So hello everybody and a very warm welcome to ALT's first virtual summer summit. I'm Mara Diebbel, I'm ALT's chief executive and I've got the sad duty this year to cancel ALT's first annual conference, to be the first CEO to do that, but in return I have the pleasure of also being able to open ALT's first virtual summer summit and we have a wonderful opening panel for you today. Now before I hand over to ALT's chair Helen O'Sullivan, who is going to walk us through this panel and chair and hopefully exciting debate, I just wanted to do a few quick housekeeping announcements as part of our welcome. So usually if you look at our hashtag in late August and September you'd hopefully see signs of a big vibrant conference, but this year nothing is normal and we've had to pivot very quickly to bring hopefully a useful event to bring our community together at this time of crisis, but also to help prepare useful resources and a useful forum to prepare for the next academic year. We are championing learning technologists across all sectors at a time of crisis and care and complexity and I'm so thrilled that we're able to welcome 275 participants from over 25 countries and since we made these opening signs this morning we've had more registrations come in so hopefully by tomorrow we might be welcoming 300 people. Now there is a little bit of participation now as I wanted to say hello to some of the different countries represented here at the summit this year. Half of our delegates are from the UK so hopefully wherever you are joining us from, whether it is from underneath an umbrella in Kendall or from your desk at home somewhere across the world, if you can give us a wave if you're participating from the UK you can also use the summit hashtags hashtag all see hashtag all see summit to give us a wave on Twitter. If you're joining us from Ireland where nearly 13% of our participants are from big wave to you as well 10% of our delegates come from Canada so hello to our Canadian friends then about 5% from the United States very warm welcome and also 4% from Australia. Participants also from Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Egypt, hello France, Hong Kong, Iran, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Korea, Mexico, Qatar, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden and Turkey and also Uruguay so it's fantastic to see such an international participation in our first ever virtual summit. This morning we started with some asynchronous sessions and in one of them we asked our participants to in three words describe how the last few months have been. I'm just going to pause here for a moment and give you a chance to read thanks to our sponsors Feevox what people answered in the word cloud today. Challenging times indeed for everyone in learning technology and you all deserve extra thanks for how coming to the summit and making it today. Now virtual conferencing just like face-to-face conferencing brings its challenges and while you might be able to find the Wi-Fi password in your own home or wherever you're joining us from there are certainly things that you might need help with so help us at hand and as well as a lot of online resources you can also get help in a number of other ways including calling us, emailing us, asking us on Twitter so please do make yourself available if you need any help. Now behind the scenes we wanted to share with you what it actually looks like when you run a big international conference with six mostly part-time staff from home in the middle of a pandemic where you're working with pets and family members and many many screens to make this virtual summit happen.  Our Emma Jane, our events manager who's our troop leader and quiz mistress for tonight's quiz. Martin Hawksy who needs no introduction and who can only be described as mission control for all virtual and face-to-face events. Debbie Buff who normally leads on membership and professional development but who's also our guest here and chief welcome her today. And as Fiona Jones who is our lead Twitter looks out for our Twitter account who will moderate many of our webinars and also makes our press releases. And Jane Frankel who looks after the help desk so she will be responding to many of your inquiries, helps participants and she has the money. So if you owe us money you will hear from Jane. And there's me. I'm the executive troubleshooter during this event and also hopefully tonight for the first time a very reluctant curry OERK participant. So thank you for joining us at all see at the summer summit the first one of its kind and please put your hands together and find the clap emoji because I'm hoping that we can give a really rousing welcome to Helen O'Sullivan our chair. Helen over to you. Thank you. Thank you, Marin. That's really exciting. I'm seeing all the claps coming up. It's really weird and very exciting at the same time. So thank you very much, Marin. You know, she said it's sad that we can't all be meeting in person for the usual conference this year. But this online summer summit is just fantastic. You know, there's so much interesting stuff going on. We've got contributors from all over the world, participants from all over the world and in many ways as we're all finding in these these times of mostly online. There are some advantages to this. So, you know, participation from people wouldn't normally be able to come. Contributions from people wouldn't normally be available. So we've got a fantastic set of sessions here over the next couple of days. And I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not sure I'll be participating in karaoke, but you know, never say never. So this is the first session. And I'm really looking forward to hearing what our formalists have got to say. And the title, obviously, the summit this year is is learning technology in times of crisis care and complexity. And we're starting off with a strategic view. And we've got four really experienced panel members who are leading learning technology across the sector. But more importantly, I think for this session, they're at the sharp end of leading the crisis response over the last few months in their own organization. So what we're going to do is we're going to hear from each of the four panel members, just opening remarks, and then we're going to open it up for questions. And what we're going to try and do is is keep an eye on the chat. And we'll help with that as well. And if you've got a particular question, if you could put a cue before your response in the chat, that would be great. But also, because only one panelist will be speaking at any one time, the other panelists will be looking at the chat and will be responding to anything that comes along as when they can. So if comments or other questions, please feel free to put those in. So we'll hear from each of our panelists, and then we'll open it up to a bit of Q&A. So without further ado, I want to start by welcoming Melissa Heighton, who's Assistant Principal and Director of Learning Teaching and Web Services at the University of Edinburgh. So over to you, Melissa. Hello, Helen and Marin, thank you for the welcome. It's lovely to be part of this panel. And lovely to see everybody or to know that we're all together in this online place, even if we can't be together in a physical place. It was last year, you were all here in Edinburgh, and that picture that Marin put up of us all together in McEwen Hall. That was a lovely event. And I'm sure that this will also be lovely. And I remember that in 2018, at the conference in Manchester, I did a presentation. And its title was Next Expect Locusts. And it was about the importance of business continuity planning in the face of big challenges that might beset universities. Obviously, little did I know. So here we are at a time of uncertainty around the return of students and staff to campuses, and the long term impact of major social behavioral change. Some institutions are facing an existential threat, or at least a major rethink about size and shape and funding and what our business really is. And I think that the it's vital that learning technologists at all levels in the universities, take some time, if we can, in this rush to think about how our services and support and how we evaluate what we do will need to change. I think that the strength of our partnerships with academic colleagues, and our partnerships with vendors and platforms is being tested under extreme conditions at the moment, as is our capacity and capability to work remotely from home. And the policy environment is changing. So accessibility and inclusion, and we are, and assessment and e safety and care online in our institutions has suddenly become much more important. And the role of the learning technologist has become the sexiest job in it with everyone so interested in what we do, what we know, how we do it. And I think that when we come to write our semalt portfolios this year, and reflect on the critical incidents, we will be thinking about our core values, our specialist areas, and the way that we worked as a community in our separate institutions, but as part of a whole sector, to try to save students from bad e learning on a biblical scale. So since I get to go first on this panel, I'm just going to talk about so at a time of crisis caring complexity what I did first. And for me, the immediate strategic priority was to look after the people, the people who are the learning technologists in my organization. And I think we're going to hear over the two days, lots of examples and lots of explanations and stories of the way people have dealt with this learning technology emergency. But since I get to go first, I'm going to start with what I did first, which really was just about keeping our staff safe, keeping them in jobs, and then channeling all of our resources into surviving this flood of demand on our services. And I've written a guest post for the old blog about this, it's called growing your own learning technologists. And if that's useful to anybody, in terms of making a case to senior management, please do have a look at it. But also, let me know. So for me, and I think for many digital leaders, the immediate priority is to think about your staff. And as soon as we had all moved safely home, it was very clear that the university was going to have an ongoing need for learning technologists. So we immediately moved as many colleagues onto permanent contracts as we could, because the whole feeling as to what was going to happen in the university and the precarity of some of us in our roles was very important, I wanted to remove that uncertainty for the staff in my organization. And we set about upskilling and reskilling and growing our own in-house to be in the best shape we could to support the institution. And the institution is an ancient and interesting place. But we certainly needed a strategy to create a lot of learning technologists fast. And as well as advertising new posts, and there were many posts advertised, it was great to see so many universities investing in their learning technologists. I was particularly interested in looking within the organization to see where we could find new resource. I'm just going to talk about a couple things that we did. One of the things I think that's important to a strategic institution level is to look at who you already have in your IT sector within the organization. So for us, during lockdown, it quickly became clear that some of the staff who work in IT in libraries and museums couldn't do their roles from home. And sometimes that's true for whole teams. So particularly the teams who manage the library shelves, the museums who do the AV fit out in the rooms, people who staff help desks. And one of the things that we did with that group of people rather than putting them on furlough was to actually try to train and upskill and develop those people in house to become junior learning technologists, starter learning technologists, who perhaps some of them will be able to continue as learning technologists. And so perhaps we've created a bit of a pipeline. But certainly in terms of welcoming people, a group of people into our area of work that I think meant that they are had something that they were able to do during lockdown, but also has been made our community very vibrant in terms of explaining what we do and what kind of support we thought the institution would need and embracing the skills that that group of people brought to the discussion. So I think that that reskilling in house and investing in the future is a big part of what we do in this community of learning technologists and alt, of course, provided us with many tools in terms of the Seamalt structure, the explanations as to what learning technologists do, what our role in institutions should be. And that has been really useful for University of Edinburgh. So I would be really interested to hear whether other people have found their institutions doing any of that same kind of stuff. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry, I'm just putting my video back on again. Sorry, I can't speak and click buttons at the same time. Thank you, Melissa. That was really, really interesting. I like that idea of reskilling and upskilling other staff. That's that's a fantastic thing to have done. So moving on to Osama, who is, as some of you will have spotted earlier, doing an outside roll cut for us from Kendall in the Lake District. So we're all hoping for it. So over to you obviously as a senior leader in the organisation, you'll have had quite a significant role in managing this crisis. So happy to hear some thoughts from you. Thank you very much, Helen and all the colleagues in ALT for having me here. And it's so lovely. I know that I'm virtually with you, but I do feel the presence of a lot of us enthusiastic about technology enhanced learning. Little did I know when I took on the role of a pro vice chancellor learning and teaching at Surrey back in December 19 that there will be a pandemic in three months time. So, you know, within the PVC learning and teaching world, we pretty much basically it's a common curse that I curse you to be a PVC education in the in in a pandemic situation.  But on the other hand, if there are little hopes, dimmer of hopes of change and transformation, I really think that this is the conference of the platform where we can share some of this glimmer of hope that we have seen through this crisis situation. So I'm going to go through a few things that are I thought were instrumental in moving to the University of Surrey. So the first thing that I remember doing that was probably second or third March 2019. I formed a team called an online learning team. Now, of course, we do have a learning technology team, a Department of Technology, enhanced learning and a Department of Higher Education. But what I meant by the online learning team is six academics who are from three different faculties. The librarians are learning technologies, education department coming together as a scrum and sprint team. And since then, they have been meeting on a weekly basis, sometimes twice or twice, where we through challenge at them, they come up with a solution. As an academic, I'm from finance background. I taught finance in the business school. Little did I know about computer coding, but I learned a lot through the project management that scrum and sprint is a good way of solving issues. And the pandemic has been so uncertain and it has been there has been so many moving parts, particularly the government didn't help. They were changing the policies on a regular basis. So looking down the university and then right now trying to open it has always been an uncertain situation. And this online team has really helped our learning technologies. If you give this kind of crisis to only to our learning technologies, it would be a mammoth task. And I do worry about their well being like Melissa mentioned. So I did the same thing, put forward all the permanent contract that was not permanent, and then gave them that support through the online learning, which has really helped. The other question people tend to ask me that, you know, how to transform. I give these anecdotes to my friends and family who are not in academia. I basically tell them that if you ask Tesco that you have seven days time, even less. And within that time, you need to transform your business model from store based selling to completely like Amazon online selling. That's exactly what we did as a sector. So as much as we are puzzled, there is something to celebrate for us. This shows how resilient, how perseverant our community has been together. And one thing I learned in this process that when you are managing crisis like that, or when you are managing transformation of the scale, the few things that you really need to be clear about. Number one, the instruction and the principles needs to be very clear. I know that some of us are very passionate about our educational research, and we try to point out the literature. There is time for that when we evaluate the situation that we faced in pandemic. But what I would say that give our academic community very clear instruction. Remember one thing that we are in unprecedented amount of uncertainty that is already there. As a leader, I felt like my job is to provide for the certainty I can provide. Now that is quite difficult. I'm sure Helen will agree with me that as a leader, sometimes we take decisions and sometimes we feel like that maybe that decision is not right, but you just have to stick to it. Because the community look up to you for direction. And that's another thing all of us as leaders can play a role, is provide that direction. What am I going to take out of this pandemic transformation that we have done? So we have created a principles of hybrid education. We're doing some research on that as well, alongside implementing hybrid. I think we would like to keep hybrid education in the longer term. That basically means that we have the flexibility and delivery that our students want. There are some anecdotal evidence that some students are actually surviving out of online education, which is there as well. But I do worry about those people who need social interaction. After all, we're human being. Social constructivism is in our DNA. So we have to make sure we interact. Like when we were meeting just before this conference, we were having chit chat. In a typical physical conference, we would have had the conversation with the neighbors. So just keep those things together, but I will definitely carry on doing the TED talk style lecture capture as much as possible because they're really helpful for students. Meetings virtually, conference virtually if possible, and a blended approach where students can choose how they're going to engage with education. One last thing I would say nothing to do with learning technology, but I genuinely think that we need to rethink about campus model. These roles of offices that the professors and the lecturers hold, the roles of offices or banks of offices or professional services hold. What can we do about them? How can we utilize the space for learning? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Osma. I certainly do share some of those comments about sometimes feeling quite lonely and a little bit trepidatious about making some really significant decisions and trying to keep the consistency there. OK, let's move and hand over to Simon. Simon is at Liverpool University. A slightly different role and a slightly different take, but be interesting to hear where you've got similarities or differences with your the approach you've been taking. Good morning, everybody. Hopefully you can hear me OK. Take that as a nod, Greg. I was trying to think back to where this started. I remember on Friday, the 3rd of March, the team that I lead in the Centre for Innovation Education actually were implementing our business continuity plan for working off site, who spent a whole day working remotely. Little did I know that a week later that would become our standard norm. So we didn't, like many of you, have much practice at this. It was something that was forced upon us in a moment of crisis. And all of our staff across the institution and many institutions have had to kind of deal with that very quickly. And I suppose what it demonstrated to me is that actually all of the digital training that we give to staff and all of trying to equip them in digital fluency is actually nothing like the real thing is to get people moving and changing and thinking about their practice. So although the whole experience is obviously put us in a moment of crisis, I'd like to think there are moments of positivity and that have emerged from this. The first thing I want to do is to say to our community, now is our time maybe to take a breath because, you know, I think as a community and as a group of experts and practitioners, we have been amazing. I could probably do with giving ourselves a well deserved path on the back. And no doubt we'll have many stories to tell from this experience when we do actually come back together at the next old conference. I also think this is perhaps our moment to shine. And I've written a lot about learning technologists and I did a series of blog posts with some colleagues around what is the role of learning technologists. But I think this is the moment and Helen picked up in the chat earlier that the conference when it was at Liverpool was all about learning technologists coming of age. And I think this is the moment that we have really come of age as a role, as a community demonstrating our real value, because often that can be quite challenging. Demonstrating value in the kind of work that we're doing on a daily basis. We all know that it's really valuable, but it's really difficult strategically in an institution and to always get that recognition. And I think finally, there has been a recognition of the roles that we play in supporting our staff to be able to move quickly and adapt to make the very best use of digital tools appropriately and learning and teaching. And I think this is our opportunity really to shine. And you can see that through the growth of the digital learning technology roles that have emerged. This number in the sector are recruiting to these roles at pace. And I suppose that's a real strength now to say these are really legitimate roles in an academic environment. And we need these roles to be able to deal with the kind of hybrid environment that Osama just kind of alluded to. I think finally, people are starting to get what we do. And it's not just about digital skills. It's much more than that. It's about the marriage between learning, teaching and digital. And I think this is where our real strength lies. You know, all I can talk about is the University of Liverpool experience. But all I can say is that our staff have been amazing. They have really stepped up to this challenge. And I mean the staff within the centre of that lead, but also across the institution, I think staff have generally really stepped up to this challenge. First of all, quickly switching to a remote teaching environment. And now as we kind of put in place more longer term strategic approaches, adapting and shifting their curriculum and their pedagogy to meet the new environment that we will all have to work in in September. In terms of the centre, what we did is we very quickly pulled together a whole online asynchronous resource to help people move to what we've called our hybrid active learning model. It's called Howl. If you remember the the film 2000, you can see Helen drowning there. So yeah, it's called Howl, but obviously HAL. Although some people might feel it's a little bit HAL. But I think ultimately what we've tried to do there is we tried to build on our strengths. And I think when we were thinking through what a version of our curriculum might look like, it is in a hybrid mode, but it builds upon the strengths around active learning that we're already embedding across the institution. So what we've asked our academic staff really to do and what we're doing at the moment, colleagues in CIE are really under pressure to support this. But what we're trying to do is we're trying to get our academic colleagues to think about three different modes of teaching. We are planning some face to face on campus teaching as our many institutions. And I think we fear if our students particularly want that interaction. So they'll be planning for some of that activity. We also then the other mode is online asynchronous and online asynchronous. And the analogy that we quite often use is if you imagine you have a hybrid vehicle and you think about the journey that you want to take with that vehicle, you make a decision about whether you're going to use the electric motor or you're going to use the combustion engine. And what we're asking our staff to do is to think about, yeah, what is really going to work best in each of those three modes? And I think for me, what's really, really interesting is not necessarily the online, but us really having to think about what we value as face to face, because we really are going to have to limit our face to face interactions. But they are going to have to be really, really valuable. And they're going to have to be really, really purposeful. So I think actually the biggest challenge is, yeah, what are we going to do with our face to face time? So that it's worthwhile for our students to be on campus for that time, and that we make real sense of being together in a physical occasion. There are also other challenges around moving into online, but I would honestly say that I think the majority of our staff have adapted to remote working and working in digital and online spaces exceedingly well. Without there, I'd say, a lot of digital training. So it also questions to me in times of my role, the value that we place on training in digital, where actually, maybe it should be more about scenario building, experiences around using technologies in certain scenarios. And I think learning technologies have a really, really important role to play in the short term for that, but also in the longer term as well. Thank you. Thank you, Simon. Funny you should mention that that conference in Liverpool. I was talking to Pete Olston, who's the co-chair with me at that conference, and we said we should have we should have trademarks the new normal. Could have made a lot of money. But thank you. And finally, Dave, if you'd like to talk us through some of your opening comments and observations on this, these interesting times. OK, yes, happy to. So first of all, a big shout out to UAL College colleagues who are in the room. It's a good turn out today. That's lovely to see and people that I've been working very, very closely with. So I just wanted to start with a quick question to the room, which is you can answer that. Well, we'll just answer this. Yes or no in the chat is let's get this right way up. Have you found that your institution has become more collaborative over lockdown? Yes or no? OK, so we've got we've got broadly yeses and a few noes, which is interesting. And I think that highlights one really important thing that is that in terms of caring and complexity, people have very have had very distinct experiences of this time. Certainly our students have. And we I think what we found we we undertook a really lightweight survey with staff and students in June about their experiences of of of covid and teaching and learning. And what's clear is that students experience is very massively depending on their personal circumstances, you know, what kind of living environment they're in, what the connections like. We know we've got students who've been undertaking the whole of their undergraduate degree, only using a mobile phone, for example. But actually managing it, but it's not ideal. So I think it's the same to a certain extent, it'll be the same in terms of staff as well. But my overall experience from the point of view of UAL is being that there was as soon as lockdown hit, there was this there was this just really, really heartening collaboration that took place very, very quickly. Everybody pulled together. And I think it's it's partly because the the covid was like a non-negotiable challenge. We didn't have to have a long conversation about what about whether it was important. It was just something we had to deal with. And given that, we saw a collaboration across, you know, the digital learning teams in each of our colleges, because of six different colleges, I.T. Registry, attainment, inclusivity, disability. And so a lot of the sort of emergency guidance and staff training that we provided was covered all of those different things in a in a more integrated way than perhaps done before. So yeah, Jane, is that question of silos, new silos or old silos? But I think certainly immediate response, it felt like the silos kind of fell away, which I which I think was really important. And I think many colleagues on that really exhilarating, even though it was a challenging time. So just quickly, I think what we've found is that students I think what would be interesting for certainly for me is that students because I want to talk about students for a second. It was clear that that certainly undergrads can conception of what university is is more cultural than it is pedagogical, which is fair enough and cultural in the sense of a cultural experience. And that's especially the case for us being sort of groovy up, which is in London and also cultural in terms of cultural capital. And so and an awful lot of that conceptualization is around the building, the physicality of the institution, which is amplified to a certain extent in our case, because we have so many making subjects and obviously, you know, depending on the nature of the course and how much it was focused around physical making practices, different students would have different experiences. And what I see coming out of research that we've been doing, institutional research that we're doing is that some of what students are calling for is a reflection of that cultural conception of the institution. So, you know, synchronous sessions, recording of lectures, and also community. So these are things that, you know, these are things that are very much sort of hard wired into the into the physical nature of the institution. But not necessarily everything we could be doing pedagogically online. So because it all happened so quickly, I think one of the big challenges is is introducing forms of online pedagogy, which don't just sort of practice mirror face to face pedagogy. Now, it's obviously it's fair that we would start there. It's perfectly reasonable. So the question for me going forward is how we can extend that. We put on we created specific guidance in lockdown very quickly. Within three weeks, we had an online staff development program that I think we had 750 members of staff through just in one week just before Easter. So the demand was huge.  So I think there's some really important things to consider. And a lot of them for me in terms of care, not only with the students is in terms of the staff. I mean, you saw from Marilyn's sort of word cloud there that you've got things like, you know, exhausting and fatigue and challenging and things like that. And I think that's partly because staff was so keen to do as good a job that they could. We've seen as lots more one to one tutorials as a way of responding to the crisis, which obviously students love. But there's some really interesting questions about how sustainable that is when you're in a massified system. And so I think one of the things sort of moving forwards is how can we take the best of what's been going on online, but make it more sustainable for staff. Because we're, you know, as institutions, I don't think we necessarily geared to be doing the best of online and the best of face to face. I think that's going to take a lot of regearing. We've we've just recently advertised seven new full time posts for people in quite senior digital learning roles. So we're we're looking at it from that perspective. But I think more broadly, there's a real question because I think and I'll just finish here is that going into the autumn term, my feeling is that students that their expectations are going to be absolutely maxed out. They're going to want the best of what they've seen online and the face to face potentially. And I think they're going to want everything that ever happens anywhere recorded and placed somewhere. And there's a big question as to, you know, how well placed are we to respond to those expectations. And I think those expectations really only mirror what we've been hoping for in that in in the sort of online learning, digital learning community for years. But now there's a big challenge for our institutions to actually structure themselves around those expectations. And I really hope that we can do that and not sort of slide back to online being something that supports face to face. I think if this is going to work, then online is going to have to be considered a central part of the offer fundamental to the offer. And we need to communicate that to students as well. So yeah, I'll stop there. Thank you. Thanks, Dave. OK, so I've been having a look at the chat and we've got some questions coming in and I'm going to direct them to particular panel members and we've probably got about quarter an hour left. So if I could if I get one question into each of you, we're going to have to be quite brief with the question. So apologies for that. So that the first question that I wanted to ask Melissa. So it comes from Matt East and it's like, will this last? You know, there's been a lot of change and a lot of loosening up of bureaucracy, but to what extent are we going to fall back to all practice, especially around the bureaucracy and I understand probably where that's coming from. Melissa, if you how are you managing to kind of hard wire in the change at Edinburgh? Well, so the working home is going to stay for a large part of the institution. I think so that will stay for some time. And so the need to be doing teaching, using technology tools is not going to go away. I think the more serious structural issues. Yes, I think that a focus on accessibility. I think that's going to change enormously. That used to be something we couldn't get many people interested in. And that will change. I think that, as Dave said, we aren't in a position where for many of our colleagues, they are just trying to replicate what used to happen face to face online, which is something that we as those of us who are interested in online pedagogy have always said, isn't, you know, isn't properly at taking advantage of what digital education can be. I suppose at Edinburgh we're very lucky in that we have quite a portfolio of online courses and a strength in research and digital education. So again, as Dave and Simon said, the importance of staff development suddenly became really clear. And we rolled out programs of staff development that hundreds and hundreds of academic colleagues who had never been anywhere near this before now came along to. So that should, if our if our teaching is any good, that should have changed the way people think about this topic. And if the models that we taught on those courses and the technology that we provide is good, then I suppose that's part of the impact. What did we train them to do? And did we instill in them hunger for more knowledge about how to do this differently? I also was interested in Dave's question about collaboration. And I think that one of the things we're seeing is a shift in the way that the universities in the same city or the universities in cities are thinking about themselves as part of the wider population of the geographic area. So whether that's because we're working from home and we're thinking more locally. But it's become town and gown and face mask now. So certainly in the city of Edinburgh, with the fringe cancelled and the festival cancelled, the four universities are having to work together to think about how we reassured the city that when we are the main reason why a huge migration of people from all over the country and all over the world will be coming into the city of Edinburgh, what our responsibility to show that we know what we're doing is and part of that is about showing that we understand about the pedagogy but also about our role and our civic role in the city. Thank you. Yes, that's that's a really important point, isn't it from local relations point of view. So yes, a lot of people coming to Edinburgh in a few weeks time and Simon if I can turn to you and Julian had picked up as as I your interest in remarks about scenario building and would like to hear a little bit more. I thought it was really interesting the way that I kind of where you're coming from about the digital skills development and certainly at Keel, one of the things we've had lots and lots of requests for is just show me what this looks like, you know, show me how I can do this. And that's exactly the approach we've been taking as well. So just can you just just elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah, of course, I think this is about demonstrating what digital tools look like in practice. It's the reality. I think there's a danger sometimes that way institutions deploy technology, staff go on training or development and what in effect happens is they learn how to push buttons and learn where menus are and things like that. And they might get the fundamentals of this system. This is how you do things with it. Actually, what they're really looking for are examples of the use of that in practice. So as part of this hybrid active learning model, we've actually generated case studies very quickly from academic staff using different technologies in their pedagogic practice. And I think staff have really welcomed that the idea of being able to see what these technologies and digital tools look like within the context of learning and teaching. And I think those scenarios is something that we're certainly wanting to explore more of. So we've got a much broader range of examples of people actually using these tools. Let's take Microsoft Teams as an example. You could probably list 50 to 100 ways that you can use Microsoft Teams within a learning and teaching context. But it's very difficult to understand what that looks like unless somebody is actually showing it to you because the reality is that you have to have a really deep understanding of the technology to be able to make the very best use of it. And also you have to have a real sense of your pedagogic approaches in order to be able to marry those two together. So I think what I'm talking about here is small example scenarios of how technology is used in the context of the discipline or in the context of learning and teaching activity rather than here's Microsoft Teams. Well, here's a list of 100 things you might do with it. But actually, here's some real examples of what people have done with it. And this is what those staff and students think. Thank you. Yeah, but I think that's really, really important showing the answer to the possible. There's a couple of questions here that are linked that I'm going to ask Dave to reply to because you started to hint at them in your in your question. One is from Cheryl Mayer, which is how have institutions been dealing with improved accessibility and inclusion issues? And then one from Sarah Chesney. Do we know yet how well students have adapted to the change, practical as well as emotional? And I suppose added to that in your three minutes is have we got any anecdotal evidence of groups of students who are actually thriving under these conditions? We've got some. So our first pass at the data at Keel shows that our awarding gaps have significantly, significantly shrunk, especially between black and white and BAME and white students and students with disabilities and without. So something that we're doing is obviously around assessment has really helped with those with with different types of students. So I just wondered if you've got any reflections on how that's going? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing similar things. I think it depends on the students. I think it depends on that what their experience of on site teaching is. So a very broad way of thinking about this is to us to not imagine that on site teaching worked fine and was completely inclusive and work for everybody. Actually, on sites teaching privilege certain types of students, certain groups of students. It's healthy to be a little bit wealthier so you can live close to campus, et cetera, et cetera. There are loads of different factors. So I think we're probably in a situation whereby students have different requirements, different needs, whether that's part of the general flow of teaching and learning or whether that's to do with disability, ethnicity and the on site teaching place, you know, helps with some of those needs hinders some of them and the same with online and therefore what we need to do is to make sure that that mix. I think a really key thing I just want to pick up on something that Peter Bryant was mentioning is that I think is really important for this community sort of going into the future is to kind of mitigate that potential hustle between face-to-face and online. You know, nobody wanted to go fully online. I didn't want to go fully online. That was COVID. And but yet here we are and that's helped with continuity. And so I think really strong messages around how online as Simon mentioned this, how online is not fighting face-to-face, but actually it's freeing face-to-face to be everything that it can be. My hope is that what will happen is that face-to-face will be seen as the very, very, very spacious and luxurious thing that it is and used accordingly. So then just one last on this is that I think something that's really intriguing and encouraging that has come up over the last few months is that the possibly, slightly contentious point, but possibly the best way to respond to students that have additional needs or perhaps don't have English as a first language, don't have English as an additional language, et cetera, et cetera. So all of the kind of groups that don't, how can I put it, kind of immediately align with the culture of university, if you like, as was. I think possibly the best way to serve that broad student community is actually to design courses so that they work online and the face-to-face sessions just become a version of a synchronous session within a design that is actually a kind of scaffolded online first. Now, I can see how that raises all kinds of politics, but I think what I'd say about it is that that approach doesn't necessarily mean that you're not doing tons and tons and tons of face-to-face onsite work, but when it comes to things like inclusion, disability, different modes, actually starting from online rather than starting from face to face is possibly the best way to design. And I just need to be really clear. That's not saying that we want to replace face-to-face with online. It's the principle of the way that we design our courses, which I hope we can shift. I think it could be really positive. Thanks, Dave. I actually do agree with that. And it's a pity we haven't got more time to really think through that and have a discussion about it. The final question with just a couple of minutes to answer a really big one that came in from Eugene Kim. I'm going to direct this to Osama. Is how have you ensured the quality of your teaching and student experience during this fame? That's a big question to answer in a couple of minutes. In fact, I did post as well that we need to be mindful of the quality assurance. I know that in the face of innovation, those of us who are really enthusiastic about learning technology, we tend to despise all the barrier that our quality office tend to put in front of us in normal time. But I also have seen the sense of resilience from our quality officers in terms of modifying their processes to get it in place. And I'm sure those of you probably have, I would flippantly commenting this, the misfortune of facing the compliance of the CMA and the office for student. You know that how much of work has gone in in terms of making these things fully quality assured. I think few of our existing tool we need to pay attention to them. So we probably all have modular evaluation questionnaire or course evaluation questionnaire. You might want to look into them and see whether they're appropriate for the kind of delivery we are doing now. In terms of observation, I have now expanded the peer observation at Surrey, which could be a peer observation of your virtual learning space, peer observation of your online assessment or even peer observation of the Zoom session that you are doing. So there could be multiple types of peer observation we can do, which will also ensure the quality. And the other thing I would say, and this is the final thing, let's take our students as our partners. If we take our students as our partners and give them the critical lens, they do really good job. So over the last one year and particularly during this pandemic, I had the pleasure of working with eight edu interns within the center of excellence in learning and teaching at Surrey. And they have been instrumental, trying to understand, trying to help the university understand how does it feel to deliver a Zoom session or a team session? How does it feel to do a take home exam? All those things are being collaborated with the students and some of our training sessions were run by them as well. So in terms of ensuring quality of engagement, let's give that onus to the students, ask them to find a diverse way of doing things and evaluate them what works for their learning. Because after all, everything we're talking about in this conference is to facilitate learning. Well, wonderful way to finish. Thank you Elsa-Man. Thank you for the concise way that you answered such a massive question there. I'd like to invite all the participants to give our panel members a virtual round of applause. That's been such a fantastic session. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I haven't learned from it. I think a couple of things that come out for me is this idea of how universities have been a bit of a kicking opportunity for commentators and politicians over the last few years about how we're not changing fast enough in the business model. Well, we have changed our business model in a few short days and the resilience and the flexibility and the adaptability that people have shown has been amazing and especially learning technologists. This has been our moment in the sun and it really has been a fantastic effort. Just on the, just on data, because I was really, I really did want to get into that but we haven't got time around how you design a course. And I do believe in that concept of well-designed courses starting from the concept of the digital classroom and the digital wraparound and then thinking about what needs to be face to face and what should be face to face. I always want to just give a little bit of airspace to a comment from Robin de Rosa. I think about 18 months ago now which was talking about a new continuum instead of talking about his face to face and his online. The continuum is what is kind of machine centered, computer centered learning and what is person mediated. So what is collaborative? What is peer support? What is social learning? Simon's mentioned social learning. We've got social learning at Keel. And we're starting as a sector to focus on what really does need to be collaborative but that does always have to be in person on a council or in a room. That can happen online as well. So building a learning experience that really thinks through what is the most appropriate mode. I think it is the way that this all has to go forward. But I'm gonna end it there so that we can finish on time. Maron, I don't know if you are planning to just come back in to finish the session. Thank you Helen. So I'll hand it over to you. Thank you Helen and thank you everybody. What a fantastic way to get our conference off to a stimulating start. It's been great to see over 160 people joining this session live. So thank you very much for getting us off. And if you are continuing with us at the Alzheimer's Summit today, then it's straight into a next parallel session here at midday. We have had a couple of users having some issues logging into the webinar this morning. So we've sent out an extra email with all the links to the webinar sessions. So apologies to anyone who had any issues but you should now be able to log in very straightforwardly by clicking on the link. And I'm looking forward to seeing you around the rest of the day. Thanks Helen, thanks everybody on the panel. It's been a great conversation. Thanks, bye.


A fiery horse with a speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty high old silver, the Lone Ranger. Whenever men gathered around the campfire in the early days of the Western United States, stories were told of the massed rider of the planes. No one could match his courage or resourcefulness, and the history of his great fight for law and order is really the history of the winning of the West. Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear, when adventure lay at the end of every trail. The Lone Ranger rise again. Red Smiley and Cliff Noble were busy at the claim they were working along a lonely tributary of the Frazier River. It was early spring and the third partner, Clem Peterson, had taken advantage of the opening trails to go to town for supplies. We see Red and Cliff as they dig into the thawing gravel. Blasted gravel. My back feels like it's near to bustin'. Shucks, we ain't hardly started yet, Red. Yeah. Well, I've done all I'm gonna do for today. I can tell you that. There. That shovel's laying there till I get good and ready to work again. But, Red... Well, what? We promised Clem we'd have all this done by the time he got back. We ought to have something to show for the time he's been going. I don't do my share, huh? Now, wait. I didn't mean to... Fine and follow with me again. I'm tired of it.  Gosh, Red, I don't know what's got into you. I've tried to be friends. I know how it is sharing the same quarters all the way to Lone. Never seen nobody but the same fellows day in and day out. Nothing to do but work and eat and sleep. But you gotta allow for them things. We all get out of sorts sometimes. You just can't pay any attention to them. Preachin' again. Come on. Pick up that shovel and give me a hand. Then we'll both knock off early. I am through shoveling. All right, Red. Go up to the cabin and lay down or read or something for a while. Maybe that'll make you feel better. I won't go up to the cabin. I won't lay down. I won't read. I won't do nothing you tell me to. Now, what? Quick, give me orders. Quit trying to run me. Quit it, you hear? Are you local? Call me local. That's just enough. Hey, get back. How so? You out, teacher?  There! Well, there. I showed you, didn't I? Learned you ain't to be fooled with, didn't I? Now let's say you give me orders. My ankle. It's twisted. Oh! That's just too bad. Give me a hand, will you, Red? I won't be able to walk. Help me back to the cabin. Get there by yourself the best way you know how. Red. Well? Maybe you're right.  We can't go on this way no longer. Tell me what you want for your share in the claim and I'll see that you get it. I told you a change of mind. I ain't sellin'. I'm stayin' on. Well, Clem will be back in a couple of days. They go on complainin' to him? No, but we'll have to talk this out to three of us. We'll have to find some answer. Maybe I got the answer already. Huh? Maybe when Clem gets here he'll meet up with a surprise. What do you mean? You've got the notion that things will be better, more peaceable around here. There were just two partners instead of three, ain't ya? Seems like it. Then maybe I can fix it so as that's the way it'll be. But you said you wouldn't sell. I ain't. And I don't savvy what you mean. Don't try to savvy. Don't worry your head about it at all. Because I give you my word when what I'm thinkin' of happens, you'll be the first one to know about it. It was the following day that Red Smiley, spurring his mount over a rough rock-shrone trail about a mile from the cabin, shouted to the stranger on a great white horse that he saw approaching from the north. Hey there, splinter! Come here! Hurry up! Did you see him, splinter? Did they go by this way?  What's the trouble? Your mask. What were you shouting?  You did... But they were zingens.  I'm not an Outlaw. Well then, did you see them Redskins? Did you sight them while you was riding this way? I've seen no one. Blast it. No Indians rode north of here. I know that. They cut over towards the east, but I thought maybe coming from where you did, you might have seen where they went. What do you want them for? They killed my partner. Yes? We got a claim along the creek down below. I was working the claim, and Cliff was in a cabin, nursing a sprained ankle. And all of a sudden, I heard some shots and yells. When I got to the cabin, there was Cliff dead. Them engines riding away like the wind. What were they after? The gold we took from our claim. But they didn't find it. It was hid. We look for the trail and take after them. Yeah, sure. Hey, there's one of the skunks. I'll get him. Don't fire that gun. You spoiled my aim. A new shot at Tonto. Himosabe. So you are with them engines. Oh, Scott. Oh, oh, Turner. Oh, what? What matter? Why him fire at Tonto? I mistook you for someone else, Tonto. Oh. Are you sure those redskins you were chasing rode to the east? Of course I'm sure. I told you that, didn't I? And Tonto must have seen them. He came from that direction. There's no way they could have got past him without being seen. Somebody were there in the band. Oh, for I reckon. Yeah. There's four of them. Did you meet four Indians, Tonto? No. Me, not the engine. But you must have. Unless they cut off some other way. That would be impossible. I don't know. There were only three directions in which they could have gone. The cliff would block escape to the south. Well, well, maybe I was wrong. Maybe they rode to the north. Well, I came from the north. Oh, the east. You just heard Tonto say no one went past him. That's sure strange. You don't suppose they doubled back and slipped past me, do you? Perhaps. It's either that or you're in cahoots with them like I said before. You can think what you wish. Well, I have the time to sit here arguing with you. I'm going after them critters. And if I find you're in with them, I'll be back to look you up. And don't you forget it.  Get along there. Get up there. You came along at the wrong time for that, Tonto. Why him after engine? He isn't for him. He made a bad mistake, Kimusabe. I saw him before he saw me. I rode down from above. He was sitting on his horse down the trailer ways. When I came along, he spurred his horse and shouted as though he'd been racing after someone. That heep strange. Not strange, Tonto. He was trying to establish an alibi. Oh. He told me his partner was killed by thieving Indians. He probably thought if there was any question about it later, he could always say he had a witness to prove he had taken after the Indians. No doubt he didn't notice my mask until it was too late to change his plan. Maybe then right. I may be doing him an injustice, but I doubt it. He was positive the Redmen had ridden eastward until you came along to spoil his story. Then he pretended to believe they might have doubled back. How of him do that? They couldn't unless he were both blind and deaf. Oh. You think him and Kim partner? We're going to find out. Not good. We'll give him every benefit of the doubt. We'll cover this whole section around the cabin. And Tonto, if there's no trace of the Redmen he mentioned, we'll act. Come on, Kimusabe. Get him up, Scout. When old Clem Peterson, the third partner in the claim, returned to the cabin with supplies from town, Red Smiley made haste to tell his version of Cliff's death. So that's the way it was, Clem. I'd done my darnest to catch some Redskins, but they was too slick for me. They got cleaned away. Cliff dead. And him almost like a son to me. You don't feel no worse about this, Clem, than I do. You sure it was Indians? There couldn't be no mistakes. Had I called them in the act, didn't I? I showed you where their horses trampled up the ground around the cabin, didn't I? Ah, yeah. Say, you act a might as though maybe you didn't believe me. I believe you, Red. It was mighty suspicious at first. I suppose the first thing you thought was that me and Cliff got in an argument and I'd drilled him. You know how things was between you. Clem, you should have known better than that. Shucks, I got mad at him once in a while. Sure. That ain't the same as wanting to drill him. I know. I know, Red. I'm sorry about suspecting you the way I did. You figure there's any way to catch them Redskins? I wish there was, but I don't know how. All we can do is tell the law and have a look out, Captain Reckon. Almost wish them engines got our dust. Then maybe they'd have been caught trying to spend it. Poor Cliff. Hey, I suppose we'll be dividing his share equal between us. Who's that? Oh, it might be him. There he is. Tell him to get him. Tell him to get him. Hey, Brooks. The same masspelling engine I told you about, Clem. If your gun's another, I'll take him away. Huh? You come with Tonto. Let me look for Redskins. Go on, Red. Tell him what you covered. I'll look here. Hurry. Get on with him. No, let me go. What do you think? You won't be harmed. Close the door, Tonto. Stranger, what does this mean? You're in no danger, Clem. Tonto took Red away so that he couldn't hear what I had to say to you. Huh?  Well, he told me how it happened, sure. Red killed Cliff. What's that? That Indian story was invented. But he showed me the hoof prints of their horses. I saw them. Well, then, now... He made those prints with his own horse. He wrote it all around the cabin to make it look as though a band of riders had been here. Can you prove that? I can. Tonto and I examined the ground. The prints Red says were made by the Indians. This appeared beyond the clearing. There's absolutely no trace of a band of riders except near the cabin. Deep and catfish. You doubt my word? I'll show you myself. Stranger, I ain't doubting. What you said fits right in with what I suspicion first. You thought Red was the killer? I didn't till he told me that story about Indians. Then you must know his motive. That's what I couldn't find out. He killed Cliff because he hated him. Yes. Red fought and quarreled with Cliff all winter. It was the biggest mistake I ever made in my life when I asked Red to come partners with us. Why did you? Of course, I didn't know nothing to get him at that time. All I knew about him was that he was a first-rate mining man. And we needed a third-feller to help us work the claim proper. I see. But, then, is Reed Bradley a friend of yours? Ah, Reed Bradley. What's this picture?   It did at first. I see my mistake now. This man seems to have a scar across his cheek. That's a picture of Cliff. Mr. I almost wish you hadn't told me about Red being guilty. Why? Why? Because there ain't no way to prove it on him. Or have you found proof? No. Nothing beyond the lack of hoof prints. They wouldn't be enough to jail him for 30 days. I wonder, Clam, what kind of man is Red? Gosh, you've seen him, Stranger. He's big with red hair. I didn't mean that. What's his disposition? There's just one word for it. Ugly. He's the kind that gets moody himself. And nurses crazy notions like spoiled young ones do sometimes. He was always saying we was giving him the worst of it. If we tried to be friendly, he figured we was scheming something to get him. If we let him alone, he thought we felt we was too good for him. I see. But I've had my fill of that. Maybe we can't prove the polecats a killer, but that don't mean I have to stay partners with him. What will you do? I'll give him his choice. He can either buy me out or let me buy him out. But by heavens, it's going to be one or the other. No. Don't dissolve partnership. Stay here. Keep on working the claim with him. Are you local too? Me stay here with a killer? You'll be in no danger. Tata will be on hand to watch every minute. I'll give him his orders. But why should I stay here? To help Red brought to justice. Say, have you got some scheme? Red will ask you what we talked about when Tata lets him return. Tell him I questioned you about your whereabouts at the time of the murder. Make him believe you're angry at me and resent my accusation. Make him think you was here because you're suspicion me. Yes. And then what? Then let me borrow this picture of Cliff. Oh, but that picture... Is going to pin the murder on the guilty man. Then listen to me and I'll tell you how. The curtain falls on the first act of our Lone Ranger drama. Before the next exciting scenes, please permit us to pause for just a few moments. Now to continue our story. The Lone Ranger explained to Clem Peterson the plan he had in mind and secured his promise to cooperate. A brief word with Tonto and then, riding alone, the masked man raced across the wilderness trail, the hoofs of the mighty silver beating a thunderous tattoo that echoed and re-echoed through shadowed canyons and sunlit valleys. Almost five days passed. The work at the claim seemed to go on much the same as ever. Red's smiley was unconscious of Tonto's watching eyes, guarding against treachery. And Clem Peterson, obeying the Lone Ranger, appeared to harbor no suspicion against the big red-headed man who worked beside him. We see them now as they enter the cabinet nightfall, weirdly dropping their tools to the floor and... Honest, Red. I'm so dog-gone-tired, I could sleep standing up.  No matter to me. Won't see you in your red. You don't sound like you're hankering for grub. Me? I could finish off a bear. I ain't hungry. After all the work we put in... I said I wasn't hungry. Ain't that enough for you? I sure had. I must be something wrong with you. Maybe you'd better get to town and see a doctor or something. You wasn't hungry yesterday either, was you? What if I wasn't? No, the day before. Ain't hurting you none, is it? Of course it ain't. I'm just worried about you, so. You ain't been sleeping so good either, come to think of it. Didn't I hear you stirring around about three this morning? Lasted leave me alone. Shoot yourself, I was only asking. Where you going? Just lighting a lamp. Mighty gloomy outside ain't it? Hadn't noticed. Sort of. Sort of mysterious, wouldn't you say? Seems a mite more cheerful like with the lamp going. Funny how this time of day always does something to me. What do you mean? Oh, I don't know as I can put it in words exactly. But when the sun's just gone down, the shadows start creeping down the sides of the mountains. And there's just enough of a breeze outside for the wind to kind of moan through the furs and pines. Well, just along about that time of day, I get to thinking of all the mean and nasty things I've done since I was a youngster. Get to wishin' I hadn't done them. What kind of fool talk is that? Ain't you never felt that? Haven't you never got to thinkin' over your... Hey, what's the matter with you? Red, you ain't listenin' to a word I'm sayin'. The winda. Winda? What about the winda? Could be somethin' clear. Glad that don't you see nothin'. You mean that oak just outside? Well, sure. It's gone. It ain't neither gone. I'll find out. Whatin' blazes are you lookin' for? Nobody outside. Nobody.   Like I've seen what? I say you look like you've seen a ghost. Yeah. Yeah. And for a second, I... I thought I had. Red Smiley had been from the first, sullen morose withdrawn. But during the next few days, what had been mere selfish bad temper became first a nervous uneasiness and then open apprehension. Finally an almost hysterical fear.  Climb me there again. In them trees, it's there. I can see it plain as day. Well, what do you see? You don't see nothin'. Not a thing.  But it's there, I tell ya. Don't go in once there. Now. Now it's gone. Red, you're gettin' liveries. That's what you are. Seein' things means a bad liver every time. Now forget these crazy notions of yours and let's get back to work. On the fourth night, Red halted Clem as he prepared to go outside. Clem, you goin' out? Any objections? Come here. I got somethin' to say. Yeah, I don't say it. All right. I wanna sell out. Oh, sell out? Yeah. But what in heaven's name for her? Ain't you makin' enough money? Don't you think the claim's payin' out like it should? Or have you got tired of workin'? Yeah, yeah, that's it, sure. I don't wanna work anymore. I got enough cash. I'm gonna take things easy for a spell. Where abouts? Oh, somewhere's a long ways away. You know what I told you when I gave you this partnership, don't you? How was that? That you couldn't sell out to anybody but me or Cliff. And with Cliff gone, that means you can only sell out to me. Don't mention that name. Ah, what's wrong? Hey, don't pay no attention to me, Clem. I'm just a mite nervous, I reckon. But you will buy me out, won't you? Nope, I won't. You won't? I'd be a fool to wouldn't I?  But you could hire somebody. Which would mean wasting time ridin' the town and lookin' around for the right fella. And then after he's hired, maybe find an out he didn't suit me after all. Nope, I'm satisfied with things the way they are.  Yeah? Why? I can't stand it here no more. I cannot, just can't. Now, Red, you're just upset about somethin'. I'm listenin' please. Give me anything. I'll sell for nothin' almost. And you can name your own price. Just buy me out, that's all. I said no before and I'm sayin' it again.  Good night. I'm goin' out for a spell. Sleep?  All hours of the day and night. Sleep? I'm goin' mad. I won't stay here. Oh, not another night. Where's my bedroom? My share of the dust. I'll pack and get right now. Right now. When Clem left Red alone in the cabin, he hastened beyond the clearing into the heavy undergrowth. But less than a minute's walk brought him to another clearing for the masked man wetted beside Silver. Is that you, stranger? I've been waiting for ya, Clem. Is everything all set? Time to get back today. He knows just what to do. Good. Mr. I think tonight's the night. Yes? If Red ain't gettin' ready to light out this very minute, then I'm the poorest judge a human nature there ever was. We'll be able to hear him from here. Yeah. I don't think he'll waste much time packing if he's leaving. He won't like staying in that cabin alone. I like it. He should've seen the look in his eyes when I said I was steppin' out for his spell. He didn't like to show himself up for a coward by asking me to stay. But that's what he wanted to do, all right. Will he have the satellite's horse? Nope. He must've had his mind made up to clear out since morning. I noticed he left his horse all saddled. Wait, huh? It was a square light just showed. The door must've been opened. Perhaps he's leaving now. Now listen for him. I don't hear anything. I'm gonna take a little time to get his war bag loaded. Yes.  Get up there. There he goes.  Here, Silver. Get back to the cabin, Clem. I'll get red.  I'll handle him. Come on, Silver. After him, boy. We'll see him in a moment. There he is. Come on, old fellow. Come on. Come on, Silver.  Get along there. Get along. Hold up. Pull up there. What the? Rain up your horse. Come on, Silver. Back. Stay away from me. Get back. Don't slap, weather. What do you want to be? I ordered you to stop. You hold him, Silver. Pull back, boy. Let me go. Who are you? The mask man. You're going back to that cabin. Cut the cabin. The lone ranger dismounted. Forced red from the saddle and thrust the cringing figure before him into the cabin's single lamplit room. Clem was wetting inside. Let me loose. Let me go. Hey, watch this. Who's your mask for him, Red? Make him let me go. Sit down. Not that chair. This one, facing the window. No, please. There. Next time you'll do as you're told without my repeating it. Red, how come you've got a trip for a part? He ain't no friend of mine. Clem drawn him. Do something. Yeah? Well, if he ain't a friend of yours, what's he doing here? How'd you happen to meet up with him? He caught him when I was clear and out. When you was clear and out? Well, I... You meant to... He was going to leave me here all alone after what I said? I guess I got a right to do as a please. I reckon I don't have to stay where I don't want to. That's the way you feel. Get out of this mess. You're in the best way you know how. But I still... Do we need that lamplit, Clem? No, don't blow it out. Don't leave me here in the dark. Dark. That face. Seen it everywhere. Leave that lamp alone. Leave it lit, you hear me? Leave it lit. Very well. That face. Red, you haven't something on your conscience, have you? Huh? My conscience? I... What do you mean? Why'd you say that? Look here. Why'd you say that, stranger? You mentioned the face, as though you'd been seeing something of the sort. Sometimes a guilty conscience will do that. My gosh. Yes? I never thought of that before. Why, stranger, Red's been acting this way for the better part of a week. No. You think that maybe... It ain't no. I've done nothing. I'm not gonna... If you have, Red, you can't expect your conscience to quit troubling you unless you've confessed. What are you hitting at? What could I have done? I never done nothing. You can't say that I've done it. Say that I could be moon outside, stranger. You can see it through the window. Now, I've noticed that... The window. I won't look. The window that... No! Hey! Who shot out the lamp? Seen it again. That same face for the sky. Just like Cliff. Make it leave me alone. Make it go away. I can't eat. I can't sleep. It's driving me crazy. Crazy to you. Something like that lamp again before this school goes out of his head for sure. Have you another... There's one on this shelf. I'll get it myself. That's gone.  All is staring at me. There we are. I don't know what to do with Red, stranger. I'd better see that he gets to town some way after all. The wall? Something's written there. It got in here. It was in there when the lamp went out. It wrote that. I know it did. Well, I'll be... Something wrote on this wall with charcoal. And read it. It says you killed Cliff. I did it. Sure, I did it. I got to confess. I can't let that face be stared at me day and night all the time. Sure, I did it. Just make it stop haunting me this way. And that story about the Indians killing Cliff wasn't true? No, no. I made it up all of it. I killed him. He was all of telling me I was no good. He drove me local with the way he picked on me. I fixed him. I did it myself. Come on in now. There's your prisoner, Sheriff. I think you heard his confession.  I'm putting the cuts on you. Just so I never see that face again. There. I reckon that'll hold you. Rain, you did a good job. I did just what you told me, Fran. What? That's him. That's the same face. You said I wouldn't see it again. You said if I confessed, I wouldn't... Mr. Bradley, you'd better wipe off that scar. You got painted on your face. Before Red here really does go crazy. Yeah, scar. Paint it. Rain, there was absolutely no evidence against you. They would have served to bring you to justice. There was only one person who could punish you. And that was yourself. But I said, Red, when the masked fella got a look at that tin type of cliff I had, he noticed Cliff looked a lot like Reed Bradley here.  But it was only me that seen the face. You always said you never seen nothing, Clem. Because that was part of the masked man's scheme. That made you sure you was being haunted. Correct. Then Tonto went after the sheriff, told him what we was doing, and had him here in time to be on hand when you broke down. And I thought there was no way I could be caught. I had it figured that I could get away. Red, you forgot something. You forgot that no matter how cleverly a crime is committed, there's always one man that knows who did it. Huh? Who's that? The criminal. If you hadn't known you was guilty, you'd never been caught. It's just too bad you're going to be hung. Because that's a lesson that might have done you some good. I own Kilroy, boy! An adventure on the trail ahead! Where you have just heard is a copyrighted feature of the Lone Ranger Incorporated.


Item number SCP-1556 Object Class Euclid Special Containment Procedures As SCP-1556 avoids human contact and currently roams an area greater than 15 kilometers from any human settlement or roadway, containment procedures require only that the herd be monitored and tracked. Human personnel tracking SCP-1556 must maintain a distance of at least 200 meters at all times and must not openly carry any weapons as this may trigger a defensive response. Experiments involving the tranquilization of individual SCP-1556 specimens have been suspended indefinitely. Description SCP-1556 is a herd of 15 free Roman feral mustang horses inhabiting a mountainous region approximately 135 kilometers southwest of ████ in the United States, consisting of one lead stallion, seven mares, and seven juveniles. SCP-1556 has only been observed during periods of mist or fog that reduces visibility to below 100 meters, and individual specimens are recognized by their unusual behavior and reflective amber eyes, implying the presence of tapetum lucitum. During periods where there is insufficient mist for SCP-1556 to be observed, no trace of the herd can be found. Tracks made by SCP-1556 individuals simply dead end without explanation. Over years of continual observation, it has been determined that SCP-1556 roams in a limb to skit pattern extending approximately 87 kilometers from ████ to ████ at a rate of approximately 1.1 kilometers per day. The reason for this specific pattern of movement is not known, but does not seem to correspond to any local meteorological conditions or the movements of any other local animal species. SCP-1556 exhibits greater strength and endurance than is normal for feral horses, as well as a higher level of intelligence. SCP-1556 has been observed exhibiting behavior such as mutual grooming, problem solving, and coordination that is highly unusual for equine species. SCP-1556 also exhibits extraordinary resistance to adverse weather conditions and the effects of high altitude, and has been observed on mountaintops or daring periods in which extreme low temperatures would prove harmful to normal horses. Addendum 1556-01, Incident 1556-09 On ████, oversight approval was granted to attempt to tranquilize SCP-1556-3, the lead mayor, for field examination and tagging. Shortly after being struck by a tranquilizer dart fired by Foundation field researchers, SCP-1556-3 went into convulsions and collapsed. It is not known at this time whether SCP-1556-3 was allergic to the tranquilizer or whether the doses was greatly overestimated, but the remaining individuals of SCP-1556 became highly aggressive, attacking any personnel wielding a firearm or attempting to approach the body of SCP-1556-3. All personnel were ordered to retreat to a safe distance to treat injuries and observe the herd. The body of SCP-1556-3 was never recovered. It disappeared along with the rest of the herd upon dissipation of local misconditions and SCP-1556-3 has not been observed since. Against this incident, SCP-1556 has avoided human contact and makes aggressive movements towards any personnel approaching the herd. Further experimentation has been suspended until further notice.


agreed. Talib is hugely in favor of vaccination and masks. So be it. His choice. Maybe he should read his own book. Here's a question for Naseem Nicholas Talib. Naseem, Nicholas Talib, question for you. Do you think that it's a good idea for every single human being to have this shot?  That's a question for Naseem Nicholas Talib. And I doubt, really, I doubted if Talib is pro-giving the shot to every single human being on this planet. That would be insane. That would be literally insane, especially because we don't know what the medium or long-term effects of this thing are. No scientists, legitimate scientists would be in favor of that.


His keynote talk today is on decolonizing knowledge, the flow of knowledge in regards to the positioning of the global South. Professor Adam Habib, a warm welcome and thank you for joining us. So thank you very much, Amir. It's a real pleasure to be here. And thank you for that very, very generous introduction. I also want to kick off by thanking a boss for that wonderful presentation. It was incredible and he's going to be a truly hard act to follow. But what an introduction to SOAS and inaugural SOAS Festival of Ideas. This is Amina and others for providing me with the opportunity to share my thoughts on the theme of decolonization. I look forward to engaging each one of you in face-to-face deliberations in the coming months, in the coming year around the issue of decolonization, but also on much of the other issues that will impact on the collective deliberations at SOAS. I want to start by with an apology. And I really want to start with this apology because in a sense, I'm going to speak frankly in the coming half an hour, 30 to 40 minutes. And I think it's, I'm going to give up, I'm not going to focus on diplomatic speak. I think that part of the problem with diplomatic speak is it creates intellectual ambiguity. And I'm not so sure that we need that kind of ambiguity in the kind of historical socially and politically polarized historical moment with him. So for the purposes of clarity of thought, clarity of ideas, I'm going to fake frankly and boldly. The risk, however, is that I might offend the political and intellectual sensibilities of some colleagues. If I do so, I want to apologize in advance. My only excuse is that I do so in order to enable an honest deliberation of the ideas that we hope to talk about. Let me also openly declare that I'm an ardent supporter of decolonization. For much of my life, I've written about it and I've also been an activist advancing this agenda. Of course I did it under alternative labels, anti-racism, non-racialism, anti-capitalism, and even transformation. This agenda of radical reform has not simply been directed at the political level but at the national level. I have also focused it on the university arena. My involvement in thinking through this agenda goes back that years. In an earlier part of my life, the rethinking of the university was imagined under the label transformation. I know today many student leaders, many academic activists reject the term. They do not like the term because, and they prefer to use the term decolonization. They do so on the assumption that decolonization is distinct, more radical, more anti-status code than transformation was. But you know, I recall that the term transformation, when it was introduced by academic unions in the university discourse in South Africa with 30 years ago, it was about reimagining the institution in the African context and using the university as an instrument of social justice. In many ways, transformation as a discourse contained all of the elements that activists today see as comprising decolonization. In a lot of ways, this is why I cheekily entitled the chapter on decolonization in my book, Fees Must Fall, in my book, Entitled Rebels and Rage on Fees Must Fall as what's in an A, transformation or decolonization. I also want to reflect a little on the term decolonization. And I want to do so through the writings of Memud Mamdani, a Ugandan scholar who teaches in Columbia and Macarena University. Mamdani's reflections are about trying to understand why our countries have not been able to build the inclusive economically successful democracies that we had hoped to build at the dawn of decolonization. And Mamdani argues that the essential crime of colonialism was that it allocated different sets of rights to distinct groups on the basis of what he termed citizens and subjects. He suggests that the mistakes of the nationalist leadership in the post-colonial moment was to leave the colonial spatial, political, and socioeconomic system intact and subvert the allocations of rights within it. So those who were previously allocated rights are our settlers. We're no longer given a monopoly of this. And in some cases, we even deny those rights. As a result, what Mamdani suggests, we enable the continuous struggle of indigeneity around who is the authentic citizen and many countries are in the developing world. And this has become the basis for continued conflict in the African context. Mamdani further argues that the answer to this conundrum is not simply to be focused on a divided past, but rather to be directed towards a more inclusive future, incorporating all of those who wish to be part of a new nation. What Mamdani was saying is we too focused, if you like, on the divides of our past, on who is the authentic citizen, who belongs to a particular piece of land in a particular part of the planet. And what that goes against is the kind of integrative impulse of the human condition, the fact that human beings have been mobile and moving across the world since the dawn of civilization. And what he says is instead of focusing on a divided past, we need to focus on a more inclusive future, who wants to be part of the spatial formation and try and think through a more inclusive future, a future that is more socially just for all of the citizens in that social formation. It is a lesson, I believe, that we need to heed in the deliberation around decolonization. Whatever the label we use, the colonial university must never be the frame of reference to reimagine the institution of today. If we are to use the term decolonization, we must ensure that it does not prevent a comprehensive re-imagination of the university so that it speaks not only to our local, but also to our global, not only to our past but also to our future, as Amina so eloquently put it in her introductory remarks. On the basis of this conceptual clarification, I want to identify four elements that I see as the core to the decolonization agenda. I'm going to reflect on this, not simply in conceptual terms, as somebody who has written about this, but also in experiential terms, as somebody who has grappled with its application in real-life institutional experiences. I've also grappled with this experiential learning from a variety of positions within the university as a secretary general of an academic union 30 years ago, as an academic and head of the school applying this within the department perhaps 20 years ago as a student activist intent on changing the world 40 years ago, and if you like, as a university executive grappling with transforming and managing the university over the last 10 years. I therefore will not only identify what I see as the elements of the decolonization agenda, but I also want to problematize it in the context of our experiential application and learning in universities in South Africa for the last 25 years, the era of South Africa's decolonization. The first of these elements that I want to speak about is the representivity, which involves enabling the presence in the university and within the academy of students and scholars of all those who have been denied access to the system in the past. Representivity is important, not only because it creates a sense of belonging for all of us, but also because it enables the surfacing of multiple knowledges, thought processes and frames of understanding within the university's teaching and research. Representivity is not manifested simply in the presence of black scholars and those who have been marginalized, but also in the symbolic representations of the institution through its naming traditions and memorials that are often reflected in the university space. But I do want to say that representivity cannot be advanced without qualification. It has to be taken in a manner consistent with the meritocratic tradition. Now, as soon as I say this, I want to immediately say that I'm aware that there are scholars and activists who correctly argue that much of the meritocratic discourses are racially and culturally encoded. Yet, the answer to this racialized or culturally loaded meritocratic narrative is not to deny meritocracy. What is required is the deracialization of the meritocratic debate and ensuring that we are its representivity and meritocracy in our appointments and our admissions processes. Representivity and meritocracy are not mutually exclusive goals. They can be brought into alignment and it is something that we all need to be expressly committed to. The second element of this decolonization agenda has to be about surfacing all streams of humanity's knowledge in our curriculum. Our curriculum has to tell all of our stories. It has to identify all of our challenges and it has to surface all of the innovations to address those challenges. See, there is knowledge in all of our communities and all of this knowledge needs to be surfaced in our curriculum. I also want to say the global corpus of scientific knowledge is not simply the product of Western intellectuals, Western universities, the Western academy. It is the product of the collective knowledge of all of our academies, both formal and informal, across continental and across national boundaries. And we do a disservice to the great intellectuals of the developing world when some of us actually claim that there is such a thing as Western knowledge and that the existence corpus of scientific knowledge is simply a product of Western institutions, Western intellectuals and Western academics. There is a knowledge in all of our communities and that knowledge has always contributed and surfaced in a variety of ways into what is now known as the corpus of scientific knowledge. It's not been reflected fairly in the existing curriculums. It's not been fairly acknowledged in the curriculum discourses, but it has influenced that curriculum in multiple ways. So there is an importance to surface multiple knowledges and to acknowledge the contribution of all parts of the world in informing our curriculum. But again, it is important to qualify this. All of this knowledge needs to be subjected to critical reflection and scrutiny. Too often, activists of decolonization imagine the surfacing of knowledge with an uncritical gaze. Now I'm sure there are some who will take offense that I say this, but it's important bearing in mind how often people articulate or scholars and activists articulate a decolonization agenda with an uncritical gaze. You cannot imagine how many times I have had student leaders walk into my office and say, I would not because I am a Marxist, I do not want to learn neoclassical economics. What I always and only want to learn is Marxist economics as if one can teach Marxist economics without an understanding of neoclassical economics. I want to say openly that we are not in the business of simply engaging with ideas that we are comfortable with. The core purpose of a university is to introduce our students, our academics, our scholars to multiple ways of understanding contemporary challenges. The university is meant to enable intellectual discomfort and force one to think and rethink before responding. It is not a political school. It is not a religious school and nothing in our curriculum should not be subject to critical scrutiny. The third element of the decolonization agenda has to involve the re-imagination of the curriculum in relation to the challenges of our time. Too much of the university curriculum is organized on the intellectual and conceptual foundations established more than a century ago. But is this a legitimate frame of reference for the university curriculum in the 21st century? Are not all of our challenges far more complex to be understood simply from the frame of a single disciplinary perspective? Let me reflect on a recent example. In 2015, the world was confronted with an Ebola pandemic in West Africa. The management of this outbreak was compromised by the lack of local understanding and by applying a unique disciplinary approach to addressing it. The pandemic was simply seen from the perspective of a public health crisis. But the challenge of addressing Ebola in West Africa was a cultural one. The outbreak was exacerbated by burial practices of predominantly Muslim communities in West Africa. It was only when this was addressed ironically through engagement with religious leaders and through the propagation of new religious injunctions that the pandemic was brought under control. The solution to the pandemic required a multidisciplinary approach. This applies to challenge after challenge of our time. And it poses the question of should our curriculum be based? Less on a disciplinary foundation and more on the conceptual framing of our contemporary challenges. Let me use another example. The pandemic that we currently live with. And look at the challenge of this pandemic and its management in the UK at this very moment. Is the management of the pandemic an issue of not knowing what are the public health measures to be put in place in arresting this pandemic? Or is it a social question? What, how do young people congregate? Why do they congregate? How do we manage their congregation? That has much issues, that has as much to do with issues of anthropology, of sociality, and of the social sciences and humanities has much to do with the public health challenge. Again, I say it poses the question, should our curriculum be based? Less on a disciplinary foundation and more on the conceptual framing of our contemporary challenges. Should our curriculum and academic programs be organized on, for instance, the sustainable development goals rather than the disciplines formulated more than a century ago? Yet again, there's a qualification. Multidisciplinary cannot be pursued without some disciplinary capacity and expertise. Too much of the frames of reference emerge by bringing a disciplinary lens to the conundrum that is under focus. How to achieve the appropriate balance between multidisciplinary and unidisciplinary should be at the heart of re-prinking the curriculum in the decolonization agenda. As of now, too much of multidisciplinary plays itself out at the postgraduate level, at the graduate level, and that much of the undergraduate curriculum is constructed at the disciplinary foundation. Should we reimagine that? And how do we create an appropriate balance between disciplinarity and multidisciplinary? So that we do create the professionals, the thinkers, the problem solvers of the contemporary challenges of our time. The fourth and final element that should be considered in the decolonization agenda is the mode and basis of learning in the contemporary world. As I have said before, all of our challenges in the contemporary historical moment are transnational in character. Whether we speak of climate change, public health, inequality, social or political polarization, clean water provision, sanitation, all of these challenges exist on a transnational plane and require an element of global solutions. But as much as they require global solutions and world-class technologies and knowledge, they also require local understanding. That's the lesson from the Ebola pandemic in 2015. That's the lesson from the COVID, from the manifestation of COVID infections around the world. It is the complex mix of global and local that will allow us to address the transnational challenges of our time. Yet our higher education system does not enable us to do this. Our global, our modern mode of global partnerships also undermines this. Currently, our global partnerships involve identifying talented students in the developing world into London, New York, and training them in the full hope that they will return home to utilize their knowledge in their local context. Yet many of us know that this is not the case. The vast majority of those who come to study in these cities and these countries never return. Life happens. People fall in love, get married, have children, and settle down. This is what the research on global student mobility demonstrates. However, in the cases of Singapore and China post 2006, the vast majority of those who go study elsewhere never return. The consequence of this is it weakens institutions and human capabilities in the developing world, thus undermining the ability to address national challenges. This remains under threat in Burundi or the DRC or the Philippines or in Egypt. So long, all of us will remain vulnerable. If we are really keen on addressing these challenges across all of our spatial contexts, then it is imperative to reimagine high education partnerships. It is absolutely necessary that we focus our global partnerships in an institutional rather than an individual sense. We need to think of the curriculum and we need to think across teaching, across institutional and national boundaries. The curriculum should be reconfigured across spatial contexts and scholarships need to be organized in a split side format. In a sense, what we require is a complete reimagination of high education and partnerships for the contemporary world. Yet too often, this is not even part of the discourse of decolonization itself. Ironically, this historical moment enables it far better than any other moment in our history. The disruption of technology, the emergence of disruptive technologies has created the possibility of learning beyond institutional, beyond national and beyond continental boundaries in a manner that has never existed before. And what this pandemic has forced us to reimagine the pedagogy of learning in a blended format, in a format that requires face-to-face learning. Obviously it requires that. Those who pronounce that the face-to-face learning is now at an end are deluded because learning in a university is so much more than learning in the classroom. It's about the interactions that happen between students. It's about learning to navigate local context, the real power of a Harvard or an Oxford or a Cambridge. It's not simply what they teach in the classroom. It's the networks that get built outside the classroom, the relationships that gets built in the cafeteria, in the sports grounds, in the museums and in the interactions that occur. And so face-to-face learning will exist. But what the disruptive technologies have enabled is a form of blended learning. The movement between online learning and face-to-face interactions. The ability to learn across national and continental boundaries and yet the ability to learn from each other in face-to-face interactions. But none of this global learning, none of this multidisciplinary development of a curriculum, none of the learning that's enabling co-curriculum and representivity is going to happen without the re-imagination of the financing of higher education. Currently, our higher education systems in the UK, in the US and Australia are organized to attract international students, many from the developing world. I wanna be honest, so as we in SOAS, we at VITS in some senses are as much complicit in this as everybody else's. Basically, we attract international students from the developing world. Yet our fees for those students from the developing world is often three to four times those of our domestic students. Think about this. In essence, we are cross-subsidizing the education of domestic students in the developed world with the fees of students from the developing world. And we do this in the name of social justice. We do this in the name of human solidarity. We do this in the name of global partnerships to assist to lend a helping hand to the developing world. How can we not be cynical about this? And should our decolonization agenda not explicitly put this at the core, at the center of our deliberations? Should we not consider fundamentally the refinancing of higher education within and across national and continental boundaries? So I am coming to the end, so let me conclude by suggesting that decolonization is, of course, important. And yes, it must be urgently addressed. Yet I want to stipulate two qualifications in this decolonization agenda. First, decolonization needs to be advanced less by politicians and more by scholars, less by political activists and more by scholar activists. Second, decolonization cannot be advanced in a nativist manner, in an ethno-nationalist manner. It has to be framed, as Amina suggested, within the cosmopolitan tradition that incorporates social justice at its core.  But if you read a wonderful book by Anthony Appiah on the cosmopolitan tradition in the developing world, he writes about the cosmopolitan ethos of the Ghanaian courts, you will realize that we need to take cosmopolitan seriously in our world. Not an abstract cosmopolitanism, but a cosmopolitanism that has at its heart at its very core the principle of social justice. Because if we do not build the bridges of human solidarity, we truly will not survive as a human species in the coming two centuries. And so I want to say again, decolonization cannot be advanced in a nativist manner, but must be framed within the cosmopolitan tradition that incorporates social justice at its core. This is the real line of inquiry that I believe the decolonization agenda must follow in the coming years. It needs to recognize that we are both local and global. We are both British, African, Asian and human. Only then can decolonization not only be about our past, but also our future. Only then can it be part of building a new human community, one that is socially just and inclusive, but perfectly in line with the needs of the 21st century. Thank you very, very much.