. Second it is about developing relevant competencies and skills for the digital transformation and finally something which is very important also for the Eden work is of course improving education through better data evidence development research and of course foresight. Back then we have set ourselves the objective to limit this action plan until 2020 for a purpose because we wanted to see whether it is a good idea first of all to work in this approach and try to have an integrated action plan so we have set ourselves a limit until 2020 to see whether we would like to continue or not because of course it may have also been a bad idea. In the meantime we have a new now of course already one year or so president of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen who already in her political guidelines has set a priority already in 2019 in the summer to actually update the digital education action plan and in particular with regard to the need to develop digital skills for young people but also adults and the need to rethink education by using the digital potential making also learning more widely available online and using different means of digital learning including for example online courses. Now this sounds of course extremely trivial to the audience which is around here and I recognize that but let me say that this priority is something that has been defined by the president of the European Commission and I think that it is an important step in the recognition of the overall importance of digital education so we have taken this of course quite seriously and started to work towards the update and when I received the invitation from Eden about this conference I happily of course accepted because I thought that coming to Timishuara first of all would be a great experience which I very much regret I cannot do right now but secondly I actually assume that I will be able to present to you the action plan which was initially scheduled for adoption at the end of this month more or less around the time we speak today. Now in the meantime we all know what has happened and since March this year of course we have been hit very hard by the COVID-19 crisis and what this slide shows in arguably very small letters is the impact on the closure of schools or universities around Europe. More than 100 million students have been affected. You all know what has happened. What is new is that this has been part and parcel of every household and of course the southern and the large scale switch to digital education including online learning and distance learning but also remote emergency teaching which is something different of course and should be distinguished has been really at the forefront of the attention of policymakers and also of policymakers in the European Commission. So the impact of this is big. It is very early to say what it is exactly. I believe that there is going to be a lot of research that will be and is already taking place and I saw that the winning paper was actually addressing this topic and I believe there would be even more research trying to understand what are the impacts also on learning achievement, what are the impacts on learning losses, what is the issue between the situation as it is and the socio-economic background. So these are all very very big questions that have been if you like amplified and made clearer by the COVID-19 crisis and I think that with this sudden switch that we saw in many places of course we also experienced that not everyone was well prepared, not every teacher or parent or learner or student was prepared for that and I believe it is very important to not throw the baby with the if you like with the bath water and to conclude that digital education does not work because you know there are so many practical problems there. No it is the contrary it is very important to actually increase the attention to what can make digital education effective and of high quality. With the crisis the European Commission has gone into a crisis mode just like any other organisation around Europe and in May so one month ago the European Commission has presented its response to the crisis which is called next generation EU so just one month ago the Commission has also taken the decision to put an unprecedented amount of money in the recovery plan and this has also led to a rescheduling of many different policy initiatives that have been planned for adoption including the action plan so one of the reasons that we are not going to be able to speak today about the concrete actions is that we have had to adapt our planning and also of course the context of the recovery plan is here very very important. Now what are the key challenges that we have identified in this period and maybe what I would like to do here is not to go through every single bullet of those but maybe to just highlight a few of them and as I said from the perspective of the European Commission and the limited competences in education and training it is important to see where are the big issues going forward and going forward with the next digital education action plan which of course now will be much more addressing the questions that we have seen being raised through the COVID crisis and the first very big challenge and you will forgive me that I'm going to tell you nothing new here but I think it is important to say that and to also have it understood by everyone who is involved in policy making and this includes finance ministers very very often to focus on the really big issues that need to be addressed and the first one is the question of digital capacity. Digital capacity is something which includes infrastructure, it includes connectivity, it includes devices and it also of course necessarily includes the use of technology and of these devices and I have here some statistics, none of it is new from COVID-19 but actually I believe this is making it even more pertinent because those problems have been there, they would have continued anyway and what we have seen now is that they are way too serious in order to be accepted so for example we know that there are very important gaps which are related to the availability of computers and connectivity across Europe and this is particularly the case in low-income families, people from disadvantaged backgrounds, remote areas and the geographical diversity of this across Europe is immense and needs to be addressed because unless we do that and the crisis continues we will be effectively cutting off part of the population to a basic right which is the right to access education so this is actually quite important even though it sounds often boring to speak about infrastructure and so on but it is very very important to take this seriously, we also know that when it comes to teachers for example I'll pick up another example that I have mentioned in this slide when it comes to teachers it is only 39% of them in the EU that feel that they are well or very well prepared on digital education and there are very many significant differences across countries in particular right now through COVID-19 I believe we have experienced some massive shortcomings when it comes to the preparedness of educators to continue education through digital means of course this is very much varying from country to country and we should never generalise in any case we have seen that we need to do much more and we need continuous professional development in this field for teachers because we all know how important they are in this in this field so the first big question that needs to be addressed is how to manage the digital capacity the lack of digital capacity and to do it in a targeted way where it is necessary and to do it with a view of those that are actually also using this the second big challenge that again is nothing which is new but again is very much amplified by what we have been experiencing and are still experiencing is the question of digital competences and the question of how prepared of course learners and educators are but also more generally how prepared EU citizens are and we know that as early as 2019 we have the basic study which said that 43% of EU citizens have an insufficient level of digital skills again major disparities across the countries but this is let's say the general population now if we go to something which is more specific to education and training we also see that for example through ISIS 2018 we see that more than one-third of the 13 to 14 year olds which is the cohort of pupils which is being studied there actually works below the lowest proficiency level of digital skills and if you look in particular at examples such as informatics education or computer science with other words and its provision across Europe and we know that computer science and computing is quite important to understand the fundamentals of the digital world so it is not sufficient to use devices we see that only in 20 out of the 55 studied jurisdictions in Europe we have computing and informatics education on offer to all students we have examples across Europe where you can graduate school and never have been exposed to informatics or computer science so we should of course not say that we have to develop programmers for the future only but it is quite important to take the digital if you like the laws of the digital world as seriously as the laws of the physical world just like we take chemistry or maybe physics we should be thinking about the digital world equally seriously knowing that lots of it is driven by algorithms by artificial intelligence by things which us sometimes mislead in terms of information etc etc so the second big question here that we have seen exposed again and and amplified is the question of how are we doing in the EU in terms of the digital competences and I would like to perhaps even go a step further and say the digital competences that we need for the 21st century and they can all be developed through education and training the final big area which I would like to focus on in terms of the challenges that we that we have seen coming to the surface through COVID-19 and becoming really really obvious is the question of of course on the one side there is infrastructure and connectivity on the other side there is a the question of the skills and competences but this is not sufficient to make effective and inclusive digital education work what is necessary is of course a trusted digital ecosystem of content services tools and platforms and we have seen through the work that we are doing at EU level but also with the consultations that we have with the member states we have seen how important that question has become many many ministries for example have tried to facilitate access to different kinds of platforms content tools with various results we have seen a lot of creativity and inventiveness on the side of educators putting different things very fast of course in this remote emergency situation some of it worked very very well I would say some of it was perhaps more a question of a quick solution than something which is embedded in a strategy that that makes sense of of of high quality education content of secure platforms of services which are fit fit for purpose and of course tools which are adapted to the learner who needs to be always at the centre so we know that in many many countries and here there is a there is an example that we that we study that we have in the in the third bullet point we have seen through a through a recent survey that less than eight percent of the teachers expect that we're going to go back to normal so we are in this situation for a while and we need to think about a way to make the different parts and pieces of the digital education ecosystem work and last but not least when doing so it is quite important that we pay attention to the questions of data privacy and ethics I think that these are European Union also European Union values that we can take into account and we have to take into account when it comes to the question of privacy and unfortunately what we are seeing is that in a international comparison European countries are still lagging behind but the intention here is to to consolidate and not to reinvent the wheel but to have a more integrated approach and bring all these pieces together now these were the three main challenges around digital capacity digital competences and digital ecosystem of content services tools and platforms and the action plan has been of course now rethought and is being in the in the process of rethinking primarily because of what we have seen through covid covid is a big big challenge for everyone but we see it as also a means to give an impetus to digital education and our initial idea of starting with a small action plan will perhaps go through some revision given the political importance of of the of the issues that we are discussing now so what we are going to see in the in the action plan is first of all a limited number of impactful actions we would like to focus on the areas where the European Union can add value and knowing that the competencies at the member states level we are not going to intervene and we cannot intervene in places where member states have their competencies and this is almost in all domains but what we can do is we can support the focus areas that we are going to likely see as as the let's say the key priorities are around the questions of capacity which includes very much the technological infrastructure but also the organizational capabilities around managing this and I know that many of you are familiar with some of the initiatives that we have in the European Commission just like selfie for example which addresses the question on digital schools then the question of digital competencies for the 21st century will be a very very important one in particular when it comes to the role of educators and teachers so we are going to look into how we can support them through our programs but also how we can develop the type of skills that would be important for going forward and I mentioned some of the aspects the intersection of artificial intelligence in education which I cannot go into here for obvious reasons and lack of time in any case is going to be one issue that is quite important for us we need to look only not only backwards or what we need to let's say speed up but we need to also look forward in terms of anticipating the changes which are coming to us and finally of course we are going to look into the question of how education quality content can be better promoted and supported how can there be better guidance in terms of the two services and platforms that exist and how the European countries can learn also from each other one important thing is that while the first digital education action plan was limited to formal education we will likely see an extension beyond formal education to include also lifelong learning I believe that digital means and in particular if you think about risk healing and upskilling through digital courses and for example there are great examples there that are for example in the open universities around Europe but also other means that offer this type of things to reskill and upskill and this is part of the bigger lifelong learning for us and we would also look into a longer duration of the action plan this was one of the criticisms that we have seen that perhaps we have been a little bit too short termistic I think that now with the start of the next generation of European programmes which I remind all of us start next year Erasmus digital Europe we will have a seven year cycle of programming that starts next year we are going to of course see the digital education action plan as a policy initiative which sets the objectives for some of these programmes to support and therefore we're going to look into a longer duration also of the actions finally we would need to of course look into the question of funding another question that is important for us having critically reviewed what we have done so far in the last two years and here we are going to look more into what we can do through Erasmus increase its role when it comes to digital education we already see a lot of interesting initiatives coming directly through the Covid let's say crisis which are accelerating and of course digital Europe programme but also other funds and here I would like to mention that we will never be able to make a difference unless we can mobilise the member states to go along especially those that need to do that so it is very important that we work hand in hand with the member states finally I would like to say that the action plan will be a part of the overall long-term objective of the commission to support the digital transition in Europe our president has set two very important priorities for the commission in the mandate and they are to manage the digital and the green transitions and we see the digital education action plan as supporting the digital transformation in Europe of which education cannot be excluded obviously again it's a question of the member states primarily but we need to see education as part of it as I mentioned we will reflect very strongly the questions from Covid-19 and we will build where relevant on the current digital education action plan we are looking at adoption in September 2020 in time for the discussions in the council and we understand that the next presidency of the European Union which is the German presidency is going to be addressing this as a matter of priority and as I mentioned it is all of this is part of the next generation EU recovery plan because we are in the middle of very very difficult and challenging times and we need to to mobilise all of us together you mentioned Mark the open public consultation with which I would like to conclude because of the significance of the current crisis I have adopted first of all my presentation but that's not important what is more important is that we can have everyone participating with their voices and expressing their views on what it actually means to have digital education which works not only in in current let's say crisis terms short term but also to develop a vision out of this for for digital education which is effective inclusive and it is for this reason that last week we have launched an open public consultation EU wide which is normally done whenever major legislative initiatives are launched in the European policy context and we have launched this open public consultation first in English and by early July so next week or at the latest within 10 days it will be available in all European it will be available in all European languages so it will be open until 4th of September it targets in particular a very wide group of stakeholders citizens parents of course teachers and educators but also private sector there is the opportunity to distinguish whether you reply in your personal capacity or in your organizational capacity and I would like to conclude this contribution by my genuine request to all of you to participate in this consultation be it in your personal be it in your institutional be it in your organizational capacity to make yourself heard in order to help all of us arrive towards a more effective form of digital education which of course leaves no one behind and pays sufficient attention to the need for quality sustainability and to reflect our our common future with this I would like to thank you very much for your attention and I'm very happy to answer any questions thank you very much well thank you very much I'm going to give you a round of applause there and I'm inviting people and reminding participants that if you would like to post some questions in the Q&A tool over the next 10 or 15 minutes we will have some discussion um I'm going to start the ball rolling because uh I have a particular interest a research interest in policy as well as in my professional role in the way in which policy can be both enabling and constraining and so um I'm intrigued in many respects and would have to say that I would congratulate the commission on the public consultation process around the digital education action plan many people misunderstand that policy is as much a process as it is an outcome it's not just the document that you end up with so my question is how are you going to take into account the feedback you receive in any revised plan is there a way that you're going to be able to accommodate that feedback and share that back with the community yes thank you very much for this question what we are going to do is we will take the input of the open public consultation which I personally expect to be a very significant amount of input and analyze it internally include it into the staff working document which will go is going to be part of the action plan the action plan itself will be a shorter policy document but there will be a very significant evidence type of document attached to it to explain in detail all the different issues that we are putting forward and the references and in this we are going to also include the result of the open public consultation I would like to mention at this occasion that what we are also planning in addition to the open public consultation in the next two months is a series of outreach let's call them events for a lack of better word but we would also like to consult with the researcher community of course the researcher community is very welcome to express themselves in the open public consultation but we are also going to reach out in a targeted manner to the researcher community we have a joint research centre in the European Commission which is working together with us with excellent researchers there and we will also try to have a dialogue in a more focused manner with the people who actually understand the matters best and I believe that Eden can be very well part of this well thank you for the comprehensive answer and apologies to participants if that was me putting my first question in I'm going to turn in a second to some of the questions in the Q&A and remind you to post your questions there I think if there is one if I could just respond before I introduce the next question I think if there's one actually outcome that might be very positive as a consequence of COVID-19 it is this consultation process because policy as we know to be effective needs to engender ownership and ultimately needs to be enacted as distinct from being just symbolic policy so I think the public consultation process and as you describe the focus groups that you're going to engage with will be really important in moving that step forward than just being something that sits there in Brussels as a nice plan but doesn't always get enacted at the country level so I'm very excited and pleased to hear that I'm also very interested to hear when you mentioned the first key priority around capacity and it links also into capability so we have a question really around both capacity and capability those two things are different but they interface is just what is required in terms of professional development for educators yes absolutely and I will try to briefly also answer the the questions that are already in the Q&A but I'll try to be brief in order to not take additional time so first of all absolutely capacity and capability they are very different if you look at them carefully they work very well together however and I think that what you need there is basically on the one side the questions around the right infrastructure the right connectivity all of these things that need to be checked in terms of boxes and on the other hand you really need the organization be it a university or a school or professional education organization to be able to actually work with this and for this it is not necessarily only about the competencies of the people you need an institutional strategy so actually you need I would even say institutional leadership that can drive this type of change because it is very very different from the classical organizational model of an educational institution so this is why capability always needs to be addressed together with the question of how many computers we're going to put here or how how much content we're going to produce or let's say what type of of continuous professional development our people are going to go through there needs to be an institutional leadership to guide this and I personally would see the organizational capability question as addressed by that now the some of the questions here that come are how we can include how can we encourage government departments to make coding and digital competence as part of the curriculum I think that there are many many excellent initiatives which are doing this quite well I would go even one step further and say that with with coding we have a very nice initiative at the european level with the code week but what we would like to see is that we go even further and start to understand better the fundament of coding which is the the computer science and the the informatics around it I think that there is a big lack of this in terms of provision across Europe and we would like to encourage the ministries of education to share practices with with each other and to perhaps think about how to better prepare the students for this type of applications which is the coding or other types of of applying digital skills and we believe that it starts with a very strong and foundational knowledge about what the digital world is and this is provided through higher quality computer science and informatics education the action plan will have actions that focus on primary secondary and higher education to answer the question of breta and as I mentioned it is likely that we are going to see an extension into lifelong learning in particular when it comes to the risk healing let me mention that these are going to be targeted actions I mentioned also that we would like to propose things that only add value at the european level but they cannot be seen as in any way replacing or substituting the the national measures when it comes to the monitoring we are thinking of introducing a coordinated approach towards monitoring better how digital education evolves in the european union I would like to stop here because this is a political question which has to be discussed more before we are able to present it or to propose it but I remind that we are in the question of subsidiarity so we are always depending on how the member states progress nevertheless one can think of assessing big questions around education including digital education in the context of the so-called european semester which is the way of the european commission interacting with the member states and looking at their developments in selected policy areas I think that probably I rather yes I agree very much that assessment and validation is a very very big challenge to this I cannot present any specific action right now but it is part of our discussion to what extent we can cover it maybe here I stop well thank you very much you took over my job very well by answering those questions in the Q&A thank you very much and I hope I speak for others that I'm really encouraged to hear the extent with which I guess one of the really positive takeaways of the challenging few months we've all experienced is the understanding of how we really need to engage accelerate and perhaps even fast-track the future of digital education and clearly the commission and the action plan is going to play a very important role so I couldn't have been a more timely presentation I'm sure that everyone speaking on their behalf found that it was very informative and again I hope I speak on everyone's behalf we look forward to engaging in the consultation process because we have an opportunity to shape our future here and if people who are participants in Eden and this particularly long-standing and prestigious community can't influence the future then who else can so thank you very much and I look forward to further engagement and in fact on a personal note I know I have a meeting later this afternoon on the Digi Ed hack which was one of the initiatives in last year's action plan and I suspect is going to find its way into this year's plan thank you could you join me please in a round of applause thank you very much to everybody thank you I'm now going to turn our attention to our second plenary this morning and those of you who have arrived during the session we've started the day with two prestigious Eden awards we've heard about the digital education action plan and then over the last two days of the conference there has been a particular theme around artificial intelligence in education and I think the third aspect to the action plan that talked about data is a nice segue into the talk that we're going to have and I'm going to do my best to make sure that I can capture the pronunciation but you may need to help me Hesius bird Tario um good enough maybe what what you carry on it's quite hard for you I use that I'll do a little brief introduction to the talk and then hand over to you Hesius has had several positions at uni related to using IT and education he's currently a full professor of with the computer science school he's head of the ADNU now you might pronounce that slightly differently as an acronym research group a scientific coordinator in european and national projects chair of the core conferences and an organizer of the workshop series on user modeling accessibility he's also an expert counsellor at uni units center for supporting students with disabilities and at the corporate school responsibility chair unit and the scientific chair for of the red altar never doubt which i'm not sure what that is but you might explain to us he's authored over 200 research articles and participated in 26 research and development funded projects so delight to have you here talking today on the topic massive deployment of artificial intelligence at higher education institutions and before I give you the floor I will just make one personal observation I have been in the room if you're in the room that I think it is with the background artwork and it is very impressive there in Madrid so very welcome and we look forward to what you have to say okay thank you for inviting me and it's a real pleasure to enjoy this opportunity with you and I'm going to share some thoughts about what is going on nowadays because it's the most you know this is a right nowadays how to apply AI to everything and I've been working in this area for 45 years already and well I'm going to share with you some thoughts about that and as well the plans that we have at UNED and in order to do that I'm going to share the presentation with you hopefully you have there okay great so in this talk I'm going to reflect with you okay because I think it's it's a matter of perfection it's not everything is so clear and technology does not provide us all the solutions okay there are many open issues in providing massive deployment or AI focus on the most important thing that we all want okay whatever the circumstances which is to provide personalized learning okay so in in this respect the the topics that I want to cover today is first of all to reflect with you some things that we have to bear in mind in order to provide personalized learning services then I am going to review not all of them obviously some of the developments in there in this area those applied to education okay with both sides okay we we have to take into account both sides not just the technology part but as important as that is the methodology and how to be effective okay I'm going to reflect on that and then we are going to share with you well how happy I am because we launched last year most likely the first global massive plan for spreading all the services at UNED using personalization and support of data at UNED and we are we are on our way I'm going to share those topics with you so first of all we are in 2020 and the coronavirus took place and well I don't know to what extent there to share with you that to a certain extent I feel that the approach that we have been having at UNED we are about to celebrate our 50th anniversary is most likely one of the best ones okay we are combining face-to-face tutoring for those who can afford them with online services and everything is so flexible there are so many opportunities that I think that the people select our university because of that and bear in mind that we are a governmental university and we lack of resources obviously okay but nevertheless I think we provide a flexible approach so in this respect yesterday I enjoy Anthony Camilleri I think talk and he reflected on something that happened everywhere over this coronavirus confinement okay which is increased even more than 50% of the usage of open courses the same to UNED okay we have already nearly 400,000 students enrolled in our courses this is very good news and well also we suffered the consequences okay we had more than 60,000 simultaneous logins sometimes this is quite hard to support and we have nearly 205,000 sessions in several weeks now this is impressive so first of all let me share with you some ideas about where we are okay my view is that higher educations institutions have been more focused on education than on learning okay our classroom resemble those created back in the old days but not just in the industrial revolution no no no way way before okay perhaps in the 1300s and well our approach nowadays is not that different we just have interactive blackboards so well let's say that we are starting to take advantage of learning communities and the approach is more or less like this okay this is what we are doing okay we have students all of them are connected and all of them learn actually if we don't provide them the resources they will do anyhow I mean they have we have discovered okay that they organized or learning in outside of their university services and this is something that concern all the universities I think and the approach of the tutor or the professor used to give a talk and I wonder if this is the right approach okay in my courses I try to take this other approach okay where I am just part of the community of learning I'm learning from them of course I organize the materials and everything and all the tasks but I share with them the learning and I force them to share the learning with each other okay the tasks most of the times have most of the time have to be shared with others and then we can learn from each other and and I wonder if all my life long working in this area I'm I'm chasing you know the the the source of a rainbow okay which is personalized learning and to tell you the truth the best approach is that one there is no other there is no other if I have the time to enjoy teaching just one person I will completely understand the person their needs and and therefore I'm more helpful okay but the approach that we have and this is quite common you you can see this in many presentations but I would like to reflect on that because nowadays there are some discussions about if this is the right approach or not okay which is to provide everyone the same type of task I don't like this approach but even even if I have to follow that approach at least want everyone agree is that we have to provide different support to different people okay so this is what matters and well let's see if machines help us in doing so so and now what well first let's me let me share with you some questions and yeah it's because I'm having problems in seeing the full screen sorry about that the basic questions that I would like to share with you is first of all do we know what we are aiming at I mean what we want in terms of personalized learning is that really personalized learning sometimes I wonder that I think that we haven't really addressed that issue imagine that you were able able to address everyone needs in terms of technology are we teachers okay prepare train to do that not myself not myself and do you know or we know what the support the support has to be put in place I have doubts I have doubts and I'm going to share with you many things that people don't usually take into account in terms of what it means to provide learner-centered learning design well that's quite hard and the topics well finally I'm going to share with you the topics in our roadmap okay so let me go back to the arrows yeah okay so this is nothing but a cloud of words that you you you can take for my own research group publications and you will get the same type of topics from everyone else in the field adaptive educational learning support recommendation modeling collaboration and so on so there are background topics that we don't usually bear in mind okay and let me share some of those with you the user experience is the only thing that matters at least if you really happen into account the needs of everyone as I reflect on later on we have to provide open service architectures and this is I mean this is a mistake on nowadays okay we cannot let ourselves think that just one platform is going to solve the problem no never never we have to share all the different resources in a transparent way to our students so that they can even share their own resources with ours otherwise we are out okay that's why they organize themselves elsewhere and another important thing that we don't really build so much on is collaboration there is a vast research in computer support collaborative learning and we don't take that into account nothing that concerns me and is how we provide nowadays personalization to our teachers and students and is most focused on dashboards and and and I have doubts that that's the right approach okay first of all I don't have time as a teacher to cover all the different dashboards that I can access I have to interpret them there is a lot of research I've been in in Wisconsin a Konati in Vancouver University they work on adaptive visualization and and I can tell you the different ways of presenting data changes completely the mind of the one who is receiving the information so I'd rather have a recommender systems that provide me the right the right answer to the right question okay that flag me okay alert me that I have a problem with one particular student because the student is trapped in whatever task or that we are having a problem in terms of how they work online in with social network analysis I will comment on that later on while they are working on our courses and lately I've been working for over eight years already more or less on taking effect into account okay it's quite surprising many times that if you very mind what the people feel is much more relevant than what the people know because many times there is a close relationship between both okay if you think that you are not able to do that and you feel uncomfortable it is quite likely yet that you won't ever be successful and you know and vice versa so one of the most important things that I insist so much in my university and I have always done is to use standards okay imagine that we didn't take into account when we have connections the distance between the right railways okay we will have problems we will have problems so first of all there is something that many times we miss okay we don't take into account which is the potential of the context and we think that all the people study the same and with the same type of facilities no there is no longer the truth okay we have to bear in mind the new situations okay we could have a student that is learning a lesson trapped in a traffic jam why not okay and there are people who are working together in in another scenario or there is only one that have confirmed and this is very important in terms of ethic issues okay to track them in order to help them bear in mind their effective problems okay and many other circumstances that I will comment so this is called ambient intelligent systems okay and then we have to take advantage to build on the diverse okay the diverse is not a problem it's an opportunity always and we have to take into account in terms of human computer interaction user agents and assistive technologies and we have to over to always comply with those requirements okay of those that are using these devices in one european project that included 18 institutions across europe we develop all the services that we can provide to a student with so-called needs I will call everyone but those with disabilities okay and so we can cater for them from the enrollment to their graduation okay not just at certain moments which is the evaluations and things like that but on providing them a support and the way they learn what they are what are they needs and and this is quite hard okay to develop and and well we develop several prototypes and and they work sure okay yeah that here you have some papers on that if you want to track them uh taking the lessons learned from that project uh we are currently provided providing uh with the collaboration of the uh association for blind people in spain the onset and several courses on how to develop accessible materials and how to take into account what it means public procurement um and how to develop accessible mobile solutions and many others and you are welcome to use them uh are there available uh regarding uh collaboration as I said before many times we just consider what the the forums provide us okay we have been working and more structure approaches to using uh collaboration so that the system the system is able to manage to control all the different sets and and we don't have to concern okay as tutors or teachers on how to manage uh that thing okay if we use um different type of technologies like uh machine learning and social network analysis and open learning models and we can let the system take um its own decisions okay the system is able to uh locate to pinpoint if there is a problem with someone in terms of the connections that they have and how they have been working over the collaboration in different stages taking of course different roles because it's very important when you are running that is uh that you uh um take the role of uh the coordinator for instance or the organizer of a uh group for study and then you are just a member of the group so it's very important to change those roles and now i'm going to share with you something that i i i i i seldom uh see in in other um speeches about how to deal with this and this reflects what what i have been learning over many many projects is that how we develop um online courses okay now i'm a bit disappointed with the um current flow of teaching and learning that we have on MOOCs i think it's quite poor it's not flexible it's not really focused on on each learner okay so uh we develop over several projects how to develop system that we're able to adapt themselves because they took into account okay the interactions of people the standards and all that's the the topics i mentioned before and and adapt themselves for for the students and that's uh takes a lot of effort but the good news is that uh once you've made the effort you can uh replicate that in many courses and this is very good news okay which is to uh do the right thing of the learning design phase which implies also taking into account uh those accessibility needs you have the admin phase where you have to combine all the efforts not yet this is just one platform uh approach but you here the current approach should be taking into account many different platforms and tools and then they use it and here you have to to have the to implement the right tracking okay and and finally an auditory process this is very important because the auditory process has two types of outcomes i think okay some of them uh relates to the model to the pedagogy and some of them relates to how the technology has supported that and and those has to feedback again the cycle for the next season because it's quite difficult for a teacher i can tell you to use several standards that we have enjoyed over the years in order to provide personalized learning paths okay and several projects we took the approach of a planning system and so the system is able to with uh major milestones that i am as a teacher able to provide to the system the system was able to figure figure out okay how to combine everything uh taking into account the pollution of everyone uh learning process and here are more papers on that and uh well as i introduced before i sometimes think that many i mean in many occasions it's not that important the advice that you provide even the system okay once confirmed that this is the right advice but the explanation something that is coming out right now in terms of using machine learning approaches and i love it okay because i think that's the essence okay to to provide the explanations why the system think something is relevant for you if the system tells you so you get much more benefit in terms of those explanations that on the action itself and and this relates to metacognitive issues that are so relevant at distance learning we have discovered over this coronavirus crisis that many of the problems that we were having with our students were psychological problems okay not so much on using this or that but they were really under stress that i mean uh and we were well prepared i mean uh we provide all of our services online we have been uh been the consultant in in spain okay uh to other universities that were not used to this well uh in um regarding uh taking into account on board okay they affected issues we have researched how to support uh the student okay and many times the text based support are not that relevant okay if you tell the student don't worry keep trying i think well it's better than to say you made a mistake okay but it's not a great support okay so we we are we are right now working in in different approaches i will share that with you and here are some papers on how to provide the right type of recommendations over several projects and now we are working on uh well i'm i'm really intrigued on how this will uh take us okay which is to learn by everything everything from you and it's about to be there it's about to be there you just have to use your mobile and discover that it's tracking all the health issues around you and this is going to be uh more and more all the rates okay uh we have to take care of this i will comment on that later on it's not that i am so enthusiastic about this okay we have to take care of this we have been using several types of devices in order to get that information from physiological devices and as well from the behavior of the students in a particular context and here we have more recent papers about it okay and so and now what what with what i mean what we are going to do at the university level okay in order to cater for all those needs for all those open issues and to learn from each other that that's the right approach i think okay the outcome is i mean the the starting point is to start from the massive which is the current situation to the potential of massive okay and well it is supposed that in order to provide personalization we need big data data and learning analytics i i rather prefer uh data mining applied to education because i've been here for so many years but learning analytics that brings on board the the teachers i have always done so so i'm going to share with you how we are trying to grow with all those things that connect okay we launched uh that roadmap that i mentioned at the beginning of this talk and in this roadmap we cover ethical and social issues data gathering data analysis provide interventions based just on evidence okay just on evidence i'm providing the causes of the the origins of those evidence to the one who received the recommendation or the alert and put it in place pretty models in terms of those recommenders the approach that we follow is user-centered that's the one that we want to follow in all of our services but first first things first okay first we have to be cautious me the first of all okay and the first thing that we launch at UNED is a participatory process which was more focused on raising the awareness okay of what it means to deal with all data that is tracking me all over okay in every situation and so we have to um in as much as we use that approach we have to bear in mind the ethical issues uh the the property rights issues uh access issues and and everything relates to that okay it's not just providing uh basic stuff saying okay we follow the rules the EU is providing us is not enough is not enough if you go to the detail of those rules and you try to apply you have a wide gap to to play with and that's what they are doing with us the the corporate sector okay in terms of the solution that's why in our institution we have developed for instance a tool to provide all the evaluations right now are to net okay roughly 300 000 imagine okay exams we have to to run in this couple of weeks and we have developed our own tool for many reasons but mainly mainly for ethical issues okay because we have to bear those in mind these are the figures of the participation in that participatory process and now with those guiding principles that we have shared with our university we want to end up having official regulation that protect us as university and our students uh the second step is data gathering and let me tell you something that is the challenge my main challenge as vice-rector right now at the net for digital digitalization and innovation okay which is as follows again this university has or has collected thousands millions of objects even okay of different sort in different areas and the first thing that we have to do is to link it okay to provide a link of data of all that we have to combine everything we have we have to use the standards and the resources that has not have not been yet labeled have to okay for the benefit of everyone imagine if someone is lost in a course and just because there are materials related to what we are accessing at the moment because the system knows presents you several presentations and different forums comments on that and many other tool facilities that you don't have you don't have to design as a teacher but the system knows better than you okay well I think I'm running out of time more or less so I prefer to go more faster in terms of data analysis we have to improve what we collect okay many times we don't take into account the right inputs there is there is an interesting discussion on when we have to provide our students and surveys assessments and and so forth no and and we don't want to bother them but their inputs are very valuable and we want to have inputs that we can control and automatically manage and this is quite challenging okay I already raised the question of not being not so confident on the dashboard approached to teaching and learning and the main issue that we are facing already at the net and many of you in other universities have this problem as well is the dropout rates okay and we have discovered that if we provide the right support to our students so that they end up going to the first sum we are successful and this is very important okay the first the first stage is someone in the university that you know surrounds someone in the university and have to be full of support and that's what we are doing right now and then to provide just interventions based on evidence okay when I was at Carnegie Mellon when I started working with Tom Mitchell in machine learning I learned how cautious a system has to be before before bothering the user with anything and let me put it this way okay and those predictive models have to fit each other okay and one problem that we have always in our universities is how to start working with this approach when we don't have information for our students this is nonsensical let me share this with you honestly okay what do you receive what do you receive when you organize a course and in terms of your students almost nothing almost nothing I mean I I'm trying to teach a black box and the only information they that I have is the courses they have passed and things like that that's not enough if we want to address personalized learning let me be honest with you okay so we have to take other approaches that machine learning can cover up as well in terms of providing more services and because I don't have really enough time I'm just going to share with you one of the main developments that we are already developing donate which is critical I think for everyone in any university okay the problem that teachers have faculty is that they use a wide variety of materials all of them from different sources and the system want them to have standards being interoperable and so forth no and so we are developing a generation of content tools that support their collaboration support having different information sources in different formats and and sharing them in alerts like e-path, html, common characters, whatever okay no problem we have to cover all of them and and this generation of contents dynamically is able not just to deal with generation of a particular content but the whole course okay as the slide I presented before that covered the adaptive life cycle that's the approach that's the final end of this and finally sharing sharing sharing with you I'm here to learn from your questions okay we are we are all here to learn from our colleagues in our university it's incredible the things that we have found over the coronavirus crisis from them they are doing great things and the people don't know that and we want to share all that with everyone in in collective and common repositories and of course to provide and to increase the the research that we are doing in this area I didn't mention before but it's very important to anonymize all the data that you have in order to incentive okay the the research in this area leverage the interest in developing new solutions even develop from the the the the the researchers I don't know in this case and we are working on that okay and well let me just and and this talk with what the experts have shared with me in different conference in the EDTU conference and in the ICDE last year with Wayne Holmes my friend I I I'm very happy to work with him in this workshops and these are some of the questions that the experts share with us okay and if I am able to see them all okay first question is do we know the skills teachers have to learn to support personalized learning Europe will be left behind if we get hang up on the ethics of AI ED other places corporations will leave us in the shade they ask for forgiveness not permission well just a question degrees if AI can enhance the student performance uh which one is graduating will we still need uh degrees well perhaps are good questions so thank you and let me finish with quote by uh someone that I enjoy so much in my earliest stages in AI Marvin Miskin in his book the society of mind he shared this with us the art of great painting is not in any one idea but in the great network of relationships among its parts thank you for your attention thank you well thank you very much for that comprehensive talk I have to say and I'm still trying to make sense and reconcile all of the points you raised but three things stand out for me before we turn to the some questions one I really appreciated your focus for some caution in discussions around the role of AI and I'm pretty confident based on the feedback in the chat channel secondly that people appreciated your focus on ethics in this context as well I know that's a concern for many educators and then lastly you mentioned the importance of sharing because none of us have a mortgage if you like or understand where the future is going and I guess that's also very relevant to the quote that you use there at the end which also links nicely into your background because we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us and we're part of a network and Stephen Downs actually was mentioned in the chat box the concept or theory of connectivism is often cited as an extension of that kind of knowledge network we do have a question only a single question now but I do have one that I compose as well but the first question I think is very relevant because you started the talk with a very strong focus on personalised learning and I also appreciated that you put that as a question as well what do we mean raising so the question is in a similar vein do we actually know if students actually want enjoy prefer and learn better on personalised learning how would you respond to that okay we would like to we would like to and we have many times tried to bring them on board they just don't care you follow they just don't care they are so used to not receiving support by anyone that they organise themselves and this is the first critical issue that we have to face exactly how to bring them on board before providing solutions adaptive to different types of topics that's another thing that we are doing at the net okay the courses will be different of course in computer science than in zoology philology imagine no the type of approach that we are following which is to provide one size fit all I mean it's nonsensical it's nonsensical whatsoever so the thing is to have their say and and the problem is it comes from earlier stages and I have launched a european project with many many important people thanks to all of them more focus on starting at the right time which is not at the university level you understand not at the university level this isn't just another step in the ladder but if we start building the house from the roof we never never be able to address the problem fully okay we have to take into account everything of course the the current puzzle pieces that we have have to be in place it's not to forget everything but the first problem that we have is that the information that comes from one level of the education to the next is almost nothing nothing and this is terrible because I have suffered the consequences with my own kids one of them is very very brilliant as her mother and has just end up first class the degree in genetics in in in Glasgow and this brilliant person who happened to be part of my family and I've enjoyed her learning has always you know puzzle the teachers okay because they didn't take into account that my kid was brilliant and therefore over and over again every course we have the same problem okay oh thanks I would like to thank your daughter because she interrupted me interrupted me okay when she was uh seven years old also imagine no and and when I discovered that if she didn't understand something I better address that because no one else was able to understand uh what I said I I'm very thankful and so on and so forth you you understand know the the thing that I'm trying to introduce here we have to have more data more data on board we have to have them on board because data is just one part of the truth people don't realize because nowadays we we live you know in such a world that we imagine that AI is going to solve everything I've been working in this area for 30 years and well I won't be here for the 30 next years but I can tell you all the the main issues that are open will be open will be open okay and it depends very much on us on how to take advantage of the technology but very mind take advantage of the technology for something not the technology apply because it's so flashy okay no never never okay technology for instance nowadays I I went to a course of uh teams uh sorry um um power VI sorry about that okay uh tool in order to apply business intelligence at the net and the system provides you something that they call insights wonderful insights you don't have to know anything about data about how to convey data about anything okay you click and you get an insight and I was wonder okay and what support that insight because I work in this field and you have to prove okay that that insight is true okay there has to be significantly aesthetically irrelevant and many old things that have to be in place okay they have to be that the models have to be precise they have to tell you what is the data that was involved and all that no that was hidden it was on the Microsoft side okay so I'm losing the best part of it I'm losing the best part of it thank you for that comprehensive answer I I have a follow-up question um linked to personalisation I'm wondering uh do you see that there is a tension between the goal of personalisation and the need for standards or standardisation I cannot be more on that side okay it's have been my battle for many years because it takes into account having to deal with many for for someone who is focused on focused on research like me managerial things okay let me be honest with you standards are very important but we have to you know come up not just with technological standards no we have to come up with ethical standards okay we have to come up with right approaches that we can share and evolve so that they end up being like a staple staple for you know progressing the field so standards is a magic word that covers many things but one thing is clear nowadays okay in order to share we have to comply with the standards that's it well that was a nice short answer and I guess what I often talk about is and I know Diana I'm going to bring you in in a second but the iPhone that I have in my hand if that can be seen is an incredibly innovative piece of technology but it is also built on standards so the two can be reconciled um to finish up I'll just make one observation and before I invite people to congratulate you on a great um an insightful presentation I think I'm right in assigning this sort of metaphor to Stephen Downs around personalisation where he points out that a lot of what we're doing in the concept of personalisation and using a restaurant metaphor is just changing the menu or adding more items on to the menu where real personalisation involves getting the person who's attending and about to eat a meal to actually be the ones who cook the meal and choose the ingredients a much deeper layer of personalisation perhaps even to go and find those ingredients so thank you very much I'd like to ask everyone just to join me in a round of virtual applause we've had a really interesting morning for the final day of the conference and I'm now going to just hand back to Diana who's just going to tell you a few things about um the rest of the day I believe so thank you thank you everyone thank you Georgie thank you um Hessos and thank you very much Mark for wonderful start of the day and I will now uh start sharing my screen so we move immediately to the to the closing because we are a tiny bit late according to the to the schedule so uh please um if you want yes this is it um this is the forum in the conference tool where you can put information about the social events you project and also about the papers it's not so much action here which we were hoping it's going to be in fact as to be able to share some information about other you project in which you are working and to declare the Eden 2020 community but what I will drag your attention today is about the social event yesterday which was wonderful we had some great food and some nice chat and some music and we seen about the cultural festivals of Timishrara so you will be able to still go and have a look at that and we posted some photos and things also on social media and today we are celebrating the Romanian Midsummer Day I think in a lot of Europe is also a large celebration and also the Romanian Blouse so the thing which I'm wearing now and we put here some links to some of that information and you will be able to to read that uh and to see also the video and so on I would like to to um drag your attention to the schedule today which is also quite busy there are a lot of papers which are following and sessions and there are some several very interesting and very good ones to to be seen it's also the synergy session which is happening later after at one o'clock a brussel train which will show you exactly how um you can have to say uh look into the European Union project because quite a lot of people have been asking about the the attendee list and the speakers list we created last night a new list so you can see those which are speakers and those which are attendees so you just need to go into the front page on the conference tool on Eden and then you will be able to see and you will be able to interact with everyone and we prepared in the closing planary but you can try it from now uh several information about where is the new research workshop in uh in Lisbon sorry for that spelling and 2021 in Madrid but also how you can do your participant photo and I will briefly go over this so you have uh a slideshare uh google slideshare where you can have all the instructions on how to put your photo into this PowerPoint this is shared with everyone and you can bring it there and then you will be able to create something like this or like this there are several images which you've been accustomed of them now and you will be able to use that and you will be able to see them like this and save them and use them this is going to be your memento Timishara so you will be able to use it also in social media and in other profiles where you have it that you've been to Timishara and you will be able to do it so everything is shared and it's the information you find it into the closing planary where you have the instructions on how to do it and so on so please follow up the day uh with the information and you can now see the attendees and the speakers and please post information into the forum about the few projects and either other ideas which you have so we can have the community also further up and more information will be sent to the closing session thank you and join the sessions now please thank you very much to all thank you Mark thank you Diana I hope I didn't run over time there my note said uh 11 10 45 so um initial schedule was 11 uh 10 30 so that's why but it doesn't matter the other sessions are open now and people are moving there so it's perfect don't worry thank you so much to everybody and thank you and Jesus again bye thank you Marina


My name is Trish Nelson, and I have been in the service industry. I've wrote all this down. I've worked alongside some of the greatest innovators of this whole profession. I started when I was 14. I'm a loyalist, began and never looked back. And helping these various people build their empires, I have donated tiny slivers of my sanity and my soul, which I'm sure you can relate to. Restaurants, they're composed of a group of highly skilled misfits. And when we're brought together in the right formation, we can accomplish enormous feats. The physical and the emotional heat of the industry, especially the heat in the kitchen, it's not for the faint of heart. The adrenaline that kicks in when you are finding yourself in the weeds or the exhilaration that runs through your body when you accomplish the impossible. And that release that you experienced after a grueling 12 to, I don't know, 20-hour shift, finally sitting down with your comrades that you've been in the trenches with, having a beer, it is indescribable. And if you're not a part of the industry, you just don't get it. These friendships are for life. These bonds are unbreakable. One of the things that I really love about us is that we pretty much, we accept everybody. So you've ruined it for me. One of the things that I do love about us is that we do accept everybody. And from the point of saying like, you're just, you got out of prison, come on, join us. Not from this country, great, hop aboard, welcome. You feel like you don't have any skills? Well, it's going to take years, but here's an onion and go figure out how to shop it. We are a part of this wild and this unmonitored industry and we're building our successes using this organized chaos and a little pinch of lawlessness, which I personally like. We are the counterculture and we find each other within the cracks of society. And the main requirement for us is we just have to have a skin that's as thick as a superhero's saying that if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen, that's been branded into all of our flesh. And this is the chaos that defines us. This is the chaos that is kitchen culture. All of these elements that are mixed with an unwavering emotional tolerance have been the ingredients that we have used to help to maintain the engine of this industry. As a people, we are not well healed, obviously, we are part of the working class. And because of this class divide, up until recently, no one has ever really cared or questioned our survival methods. They've just kind of left us alone to survive, which brings us to the other side of kitchen culture. Things that are completely normal to us, they sound absolutely effing insane to anybody who is not a part of this industry. Behind the scenes of a restaurant, it can be intensely passionate and chaotic. I once heard that you can tell how good a chef is by the amount of scars that they have on their forearms. But what you don't see are the scars that are psychologically embedded within their souls. As I look out into this forum, I know that you kind of know what I'm talking about. Sometimes you have been so verbally or physically bullied and abused by your teammates or your chefs that it has been irreparably soul crushing. Possibly, in the middle of one of these tirades, you have witnessed somebody completely lose their minds and toss all your hard work in the trash.  Maybe you've had scalding hot food thrown in your direction, which is always fun. You've experienced other forms of harassment, or the violence from not only your superiors but your teammates who are supposed to be your family. These endless cycles of abuse have been allowed to continue on for decades. It has been carelessly labeled as kitchen culture. And what you have done during these moments, I mean, really, what have you done? You felt humiliated. How did you respond?  This is kitchen culture. It's the way that it is. It's the way it always has been. This is our norm.   It's just the way it is. It's the way that it's always been. This is kitchen culture. So this year, there's been this massive global expose that has kind of begun to look at the underbelly of some of these less than desirable traits that are a part of our industry. I think we have to take a long look at the methods that we've used and the bullying and the tactics. This is an unmonitored industry. We have accepted these abusive behaviors as normal. Why have we chosen to stay silenced along? What's wrong with us?  It's been much easier to turn our heads and to ignore the elephant in the room. Dealing with the ugliness that stems from kitchen culture has always been a part of the job and we've just been finding the vocabulary recently to truly crack this open and have these necessary discussions that have led to the dismantling and the reconstruction of our entire foundation. These conversations are necessary and they will bring forth this long overdue change. Moving us forward as an industry, violence, abuse, sexual harassment, racism, sexism, misogyny, these are the triggering topics that we need to finally address in order for us to reform our culture and it ain't going to be easy. We're basically starting a new discussion and we have to be forgiving of each other for mistakes that have been made along the way. We have to be empathetic because this is nothing but awkwardness and discomfort as we reluctantly and painfully stumble together into this dark and uncharted territory. As we truly evaluate these issues that plague our industry, the term kitchen culture enters into the conversation as being the very root of this global problem. Patient zero, if you will. The sexism and sexual harassment that runs rampant throughout our establishments are not alone issues. They're not standalone issues. They are directly, they're symptoms. They're created by the toxicity that we have provided and that nourishes other matters of contention such as toxic masculinity and rape culture and that's a whole another discussion that we don't have time for today. But those things are still associated with kitchen culture. The end result is this unbridled poison that has been injected into our most beloved establishments, spreading like a disease, a malignant tumor, infecting and destroying these institutions that we love, starting from the very top and fingering their way outwards, trickling down, mutating, until it has permeated every single cell within the bricks that build this industry's foundation. There's no way around it. This year is sucked. It's been so painful for so many of us as we've stood by and we have watched our heroes fall from grace. Some of these leaders were our mentors. Some of them were our friends. Those of us who worked alongside of these people witnessed firsthand the events that led to their demise. And the knowledge that has been gained from observing their mistakes I think is crucial for all of us to take note of as we strive to make a better choice for both ourselves and for this industry. It is important that we stop this repetition of these abusive cycles. Sometimes you just have to get rid of the outdated broken systems and archaic methods in order to implement new and improved structures. Luckily, as we maneuver forward through this transition, we're all going to be able to carry this knowledge. The knowledge from the past, what we knew it was like, what isn't useful, what hasn't worked, the mistakes that could have easily been avoided. Now, this saying, if you can't take the heat, it takes on a whole new meeting. If you cannot behave with integrity and you treat your employees with dignity, if you can't respect that they deserve empathy for the tireless and thankless help that they are giving to you as they build your empires, then you've got to get out of the kitchen. Someone asked me the other day what I thought the answer was to changing the landscape of this industry, that a lot of people are viewing as being broken. And as I look out into all of your faces, I know the answer. It's you. You guys are the answer to this. And it all comes down to a word. It's choice. It's about accountability and having, holding each other accountable for the choices that we are making. It is about ending our silence. And if you hold a leadership position right now on the most basic level, you can have the awareness of behaviors that will help you check your ego and move. Sorry. I'm glad I brought this because I knew I was going to need it. Thank you guys. Back to ego. You just have to become more mindful of your choices. And if you have made some mistakes throughout the history as a leader, there is still hope for you. There's still hope for all of us because all of this comes down to the action of choice and we can and we should be better than this for the love of God. We are in the middle of a changing of the guard. And what is being asked of you right now is to find your true strength of character and the integrity and internal fortitude to be able to take the heat of this industry without taking it out on everybody else around you. Within moments of exhaustion and depletion, the right choice will be within your grasp. The right decision will always be yours to make. You are the leaders of this industry. Please be the leaders that you were meant to become and forge a new path for all of us because we will follow. Force yourselves to have these difficult conversations with one another so that we can overcome these obstacles and find our way forward together. This chapter has not yet been written and you are going to be the ones that write it. You will implement better ways and you will bring with you all of the knowledge from the past helping our industry redefine what is normal. You are going to recreate this entire culture. And it's huge. It's a huge responsibility. But I just know that you guys can do this. You're 100% up to this task because it's time to change the archaic landscape and build a better future for all of us. It's for those who follow in our footsteps. They are depending on us.  And I wasn't going to add this. I'm going off script, which is a good thing. I am one of the women who came forward to the New York Times and to 60 Minutes. And I know that makes me a controversial figure to some of you because I know that these people were your friends. But I want you to know this decision was one of the most difficult ones that I've ever had to make. But I had to do it. Because I couldn't resolve this any longer on my own. I needed you. And I needed your support.