Hey y'all, I am cold, baby. I am cold. I'm always cold. Girl, you can see that gray coming through. It is what it is. Hi, y'all. How y'all doing? It's time for another chit chat. Now, let me tell y'all something. I just got finished doing a product haul, baby. Oh, I have to run to Brook Shires, which is a little grocery store out here in the south. And they, y'all saw it. If you saw it, now I'm talking about it.  And then I saw like a couple of hair products. And I looked down below and they said $2. I'm like, do what? Anyway, y'all, y'all know how we do this. It's a chit chat. We talk about what's going on in my personal life, what I want to know on YouTube and what I'm watching on TV. Now, my hair is a mess. I have scheduled, because I bought all those products, I have scheduled three product reviews. Do I have any readers out there, those of you who love to read like me?  I should probably be detangling while I'm talking to y'all, but I need to really take my time and detangle. So anyway, this is not me doing anything. Just talking to y'all. This year alone, I have purchased all of these products, including books, including this. So I'm not going to go over all of them. Some of them I did purchase through Half Price Books, but some books I'm excited to read is Dean Coons, The Good Guy, Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes. I got this called Trust by Diane Reeds. I started it, put it down. And then if you like a cute mystery sexy book, I'm going to recommend Finley Donovan. It's killing it. It's by a author. What is her name? Ellie Cosmino. It's a three series. And I just got this in yesterday. You guys, I will, I can finish a book. It's not that long. Probably three, less than 300 pages, 284 pages. I can finish this in a weekend. No problem. So I'm going to continue to read this tonight. Have a slice of pizza. I want to order pizza. And that's it. So that's what I've been doing. I've been ordering books, getting back on my reading game. I did have, I was, excuse me, in the middle of the number one ladies detective agency. I think I'm on the fifth book of that series. And I got sidetracked, started to read another book. But I want to go back to that too. But let me finish this and go through all these. And yeah, I'm excited to be reading again. I really am. Girl, the Texas star. How y'all doing out in Dallas, in Texas? How y'all holding up, baby? They shut the schools down, of course, the school, at least for us in the Dallas area, Dallas, Fort Worth area. I know my sister and them, they went back to school out in Texas. They were back in school, I think, as of Wednesday.  I was laughing with my, with JB's teachers, because I said, when you sent that message, I was in a Chick-fil-A parking lot, eating my fries and my wrap.  Is she starting left? She's gone, I'm sorry. I said, no, it's okay. It's okay. So it's okay. You know, we stayed in, I think we went out twice, all that, all this week actually, because today is Sunday. It's finally cleared up as of Friday. But even with Friday, they said, no, we're going to go ahead and, you know, you keep your kids at home. So girl, some of those parents, because I am on a couple of different Facebook groups with parents, and some of these parents, I get it. It could be a lot when your kids are home, but the school is not a daycare. It is not what it is. They are there to learn. So I saw a post from one of the moms here in 40s. She's like, I have three kids under the age of seven. And this is a lot, okay. So what do you want us to do about that? I mean, I get it, you need a break, but again, school is not a daycare. Take care of your kids, ma'am. Come on. So it is what it is. We waited it out. We were good. Nothing shut down, thankfully.  Prior to the storm coming, I guess Sunday night, some kids decided to, teenagers decided to wreck it. Just open up a AT&T box and just messed up all of these cables. And so half of our neighborhood has been one out on the internet for the past five or six days. Again, some people are going crazy. JB's so cute. He said, mama, we will be okay because I have a record player. I said, okay, baby. He said, he said, I have a record player and we could play my Wii game. I said, child, we will be okay because we old. You know what I mean? You know, my job will be okay. They know that I live out in the countryside where, you know, never know. Granted, the internet outage is due to a person, not necessarily the weather. But anyway, that happened. But speaking of work, honey, when I was in one of my meetings this week, our team meeting, one of the trainers that I work with, those of you who don't know, I work in the educational field, mostly with adult education. So my department sets up training and stuff for the product that we sell. And it's globally. And we also do virtual training. Okay. So anyway, um, baby, one of them was like the trainer, which we all are close because we've been working with each other for so long.  So anyway, we're gonna, I'm not gonna be using my manager. We're gonna call her Lorda. So she's like, this is my co-worker.  I said, well, she said, yeah, um, we're trying to secure a major deal. I'm not going to give the numbers. Um, but trying to, you know, secure a major deal. It wants to know if you're willing to go to Dubai off and on for two years. I'm like, yes, sis. Cause she's, she's black. I said, you better. She said, well, I said, yes. But now I spoke to my husband and he's like, no, that won't be a good fit. I get it. I said, really? She's like, yeah. He said, no, I don't think, I don't think that will work for us. I said, oh girl, I was already picking out.  You know, Dubai is a beautiful country, but I get it not everyone. But in the same breath while we're talking in the meeting, I was like, you know what, maybe I will learn the product. Yeah, I've learned the product again. She said, well, what about your husband? I said, he won't be down for it. He works contract jobs and she said, like, what about your child? I said, what about Jamie's ready? Jamie would be, look, you only have one life. If I was in that position, you have one life to live in another country. Yes. And my company's going to pay for it. Absolutely. Now let me back up and say, I can't do this particular position they're talking about. It's a trainer. I'm not a trainer. Now I could probably get caught up and learn the material, but I don't have time for that. But if I was in that position, absolutely, girl, looking, but anyway, y'all, what I'm watching on YouTube, one thing I want to say, I have been seeing still to this day a lot of murders that are happening. Apparently three rappers were murdered. I don't remember where it at. Three men were found, their bodies were discovered. They had canceled a concert and they were found dead. Three women were murdered in a posh, I have to say the word posh, but a really nice Beverly Hills mansion that they were renting out.  And one of the women was a rising rapper also. What in the heck is going on? This morning, I was looking at an Instagram. I know this is not YouTube, but I was looking at Ricky Smiley. Those of you who don't know Ricky Smiley is a comedian and his son, his oldest child, actually ended up passing away unexpectedly. And he's being very candid, meaning Ricky Smiley on his platform and he shared on Instagram, I don't know if it was yesterday or today when he actually uploaded it, but I saw it today and basically stating that he was going into, he was picking out underwear and socks and undergarments and in the back of his head, he almost got things like extra toothpaste, extra mouthwash. And then it occurred to him that he was purchasing, not purchasing, but he was grabbing these extra items to bury his son in. You're not supposed to go before your children. It's unnatural. I know people that have lost their children and they are not the same. They don't even talk about them. They don't even say their names. You know what I mean? They don't even say their children's names. They don't bring them up and I know someone else who actually, her child was murdered and she ended up in a, was an old coworker of mine, I didn't text her. She ended up in a mental institution for a couple of months. I don't blame her. So anyway, that was disturbing. Let me backtrack a little bit you guys on personal stuff. I have an aunt that's having a seventh birthday and her, my family is really big into themes. Aunt is turning 70 and it's a seventies theme. And so, and so I went ahead and purchased a jumper. I'm going to show you guys what it looks like. Excuse the background, J.B. is screaming. I purchased a jumper in my favorite color, purple. And then I was looking for some shoes on Amazon or some didn't like them. I have enough shoes. I can just wore me in some cute black strappy heels. I had asked y'all on the last chit chat on where my hair in an afro versus a ferro faucet. I think it done a summer's big hair. I think I'm going to go that route because the afro, wearing your hair in an afro and leaving it like that, it can get so, so tangled. You can get so many tangles. I rarely have done that and the last time I wore my hair in an afro like state was typically, was seriously like five years ago. So it is not humid here. It is, I'm sorry, it is not humid here at all right now. It doesn't even get humid here till the spring time. And so it's going to be the birthday parties in February. I think I'm good. Anyway, purple. I decided to do my own press on nails. I was looking for some for the longest and I was like, you know what? You got all that nail stuff back there. You can make your own press on nails. So I went ahead and made my own press on nails. Aren't these cute? And different purple colors and a little bit of glitter. And so let me show y'all this outfit. Again, it is a jumper. It cinches in here at the waist. Low cut. Now because my family is my family, I'm not trying to be all boozy, booby out.  It has a little sash to go around there. And I'm going to be wearing it my purple pink glasses. I don't know about that again. That's in two more weeks. I will be filming that because my family is beautiful and amazing. All right you guys. So what I'm watching on YouTube, still watching Willie D, watching Kendra G, you know, I'm finding that Kendra G is a little biased when it comes to certain people on her channel. I think that she is losing patience to a certain degree. So she may need to take a break and come back, you know, for a while. I'm still watching my true crime. I love my true crime. And as far as TV, okay, so Netflix and Hulu. I'm back on the center and I'm on season 124 Percy. Really, really good. I like it so far. I had to go back on the episode or two to go back and figure out what the hell is this about? But it's good. It's good. It's good. Um, deaf girl. I can't even read my handwriting. I don't know. So on Netflix, I decided to watch The Irishman.  And what is his name? What is his name? The one that was married to the black woman. But what was so unrealistic is that he's playing someone, his character is supposed to be young. Because at one point Joe Pesci is like, Hey kid, I'm like, wait a minute, he's not a kid. So they try to put on all this makeup on him. But he's old. Like they're both over 70, I think both over 70 years old. This is not, it's not. So it is what it is. The Watcher, very interesting. And I know this is based on a true crime story, which I honestly think the family, anyway, but The Watcher has a great cast and I'm on episode two, very interesting. Better Than Us is a new one that I want to start watching. It has to do with like AI futuristic stuff. It's in a different language. So I'm using subtitles. Snow Girl is another one that I want to start watching. Now I started to watch back again. America Horror Story, not back again, but for the first time 1983. I'm here for the it is overkill 1983. I mean the lingo. I love the fashions. I love it. 80s. I love it, but it's a little too much. But I think that's the whole point. It's very campy, but that's the whole point, right? But I think I may pause that and go to Ronald with Cuban Garden Jr. I think I may do that because I like him.  On Hulu, I have mistresses that has good reviews and people work, but it's giving me boddish, you know, which is what it's supposed to be. It means cause mistresses and the watchful eye is on my thing. Oh, back to Netflix. I did, you guys, I did go back and finish the first episode or the pilot for Amsterdam, New Amsterdam. It's not bad. It's giving me though, honest, I'm gonna be honest. It's giving me more in your feels. ER. I was, I watched ER front and back. I was off for it. I wasn't into house. I wasn't into any of those other type of medical like stories, but the pilot is good. I'm gonna try to give this new Amsterdam. I'm gonna try to give it a shot. So that is it everyone. Thank you so much for watching and thank you so much to all of my new subscribers. Take care. Bye.


Okay, so we'll get started. You're all very welcome to today's webinar and part of the European online and distance learning week which Eden is organizing along with several other universities such as the Open Distance Learning Association of Australia and the Flexible Learning Association of New Zealand, the United States Distance Learning Association and the National Distance Learning Week and we also have special contributions during the week from ICDE and so really this is very much a global affair. My name is Elaine Byrne and I am from Dublin City University in Ireland and I will be moderating this session and the title today is Making Higher Education 4.0 The Inside Story and we'll essentially be getting a behind-the-scenes look at the design, development and implementation of the MOOC higher education 4.0 certifying your future and some of our panelists will be sharing their different lessons learned along the way. I suppose this is a very timely discussion and as the second iteration of the MOOC has launched today I'm sure we'll hear a little bit more about that from our panelists. So who are they? Well first off we have Professor Mark Brown, the director of the National Institute for Digital Learning. Hello everyone. And then we have Professor Maree Vigil-Vigil, director for my confidential strategy and innovation in DCU. Hi everybody, how are you? And then finally we have Profer McLaughlin who's a researcher and project doctor also in DCU. Hello everyone, nice to see you. So I suppose then in just quickly in terms of the format we will start by kind of Mark will present a rationale and an overview of the content and structure of the MOOC just to give us a little bit of context in that regard and then we'll engage the panelists in an open discussion kind of reflecting on their experiences of being involved in designing and facilitating the MOOC. And then the last 15 minutes or so there will be an opportunity for you to ask any questions you may have or give your feedback on the MOOC if you've taken it. But of course if you have any questions along the way please do post them and I'll do my best to incorporate them into the discussion as we go. We will also be asking you some questions in the chat via links to Mentimeter and we hope to have a look at those responses towards the end of the discussion as well. So I'll pass it over to Mark if he wants to get started. Well thank you very much Elaine I'll just share some slides here to give everyone a little bit of an insight into what we're going to be talking about from the inside. What we don't want to do today is just be seen as if we're promoting this course that we developed back earlier in the year and as Elaine said the second facilitated iteration of this course actually started today. So you're not too late to join and this is what it looks like if you haven't clicked on the link that we put in the chat box there. Higher Education 4.0 certifying your future. So what I'm going to do is just take a few minutes to kind of give you a little bit of an overview of the course itself. But really what we want to talk about is how we designed it, why we designed it, what we've improved, what lessons we've learned about designing such courses and so forth. It's also important for us to acknowledge that this course has been developed with the ECIU University. ECIU is the European Consortium of Innovative Universities. It's the largest European University Alliance with 12 partners in addition to DCU and we've used the course as a way of helping to raise awareness of some of the big issues facing higher education with a particular focus on micro-credentialing as you'll see in a second. So we're delighted to have the ECIU as a formal partner. The term higher education 4.0 in fact I've even seen some people talking about 5.0 but it's borrowed from industry 4.0. Borrowed in a critical way as you will see because we shouldn't just accept technologically deterministic view that somehow the future is being changed through new technology. People also have an impact to technology as technology has an impact on people but nonetheless that's the origin of the term. And there is some literature already in education about higher education or education 4.0. I think we're going to post some of these links that I referred to along the way. This comes from a journal article by Jelly Salmon. Many of you I'm sure are familiar with Jelly Salmon's work. She talks about education 1.0 being a transmission model and then 2.0 a social model, 3.0 about digital lives and then a question to mark what will 4.0 be. So you might want to pursue that journal article. It's available online for you and it's also incorporated within the course with some commentary to go with it. Also because the course is using the FutureLearn platform I thought I'd just give acknowledgement to this FutureLearn report that was produced at the start of the year on the future of learning and we do draw on some elements of this report within the course itself. But in terms of the course we've actually called it a master class. We sometimes will interchange master class with MOOC. We're just conscious that what we wanted to do was signal what the course was about and there's no reason why you have to do this in a facilitated way. The course can be done quite self-directed after we finish the three or four weeks of facilitation. All of the social learning side will be there as well. But we begin by introducing Higher Education 4.0 and it's made up of just three weeks, three themes. Future skills, micro-credentialing and new sort of authentic ways of teaching for new times and I'm going to touch on each of those just briefly. We begin the very first part of the course with this sort of screen dump. I didn't take you in here live. I thought it was easier just to show you some of the features of the course and in particular we are outside of their own mugshots in a video welcoming you to the course. We feature this video that was produced in the United Kingdom by the agency called GIST which generally has a very good reputation for its resources that it produces in education. But actually we want you to be quite critical of this video and I might just give you a 30-second snippet of it.  But I'll give you 30 seconds which hopefully wets your appetite for you to go and explore the link on your own. So take a look at this. This tool controls the way there must be an industrial revolution in education in which educational science and the ingenuity of educational technology combines and modernizes the complexity and efficiency of the procedures of conventional education. Sydney, our president, 1924. These young people are studying in a new way. A computer calculator designed for use in high school classrooms has created tremendous excitement about how to do it. So I'll stop on that note. Hopefully that wets your appetite to take a look at. It's only four minutes I think. A couple of lessons. One, the use of new technology in education is hardly new as you saw from some of those primary clips and some of the quotes from the 1930s. The second lesson is as you go and watch a little bit more of that video and you will see the question that we asked at the bottom of who's shaping the future, whose voice is being heard. What you will see and in our introduction to the course is really concerned that what we have is a very elitist view of education and generally speaking based on those who are speaking throughout the video, a white male-centric view of education. Quite disturbing that we would still produce a video like that talking about education 4.0 or in our case higher education 4.0. And that question about who's shaping the future, whose voice is really being heard influencing the future is one we have coming back through out the design of the course. But you can see this first section on the new skills agenda. We look at some of the pressures and forces at work on higher education to change for better and worse. In fact, we ask a poll and the results of this poll come from the last facilitated iteration of the MOOC. We asked how many people believe the rhetoric that 85 percent of jobs that don't exist today or won't exist by 2030, they haven't been invented yet. Usually you hear that figure being 65 percent, but actually we will link to an online publication that talks about 85 percent of jobs not existing. And you can see the responses of last group of participants. The cohort was almost a thousand educators around the world. You might be able to read as I've been talking what was called hogwash in some quarters that there is no empirical evidence actually substantiating some of these claims. That's not to suggest that the future of work is not changing and changing quickly, but we do again need to be a little careful that we don't just accept what we're being told. Then week two, we drill down if we need new kinds of skills, if we accept that future skills, some people call them transversal skills or soft skills for future of work, but also for future digital society or even the post digital society. That also brings into question what sort of credentials we need. And so we explore the growth of micro credentials and in particular ask the question is small, beautiful. Is it actually the case that we need these smaller units of learning to recognize the kind of learning that needs to be developed, more agile approaches to assessment and recognition. And hopefully you can see on this screen the various things that we explore around micro credentialing, but similarly with a critical lens. So we do introduce some quite critical pieces arguing that micro credentials and the unbundling movement isn't unproblematic. In fact, it might almost be like the supermarket model of education where the learner is building their own curriculum. But when I go to the supermarket, sometimes I buy things that I know are not good for me. So it raises some quite serious questions. Again, a poll that was from the last MOOC as well as some a poll that was done earlier in the year by Holden IQ. You can think what you like about micro credentials. Some see them as the next big thing. It does seem that participants in the MOOC were very much of the view that they are going to have more of an impact over the next five years. Just conscious of time. I don't want to take too much longer. But within the course, we also give some interesting case studies of micro credentialing activity around the world. And here in Ireland, we have a national initiative being led by the Irish University Association, the micro creds initiative. So you'll learn more about that if you do go ahead and join up in the MOOC. And we also bring many resources about micro credentials to get that into what we call the micro credential observatory. So if you have a particular interest in this area, we really encourage you to have a look at the URL link that we'll put in the chat box if it's not there already. It's probably the most comprehensive resource of links and reports and research projects on micro credentials. Finally, in the third week, new pedagogies for new times. We look at a number of so-called new pedagogies. And I say so-called because in some respects, the future lives in the past. Not all of them are that new. Discovery approaches to learning, inquiry approaches to learning have actually been around for quite a long time, although we do look at initiatives like hackathons, sprints, and in particular wrapped around what I'll call a signature pedagogy of challenge-based learning, which is something that the ECIU University has committed to. So you'll see frameworks like this of explaining challenge-based learning and what it is and what it isn't. But at the same time, we'll be a little critical in asking questions about where does this all fit if assessment approaches do not change? And if there's one thing in the COVID experience we've had, we've had to rethink assessment, perhaps hopefully rethink the traditional final examination approach. Here we ask quite a, I guess, controversial question in many respects about whether the final examination is evidence of learning. That's set against an idea that actually the measure of learning is the ability to transfer that learning from not normal academic settings, but to more authentic like settings. And we introduce some literature around high road and low road transfer. We bring the course to an end with a call to action. What is it that you might change after three weeks? What might you not need to change? And to come back to this idea that perhaps higher education 4.0 is about developing new ways of doing things for new times. There's a great quote there from Michelle Obama. If my future were determined just by the performance of mine on a standardized test, I wouldn't be here. I guarantee you that. So we hope that you will take a dabble into this course. And what I've done in the last 10 minutes or so has given you a bit of an overview of what we've produced is what we hope is a really powerful and valuable learning experience. But the intent was not to do a sales job. Ultimately, the intent really is, in many respects, we're hearing a lot about education in change. And what we're really trying to do is get educators to be the ones who earn the box seat who are driving education for change. And what is the type of change we want? Not the change that we're being told. So what is the change as future makers that we might need to put into place, particularly in a post-COVID environment? I'll finish on this quote. The quote, again, I mentioned earlier that the future lives in the past in many respects. Well, this is quite a dated quote. All education springs from images of the future. All education creates images of the future. And I won't read the rest of that. I'll give you a moment just to take it in. From Toffler, Alvin Toffler, 1974. The key one at the bottom there, though, is if we don't understand the future we are trying to create, we may do tragic damage to those we teach. So Elaine, I think that's my overview of the course. Hopefully it came in within a 10 or 15 minutes scope that you gave me. And back to you, essentially, I'll stop sharing the screen. Yes. Thank you very much, Mark. I think that definitely sets the scene and gives us some context from which we can now kind of develop our discussion. And I suppose in that regard, I'll start with Maureen and maybe bring you into the conversation and ask you just about to give us some insight in how you went about designing this move that we just looked at and what were some of the key considerations that came into play along the way? Thanks very much, Elaine. And I think Mark has done a great job of outlining sort of the different areas that we were trying to explore. I think the key part in the design process for us is that we really wanted this to be by educators for educators because really there's a huge awareness piece in and around this whole, the three elements of the agenda perspective really was to be to be give really practical and good and helpful advice to those who were entering into this domain so that they would be aware of what was going on. We had done an awful lot of research prior to this as part of some of the micro potential and work that we do. So we knew where and what people were looking for. And some of that is in around the house. So particularly if you look to week two of that course, you'll see that we're trying to really explain some of the key issues in and around the house. We're also trying to be, I suppose, and this comes from our own backgrounds, is to be critical of this whole, so not to be this hyping it up as something that is going to be cure all ills and be the panacea to all of the questions, but actually to call out some of the big questions, to call out the issues around adapting this type of approach, to call out the issues around saying that is unbundling education, the best approach or the most needed or the most required approach, to take some of that. And I think there's some really good, you know, we've drawn on some really good resources from other educationalists and theorists who are talking about these things and also to put that into perspective. We've looked at some of the, I suppose, the leaders in the pack, you know, the early adopters and how they're getting on with it and how they've done it, how they've conceptualised it. And I think there's a really good resource for me, I think it's one of the most valuable resources, particularly from the implementation side of it, is because there's a plethora, an absolute plethora of talk. It is one of those things you can talk about, I think Rebecca Ferguson said it there at our last eating conference, at our last eating webinar about our primer for micro-credentials. Like usually when people talk about micro-credentials, they talk about micro-credentials and the online and the platforms and the technology. And there's a really, really good resource there who, completed by a master's student, was part of the ECIU University, Ahmed. And that, I think, it goes through the platforms affordances. It gives that really, really, you know, practical functionality that I think a lot of us who are in the space of translating visions and strategy, which really come from the first week where we're talking about skills and all this sort of this demand led and future focused on skills. I think translating that into acting and how best to do that and then of course wrapping that up. So I think for those key design things where it was to be hugely practical, to be critical, but also divide a forum by which we were both provoking thought and also engaging with the learners who and the educators, many of them were who were engaged in this. And I think giving them that opportunity to comment from their own context, because I think that's one other, was that we were very cognizant of, you know, the view of micro-credentials in a publicly funded system versus a view of micro-credentials in a commercially driven, private focused higher education systems are quite different and there's tensions in and around that. So I think we took a lot into consideration. We also try to reference some of the really good frameworks that have come out from Europe as well. We spoke to them because I suppose without trying to be European centric, we knew that a lot of good work has taken has taken place already in this and to draw on that. Because again, you know, it's this notion of you don't have to keep recreating the wheel. And I think that was one of, that was a few of the design thoughts. I don't know if anybody else had any others that come to mind as we went through it. Thanks Marie. I definitely think what stood out to me there was about that facilitating conversations among peers and giving people an opportunity to address those key questions. And Mark also mentioned the social learning aspect of the course. So Kaur, I might ask you what kind of participant discussions or questions stood out to you in the course and why they stood out? Yes. So thanks Elaine. It's a really good question and I think that it's kind of, I know we might speak to what kind of advantages and disadvantages MOOC-based learning has, but I think a big advantage is that it does give people the space to actually discuss these questions. So the fact that, as Marie was saying, that this was by educators for educators, I think was very important because we found, first of all, that there was a vibrant amount of debate because people tended to have experience in particular contexts. So for example, someone coming from a Canadian context or someone coming from an Italian context. Education, obviously the principles might be human universals, there'll be a debate about that, but the systems are so different that you're actually learning an awful lot from your peers in different contexts. And one that I wanted to highlight actually, because I think it's a good example of an activity, I might just share my screen, I see that I am allowed, is one activity we asked participants to engage in was what we called a future skills tree. And what we were intending to do with this was essentially we asked them if you were thinking about skills for the future. So this was in week one, this is actually live again now. But we asked them to think about skills as a tree. And then we wanted them to kind of tell us, well, what does it look like for you if you take that kind of metaphor of a tree? And what I couldn't get over, because I was thinking about this question earlier, was how much people actually did this. So these are all individual contributions from people. A lot of people went very flowery with the metaphor, water and oxygen, the main nutrients in life. Some people were very, very detailed. So they talked about renewal. And actually, Mark, as you were speaking, one I thought about was someone down here had a very nice one, where they talked about the future as something that never arrives. So floating into space into the future, which never arrives anywhere, a lovely kind of way to think about it. But you can see that the detail and the way that people actually engaged with the question was really quite remarkable. So we've been looking at these responses. And I think the other thing I'd say on it as well is the diversity that's actually inherent here in terms of what people approach it as, because I think as educators and anyone who conducts research on this will know, if you talk about skills, some people might talk about the psychological dimension skills, skills as a ability to self-regulate, the ability to self-direct, et cetera, things that we now recognize as very important, critical thinking. But there's also, and our moderator can speak to this as well, because it's a special research, or it's a research specialism of her, but the emotional aspects actually of skills as well, the ability to thrive, to be a citizen, to be a member of a community. So these are all things that we wanted to explore as well. And Mark has done some fantastic work on this too, in our ECIU project on looking at pillars of learning. So we were looking at adopting some of the United Nations pillars. And it is very telling that some of the pillars they identified years and years ago, so talk about again, the past repeating itself is learning to be, for example, so how to be a relational human being in a complex and changing world. So these questions are as old as time in a way, even though a lot of these, even though our technologies might change, our social context might change, but a lot of these questions are human universals. And so I wanted to highlight that because I think it really was an example of there's the famous quote from Field of Dreams. I think it's butchered a lot about build it and they will come. If you build these kind of social fora where people can actually interact with each other, and educators in particular, I think, are people who enjoy interacting with each other. I think that's something we've probably all experienced at conferences. And there is a certain educator attitude, a can do attitude if we wanted to talk about one of the skills that one person referenced here. So I would say that it was an incredibly enriching experience actually to see those discussions. And I think it speaks to where these kinds of courses are really useful. I know we might talk about that further. But I'm not sure if anyone else had a particular point that stood out to them, but certainly when I think about it, I was really impressed by this skills tree and the contributions we got from our participants. So I might close the stop share there. Thank you for her and thanks for the mention to my own work in the field of emotion. But I suppose, Mark, I'll give you the opportunity to come in here because essentially, you're a facilitator of the course, but you're also a member of the target audience for the masterclass. And from your own personal perspective, was there anything that you learned or new viewpoints that you got from discussions like this or activities in the MOOC or the masterclass? I think you're still on mute there. Lost my mouse before a minute there to turn my mute off. My answer was heaps. It's really rewarding contributing to MOOCs like this or masterclasses that have a truly global community of learners. Some people wonder why we do this. And it was very clear the impactful nature of not just the framework that we had, but the conversations. And in some respects, I'm not sure if we've already said this. There's a sweet spot in learning design, because we want to think about the making of the MOOC, if you like, in the way we frame today's webinar, having an emptiness. So it's sort of almost a contradiction, but designing for emptiness. And one of the things I think we have to be very conscious of an online learning and a MOOC platform is in particular is no two MOOCs are the same. There's a framework they operate. There's a platform, but that platform can be used in many different ways. So we try to design for a degree of emptiness that really valued the contribution and experience of our participants. But our job was I'll use the analogy of a coat hanger. We tried to frame that discussion and have interesting polls and and questions that we would pose and the way in which people engaged in the conversation. I think the one takeaway, if you know, I was put in on a spot, say what I learned, I just learned that change in and the future is never going to follow a straight line. And one thing that we had was differing viewpoints. Some came through in some of those polls. Here we have a group of educators that disagree, for example, on the future of MOOCs or on the different way in which future skills are being framed. We had some really critical contributions and links that then went out to examples that I wasn't aware of are much richer now having seen those and I may be preempting a question to come. But some of those links and resources people referred to are now in the situation of the MOOC that we refreshed and redesigned accordingly. So not in a straight line. The future is not unproblematic and that if we don't engage in shaping our own future, we're going to get one that's given to us and that's why we need to be engaging in these conversations. Great. Yeah. And I suppose then on the other side of we've kind of discussed so far what has worked well and the conscious decisions made in the MOOC. But I suppose sometimes the best thing, the most important things we need to reflect on and what were the challenges and what didn't go as well. So I'll open this up to all or any of you about kind of to critically, if you were to critically reflect on the design and delivery of the course, what were the challenges and how did you kind of circumvent those challenges along the way? Well, I'll just jump in initially and say we're doing this on top of our day job. This is something that we're making a contribution to for all the reasons that I think we've explained. But it's hard to sustain that contribution. And when you get hundreds of discussion posts, as we did, it's really tough to reply to everyone. We committed to trying to really have a dialogical experience. The future and platform itself is actually designed in a way more so than most other platforms to engage in that conversation. So I think for me it was keeping up with the conversation. But that's the great thing about doing an experience like this in a team. If it was just one person, I think that would almost be impossible in teaching at scale or mass pedagogy.  Yeah, and I was going to come in there and just sort of say what I found was we're typical academics in a way. We said it was a mook for a certain amount of time and that. I suppose we could, some of the comments that came back, that it took a lot of people a lot longer to do the mook, to reflect on it. And I think that's one of the things. And I think we tried our best to put in those spaces for people to have that reflection time into it as well. But we were also conscious of the design of the mook itself as well. And that gratification of having a step completed was another thing that prompted people to complete it. And we all know about completion rates and all that type of stuff. And actually for this mook, we had very, very high completion rates as it happens and engagement. So it's sort of that tension between allowing people to move progress through it and then also providing that reflection piece. That for me was a critical part of it. And also, I think that you could necessarily, we could say that the mook could take an extra week or two weeks for people to complete. I think that would be a fair assessment as well. So for me, it was that sort of thing of trying to bring people with you, bring the conversation on, move them on. And some people were quite diligent about doing it. And they went through it in one sitting, or they went through weeks as they went there. And I think the other part was that the other part that I would have liked, and I came back with this notion, and maybe Courier will speak to this about the synchronous version of it as well, that there was maybe an opportunity. And I know Courier, you were particularly, you know, getting some feedback with respect to that, that we could have also facilitated that screen time with people or Zoom time or whatever time we wanted to call it, that they also wanted that to have that element of it. I don't know, Courier, if that leads into somewhere where you were particularly looking at. Yeah, well, absolutely. I agree with you. And actually, I agree with your other point as well, because the thing I was going to say was it's kind of like that thing, if you ever read any handbooks on like ethnography or something, they often say that the problem, if you're studying humans or if you're working with humans, is when you leave. Do you know what I mean? That's when the problem emerges, because if you're conducting your research, you've gotten access to the field. How do you say goodbye then? How do you say this is the end of the project? This is the, you know, we're finished here, we're moving on with people that you've kind of built relationships with in a way, often case. In our case, it was short, so we didn't necessarily have relationships in that sense, any emotional form of connection, albeit that we know and like a lot of our participants. But I think that the finishing is a problem often in MOOCs, I think, is because you want to promote this discussion, you want to promote the dialogue, but it has a date when it finishes. So I really agree with you, Merade, on that. I think that's a big thing is how do you contrast the formal end? You know, this is the calendar end. This is the day that it's finished with. Well, maybe I would have liked to continue that discussion. And that actually leads to I think the other thing you were saying, which was yes, there was quite a bit of feedback about that, that would it be possible, for example, for us to meet up, to have some form of synchronous session, which is something, again, I don't want to preempt a question, but I think it is coming up. But yes, this was a change that we were certainly looking at was, would it be possible to incorporate live sessions? And we're happy to announce that it is. We have ones coming next week and the week beyond that. But I think that that's a really, really big point here is the, it's, and it's kind of design-based, but it also has the human element as well of how do you ensure that people get different forms of communication as well? You know, I think just Elaine, just a thought sort of sparked when Coher was talking. I think one of the important bits when we were doing the refresh of the MOOC in itself this time was, was that so much has happened since we originally published this, you know, and I think one of the challenges for us as sort of academics and researchers in this area and et cetera, is keeping up with that, but also maintaining the rigor that there's people still coming to the table of micro-credentials and future skills and pedagogies who may not have the initial or ab initio experience, you know, they may not. So it's balancing out, trying to course those educators that we have and we've had some really, really great participation from people from all walks, from institutions, not only education institutions, but also from super national bodies, from the commission, you know, from other bodies, from training, education and training networks, from government policymakers, we've had them actually participate in the MOOC. So that for me was, it's an important balance we've been trying to maintain so that we're not losing people because we take it for granted in this refresh that they've understood. So we've tried to maintain the integrity of building the narrative, building the story, building, demonstrating how it's been moving on, and also then providing avenues for participants to go out and become part of a wider micro-credential community. So whether that's the micro-credentialsonfrontier.org, that Beverly Oliver and others have put together and that I think that's a really important part of it, you know, and as Mark has put in the chat there, you know, there's a huge, huge, huge number of reports that have come out. And we also know that we're in a cycle in Europe of where we're waiting for the commission's recommendations, et cetera, with respect to the roadmap. But again, that's a really, really important aspect of it. So I think we'll be in a state with this course where it's going to be maintaining the integrity of it, but then also providing those who are advancing with it to give them the new and the updated and to maintain that sort of thing. Whilst also keeping the integrity of those critical questions that we had around unbundling, holistic approach to education and that criticality. So yeah, so it's been a challenging time, but I think it's also been a great learning experience for ourselves as a team. Yeah, it's a, I think there's a lot of lessons there as well that can be kind of applied to other contexts as well and not just the move, this master class. And you touched on it a good bit there, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity as well to talk about now that we are in its second iteration and how the course has developed over time to the, we mentioned there, you mentioned there about the updated research and how that has been incorporated into the course. And if you've had, I presume that was based on feedback as well. Yeah, definitely. So, and actually the two teams probably of changes they have both been touched upon, but to maybe even just synthesize them is, as Morade says, I think that's the particularly in the microcredential week, that's a big issue is that things are changing almost week to week. So the question then becomes, well, our resources out of date, do they not actually keep up with developments in a field or does someone say, oh, well, this report is actually version 2.0, we're now on version 6.2 or something. So there's actually so much movement in that field that I think the first run of that are changes. And in a way, it's a nice metaphor for the MOOC about the future is the fact that today's present is yesterday's future. And so there's this constant wheel that we're talking about of time that we have to be cognizant of. And as Morade says, actually make sure that the course balances that as well, that it still covers the initial content, but also has updates. So we've made pretty substantial changes to week two in terms of content. And then the other element is also including the synchronous elements. So as I said, we actually have upcoming synchronous sessions, just to allow actually not only as a result of that feedback, but to actually allow a richer form of feedback, because there is nothing like and I mean, even we're looking at the chat here as we're speaking, I don't think there's anything like the actual, you know, human interaction again of it's grand when you get a form back, but then you're actually chatting to someone in a dialogue, a live synchronous dialogue. I think that's a bit different as well. And so we're taking the lessons of that also. Yeah, and I think you touched very nicely there on Kathy's question in the chat about whether there were synchronous elements of the MOOC or whether it was a drawing in its entirety on asynchronous methods, but I think you answered that nicely there as well, that there are synchronous elements incorporated in the form of workshops and webinars. Yeah, yeah, in this iteration, but in the previous one there was and as I say, I think it is something, but again, to touch on something Mark was saying earlier as well, part of this is to do with resourcing as well. It can be very difficult to find the time and the amount of investment that's required on the time side is huge as well, but this has been such a rich and valuable experience that I think we can see the advantage of doing so as well. Right, I might just ask you if we were to kind of widen this discussion and thinking more of the MOOC as the vehicle through which this course was delivered. How do you see MOOCs kind of moving forward in and the role that they play in kind of providing continual professional learning and development for educators? And maybe the role that Mike potentially plays in this as well, given that that's such a tough point at the moment as well. Yeah, so I think having they said that 2020 was the second year of the MOOC, and I think that's partially towards obviously the pandemic and people reaching out and engaging with learning in that format due to the restrictions, et cetera, that we all live through or live and live through. So I think definitely MOOCs are there and have always been seen as sort of that stepping stone into professional development. I think Beverly Oliver does a lovely piece about talking about how MOOCs are now seen as part of the fabric. They're part of that tapestry of CPD that's available. So I think, yes, definitely MOOCs, I think are here to say as part of that. I think with the microcredential aspect of it, I think this is an interesting thing because not only the subjects that we're touching on obviously, and it's that notion. And I come back, when we talk about change, we talk about it usually in the static sense where I'm more comfortable with the sort of verb changing as a continuous action. And I think that's become a part of what we have to consider. But if we take a snapshot and a shot on a point of time, I think this type of approach to CPD with regards to sort of not, and I use the word cutting edge, but those that are really those sort of initiatives, those innovations, those sort of trends that are at that edge that are being progressed. I think it's important that you can use this platform to reach at scale a breadth of people, a wide breadth of people, and to be able to publish. And I think that for me is the flexibility of the provision, you know, born out by the participation rates, but also the engagement rates. And also what was interesting for me was was that the breadth of participants globally engage with the MOOC. And I think that learning, that breadth of learning is really, really important. I think one of the things, you know, when we were reflecting on this webinar, we were saying, well, if you were to go down another area, you know, and look at what could be or should be included. I think one of the things that we, myself, I think is a really, really important part of this is that through the pandemic, we've learned an awful lot and more people have learned an awful lot about the support and the provision or the affordances of technology to provide some form of learning. I think there's a note, there is a necessity for continued CPD in that moving from transition based models of engagement and teaching and learning, but also then through, and this is potentially just true lack of knowledge or need for the development of knowledge and skills in the notion of people being very unaware of the sort of tracking, the data failings, the surveillance aspects of platforms, technologies, et cetera. And I think that's where there's a need for criticality, a little bit more criticality as we widen out provision as we widen out use of technologies, et cetera, because you'll see, and I follow a lot on Twitter and a lot of academics who are now engaging or embracing new moves into online based learning or digitally enhanced learning, whichever way you want to put it, but they're engaging in practices that need to be ethically considered. And I think we need to have some sort of open conversation about that a little bit more. So even for me, we've taken a trend and we've seen it, but I think there's a door that needs to be pushed a little bit more on a wider scale and outside of potentially the community that we're very much in Wisconsin, but to a wider, the wider community of educationalists and academics to understand those issues. They understand it quite well in classroom conversations and face-to-face situations, but I just think there just needs to be a little bit more work done on that. And I'd love to see some resources coming out, maybe in a MOOC to talk to that subject area. Yeah, thanks. And I think that leads into a question I might bring Mark in on this about other similar initiatives or forms of ways to address higher education and professional development. Have you come across any or similar initiatives that would complement a course like this, or are another way or methodology to look at this kind of area? Yeah, well, Elaine, right from the start with this MOOC or masterclass, you can see I said, at the start we would interchange is that we were thinking of a blended form of delivery or hybrid form of delivery. Those are not entirely the same blended hybrid, but essentially there's no reason why a cohort of learners from one university, one higher education institution couldn't be using the course alongside some opportunities to interact together, perhaps alongside another course they're doing or a professional learning experience. Essentially, we would be advocating that. And for the ECIU University, we were probably a little bit early with the MOOC being available. Sometimes we had some deadlines to meet for funding purposes for the consortium partners to come together and share across the 12 universities. And so we are doing just that with this iteration of the MOOC that we hope to bring people together from the partner universities, but also promote conversation within each partner. One thing we tried to do, and again this would be one of those quick answers to the question about our feedback and what we know sort of happened and what we don't know, is we tried to design for some action, a call to action. I think I may have mentioned that at the end, we didn't want people just say, oh, that's interesting and go away and not change anything. So we challenged people to say, what's the one thing you're going to change? But that change operates sort of at an individual level, at maybe a unit level and a higher whole of institutional level. So for me, if you really want to get that change at a more systemic level, then you have to go beyond just the MOOC experience. So if we've triggered some conversations, that would be great. We would want to continue to trigger those conversations because in terms of professional learning, what we know from more than 50 years of research on the use of new technologies for education is that people largely assimilate new ways of doing things, whether that be a technology or an innovation, into their existing pedagogical orientation, their existing approach to teaching. So MOOCs can be used for transit, transmissional learning, or they can be used for conversational kinds of learning. And I use the word conversation here to quite intentionally draw on Diana Laurelard's conversational theory as an example. So I guess it doesn't stop at a MOOC, but I think the MOOC is a permanent fixture now in the professional development toolkit that we have available. And the fact that you can interact with educators around the world and get different viewpoints is something that's a strength that you may not have from just your solid, institutional-based approach. Thank you, Mark. And I think now it would be perfect time to bring in some of our participants and address some of their questions. So please do post in the Q&A section of the Zoom here. And I'd also, we're going to post some of our own questions to you that you might want to consider and we might reflect on them as well. But we do have one question in the Q&A box, and that is, what do you think of the transdisciplinary approach to education? And I'll open that up to the panel for whoever wants to jump in. I wonder what's meant by the term transdisciplinary. And I might go to Mulky task in a second while someone else is talking and share a table that I have that helps to define transdisciplinary for multidisciplinary from interdisciplinary. So I'm not entirely sure we're all speaking the same language when we use those terms. So I will see if I can find the table that I can share my screen. But one of the things, if I just pick up on the point about transfer of learning that I was referring to in the last section of the course, what we know is that learning that takes place in predominantly academic contexts that makes no real link to the rest of the world. I could say real world, but academic contexts are part of the real world. That has weak transfer and therefore weak potential for learning. And in the real world in inverted commas, when I use that term, knowledge is interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, it doesn't get siloed and ring fenced into all I'm doing physics now. All of these disciplines that we have come to bear in solving problems. So for me, it's implicit that you have to adopt and promote such an approach. Thanks, Mark. And you might have some of you might see now we've posted them, one of our polls in the chat box, where you can contribute and reflect yourself on what you think are professional learning gaps that are emerging for higher educators at the moment. And perhaps some of you may want to comment on that yourselves openly. I know Mark has already taken the opportunity to give us what his key takeaway from the course is, but perhaps for her, you might have something to add there as a last kind of encouragement for people to get involved. Well, yeah, I mean, I think the big takeaway I took probably was, and it's a funny one, but it's probably the degree to which what you know is kind of limited to what you know. And what I mean by that is kind of the real enriching nature of these abilities to when we talk about transfer, transfer knowledge and transfer experiences as well. I think that's really important, you know. And I think that's something that I took away definitely was that people are engaged with and ready to discuss these conversations, because I think sometimes a lot of discussions are had this is something Mark touched on at the start, but they're often had about educators and about people in higher education, but there's not necessarily that higher educators voice. But then when you actually talk to educators, they do have opinions, they've talks, they've disagreements on all these issues. So I think if I were saying what my big takeaway would be, would be to harness that in your own practice, I think as well that criticality, it's something Ray touched on as well. I think there are a lot of questions, implicit questions to these types of practices that aren't always brought to the surface. And I think that because of COVID as well, we're seeing far more people engage with these questions than might have before. And distance education is its own subfield, however we want to find it, digital learning, etc. But a lot of these questions are starting to become prevalent across areas where maybe they might have been historically as well. So I think that's a really important takeaway I'd have would be to be open and to invite everyone as well who hasn't registered to register, because I do think that conversation is something that I imagine you're very present here today, I think, makes me think that you would probably be interested in that conversation as well, contributing and hearing what others have to say also. You're on mute there, Mark, if you want to come in and give us a little bit of context to your slide. Now, am I still sharing the screen? You're still seeing that? No, not anymore. Okay, I'll share the screen. Sorry to cut in there, a grower, but I just thought since I did find what I was looking for. So I think I'm not going to take time to walk you through this, but just to say, if there is a takeaway, and maybe this is the scholar or academic in me, that words do matter. And even the concept of challenge-based learning, even though our institution has made a commitment to this as a signature pedagogy, we're quite critical about what's meant by challenge-based learning and what it isn't. In this case, just to give you one take on the difference between transdisciplinary into disciplinary and so forth. So there are various domains that one needs to think about. So since that just came up, I thought it was the teachable moment. Thanks, Mark. And I think while you've been chatting there, we got some input on our poll. So I'll share my screen and it might be something that you can reflect on as panelists in terms of. So this is the different professional learning gaps that some of our participants have seen from their own experience or context. So we have a lack of collaboration, and again similar around more flexible opportunities to interact with different cohorts in a boarder's time, space. Please do continue to add to these, and we can share them via our different platforms after the conversation as well. I also added another poll about just to get over regards to feedback on the MOOC itself, whether you've taken it, or listening to Bob and talking about here today. That's also there. I suppose I'll just come finally before we finish up, unless anybody has any other questions, just to Maree to give you an opportunity as well, just to reflect even on these points, because I know you spoke a little bit about CPD earlier, but also kind of your key takeaway from the course as I've given you the opportunity to talk about that. Yeah, I think again for me, like these are really interesting innovation, management, and design thinking really important areas now. And for me, I think one of the things is this notion of agility and changing. I think we're being presented with so many different trends, concepts, and I think there's a need for a lot of synergistic thinking that you get when you engage with creative processes. I think it's one of the things that I would say is having been able to look at being able to draw together those notions of design thinking when you boil it down to agility based approaches. They all come down to that notion of creativity, and I think that's becoming sort of a CPD area that I thought I'd never have to engage in as an academic. But I think actually it's becoming more required because we are being asked to be chameleons, we are being asked to reflect on and to be able to pivot into new domains. And I think one of the things, and even following newer academics, and those who are coming through PhD programs and are coming into their first few years in academics, is that being able to juggle so many things, but then being able to focus, to have that laser focus within them as well. So I think there's a notion of the creativity, the agility, and then also focus on how the three of those meet together. So I think that would be a really very interesting area for me as an academic. But also I think for other academics, as I see them progressing through their careers, because today we're doing this webinar, I think that we're looking to challenge people to think about their careers, to think about what's coming down the line, to think about also their research areas as well, and how they should meet. So for me, the capacity to have that innovation, to have that entrepreneurial spirit as an academic, which we're very privileged in many aspects due to the nature of our work to have, I think to develop that out for academics would be an interesting area to explore with other higher educators. I think Mark is having a step out to a meeting, so I'll hand back to yourself, Elaine. Yes, thank you. Yes, he has indeed. But Justin, I suppose we can finish up now anyway. I want to thank you all for joining us here today, and in particular to thank our three panelists. And I hope your contributions have been really insightful, and I hope everyone here enjoyed listening. And also, thank you to anyone who took part as well in our by asking questions or taking part in our interactive questions polls. But please do join us on the MOOC itself. We'd love to continue our conversations there, and I think some of Moray's finishing points there allude to maybe opportunities for future MOOCs in this area as well. So please do keep in touch, and we will share some of the contributions to the Padlet via Twitter and things like that afterwards. So thank you all very much, and have a lovely rest of the day wherever you are. Thanks very much, Al. Thank you very much, Banya. Thank you, Gorma Hagwif. Thanks, Elaine. Thanks, Eden. Thanks, Elaine.


Good afternoon and you're very welcome. I'm Alex White, Director General of the Institute of International European Affairs and delighted to have you with us for this event this afternoon. When we're going to be joined by Emer Finnegan, Director General of the Council Legal Service and the Legal Council of the European Council. So there's an S in one of those words and a C in the other. We're really delighted to have you with us this afternoon. Emer will speak to us about 20 minutes or so and then we'll have a Q&A. Sometimes when people are asked to try to describe the European Union, you know, describe the union. And I think one answer or not bad answer is it is it is really a compendium of rules and laws that kind of it's one way of actually defining the European Union. It might be a little bit turgid and a lot of people might think it's a bit minimalist, but in many ways that is that is what the European Union is. And Emer Finnegan, our guest this afternoon sits very much at the top, or at least shall we say at the center of all of the complex activity that goes on around lawmaking and law enforcement in the broadest sense in the European Union. Emer, as I said, is DG of the Council Legal Service and she's also the legal counsel of the European Council. She's the first Irish national and the second woman to hold those posts. Emer has worked in the Council Legal Service since 1999 was made a director in 2015. As such, or in that role, she was responsible for legal issues in the competitiveness environment and transport telecom and energy councils, which I was privileged to be a member myself at one point. And for legal issues concerning employment, social affairs, education, agriculture and fisheries really the whole kind of gamut of the competencies of the European Union as we're familiar with it. And Miss Finnegan was closely involved with the negotiations on the withdrawal agreement and the trade and cooperation agreement with the United Kingdom. She's extensive experience representing the Council before the Court of Justice of the European Union. So we're really delighted to have you. It's a webinar this afternoon. So you can, if you have you're watching us and delighted that so many of you are, you will have an opportunity to put in a question using the Q&A function there that everybody is so familiar with now. And there are some of the housekeeping points that I tend to forget at this point, but one most important one is that if you're asking a question, try and keep it pithy and clear so we can read it before we actually smother it and say who you are. Give us your designation if you have one. And please, if you're going to ask a question. But without any further delay, Emer Finnegan, you're really welcome to the IAEA this afternoon and the floor is yours. Well, thank you very much, Alex. And thank you for inviting me to speak with you today. I regularly attend IEA meetings in Brussels. So it's nice to attend a Dublin event for a change, although it would have been even nicer to attend in person so I'll try and see if I can do that the next time. So I was asked to speak on a really interesting and a complex topic in my address for my address to you today about how European law has been used to address Russia's invasion of Ukraine and how the legal service assists the two institutions that it serves the Council and the European Council in responding to other major political challenges for the EU. So, so indeed I'll make some remarks and then obviously, as you said, happy to take some some questions from the listeners. And so, as you know, of course, tragically it's been more than a year and a half now since Russia since Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine in the morning of the 24th of February 2022. I think we all remember that moment we know where we were when that happened and then use hit the screens. And on the very same day the European Council met, and it contend in the strongest possible terms, the Russian for iterations unprovoked and unjustified military aggression against Ukraine. And it has remained seized of the matter ever since, most recently in the statement that was issued at the informal meeting of the members of the European Council, which was in Granada last week, which I attended. And there the leaders reaffirmed that the Union will continue to support Ukraine and its people for as long as it takes. And throughout the conflict, the European Council has sent clear consistent and and coordinated messages in support of Ukraine. The members of the European Council, as you know, of course, that's the the heads of state or government plus the president of the Commission and the president of the European Council. They have to find the general political directions of Union policy on this terrible conflict in accordance with with the role of the European Council. And it's going to provide some some further guidance in its next formal meeting in Brussels, which is due a little bit later this month. In my remarks today, I thought I would, however, concentrate a little bit more on the legal developments that have occurred in the in the other institution, which we assist the Council of the EU, which I see is often still informally called the Council of Ministers. It's not its official name anymore, but it's still quite descriptive. I think this the the Union has has shown and the Council has shown that it can face this enormous political challenge with with creativity and with determination. And this has been demonstrated by the many legal acts which the Council has adopted. In many cases, the Council has had the capacity to act alone. But in certain cases, it also acts obviously as co-legislator with the European Parliament. Now, obviously, acting in the face of political challenges poses legal challenges, because it's often in times of crisis that the Union has to take unprecedented action. And the Union has to find some way of rising to these new challenges. And this in turn is challenging for for we lawyers, because of course we rely on on precedent and we rely on our established legal legal frameworks. But it's particularly at those moments that I think that our work is very important and political priorities require us to innovate. But we always do that while recalling our basic values. And in particular there I'm thinking of the rule of law, which as you know is one of the values on which the Union is founded. And this for us means that all action taken even in times of crisis respects the principles of principle of legality. We must respect the treaties, the general principles of law, fundamental rights as protected under the Charter and the applicable procedural requirements so that acts are validly adopted and can withstand challenge before the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg. We are an independent service I think it's important to stress that and we act in complete impartiality. We are aware of the political context in which we operate, but we as the as the legal service are concerned only with the legality of the acts adopted, and with the drafting quality of those acts. Now many of the individual individual measures that have been taken in response to the invasion have made headlines and some of them are indeed very creative. I'll start by just mentioning briefly the the vast scope of union law that has been affected in our response to to this tragic invasion. We have of course action directed against Russia itself. And in particular the succession successive sanctions packages are restrictive measures regime, which has been very active. And I'll say a bit more about that in a moment. Our action also involves a range of measures to support Ukraine. As well as measures to protect our economy from the impact of the war. In particular through the adoption by the Council of a series of acts to respond to the energy crisis, which was caused by the EU's dependence on fossil fuels. And the the invasion has also on a different note changed the EU's approach to Ukraine's desire to exceed to the European Union. And so I'll also come back to the to the energy acts in a moment and to one or two other points. But still more generally speaking, we have used, for example, our traditional trade instruments in order to support Ukraine by facilitating its access to our internal market through the adoption of a range of autonomous trade measures so as to eliminate tariffs on their imports into the EU. And this is in addition to the market access, which was already being granted through the EU's association agreement with Ukraine, which includes already a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement. We are providing macro financial assistance. Those are acts adopted in co decision in order to support the economy of Ukraine and other assistance to facilitate its development. Ukraine had already started to participate in various union programs under Erasmus plus, for example, the union was already support providing support for the schooling of Ukrainian children and participation in the the sectoral programs generally has been stepped up since the war began. And the union is providing assistance specifically to support Ukraine's armed forces. And I'll say a little bit more about that in a moment. And now obviously as you know very well in in Ireland and it's the case for all member states. And the member states have welcomed a very large number of Ukrainians fleeing the war as well. And it's worth noting that there the council put in place and in fact activated for the very first time, the mechanism concerning temporary protection, which, which stems from the basic act, the temporary protection directive which was adopted back in 2001. And that drew on the experiences concerning persons displaced by the conflict in former Yugoslavia. And so, in that that crisis way back then led us to put a framework in place, which is what we have drawn on now. And, and in fact the council is just on the point of deciding that the specific measures for displaced persons are going to be extended until March 2025 to give some some predictability to the situation. And yes, they set out minimum standards for harmonized rights throughout the union, including residency rights, the possibility to work, access to suitable accommodation, access to education for the young people, and the necessary social welfare assistance, and medical assistance and so on, and guardianship for unaccompanied minors of which there are some as well. And so Ireland, it has has opted into this measure in accordance with its, its own rules on pursuant to the protocol on the, the area of freedom, security and justice. So the, the emergency toolbox of the union is very wide and large. And as I said, there are many financing tools available. There are specific emergency measures under primary law like the energy measures that I will mention, and different competences of the union are involved. There's extensive scope for common action so that we can address the crisis in a united fashion, but there is also flexibility in there where necessary for individual member states. So common action really runs across the entire spectrum of what, what used to be the three pillars. So the traditional union activity which used to be community activity. The old second pillar which was CFSP, and, and the old third pillar, Justice and Home Affairs, and in fact all of these areas are engaged by the, by the union and its response to the invasion. There are a few words about military assistance now. The Council has put in place some concrete support to the Ukrainian war effort by the provision of assistance to the Ukrainian armed forces. As, as you know, I've seen the, the debates at home. There has been a lot of activity by the union in matters linked to defense and there are some interesting discussions underway in, in Ireland in relation to that. Under the European Peace Facility, which is a council act, it has shown its determination to play a part in providing military equipment to Ukraine. Under the treaties, military and defense expenditure cannot be financed under the union budget. So this is a fund which relies on contributions by member states. And it's a defense policy measure, of course, adopted by the council, and under the treaty on European Union, the specific character of the security and defense policy of certain member states is respected. In particular, we have a possibility under the treaty for member states to constructively abstain as it, as it's known when CFSP measures are adopted. This means that they are not obliged to apply the measure, but they accept that the decision commits the union, and they must refrain from action which would conflict with the measure. The three member states, including Ireland, avail of this possibility when financing for military equipment for lethal purposes is, is agreed. And instead, those member states voluntarily make a contribution in respect of non-lethal assistance. So in this way, the union has been able to move forward in full respect of the national position of member states, national defense policies, in some cases constitutional requirements, so that the sovereign choices of member states are fully respected in this very sensitive area. I thought I'd say a few words as well about restrictive measures, as I mentioned already, are otherwise known as our sanctions regime. And this has been an area in which we have adopted a very large number of measures in the past year and a half since the Russian invasion. The council had already imposed certain restrictive measures on Russia after the occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, but the scope and importance of the measures has been greatly extended since 2022. There are sectoral measures and these are a wide range of measures. I'll come back to a few of them in a moment, but essentially many of them are designed to weaken Russia's economic base, deprive it of critical technologies and markets, and hopefully significantly curtail its ability to wage war. We've also adopted sanctions against Belarus because of its involvement and support to the Russians, and we've adopted measures against Iran because of its manufacture and supply of drones to the Russians in the conflict. So sectoral measures involve, for example, financial measures, restrictions on Russia's access to capital and financial markets, and a ban on using SWIFT for 10 Russian banks. We have transport measures, the airspace of the EU is closed to Russia. There are road restrictions as well, maritime transport restrictions. We have export bans of certain goods and we have import bans of certain goods and it's quite an eclectic mix. We have a lot of products there, everything from steel and wood, gold and jewellery, seafood, basically it's a collection of import bans which are designed to cause economic harm. And we even have a ban on the provision of certain services. And there are measures directed against individuals and that involves typically an asset freeze for assets which are within EU jurisdiction and a denial of entry into the EU. So these involve members of the government, others engaged in the war and oligarchs who support the Russian regime financially. And of course, ensuring the legality of all of these measures, and in particular for the individual listings, the respect for the fundamental rights of the persons listed is a big challenge for the legal service and we're very engaged in litigation in Luxembourg on this. We have nearly 100 cases concerning these regimes. The council provides reasons for the listings and it ensures that the rights of defence of these persons are respected by giving them an opportunity to comment once they have been listed. Before that, of course, you need the surprise effect and taking those comments into account. So even when we act under extreme time pressure, some of these measures were taken within a couple of days of the invasion and we've continued ever since with additional packages. We still take a lot of care to ensure that the measures are liable to pass muster before the impartial judges in Luxembourg and so we're always vigilant in advising the council in the decisions that it takes in this respect. One interesting creative measure which we had not taken before concerned ban on broadcasting activities of certain certain Russian media outlets, including Russia today. And that was motivated by the propaganda campaign carried out by Russia justifying its military aggression and targeting civil society in the EU. And we've already had a judgment in the first of those cases because several media outlets have challenged that listing. And so far the general court has has upheld the legality of the council's action. It has referred to the fact that in the field of common foreign and security policy, the council has a great deal of latitude and defining the objective of its restrictive measures. And it considered that the council could legitimately consider that these measures were necessary. And at the same time, it examined very carefully the evidence provided in support of the listing, because it wanted to ensure that the fundamental right to the freedom of expression had been respected in so far as necessary and proportionate. And the court concluded that we had done so that that is on appeal so we will wait to see what the Court of Justice says on the appeal. Then perhaps a few words on energy dependency. There, again, it's an example of a certain amount of creativity on the part of the council, because we have made quite extensive use of emergency powers which exist in the treaty under article 122 of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union. And this gives the power to adopt alone measures appropriate to the economic situation, which is quite broad in a spirit of solidarity. And these measures must be economic in nature. And there we have also been careful that the council uses this wide power responsibly because the use of that particular mechanism, which allows us to act very quickly shouldn't undermine or circumvent the use of the other legal basis which exist for action in normal times. So the situation has to be urgent, it has to be exceptional, and the measure should be temporary essentially. And so we adopted several measures concerning demand reduction for gas, solidarity, better coordination of gas purchases, we addressed high energy prices. We laid down a framework to accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, and we established a mechanism to protect union citizens and the economy against the extremely high prices which we saw for energy last year. So those measures have proved relatively effective. And now we are in the process of considering whether it is necessary and justified to prolong some or all of them, and taking into account the constraints that I have just mentioned. So just to sum up these introductory remarks. As I say, crisis doesn't turn the union into a purely political organization. We always try to ensure the full respect of the rule of law when faced with such an emergency situation. And that's why our work is very important. And creative to certain respects while staying always within the boundaries set by the treaties and our other rules and procedures. That's what makes it challenging but also absolutely fascinating and that's our life on a daily basis in respect to this area of our activity. Thank you very much.