And I'm the chairman for this webinar. Welcome on the second webinar in the European Distance Learning Week. Yesterday we had the opening webinar with an interesting panel discussion on challenges about open and distance learning in Europe and beyond. Today we start with the topical webinars and the topic of today is quality. Quality in open online and technology-enhanced learning. The format of the webinar will be as such. We have selected a couple of interesting speakers, presenters. They have prepared a short introduction on certain aspect of quality issues in open and distance learning. They all have about 10 minutes for that presentation. I invite participants to just listen to these presentations one by one and write down their questions. You can also use the chat box by the way. I invite all participants to also present themselves in the chat box just in a short sentence what they are doing and what they are interested in in this particular topic. And so you can also then put your questions in there. We will bundle the questions at the end of this webinar. So after about, let's say, 45-50 minutes presentations, we will then have time to go through all the questions one by one. You can also ask your question as participants at that moment if you think that you want to intervene with one of the presenters in particular or with the topic of quality in general. Okay, also one remark for the participants, please. Thank you so much, William, for the introduction. Can I have my first slide please? It makes it easier for the presenters and then we don't have nasty echoes in the system. Yeah, thank you so much, William, and I also would like to congratulate Eden for starting this European distance learning webinar. And we had a great initiative and I attended yesterday because we are interested in the webinar following these very interesting topics. Yes, you can see. I would maybe like to add we have just started with Eden as well, a special interest group about quality. And I am quite excited to be here at that group. So I hope there will be a lot of interesting events and happening in the future. So I would try to cover something about the challenges on quality and also online. So Eden Fellow and Eden Nap. You get an overview. Next slide please. She is with the Swedish Association for Distance Education. In the last year, I was the research leader and one of ICDE to conduct an international review about quality models in online open education around the globe. And this project was coordinated by EITQ. You are also here today with us and will be one of the presenters. So I was the research leader. And together with the team with Kate Williams from UK and Antoine Camilleri from Slovenia and Mark Brown in Ireland, we did a study about quality models in our E-Learning, online learning around the globe. And it was really an interesting study because although there were so many different kind of well-known and used models, most of them also covered the same kind of quality dimension, quality features, quality issues. Although they maybe were named somewhat different. We also did in the report an overview about whether those models were more known based or if they were process based. If they were about application, about certification, about benchmarking, about a frame of reference of quality. So we come up with some kind of quality matrix for that. We also came up with a set of characteristics what is important to look at. And of course we were studying also the different kind of stakeholders because the learners I want to speak to, maybe the country or the national authorities have other dimensions to look at, the institution as such. So there are different stakeholders looking at quality. And some dimensions are maybe the same but they can also differ. And it also depends what kind of maturity an institution are at if they are beginners, if they are very well advanced in open online learning. They maybe have to focus on different kind of things. So we looked also at the macro and macro level. That means both the course levels, the quality of course levels but on the institution or for the nation as such. And we came up with a set of recommendations for stakeholders. Next slide please. Most of the models covered as the E-excellence by EADTU. They have three major dimensions and that is about the management which covers strategic planning and development and vision about products, about the course as such, about the curricula, course design and course delivery. And of course about the service, student and staff support service. So most of the models covering those three or six dimensions. And then we also looked at from the learners perspective. Here are some of the dimensions listed for example flexibility, level of flexibility, interactivity, accessibility, personalization, transparency, participation. And I would like to add those written below about autonomy, diversity, inclusiveness. Just for me learning which really is a topic nowadays. How useful it is for me about openness. And of course about motivation and passion for the learner and presence from the peers and also from the academics. And of course what kind of purpose it is for the learners to take in the course. So those adventures are very much from the learners perspectives. Next slide please. So I would say and we would say from my research team that there is no single one only quality model. It depends if it is a norm based or process based quality intervention you would like to have. And as I said about the maturity level, about the stakeholders, what the stakeholders and about the level of the macro and micro. But what is really important and what also was stressed very much in all of those models where that is needed to have a holistic and contextualized approach when you are looking at quality. So you can't just look at the course as such or the service you provide for the students. For example you need to have the whole area covered. Next slide please. There is also recently a study conducted by APTF about quality in open education. And this just came out this year and they have focused on four transversal dimensions and that is about leadership, strategy, technology and quality. And six general dimensions and that is about collaboration, research, recognition, pedagogy, content and access. You can see that those are similar dimensions that I mentioned before from our study. But they also point out about efficiency, about impact, availability, accuracy. I think something is missing in the exercise. And also about excellence. We also need to be covered with all those dimensions. We can discuss those features later on during the second if you like. So next slide please. So actually there are more questions than answers talking about quality because there are so many different kind of perspectives. But I will say the course is very much about we need to come out from those pipeline courses. And also how curricular and learning outcomes and assessments are designed. They are mainly often defined in a very traditional campus-based way. Also that kind of leadership and open online learning are changing as we are going more about pedagogy, pedagogy, using social media and unbundling perspectives. And also very much it is just for me learning. What is in it for me as a learner? And that means also that the roles in a educational arena and aspect need to be changed. We need to discuss and to use and to collaborate with the learners. Learners are not just consumers. They are consumers more. They collaborate with us. And that is very much about ownership and power. It is the learner who has the power. So what kind of quality dimension do we need to look at when we are looking at that? And there is also very much about capacity building within the institution. And not at least the question about validation and recognition, which really is a quality dimension. How institutions are dealing with that? And let's like this. So confusion. There are needs to rethink quality. As the questions are more today are about impact both in short time, long time, and also on personal level and social and community impact. We need to look at student engagement and satisfaction. How we train students' activity in a few months and the efficiency of learning and the levels of interactivity. But also about knowledge and skills and the competencies as a result of learning. And of course there are needs to look at faculty satisfaction with their conditions for teaching and learning. But also the faculty's engagement in the academic decision making. So there are a couple of other kind of quality dimensions which we need to look at when we are looking at quality and open online learning for the first century. So let's like this. So thank you so much. And I'm very much looking forward to taking questions during this afternoon. Okay, thank you Eva. I think it was a nice introduction to the topic of today. And you have given us the idea that there are so many different models for quality in open online. And the technique in online learning that no one single model. Yes, we have very difficult time actually. Yes, I assume from our experience in research that took place just a couple of years ago. And Eva told already that we knew of course we are aware that there exist so many models in quality in quality topic in the area. So actually what we started with, we started with a discussion on the concepts. We use the concept which at that time used to be the broadest one. Technology enhanced learning because we aimed at the research was actually implemented in the area of education. And we agreed among the team of researchers that technology enhanced learning is the concept that covers all different, different modalities and scenarios whenever we apply technologies in education. And also we took approach to online learning, distance learning, game learning and other formats and other innovations that actually continue changing the landscape of education in Europe. That these are types of innovations. When we join conferences, when we talk with professionals, when we hear new ideas, new things, we always come back to our organizations. And think how to integrate knowledge, whether it is work, what would be the challenges, what shall we do with it now. So we had the aim to establish the framework, how organizations could look at it. And of course we don't think this is the best example, but this is the example that we used and that worked with three types of organizations that we validated in. So I will share it with you. So we had objectives for the research to identify prerequisites of integration of tele-inorganization to describe responsive and responsible integration of technology enhanced learning in organization. Responsive means that it responds to the needs of the target users of our students, like long-long and saddles and or battery, let's say, learners. And responsible in terms that it is actually based on some quality model or on some quality assurance procedures and other types of regulations. The third objective was to design responsive and responsible tele-curriculum for target organization. And then to describe the impact of responsive and responsible tele-curriculum integration in target organization. So what impact it could have? It is very... And in relation to quality assurance internal and externality. First of all, let me check if we can change myself. So what is an up-to-date high quality curriculum design and time digitalization? So we are talking about not replacing campus education to online education. It is about the mix, having added value and an enrichment to the curriculum by using online education and therefore improving education. So it is not replacing... That first said, looking at elements that are of importance to the curriculum design. So what are we looking at? What can we do with online education when there are especially also more and more students joining? So we can look at personalized teaching and learning. Offering students learning activities and putting students on their ambitions at the center. We can create by using learning communities still small scale intensive education even if we have growing groups of students. We can think of integrating courses in larger learning environments and therefore also link students with research. Which is important for the academic education of course. And we can organize open flexible education thinking of new target groups of campus students. And think of cost effectiveness by scale effects. And in the end it is about creating a high student staff satisfaction. It is about innovating education. For all education it should be a very exciting element in being part of the uptake of new modes of teaching. Going online does actually mean that you have to change the pedagogy. If you are going to copy lectures that are on campus by video and just presenting them online by video. It has added value in the sense that students can watch the videos at any time. But it is not taking the optimal use of the opportunities provided by new modes of teaching. You should think by new pedagogies of new ways of engaging students. To have the benefit and achieve economies of scale you also have to work with new pedagogies. It is so that it is not that you have more students that the teacher professor will get more and more work of course then. But you have to think of new pedagogies in which students can work together. So in student peer groups but also have students think about the questions to bring forward to the professor. So first make a selection by themselves. Making students part of the learning process. And so it is all about how to design the curriculum to make the most benefit of the opportunities by new modes of teaching. So five main challenges in designing a course. This is mostly coming from Diana Lorela. Which learning activities should be designed for students in the course to reach the learning objectives? What is the sequence? How to support students? The learner control and how to organize the assessment. So these are the five main challenges in designing a course. And then you can think of, this is changing over time of course, different methods of innovative pedagogies that you can introduce into your courses. To talk about blended education, like I said, it is about the combination of campus online education. It is however a qualitative judgment on how to make the best blend. What is the optimal blend for a course? And that has multiple factors, like the course content, student characteristics, course objectives. So it is a qualitative judgment depending on the course itself. So it is, you can't work on a matrix and build a blended course like that. So design concerns for the choice of media, sequence of activities to come to an optimal blend online and face-to-face education. Looking at the quality assurance, then there is one typical factor of online education is that you can have an exam to check on the quality. In a smaller group, you can test what you have developed. And only when you learn from that smaller group and improve it from there, you can launch it to a much bigger group. That's not possible in non-campus education. You can do this only with online education. And of course, you can also feedback by an online system, by learning analytics, on where to improve the course. So this is kind of a built-in quality that you can make use of. Looking at external quality assurance, you can think here about the reference in European standards and guidelines. What is the role of quality assurance agencies in this? It's not literally there, but if we look at the task of external quality assurance and not ending with a report by the experts on providing clear guidance, you also can think then in the near future that also guidance must be given in relation to the uptake of numerous teaching and the quality and related to that. And also, in the other paragraph, offering features of good practice and demonstrated by institutions and recommendations from good practice. So quality assurance agencies and the role is also changing with the uptake of numerous teaching. A report, a publication building on this, actually also directly referring to the ESG, is the Change in Pedagogical Landscape Study, in which there is a dedicated chapter on quality assurance and the change of that in relation to the uptake of numerous teaching. Here you can read in this publication that both the universities as well as the quality assurance agencies still are in the beginning of the transition period. So well, of course, some are way ahead, but overall we are in the beginning of the transition period and that needs to be accelerated to fully exploit the opportunities of numerous teaching and learning. How to do that? The Change in Pedagogical Landscape Study comes with several recommendations. One at governmental level, governmental agencies must be aware of the need to accelerate this development and encourage and not compete these developments by legislative regulatory frameworks and practices. Looking at national quality assurance agencies, they should develop their own in-house expertise to be able to also guide universities, but also recognize and support numerous teaching. At European level, ANQA gets further support at European networks by providing expertise and sharing good practices in this field. Looking at EDTU, the European Association of Distant Teaching Universities, we offer three services in relation to this. One is Empower, it's 12 expert pools of 75 to 100 experts supporting universities in transition on the uptake of numerous teaching. We have the Accents Instrument that was also referred to by HEPA on quality assurance and online open flexible education. And we have the Court and they will open about specifically dedicated to the two months. Thanks, this was my last slide. Thank you, George. I don't know, Eva and Nati, how far you are for the moment? Any progress? No, not the opportunity. I'm trying to chat with her. I was trying to send her email because she's unmarked my email as well. She's not communicating. Can you hear us, Nati? You're working the chat. You can hear us. Maybe not. No success so far. No problem. We can still try fixing Nati's problem. There was a sixth presenter announced on the list, James Branson from Dublin City University. We prepared a PowerPoint set, but I don't see him on the participant list so far in the conference. So I don't know, maybe with time difference in Ireland or so, that he has made a mistake. I'm not sure. But anyway, let's finish here this first part of the webinar with the four presenters we have had so far. I've seen a couple of questions mentioned in the chat. I invite others still to continue putting their questions. But if I see for the moment what is in the chat, I think it was especially with Mark's presentation when people were asking, how do you motivate students to fill in the surveys? And the second question related then is how do you then motivate the teachers to take care of the results of the survey? I guess that this is a particular question related to what you're doing. But I assume that also the other presenters might have similar, let's say, questions in mind in that they also can react on that question. But Mark, maybe you can first say a few words about how do you motivate your students to fill in the survey and how do you motivate teachers then to take care of the results, especially the results of things that are not going well in the course? We provide students with plenty of opportunity to participate. We send them an email with a link to the survey and we actually send that email again, I think three times during the time frame of the evaluation period, just to give students plenty of opportunity to respond. To help lecturers make the most of the feedback, I've responded to maybe it's in the chat. One of the advantages of using the five-star system is we can quickly see which courses might benefit from a better look. And managers are able to to zero in very quickly on those courses and take a look at the part two information, which explains a lot of the reasons why students provided such a low or high rating. Some of those courses too can actually be taken all the way up to academic board at a clump. So that's not just the lecturers looking at the feedback, it's actually the organization. But as I pointed out in my response to Matias, it's important that managers approach the feedback from a desire to assist improvement. So it's not about punishing anybody, it's about looking at opportunities to actually improve quality. I think that's been working quite well for the polytechnic. Thank you for that answer and it reminds me of another question that I have and that we could discuss later on with participants, but I will already ask it here. It was in one of Emma's slides in the beginning and it's called Quality Culture. And I think that we should talk about that more later on, I think. Thank you for mentioning this and giving me the chance to introduce that question. But maybe I would like first to the other presenters to give their reflections on how do you motivate at one hand students to be involved in evaluations and quality assurance issues. And at the same time also, how do you motivate teachers? Is anyone, Irina, Eba or George, who would like to start discussing here? Irina, can I start with you? Yes, of course. I can give you the perspective from our university, actually. And not only our university, but maybe more universities in Lithuania and those that I visit. Actually, I would start with some broader issue. I think Europe went too far a little bit in standardization and in quality assurance procedures in curriculum designing. On the one hand, of course, it needs different requirements in order to start internationalization, curriculum exchange, collaboration, but on the other hand, from my observation, teachers, first of all, got tired from the requirements set up from regulations that actually take care of the four-year bachelor curriculum or two-year master curriculum requirements and updates, which are quite frequent. This is, I think, one of the reasons why teachers sometimes are not so much willing to change their performance, their habits, their participation in the teaching and learning process, because they already are stuck with the formal requirements from big programs from quality assurance agencies, from organizational regulations and other things. So whenever they find their way and whenever it needs all these formalities, the teachers are already tired. So I think this also proved when all curricula was transferred to ECTS, when all the syllabus had to be updated, when all the programs had to be revisited again. And now, for example, in Europe, we go for short programs, for unbundling of the curricula. So we can imagine how much of this weight is on the shoulders of the teachers. So this is actually the reason that our teachers express very often, but the motivation is the satisfaction of students. So to reach students to provide feedback, I think once that was very successful when all the courses appear on the online learning platform, and if there is a link provided in the online learning platform, which is available at any time for any student as much as we can use email or we can use online learning platform where all students log in from all over the world. In our case, this facilitated a lot and we received much more student feedback than before it didn't exist. And teachers actually are motivated whenever they see positive results and positive feedback. With the negative feedback, of course, there are issues because teachers get closed, but it needs time and I agree very much with the remarks in the chat saying that we need to involve them in fear-reviewing, in setting the requirements and reviewing the requirements and having communication with them. Sorry for long time. Okay, thank you. But I like what you said that the motivation for teachers is the satisfaction of the students. But I think that it works vice versa as well. Just think about that. Eba, you would like to answer something here on that question? The learner's perspective, I will stress that learners need to see that during their course evaluations, of course feedback or feedback in any sense, they need to see that there is some kind of impact and some kind of value for them. Quite often, evaluations are made afterwards and it will maybe make sense for other learners coming later and it doesn't make sense for themselves for their own learning. I think that is really an issue to think about. We're talking about evaluations for learners, because every learner needs to see that there is some kind of impact. There are some kind of added value even for themselves. From the teacher's perspective, as you said, I introduced the concept of quality culture because each of the staff, each of the students have responsibility for developing a cultural quality. Also, as you mentioned, I mean, sometimes there are no incentives for teachers making any change for opening up education or for improving education with increased digitization, etc. There need to be incentives and there need to be time and in one of my slides I also pointed out very much about leadership because this is a leadership question. You just need to make time and to make possibilities for the academics, for the teachers to do this transformation and to do the changes and maybe to appoint champions or whatever, but there need to be fair allocation of time, resources, incentives, maybe awards, etc. to get the teacher involved in this transformation process. Okay, I think that is already one of the answers to the quality culture. What you mentioned now, leadership is an important characteristic there. The issue is really important. For example, next week we'll take place the first leadership school. We'll take place in Barcelona and it's really targeting directors. I'll be there myself and it would be really, really interesting to see what comes out of that discussion. Okay, George, you would like to add here something on that discussion about motivation for students and teachers? Yeah, so the experience is that both actually students and teachers are quite conservative. Students just want to focus on their credit points, so they want to follow the path that is set out a bit more taken by the hand. You're not very much into new things or experimenting. Teachers, professors are most focused on research more than on education. So both are very conservative and not so much open for change. But you need both parties to make this innovation education possible. For students, I guess it's best to work with those students because you need their voice with those students who are open to this, to be interlocutor on behalf of the students. So at least work with student unions and try to get students at the table. Rather talk with them than maybe just sending lists of questions. And with professors, you've seen that professors that are open for change, it is often linked to research then. So if innovation and education also improves the research, then there is a win-win and then they are open for that. So if you involve students or students from abroad in improving the research and by doing that, improving the education, that's the best mix for them. Okay, thank you. It's interesting that you mentioned that because I saw one reaction in the chat by Lislak Risadjer, who was also talking about students are often conservative and they prefer old school teaching methods he or she taught in the chat box. So you already addressed that issue, George. Go ahead with the ones that are a bit more, let's say, revolutionary in their approach and not so conservative. Okay, there was one other striking question. Can I add something? Yeah, I think it is really, really important, exactly what you've mentioned, George. I mean, there are some kind of spin-off effects. As long as the national authorities are not even an anchor, for example, are asking for this kind of questions about open education and everything which follows up that, institutions don't care about it. Of course, this very much like that, institutions are doing what they're doing or the national government is doing the national political agency and that's the teachers are doing what the faculty and the universities are asking for and of course in there, learners are doing what the teachers are asking for. And as long as this process is going on and then I would mention that the very interesting project about the sequence which was run by EADTU, it was about quality models and so we worked also with Enka trying to get all those kind of issues into this thing. And actually there is a report where quality dimensions are really aligned with the Enka suggestions for quality. So if institutions can have a look at that, I think we can get a lot. Okay. Thank you, Eva. I think that there was another question by Seppel Kotschner and the question there is that quality and accreditation is mainly focusing on outcomes of a process. It's measured at the end of the, let's say, the teaching and learning process. But what if, is that the real way to go? Do we really need to look at quality criteria focusing on, let's say, the outcome of a process or does it mean or do we also need to have inputs and the process itself included in the quality assurance process? I think by asking the question that the answer is more or less given but maybe you can reflect a little bit on that as well. And then I think that Irene's presentation was focusing a little bit on that as well, talking about the identification of preconditions, the responsive part compared to the responsible part which is then more focusing on the outcomes. Do you want to develop a few ideas here on that question? Yes, actually, I'm very worried about this all the time because on the one hand, of course, we have to have promises for the students, for the learners. We have to describe what we are going to help them to achieve. We have to clearly identify how this is consistent with what we use. So this is already, I think, embedded in the academic community. And if I had the opportunity to approach the quality assurance, how to say gurus and see how to change it, my only wish would be following so can Robinson's maybe invitation, leave sometimes teachers and academics alone. I mean, they already have these promises. They already have these frameworks. They know that they have to keep promises. If we put more trust, maybe more, I would mention Scandinavian approach because now in Ukraine we have a lot of good ideas coming from Finland, how to run those schools and education and everything. So maybe if we put more trust on them, maybe then they could focus a little bit on student perspective. At the same time, integrating innovations that we represent, which is distance learning, key learning, online learning, technology in Haslund. I don't even speak about openness now already, but even with the classical approach of integration of technology, you know how many obstacles we need sometimes to overcome in order to prepare innovative, flexible, user-friendly programs for students in the classical setting. In teacher training surface from that, so future pedagogues, future teachers, they cannot actually in our country, they cannot teach online, they cannot have the placements online. And these are such limitations that just break, you know, everyone out of any kind of wish to implement innovation in organizations. So I think these are the obstacles that universities meet and then teachers meet. And then I see this as one of the bigger problems, but not actually the promise in terms of learning results, but everything comes to it. Okay, thank you. Anyone else who would like to dwell around that idea of not just looking at the input? I think there is a huge need to develop the quality of culture, to develop what Martin Weller is talking about, digital scholarship. We are talking a lot about scholarship of teaching and learning and that is in higher education, this is really in our high stages in education. But I don't hear very often that institutions or academics are talking about digital scholarship. And that is really, really important. And that's what you are saying, Irina. Teachers don't even know how to use it and how to change it. And if they are trying to use the media there, they are just trying to replace something. And that makes all the sense to have this summer FAMR. What do you do? What do you like to change? What do you like to do? And I had a question here from the other week. We talked about pedagogy in one of my slides. And I answered her in the chat box. But that is also, we are talking so much about pedagogy, but pedagogy is not changing the way we are thinking about it. If we are not viewing this transformation and developing this digital scholarship of teaching and learning and how to use, for example, social media, different kind of tools, this pedagogy, which I mentioned is built on Bloom's taxonomy and how to integrate digital features for different kind of... I mean, the purpose is... It's not a question of introducing technology or digital media, but the question is, what do you like to use it for? And that is one of the topics which is really, really important for developing digital scholarship of teaching and learning and to introduce to teachers. I think that is very much lacking nowadays. Okay, thank you, Eva. Coming back to that question about the input-output issue, George, you were also mentioning that its quality should not only focus on the products, but should also focus on the educational design with one of your statements. I think that also you can agree with the fact that it's not just the outcome that needs to be measured, but that we also need to see more holistic view on quality assurance. Is that right? Yes, so if you only look at the output, then you are actually ignoring that there can be an quality improvement in the process. And, of course, there can be a quality improvement in the process. And if that can be done with numerous teaching online solutions, then it should be used. It should not be duplicating what's been done on campus now, but you have to clearly look into opportunities of online education as an added value or enriching the program, and only then use it and then use it in the optimal blend, of course. So it's now really, and then looking at the quality. The quality of education can improve by doing that. Okay, thank you. Mark, with your easy survey of just 12 questions, is it possible to tackle both the, let's say the outcome issues? And at the same time also looking at inputs and process, do you think that is, you can cover that with your 12 questions? Yeah, I think it can, and it's mainly because the first two questions identify those courses that we need to have conversations with the lecturers or faculties about. And sometimes those conversations will reveal a lot more than the actual survey results. So if there are some wider system problems, if there are some things that aren't captured in the part two of the survey, we know who to talk to to learn a bit more about how those things are impacting course performance. So I think even at 12 questions, even though it's not comprehensive, it does give you insight as to who you should be talking to, which parts of the organization with entering into conversation with. Okay, thank you. So we all agree that indeed it's not just the, let's say the outcomes that need to be measured and it's not just impact that needs to be measured, but we need when talking about quality to look at every aspect of the whole chain, let's say the whole process from ideas, input, prerequisites, conditions up to the, let's say the learning effect with the students. Okay, it has been touched already a couple of times, the idea, oh, by the way, I've seen a message passing from Nati that she's not able to switch her microphone on and that's so she cannot present. But now we see her face at least in the camera. So Nati, sorry for that. I apologize, but it's nice that you will make available your presentation through the Eden websites and so people can at least share some of the ideas and can get in touch with you later on on particular aspects and issues in your presentation. But okay, let's move on. Like I said, it has been mentioned already a couple of times that talking about quality also means talking about quality culture and words that have been mentioned in relation to that are leadership and Eba also added digital scholarship as one of the things. I've seen messages passing by in the chat box where people talk about, let's say professionalization of teachers, new competences of teachers needed and not just of the teachers, but also let's call it organizational competences. The competence of a whole institute to install quality measures, quality assurance, quality management in total quality culture. I just wonder what the ideas are of the presenters. If we want to address that issue, how do we do that? It boils down maybe to a question that we already tackled a little bit earlier about motivation of teachers and motivation of students. But I guess there is more needed than just motivate the people to get involved. I think that we need to maybe transform the system, maybe talk about, I already mentioned the word professionalization, new competences, new skills. I was just wondering what the presenters think about that whole, the broader picture, let's say. I don't know who wants to start. I have my own idea, but I already make, I'm talking too much. Thank you. I can start. Okay, Irina, thank you. I would see the conditions for the successful quality culture and organization as follows. Well, we are groups of stakeholders, actually. And we all understand that stakeholders come from business, from academia, from education policy. And once, I would speak about the university. So once the university stakeholders agree upon the direction, upon the development, study program portfolios, forms of innovations, I think all agree upon the need, then upon the resources, and upon the timescale, let's say. So once it is agreed, it is important, actually, to my mind that consistency is being ensured. So that, I love, actually, classics a lot. And if we go back to different classical theories, we would see that all of them ask for the reason behind. So if there is a reason behind, and if all discuss, if they have conflicts, if they have disagreements, anything, if they follow the same reason and the same need, and if it is, it was already been agreed, and if consistency is ensured. I think we can talk about quality culture within an organization. So this is my point of view from my experience at Vida Las Magnos. Okay, thank you, Irina. George, can I ask you to continue on that, or would you think about the future? You have, of course, in a particular type of universities, and maybe that's slightly different from other more traditional universities, although maybe not. I leave it up to you to discuss. Yeah, of course, we have a core group of open universities, but there is a big majority also within our membership of conventional universities, working with distance education. What we see in the quality culture, well, it should, first of all, be a shared concern, of course, of all staff members, especially when you're looking at the uptake of online and flexible education in traditional universities, focusing on that. The struggle often is that the management is way ahead of new developments than the staff itself. You can guide that, probably, by the quality instructions. It depends more, maybe not the quality culture, but the institutional culture. Will this change really, really happen? We see very much differences between institutions and question ourselves, why is it possible that this institution is so innovative and others are so conservative? Sometimes it depends on the subject even, the focus of the university, but sometimes you can't explain it. It's a culture that is there, that is strengthening each other, and sometimes when professors are full autonomy, almost like in Germany, it's very difficult to get this change made. It's more the institutional culture than the quality culture, I guess, that is hampering. Okay. That's an interesting viewpoint, I think. Okay. Mark, you would like to add here something? Sure. I think George's last point is a very good one. I think ultimately quality needs to be linked to the purpose of the organization itself. So it's perfectly possible to benchmark performance against other organizations, and I think once organizations do that, they find out where some competitive opportunities might lie for them. But ultimately, quality assurance isn't about measurement, it's about improvement. I think the more we talk about quality assurance as a means of improvement rather than just finding out about things, what organization doesn't want to become better? And quality assurance provides, I think, really good ways for organizations to actually become better. I think that's where the culture might find a common value set for the quality assurance mechanism. Yeah. Coming back to what George said about an institutional culture, you were talking about a New Zealand experience, let's say, and now you're in the UK and the Open University, a totally different organization. Is it possible for you to compare the two and to, well, to indeed talk about an institutional culture that is then addressing the quality issues? Or do you don't see that institutional culture difference in your particular case? I think the organizational cultures are quite similar across the Open Polytechnic and the Open University. The Open University is ten times bigger by staff numbers, and so it's a lot more complex, which makes it a far more complex place to work and to apply quality assurance in. But the organizations do make very similar challenges. I think, though, that the faculty or the staff here would have a very common perspective as to the value of quality assurance. Okay. Thank you. Eva, you were the one who hasn't said anything about quality assurance. Well, you already introduced the quality culture in one of your slides, but maybe you can come back through that now here in the discussion as well. Actually, I think I mentioned already in my presentation the needs of this holistic approach of developing quality framework for the institution. So one problem I see very much is that institutions also, you know, like CLOS, they are in departments, they are in faculties, IT sector, the library, they are, everyone has their own responsibilities in their own budgets. And opening up education is a transversal action. So I would like to say maybe a bit ready for all of that. I think there's a lot of talk about the CLOS classroom, but I really think we have to flip the whole institutions. And that is also what I would tell you about one funding system. We are so used that everything takes place in-house from the learners community, the course, and everything is just in-house at the university in different kind of CLOS. We need to open up a lot there as well. And that is really about management as you mentioned, George. Already in 2013, when the opening initiative by the UKP Commission was launched, I don't know if it was just by chance, but one of the first bullet points in their initiative was about the change of the organization of the institutions. And I don't hear quite a lot about that in Europe, but I think that is really, really important that there needs to be an institutional change. This is really, really required. And I also see quite many quality reviews during the last years, both with ICD and with the ADTQ, but also with a PhD, about quality and benchmarking. I see that institutions who are really taking this seriously, when they are, for example, doing benchmarking and to make improvements, not to be just as you are saying in Mark, you're not just too sure about quality, but the whole thing about improvement and enhancement. Then you can also focus on those more tacit features and tacit knowledge within an institution. And I have also the experience that staff who are involved in the benchmarking process with the SFAA relation is suddenly more can aware about the quality culture within the institution and also see their part of it. So again, this is very much about leadership. If an institution would like to do self-evaluation, then a need to involve all the different kind of stakeholders. I talked a lot about stakeholders in my presentation because there are so many involved that each of those stakeholders within an institution need to be involved. Because involvement is the only way we can change behavior and change the culture. To get people involved and to have people's opinions involved. In the meantime, my camera got some problems and you only see a gray me now. I apologize for that. I'm still here, so apparently you can still hear me too, so that's fine. The one thing that they also relate to installing a quality culture or to improve the quality culture or call it institutional culture for quality is the professionalization of the people involved in the whole process. Teachers in the first place and I think I was just wondering if we could give some advice on how do we really need to train our teachers or to get our teachers better equipped with new skills and quality issues in the whole let's say digital world in the open and distance learning world. Is there any let's say good message that we could give to the teachers in the institutions? How can they get better skills for that? Anyone an idea for this? Maybe I'll let you think about that for just a few seconds and I can refer to what Nigel Jones was mentioning in the chat and that is the sort of best practice reports in the UK about digital skills and how staff could what kind of skills staff needs. I think that and he shared the link in the chat. I think that this might be a very valuable source also to look at and see how in the UK at least they look upon this new skills for teachers. Okay, now we have had a couple of extra seconds. Mark maybe you can tell something was there any particular training or yeah I don't know what other words to use education for the teachers to get involved in the course evaluations like you described or was that just taken for granted that teachers could do it that way or how did you I think it was taken for granted actually well but I think the major challenge there and in response to your question is reassuring staff that it's about improvement and assistance. It's about actually helping them improve as educators. It's not about trying to catch them out. It's really about constructively looking at those things some of which may well be beyond their control and trying to bring some sort of assistance to improve the situation. So coming back to your earlier point which I think is really well made about culture. I think the more we can do to establish that type of thing as a part of organizational culture the easier it will be to have staff participate and quality assurance construct Okay, so you think that it's not necessary to organize separate trainings for that but it's more like that holistic view on installing a quality culture and then people will in a sort of natural way develop their own skills in participating. Yeah, I think so. I think the organization can learn a lot about the framework that staff work with it because sometimes the focus actually with the organization and the way the systems work not necessarily what any individual staff are doing so a good quality assurance system I think would pick up on that. So I think it is about educating staff about the purpose and... Okay, thank you. George would you like to continue on that or no party? Yeah. It would of course be a pity if the will is there because that was the biggest problem and when the will is there and expertise is in there to be shared. So I think it's important also at governmental and European level and national governmental and European level to make sure that there is expertise to be shared in case that is needed and also in the change pedagogical landscape study it is referred to the importance of having these organizations like SERV in the Netherlands I believe it's just in the UK. Those who are supporting digitalization of education will share these expertise. So, yeah, you have to do that center. We have to prevent that this would hamper new developments, this lack of shared expertise. So yeah, it could be very helpful to have that in place. Okay, thank you. Eba, you would like to say a few words on professionalization of teachers start management. We don't hear you very well, Eba. Yes, I will say again that there are needs to be incentives for the academics and for the teachers. They need to gain something for doing the change. I think you mentioned earlier, Irina, that teachers are so stuck up with a lot of duties and tasks all the time and they are not really any incentives because you need to free time and you need to also look up where you have new persons that need to be introduced to this if you have started some kind of new environment for digitalization and for the quality of culture. So, to establish champions and also as I think you mentioned, George there are different kind of stakeholders and they are also different kind of which I mentioned are the micro and the macro level. You need to work with all those levels and they need to be integrated as well to build this quality of culture. Okay, thank you. Irina, the last one. Yes, I think a very good example that comes to my mind actually is when European project started in life and learning program and of course now we have other possibilities of exchange you know, actually some things went unconsciously. Actually I can maybe think that I participate in terms of additional opportunities to visit countries to produce some deliverables, but then this professional collaboration and some outputs, results that are achieved in this international setting. For me as a teacher it means sharing of emotional you know, ownership of some innovation that has been created together. And I think this brings a lot of incentives. This also develops experience. I can share some innovative things with my colleagues. It means that I already one step ahead and I feel proud about what I achieved. I think these are successful examples from what has been established in Europe and it often works. So I think we all have internal motivation but it is not always about additional possibilities for funding things or for getting some new ideas from projects but achieving something together. We, I think we can call it collaboration international collaboration professional collaboration of teachers and building something together. So I think this would be a quite successful thing for all things that you mentioned actually for the quality culture that Mark mentioned also for willingness that George mentioned. I think Okay, thank you Irina. I'm now looking at the clock and it's 2.30 so we should finish this webinar and I think that with the last words of Irina talking about collaboration and talking about a network of let's say people thinking about same issues that would be one of the networks that we could cherish for that purpose and as Eva already mentioned there is a special interest group on quality issues that we would like to bring that idea further on on the agenda of the organization so I think that it's my pleasure to finish here this webinar we have heard a lot of interesting things about the topic on quality in open and distance learning I don't want to summarize the things that we have been discussing but I would like to thank all participants for being here with us, for sharing their ideas and for being active in the chat and giving us input for the discussion. Thank you very much hope to see you again in the coming webinars I would especially like to thank the presenters for preparing their presentations and bringing in their viewpoints and perspectives and dimensions of quality a pity that Mati could not give her presentation but she did her best and she was also active in the chat so and her presentation will be available afterwards I would also like to especially thank the people behind the scenes to make this possible I think it's important to realize that what we have been doing today was not possible without the help of many people especially at the Eden Secretariat to help us out with this so it was a pleasure to be here with you, thank you very much and hope to see you soon in one of the other webinars later this week. Happy European distance learning week, bye bye