So hello everybody and we're just waiting as people come and join us. I'm Lucinda Bromfield, I'm currently the secretary for ALT South. Thank you very much for coming and of course big thank you to all our speakers as well who are going to be telling us loads of interesting things over the next couple of hours and to just to say that we're also currently ALT South, we're looking for some more committee members. I can, speaking from personal experience, it's not a huge amount of work and it is fun so if anybody would be interested if you can drop me an email, my emails on the ALT site and we can have a chat and that was all I was really going to say in terms of opening and I'll hand over to Manish Malik who's our chairman. Thank you Lucinda, thank you for all your hard work. As you might as well say it's not a lot of work but you have done a great amount of work to get us started again. We started a few years ago where we wanted to to start up sort of research in the region and I got on to that track with a few ALT members and then I started my PhD as well so that therefore we completely sort of got engrossed in the research that we wanted to do. I'll talk about that a bit later but a really big thank you to Maran and Debbie also to join us today and and to Ale to talk about their work and to sort of highlight how the group fits in with the ALT network. I would like to just say that our group represents this group of friends where you can come in and have a regular discussion with people in the ALT South Group region that things related to learning technology, some problems, some challenges, some sharing of practice and with our newly sort of replenished team we look to run a lot of sessions throughout the year. At least a month a month you can have some kind of discussion and every term some kind of event like this where there will be invited speakers and to get some discussion sort of going within the region. In terms of our expertise with my background is systematic reviews, technology and hands-learning, my PhD area is looking at the evaluation of orchestration technology in engineering teams which include a bit about the neurotypical, neurotypical people as well. So I'm deeply interested in researching technology enhanced learning in engineering education really and other people obviously bring other advantages. Ankur is sort of going on to on a PhD in this area as well. He'll probably talk a bit more about it. I'm also student experience related and in my school here at the University of Portsmouth and I'm quite interested in evaluating technology enhanced learning and I do run some sessions on development of staff as well on technology. In terms of going forward as I was saying earlier, there will be one meeting per term of the group and that meeting would have speakers invited. So if you are aware of people who you want to hear and want to you know invite them here please send those names to us. We'll reach out and we'll try and organize that. Or if you want to do it yourself please send the details to Lucinda or myself and we will look into that. Plus as I said we want to meet every so today is the last Thursday of this month and we would like to continue this pattern every last Thursday of a month. We would like to have a one-hour just informal video conference like this one where we will sort of call that as tech Thursdays and we come in and have a chat about the issues that we're facing the solutions we can we can tell each other what sort of informal approach and that should give us an indication of what is the what are the needs of the region what do we actually want to know more about and have more sort of evidence based approach on things and that can be satisfied by these termly events by inviting relevant speakers and so running a full year like that would be our ambition. How many how many things come in the way of that that's a different matter because we still don't know what's going to happen with COVID. Things rapidly have been changing in the past and they continue to do so. In terms of outputs from the group we've already as I said earlier there's a systematic review coming up in July we want to put there into a publisher to submission at a journal which is a huge piece of work we carried out for the last two and a half three years at least if not more. We did a sort of delayed start first year was a little bit slow then we went on to to pick it pick up the work quite rigorously and there's a hundred and well hundred twelve hundred papers we reviewed and as somebody of that it will be published in a journey hopefully and the topic is use of technology to enhance learning to enhance project-based learning case-based learning simulation-based learning all those constructivist approaches that are used in stem subjects so that's very focused it's that's you know we've done a landscaping review and systematic review so two outputs coming from that so so that's how I'd like to that to continue more people who are interested in research you know please do reach out to myself and we'll see if there's enough interest in the areas you're you're wanting to work in and train and even work with you to produce more such research papers in future so that's the the eternal goal for me is this to keep on you know inviting people and engaging with them in this type of endeavor of systematic reviews I even have background with some meta-analysis so if that's something somebody's interest then we can look into that too and just quickly about the special interest groups and if people are interested please again reach out to to listen to about if they if you want to look and form a little special interest group and and continue discussions in those areas then we're more than happy to to explore that with you I think that's a quick summary of what we are about and what we want to do in the coming year and beyond I'm at that point I'd like to invite Debbie and Maran to tell us how you know the the old and our existence of work together and also give us some some sort of horizon scanning of what activities are there so over to you to Maran and Debbie thank you Manit and thank you everyone it's really great to be here and you know I think Debbie and I've been going to quite few members meet up like your group I think many other member groups are finding just a tiny bit of capacity again to meet up and reconnect a little bit more after a very chaotic year so I think we're definitely here to support and we also have a new colleague Emma who's been working with Debbie very closely on support for members groups so I'll leave Debbie to cover all those bits and maybe also it might be worth while following up with Emma as well who can provide some input and what I was hoping might be useful to you and to start off the meeting is just to give you a couple of sort of headlines from what's been going on across the association and just remind you of a couple of key resources that are available but also I hope prompt some discussion on your experience over the past year so I'm gonna Debbie and I've got the slides that we can also circulate in a mailing list if that's helpful for everybody who can't be there and I won't go through everything but I will just do a couple of highlights of the key things that I wanted to talk about today and then maybe I'll hand over to Debbie to talk about exciting developments for members and one of the things I wanted to start with was to speak about our impact report that was launched just a week ago and one of the things I've been really staggered about when we looked at you know how much has been going on across the association last year it's just at what scale of activity we've been operating and obviously we've also welcomed many new members as there more and more people interested in learning technology and it's been fantastic to see us welcome more than 5,000 participants from 300 from 30 countries and now we run a total of over 150 webinars and workshops and a lot more activity than we would have had if we a few years ago still and we've had some fantastic feedback about the sort of caring humane and and just kind of community focused activities that we've been doing as a professional body I think it's been really great to hear people's feedback about the past year and one of the things we've obviously been focusing on is professional recognition and development so we've made 16 new Seamold awards last year and funded 54 scholarships and I just wanted to highlight the scholarships to you as a group and either for members or if you're reaching out to colleagues and we do offer fully funded scholarships for all of our events and also for Seamold workshops so if you're aware of anyone for whom cost is a barrier to attend let's say the annual conference that's coming up in September please do encourage them to apply for a scholarship and that's what they're there for and we've been having great feedback about how much people valued being able to take part for free. It's been interesting for us I think as a professional body to consider how things have changed over the past year and to really have more work to do than ever before to champion the value of learning technology expertise within institutions and within the wider public so it's been interesting for me in particular to read what members have fed back to us what their value about being a member of ALT and I think the member groups like this ALT South group play a really big part in that. One of the other key changes for us as an association is that now more than half of our event participants and about 20% of our members overall have leadership and management roles we have many more members getting involved who are working at senior levels within their institutions and I think that's been particularly evident in the work we've been doing to develop the ethical framework for learning technology and that's one of these sort of horizon scanning activities that I wanted to highlight to you and just like in you know in previous years but maybe even more so than in previous years we've been working to represent our members in consultation and with policymakers there's some important pieces of work for example on transnational education with universities UK and also working with JISC and other professional bodies like CEDA and the QAA and Alden HE and 1HEs there's quite a lot of participation from our side in different collaborations to really represent the learning technology perspective and one of the other key things that I wanted to just reflect on and I have to say it's been a bit of a staggering kind of volume of support for participants during the acute crisis months which then stretched into nearly a year and Debbie was at the forefront of running these weekly drop-in sessions there's obviously many webinars still going on every month or every week and with I think the copyright and online learning group having thousands of participants alone so overall in 17 members special interest groups we now support 500 members who are actively engaged in those groups. I don't know if there's many people from further education here in the group but I just wanted to highlight that we've also set up a dedicated new network called Amplify FE that specifically supports practitioners in FE and vocational education so if that's of interest to you as a group then please do have a look at that and before I hand over to Debbie I also wanted to highlight the work we've been doing on our ethical framework in learning technology so a working group was established last October which is chaired by three of Al's trustees Bella Abrams and Sharon and Natalie and they've been working with that I think 120 members now including learners and representation from industry to develop this framework and I'm not sure if many of you have heard of this or contributed to the consultation but here is what we hope the ethical framework for learning technology will do so for practitioners will provide clear guidance and pathways to accreditation as well as practical tools for learning technology roles for institutions we hope it will help inform policies and strategic decision-making in the use of digital technology for learning teaching and assessment and in for industry we hope it'll provide a way for commercial providers to demonstrate how they're taking ethical considerations into account and engage customers in the process now here is what we've done so far so as I said we've started work in October but six months in in March we did a large consultation exercise with the members assembly we then finalized the draft framework and then went back to test it and to gather feedback in May and June and then we reported back to members at the AGM just as I'm sharing this with you now and now we're working in July and August to finalize the framework and the tools for launch in September I think that's a really important piece of work and I'm very keen to take any questions that you might have as well and see what what your experience is if this could be useful to you and and before I finish I also wanted to say that I'm not sure if many of you've made use from the findings from our annual survey this year but I think if you haven't already discovered that that might be a helpful use for you to baseline practice in your institution particularly when it comes to trends and tools and learning technology so that's one of the I think pieces of work that we've done this year that many members have found really useful but I'm just going to pause there and hand over to Debbie and then hopefully we can pick up questions and have a bit of a discussion so Debbie over to you that's lovely thank you Marin and yeah delighted to be here today it's really really great to see so many engaged members really and I'm highly delighted to see the outside there kind of refreshing their their presence and everything there's been lots of activity on the website and what have you so I'm looking forward to seeing where you go from here for those of you that don't know me I'm Debbie Baff and I'm the membership and professional development manager at ALT so as part of my role I look after our member groups our special interest groups I look after all of our member services and I'm also responsible for the C mold framework and a new initiative that we've we've recently undertaken is providing open digital badges for our members so we've literally just started this we have had digital badges previously but we're now using a different platform so we're working with open badge factory and so far we've we wanted a way of basically recognising people's membership with us so that's where we've kind of started with it and we've issued open digital badges to our ALT assembly members but more recently we've issued three and a half thousand badges to our members so whatever category of member somebody is in they will have received one of these badges we've had some really great feedback on Twitter and directly and you know it's pleasing to see that quite a good proportion of members have already accepted their member badge and are actually sharing across social media and you know fairly positive positive results for it really so we've got lots of others that we're working on including which I'm sure you'll be interested in I know Lucinda will be and we're working on badges to recognise our member group and our special interest group officers so they'll be kind of coming very very soon I'm also working on recognition for people that contribute to our blog and also our C-Mult assesses because our C-Mult programme couldn't actually run without the help of our C-Mult assesses and sometimes that that work is quite invisible that they do and we wanted a way of recognising and so that people could actually get some kudos for the great work that they do really so C-Mult assesses is also on my list to develop so that will be coming soon and also recently I've been sorting out some open digital badges for our alt-C conference which takes place in September there are other badges that we're also working on but they'll come in the next phase so I'm always happy to talk badges with anybody and we're also I should say as well as kind of offering this we're we're looking at ways of making it easier for member groups to sort of cross collaborate with each other as well so Emma that Marin mentioned earlier on has been great she's recently joined our team to help me look at the kind of the way that we're enabling people to to work together on the various presences that we have within our alt site and as part of that we're going to try and integrate it a bit more with our normal alt blog so hopefully that will will kind of raise the profile of our special interest groups and our member groups as well so Emma would be more than delighted to continue that conversation I'm sure so I think that's me done because I don't want to take up any more time. Thank you Debbie and here are contact details I think many of you already have them anyway but do do please get in touch with us and yeah we're going to hand back over to Manish now and yeah if anybody has questions or wants to discuss anything we're here. Thank you Debbie and that was great if there are any questions if people would like to ask they can raise their hands or put that in the chat the badges thing just sound very interesting and also of course you might have questions about the same alt or or the the the framework the ethical framework while that's also quite interesting to me in particular. If anybody wants to join the working group to just keep up to date with the ethical framework I'll I think Debbie's already put the link in the chat so working group will open anyone can join and do feel absolutely welcome to do that. I'll ask a question I don't know if that's the right time to do that but I'll ask anyways because I don't know where Ben else to ask it we keep looking as researchers for for opportunities for funding for just small parts of Manish for doing sort of academic pedagogy research in learning technology and it yeah it doesn't take for a small project doesn't take a huge amount but I think there's still very little out there in terms of funds to do is this something which all looks into and get with support in future. That's a great question Manish I think I think it would be a good idea to put our feelers out with our research and learning technology editorial board because I think that's probably the part of out which that's the most kind of research focus work and we've we've funded scholars to attend and write about things for the annual conference but other than that I'm not aware of any initiatives at the moment so and I'll make a note of that and investigate a bit and then report back that's a really good prompt thank you because I mean uncle is going to just talk about his whenever he talks about his research when he's he's on to a PhD and you know there are many other people who may also want to progress in that direction so if there's funding around and that's sort of it's the words being used kudos and it gives them them both the the the academic opportunity and kudos that they've got something funded and that looks really good on their profiles it helps them. One thing I'm aware of is that for any research that's related to open education there are funding opportunities with the GOGN network I don't know if many of you have come across that I know Debbie is a member of that network because she's also doing PhD at the moment so I'll put I think they have fellowship applications open so I'll put a link in the chat to that as well. Excellent that's great thank you so much any other questions in the chat anybody can see let's have a quick scroll through no okay well I guess Ankur you can come in perhaps now and and if you wish to read that discussion that you want to about yeah please or do you. That's perfect thanks thanks Manish and thanks Maran and Debbie for the initial information. Morning all my name is Ankur Shah I work in the Faculty of Business and Law as a technical and e-learning manager and and just while Manish mentioned just to give everyone a brief info about my PhD in my first year anyways I've got my operational knowledge by I thought I might as well improve my academic side of things by doing a PhD so I'm doing a PhD in digital transformation because obviously with the pandemic happening and everything moving towards digital I thought it might be a good place to start my PhD with so currently based on the readings and stuff so far I have done I'm sort of looking into processes and how industries across the sector or even higher education have they've improved the processes and whether they are digitally transformed based on the digital maturity model and and just based on that going forward in terms of doing my collection of data and doing my research and potentially answering the question that I'll have down the line but I'm in my early stages of my research so it's been nearly three months I'm in because I started in February so hopefully once I start reading more and more I'll have more idea about the digital transformations out of things and maybe I'll be able to able to share more findings across the sector but ideally today's today's idea about about what I initially wanted to share I mean you have mentioned earlier Marin mentioned and Debbie as well about kudos to all the academics who have actually over the past 18 months and not only evolved their style of teaching but had to adapt to the way they were delivering their teaching and ideally what I would like to explore from the participants who joined our session is to to share their success stories in terms of what did they find valuable for their students in the past 18 months in terms of how they delivered their teaching and you can you can keep the technology to one aspect but let's focus on the teaching pedagogy and the delivery style and basically share your success stories in terms of what sticks positively and what are the things that you know you would you would sort of like to what what were the things that made it possible that you would think are valuable for your students or were valuable for your students because I think it would it would form a nice foundation moving towards alleys session in some time so I would sort of open the floor for for all our participants and I would like to ask them like making it a collaborative session I would like to ask them to share their success stories with us and then perhaps we can sort of have questions and answers in between or even even discuss about their points that they will share with us so here's the opportunity for people to really engage and and contribute anybody would like to yeah Allison is trying to yeah yeah I just put on my microphone because it's that classic thing with teaching isn't it you wait for someone to answer um I think there's a number of things um I would take away I'm a course director of an online distance learning masters so I've been in quite demand over the last year in terms of trying to support staff with how to you know teach in this kind of environment um there's a couple of things I would I would take away and I would you know in discussion with colleagues there are some things I think some of them have appreciated too and this is how we um sort of structure the resources or the combination of resources that we make available for students so we use the campus platform where we would put you know a sort of module basis and I had the advantage of being able to import some digital resources from my online teaching from my online distance learning teaching into my on-campus modules and this means that I could then focus the time I had with them for synchronous learning to to collaborate more in discussion in sort of group exercises in work that used padlet I use padlet quite a lot in terms of you know sort of collaborative exercises and that works quite well both in the classroom and and online um there's quite a lot of management of breakout rooms that I think we learned over time um for on-campus students and students that are expecting to teach to be taught online and distance were different are different to those who weren't and one of the things I think I I perceived is that that expectation and that sort of disruption in learning for on-campus students built-in resistance and I think a lot of tutors found that quite difficult to overcome and I it's not that we're not doing it well it's that the students themselves didn't know how to manage it weren't expecting to manage it they found their own time management difficult they got distracted easily um and so on so you know I think there were things around it that where we had to provide a lot more sort of support um and in doing that sorry I'm going on a bit but in doing that I found regular communication with students so I use quite a lot of sort of scheduling for communication and um so that they knew I was sort of keeping up with them um and made myself sort of accessible through those digital platforms in a way that in some ways we we aren't as accessible when they're on campus so that's another thing I took away that you know making ourselves accessible through the digital communication is sometimes easier for students to reach out to us that way than it is to come and knock on the door um even if we have so-called office hours so those are a couple of things um and I'm sure other people have things to add to that um but the you know the taking away from the formal lecture process by structuring other inputs so that we could use the synchronous sessions I felt more collaboratively and supportively um was one of the big takeaways for me that's great thank you anybody else I'd like to chip in I was very eloquently put by Allison the some of the things I also completely sort of relate to as well but I'll come to that in a minute James yeah hi can I just uh sorry my I have just got my laptop re-imaged and um this the font size is incredibly small I think it was Allison I think uh who's just talking and I I just like to sort of add weight to that and I think that um that anchor's research might have hit on something actually because I think over the past sort of year or so we haven't really been teaching online in a sense we've been transitioning and our student our students um did not sign up for online they signed up for sitting in classrooms talking to us and I've been I've got a a meeting on Monday with my with my team I'm a course leader too and I've got a meeting with my team and I'm just putting together some stats um so that we can have a discussion and it's really interesting to I've only done three modules so far but what I what I've done is I've looked at um the correlation between what I'm calling moodle activity which is essentially interact with online teaching materials um zoom activity which is sort of webinar activity synchronous um and and it's sort of combined and it's really interesting to look at the correlations between those activities and the students performance on the module so it's quite it's quite interesting that um uh in in my module the students there was a higher correlation between being in zooms and their performance than there was between um the online materials which is devastating for me because I spent huge amounts of time creating h5p's and interactive learning experiences for the students now on other modules it's it's different um and so I think it's it's an issue sort of of how individual teaching styles have translated into um into online environments and also pedagogies the the person who's got the highest number of correlations I can't obviously I don't want to say names on name modules but the person um who has got the highest correlations very much the pedagogy of that module is very much geared towards the performance on the assignment and that has as you might imagine has created the highest number of correlations but it's really interesting to look now I haven't checked this data yet um because obviously I'm I've got these stats off Moodle and so you know the big question mark about how sort of accurate that is and I need to investigate that but it's very very interesting to see that I suspect there are going to be quite large disparities across the different modules which have been dependent on the approaches that people have taken can I just say that the the person with the highest number of correlations has not gone for gone in for anything fancy um they they've gone in from basically um chunking lectures lecture material it's quite a simplistic approach which seems to have had the most effect but I suspect the effect of the online is is in fact cross-correlated with the personal teaching style and the pedagogy that's being adopted in the module if I've taken this in a completely wrong direction I do apologize but I'm just my first meeting no no it's absolutely fine James I think I think yeah yours and Allison's we were quite nice um anyone else yeah I quite agree with yeah there is no wrong direction that's correct I think I think what Allison and James have sort of alluded to is something we we have been doing within within the faculty as well in in the past few months um so myself one of my other colleague Aaron and Valerie we have been we've been actually meeting academics to find out exactly the same thing that I've asked the colleagues over here is about what has worked well for them what sticks keely for their students and it's very interesting because I was I was trying to see whether there might be different themes coming up from here but it's very interesting to see that the themes don't come up differently because while while our discussion with the academics over here and while you guys sharing your views the first thing that I sort of picked up from from Jim and from Allison is keep it simple but make it effective sort of thing um which which like basically what Jim mentioned was the the academic didn't do anything fancier but they kept it simple then the other bit was about giving the students um sort of you know having the student friendly relationship relational opportunities which is something Allison mentioned earlier where we're doing the synchronous session with the students giving them the actual opportunities sort of things which is which is quite nice as well um and in essence pretty much like to to not quoting someone else's word but it's pretty much good teaching is good teaching it doesn't matter however you do it as long as you're teaching good and students get it that's that's what good teaching means so I think I think that's that's in my context and based on what Ali is going to present it's sort of a good icebreaker for everyone because I'm I I certainly think Ali's thing will add on to whatever people have shared over here and then I'm sure Ali will pull have Ali will be happy to answer any questions you guys will have so yeah just can I come in as well before we go to Ali um yeah um well it was touched upon by by Allison the the structure and and and I've I've immediately I'm I'm somewhat I don't know I'm I'm autistic or not but I might be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum if not over onto the other side um and as an engineer for me structure is everything you know if I see structure it makes me feel familiar in a familiar place and this year in our our university thanks to the central team you know we've had structured moral sites and we sort of all our lecturers in in my school we just immediately lashed on to that we and the students loved it too being being engineers wanting to be engineers that there's some kind of something to be said about that I don't know what's the research on it but the structure love for structure for engineers is it was evident in our school at least and weekly you know organized um mood learning environment with time and sort of repeating lectures or synchronized sessions in our school we went slightly different from the university we we did do synchronous lectures and many others as well did but then yeah a lot of people were doing pre-recorded content and materials beforehand and then try to engage them in activities in class we didn't do that we we went in with the lectures like it would in a face-to-face setting because we were aware that a we did some survey from the students in the summer we asked them what would you rather have and they said well listening to students we we did what they said that we would rather have the lecturer being there and answer our questions if we need if we need some help from them in a real-time session and then record that session and make it available for us as well for later the FOMO kicks in after you know if you if you miss a few lectures you're always learning what I've heard or whatever I missed the fear of missing out and then and so recorded lecture really addresses that very well so structure for me the key takeaways with structure orchestrating students into these life sessions through sending them out the links or showing them where they can find the links because their timetable wouldn't show them the links you know the timetable appears on google and they have their their antenna that they're what you call them yeah lectures all scheduled in a week but then they have to find the link and each each lecture might be doing things slightly differently and it just takes a little bit longer and it might just yeah be very stressful in the beginning to coming into a lecture late some may not come into because of that but anyways after a few weeks of whatever we were doing students do get used to so keeping that in mind the students get used to something and if everybody is beating in the same way that you know this is how we're doing it this is how we're doing it people just get used to that and that becomes the norm and and you get people coming into lectures then what do you do in lectures there was some mention about difficulties on breakout rooms and i totally agree and students have had back you know in in all different ways that having sort of group work done in in these breakout rooms it depends really who you end up with if somebody's going to decide decide to just be quiet and you're the only other person there who want to talk you cannot have a conversation with just yourself in that and and sometimes what happens when the lecture comes in there then they start talking and then as soon as the lectures out they stop talking so group work has really not been able to sort of manage or be sort of very good with that i'd say but other than that you know it's been there's some very good positives from coming from the structure coming from um moodle quizzes and things like that which which help people to learn and practice um things when they are when they're not in campus they are in their rooms they can actually watch a video and do some quizzes so that's that's really been in use that'll be my two cents and i'll be quiet after that there is just one question manish on the chat from edward who says and um by all me edward i might not be an expert but i'm sure there are experts over here um in in our in our room edward ask a question about how do you think the arts are dealing with online learning because they they don't fit the typical structural online course um but i'll sort of leave it open for colleagues to answer but i mean i would have my way of sort of tech sort of things but i'd rather let colleagues answer from the academic perspective um i was going to observe that i think it's interesting that you're talking about engineers because i think engineers have a very structured teaching schedule where they're used to being taught for most of the day and that contrast with arts is quite an interesting one i sit in social sciences i'm part of the business school and we're probably closer to the arts model than we are to the engineering model also the pedagogy says that trying to sit through a full hour online is not the best way for learning so we encourage staff to although pre-record lectures but to chunk it down into smaller elements so that students could pick it up and put it down according to their own schedules so that i mean for instance i did one course one module or course depending on how you use your terminology um where i chunked my my lecture element down into 20 minute sections um because then students you know that's the attention span so if you can take it into you know there's a lot of research in the pedagogy that says they're better off if they've got shorter elements um you know to focus and also for taking notes and things and i think that question around arts i think that's probably where that comes in as well that if you can structure the combination of resources that signpost a different kind of balance between the kind of online resources that you're providing rather than thinking oh we have three hours a week contact normally let's provide them with three hours contact online or four hours contact online um i think it's that that challenge that students have had in managing their time and managing their study they can somehow cope better if they can chunk it a bit better i don't know if anyone else has had that experience i i sort of agree with you on that listen because we've had um i'm sure jim will agree as well we've had a similar approach within val because i i work in the faculty of business and law as well and we sort of adopted that when i say we um agreeing with the heads obviously and with their decision we sort of agreed to go with short chunks of lectures and stuff um but i think i think and i'm just adding it in in the mix over here but i think while everyone followed the short chunking of lectures and stuff i think from a student perspective we did have some students saying they liked the aspect of having a live lecture because that's what gave them the the how should i put it that's what gave them the essence of learning otherwise doing short chunks lectures and then leaving students to actually look at them by themselves is one thing i think james mentioned earlier is you can't actually see whether the students are engaging with the content or not and it was it was sort of and it's it's there is no balance and there is no right and wrong to this but it was just sort of that one of the thing that we picked up after after the year where we we going forward for september there is a huge discussion across the faculty and across the university of how we should go with things going forward sort of thing so yeah okay i think if that's everybody's contribution maybe because i have we got time i'm just sort of mindful of the time but i think we're okay um so just a couple of things um about the arts so i'm i'm law-based so i don't have experience this personally but i did um watch um a short presentation by a colleague who teaches art and sort of physical art so painting and all of those sorts of things and sculpture um and she was saying that one of the really big issues was actually getting materials so they had to do a whole new thing with projects with found objects that students could actually work on um and then they used zoom to to talk about things um but it was it was very difficult particularly because what they've been doing previously relied on students being physically present to learn techniques and do various other things so it's a very difficult year for them but i i don't know it is anybody else sort of arts-based who could add anything we're all we're all we're all much more academic subjects it looks like here um the only other thing i was going to say was there was another question further up that i think was for james um from samantha uhern um she just talked about accessibility and accessibility concerns um and the question was was what's your equitable plan be so i don't know if we have time to just have a little think about that as a group as well manish does that work is anybody got any sort of comments around that i was busy typing something so could you could you just say that not again yeah just ask you digital accessibility and sort of what what people are doing in terms of equitable concerns about the year we've had for students and just trying to balance what's been going on and i think probably particularly for for students who do have accessibility issues for whatever reasons and or who certainly in in my experience who have been disadvantaged because they have never done online learning before and it's completely different um so we had a little chat in the chat about it so they've had to learn how to do that on top of everything else that was going on and i don't think i mean i certainly didn't i think i underestimated how much of an issue that was going to be for some of my students so i ended up running some just come along to an adobe room we'll have a chat we'll play some silly bingo games you know learn how to use the mic where all the controls are and all of that sort of thing which i sort of i mean with hindsight i should completely have realized that that was going to be a thing but i sort of didn't because in my world most people are pretty you know knowledgeable and i teach um level seven i teach post grads so i just sort of it it was a completely wrong assumption i shouldn't have assumed that but i thought it would be easier for them than it was now i sense the the there's a little bit of a sort of a tension between the accessibility offers from the online you know and and it sort of is both ways it's some in some ways it is better than the campus and in some ways it still needs so i think we should we should we should nurture this topic in the coming weeks and and see what we can do around that perhaps or keep a note of that um yeah that's all i can say at this moment at this point i don't know because um you know i did some work earlier but this was for Lancaster University about two years ago so it's out of date whatever i did so i won't talk about that on accessibility uh okay uncle uncle do you want to proceed or is there any other point or anybody else like to say anything about accessibility um related topic no then in which case i think we can invite professor ale Amalini for his much-awaited talk and thank you for being patient and and being here so over to you ale okay thank you colleagues for inviting me to to share a few ideas with you today it's a small group so it's um it's more likely to be a conversation rather than a presentation or or anything like that so feel free to um interrupt and show your horror throughout don't wait till the end um just get the horror out i should begin by saying that um my next door neighbor uses a piece of technology um apparently very well it's called a lawn mower and he picks he has an admirable ability to pick his timings to do the lawn when i'm speaking at an event so apologies if you if you hear any any any of that in the background um i'm going to try and uh share some content with you now it's um it's a while since i i think i think it works it's a while since i used uh collab but um i think you should be able to see us a slide now so um let let me share with you what what the plan is for today uh in the in the minutes that we have together uh we have um essentially four five bullet points uh for mostly content driven and and and a q&a at the end uh and uh and of course given the size of the group don't wait till the end i'll i'll be asking um uh anchor and uh and manage to to to interrupt me at any point with any issues that arise from the chat or or anything else of course put your hand up and and um and interrupt um i'm so sorry to see that you're going marin disappointing but there you go sorry ale i'm sorry to interrupt as well i apologize no problem no problem thank you for coming and um and and hope to see you at another event very soon thank you right so those are those that's that's the plan for today so let me let me start by by sharing some some principles and then i move on to some of the earlier work um and some i i realize that some of these principles might might be a little bit debatable if not controversial but here we go um this uh this is a set of principles that um that that revolve around the notion of active blended learning or abl which has nothing to do with pushing technology down people's throats uh it's about good design good pedagogic design and teaching practice um the second one is about um what what is a good way forward when we design for good learning uh so if we if we use the analogy what is the best way to write well it's to rewrite well we can we can apply that and and say well the best way to design for effective learning is to redesign over and over again uh the third one uh one i like very much and i've been flying the flag for that one for for a few years now content is not king context is uh there is an obsession with uh with content i love my content my students love my content if you're nice to me i'll share some of my content with you um actually what matters is what students and tutors do with that content why they do it how they do it who they do it with and so on um good contexts promote quality contact um and uh and that contact can happen in various environments not just the physical one not just synchronous uh and we can have a long chat about that as well um one aspect i'll delve a little deeper on you know a few minutes is uh very much uh around what we mean by blended learning uh and what we should not mean by blended learning but i'll park that for the moment because i'll go into that later um let's think synchronous and asynchronous in whatever environment rather than the velcro approach of face to face and online it's it's so interesting to hear people talk about the split between face to face and online in the same sentence as they're using to talk about a blend so is it a blend or is it a split uh and if there is a blend then we should not be talking about separating the bits about face to face teaching the bit about online teaching we should really be talking about blending and and and that does not always come across clearly in the in the narrative of many of our colleagues actually um the the second to last one is the spot the difference one again one word i try to avoid is deliver i hear so many people in the academic sector who should actually know better talking about content delivery as a substitute or as an equivalent even to teaching uh content delivery is one thing teaching is another and teaching well is another content is one thing learning is another accessing content is one thing accessing learning opportunities is another let's be clear about that um so uh there are many things finally that we can do with in honor about learning deliver uh is not one of them so uh just to get started on active learning before we move to active blended learning uh this is an old quote from 1991 that still guides some of our thinking that still guides um many of the things we do with our students uh it's not just about doing things it's about doing and thinking about the things we do and that is uh that is very much central to the definition of active blended learning i will share with you in a few moments um i'd like to set this task for you very informally because we're a small group um we can do this verbally we can do this in the chat whichever way you prefer i'm putting i'm giving you a list down the left hand side of words active blended connected distance distributed um and i'm giving you an opportunity to think about words you associate and you do not associate with each of those terms i will give you my own answer as an next slide but um can i invite you people to um either grab the mic and and share your thoughts on on this or indeed put that in the chat if you so prefer um so just a couple of minutes to reflect on this words you associate with these terms and words you don't perhaps the opposite silent there's also an interesting question from ed at the fault and if you can look right i can see that you are you have i didn't know you've had the the functionality enabled but if you have the functionality enabled please write into the slide which is what some of you are doing great i i couldn't see if you if you had those options on your screens fantastic thank you very interesting to see words like didactic in in the second column because coming from uh non english speaking culture myself um didactic is not a bad word in latin literature and on learning and teaching didactics is actually an area of study uh which is quite broad and and quite diverse and quite rich um so it's very interesting when i when i interact with british colleagues and they talk about didactic as as a bad thing when uh when it means something very very different in in other in in literature in other languages so we've got things like seamlessness between face-to-faceness and and digital we've got connections creative engaged energy involvement students doing stuff availability of help anytime anywhere on and off campus physically not virtually um we have ideas around loneliness we have ideas around teacher centeredness centralization wall gardens connections creativity emotion right thank you global yes right um that's been great thank you for for for putting into uh into the slide i can see in the chat as well that people have shared shared words like synthesis and integration and active and doing which is which is great um so uh i'm going to share my answers with you which is which are here um and of course some of that overlaps with what you've been adding into the previous slide um i'm not going to read all of this i'm just going to highlight a few aspects of this the blend and the second row the blend revolves around for me around creating the right context synchronous asynchronous where motivation plays a key role that is very different from the dual track approach which is the split between face-to-face and online which i call simplistic bearing mine simplistic means one thing simple means another i like simple i dislike simplistic and and and and that brings me back to the velcro analogy i was i was referring to earlier connections or connected refers to to the three in my view to the three key types of interaction uh that that we find in in face-to-face in online in any type of of blend which is learner learner learner tutor learner content uh and um uh and distance and and distributed both for me have to do with location have to do with place uh now uh distance has more to do with pace uh and autonomy and uh and and and it does require a lot of resilience so uh that's that's just a few thoughts which which bring me nicely to what i said before about component of blends and there is a a focus a historical focus on face-to-face versus online and uh and i would argue that we should move away from such um such a focus on such obsession there are many other dimensions i put four here just for discussion but not not they are not the only four so we've got synchronous asynchronous whatever that happens remember synchronicity can happen in and outside the classroom a synchronicity can happen in and outside the classroom who does what who facilitates what is it tutor facilitated tutor mediated or is it student mediated is it is it work done individually is it work done in groups how does that interact with the other three quadrants blends are complex multi-layered messy things we must not stick to the face-to-face online therefore it's a blend please let's move away from that in the context of my previous role as dean of learning and teaching at the University of Northampton where i spent eight years between 2012 and 2020 we had three major institutional large-scale projects running and today they are illustrated here today i'm essentially focusing on that one which is which is the bottom left and and i'm going to share a few couple of slides now that that you some of you may have seen elsewhere indeed they may be they are part of the book that that myron was talking about earlier so this this one captures in a single slide our early or earlier thinking around abl around active blended learning in in many cases people associate this with the flipped classroom except that that bit in the middle the sense-making bit in the middle is often not always but often missing from people's designs and so a lot of people tend to think colleagues of mine keep telling me yes you you give them material to read and they come to the next session and they haven't read it surprise what a surprise you give them videos to watch and they haven't watched them and in the next session you've got to recap and waste time that we should be spending on discussion doing the things that students should have before all of that is true and there is no vaccine against that there's no guarantee that whatever we do that will fix it but what we do suggest is that that we should steer clear of approaches characterized by read this watch that come back with three points next week that is we need to do better than that we need to do better than giving simplistic instructions like that and we need to to be more sophisticated in terms of the sense-making element the the scaffold that we build around those elements of material and content that we're so obsessed with and bear in mind that in that in that slide we have there is no reference really to onlineness there is there is no reference to digital there's no reference to tech this is this is this is about how people teach and how people learn a more recent version of this looks like this and that's that's more the like the one that appears in in in the active blended learning articles and in the book at the top you've got the activities are center stage with embedded content so what matters is what students do hence the activities and the content which is critical is embedded in those so so students need that content to be able to to develop and to meet the the the requirements of the activities then we have real-time sessions whether that happens in in the classroom or or online doesn't it's not specified here on purpose but what is specified is that it's due to facilitated and it's primarily synchronous and then we have a consolidation phase for evaluation reflection that happens primarily asynchronously so that again is the same idea as the slide before what did help us a lot at Northampton was very much having a an agreed institutional definition for what we mean by active blended learning and that is what that definition is and it is it is a a pedagogical approach that combines sense-making activities with focused student interactions with content peers and tutors the three types inappropriate learning settings in and outside the classroom with some descriptions below or strap lines if you like below so that's that's the published definition the official definition we've had for years and it helped us to galvanize what we meant by this and so it helped us move away from the content bombardment culture of upload content use your VLE as a content dump approach this helped us move forward in that respect not that it fixed the problem fully but it it it did shift people's thinking towards student centeredness towards making sense of things towards active learning towards using technology as and when it's appropriate to use technology how did we do how did we scale this up well it took us around five years five and a half years to do this in that period we invested in human resource in expertise in scaling up we ran round about 600 learning design workshops that more or less looked like this this is based on on the original carpet EM approach that that we Julie salmon and I worked on extensively at Leicester uni before my time at Northampton we changed a few elements of it at Northampton we had a different name for it it's called Cairo and it's not my idea to call it like that but it that was the name it had as some of you will know it's a staged process that has a critical very creative element around the storyboarding and and it is the storyboarding that enables that enables the course team the multidisciplinary course team to really express what they think the course is about with learning technologists with learning designers with employers and with students I can talk about the Cairo approach at length there is quite a bit of literature around this too so any any any issues on that we can we can discuss them we are in the process of considering something like this at Portsmouth whether it's this or some of the other approaches which share some elements with Cairo but we're precisely at that stage at Portsmouth now with a view to scaling up a consistent approach to learning design that removes the the the content focus into interaction knowledge building as a team this is a team approach can i interrupt you there were there were a couple of questions from Edward on the chat so one of one of them and Edward you might want to help me over here one of them says do you have a contextual example of this which i'm assuming is for ABL i think and then the other question from him was how did you deal with culture change and convince people which i'm sure you might mention it later on so yeah yeah yes the contextual example of this is i i am placing this in context i am i am not speaking about this in a vacuum and i'm explaining that this happened in the context of a university of in this case northampton and in as we move forward at Portsmouth as well all of this happened in in in the context of people having many things to do many boxes to tick lots of admin activity going on as well this of course revolved impacts directly on things like validation on things like change of approval things like periodic subject review one of the key things that we did was incorporate this into those processes into those quality processes so that there had to be a pretty good reason for a course not to have undergone a redesigned process like this before a periodic subject review or revalidation or any of those processes so all of all of these things that i'm saying is happen in context they they they are very much a story from experience in a in a university that that that of course had many additional priorities as well in terms of the culture change that itself can generate probably a couple of new sessions just on that topic i do have a couple of slides on that later so i will temporarily park this and i'll return to that in a few minutes but just as as you would probably imagine highlighting benefit was the absolute key thing here highlighting benefit of this approach and indeed of similar approaches like ucl's abc approach that is raised by Samantha in a in a different in a different point abc and this share a number of features they differ in a number of other features and we can talk about that both have significant advantages both have some disadvantages but the the outcome is meant to be similar in that we want a team approach to scaling up course design we want a team approach and a consistent approach which does not mean identical it means consistent where the values across the board are shared although each teaching act will of course differ so yeah there is a there is another question which i've just noticed in the in the chat which is about whether the work at Northampton was driven by the move to the new campus no no it's the other way around the new campus followed this when i started at Northampton in 2012 i had no clue that we were going to be in a new campus at the end of 2018 this work started long before what what what did happen is that the new campus gave us a deadline for this to be done because we designed the new campus on the basis of pedagogic principles that that that active blended learning was was promoting so Northampton's new campus without lecture theaters is is an example of of of what big decisions were made on the basis of how we thought learning and teaching happened at its best so the new campus gave us a deadline but we shaped the new campus on the basis of this approach so there are a few other points in the in the chat as well that that we can handle and we can tackle so let me let me just move forward a little bit to see if they those other the next bits help to answer some of these points and if not we will of course return to them so this is a little a little task for you which you can do on top of the slide or in the chat if you prefer so a course that is not taught in active blended learning mode looks like what so i've told you what abl is i gave you a definition what i'm asking you is need to tell me what abl is not so can you can you experiment a little bit here and i'm putting some some answers into the slider in the chat extra remember this is this is what abl is not content dump lectures there's no evidence of student-centered activities there's no evidence of engagement so a clear answer there lectures repository afterthought peer learning yes all of that reflective practice no evidence of that oh someone's deleted the lot right that was that was my mistake sorry i clicked the wrong button that's my sorry really sorry okay okay really sorry really so i'm going to give you my answers as i did before which are very much in sync with or in line with what you've just put in here so of course it's not taught in abl if it makes regular use of non- interactive lectures and i i'd pause there for a moment because in no way am i suggesting that that that lectures should never happen what i'm saying every good blend has some element of various of various things of some component of various things and and there is a point about using lectures here there well the problem the problem arises when the lecture becomes the regular perhaps the default means of transmitting information and that is where we have a problem here this this this relates to a later point about the absence of teacher training on teacher education in higher education where people do lectures sometimes because they have to sometimes out of necessity but also sometimes because that's what they know what how to do and they have very little knowledge of other methods and and and we need to be quite blunt about that and quite transparent about that and that's exactly one of the things we said at Northampton and and we put in place a range of other alternatives available for people to learn from so every good blend will have a bit of this and a bit of that and teacher centeredness is one of those bits as long as it's used in moderation the vle is primarily a content repository or a or a content dump on that activity is an add-on so it's an afterthought if you like so this is the velcro thing so i'll do my face-to-face bits i'll i'll i'll just put a few bits online so that's fine i'll tick the box so i do i do blended learning so everyone is happy and there is no evidence of systematic enhancement is the final bit but all of the things that you said to would work here equally well so let me let me just move because we we have been focusing so far on the earlier work if you remember my plan it was principles and earlier work i'd like to move a little bit into from the published definition of abl that i shared before to this definition of blended and connected which is the which is the terminology which is the narrative that was in place at portsmouth when i joined in september and so this is a draft definition that my colleagues and i have been working on in the last few weeks which makes use of the earlier one but but adds a few new elements so this is not official but it's a draft piece of work that we've been doing and again some common areas synchronously and asynchronously in and outside the classroom through activities taking ownership critique incorporate new knowledge application of that knowledge not this is not just about skills it is about knowledge and removed from here is the is the sense making bit which was thought to to be rather too cognitive if you like but with a view to making the definition accessible to a broader audience the the idea was to make this to make those changes and and and and sort of soften some of the elements of the previous definition so this is this is where we are where we are at and to to kind of to end this section of of the sort of principles and earlier work just a couple of things one is some literature on this and this is the book that marin was referring to earlier marin wrote the preface to this book and the book has two sorry four open access chapters and and out of a total of 15 chapters and it's got a nice intro and preface as i said so a few articles there on abl as well and the final one that i wanted to share brings me back to the the change process the culture change this is looks very funny in in blackboard collaborate the original slide is rather different from this but the key elements are there if we look at the three big overlapping circles and the change to active blended learning over a period of five and a bit years sits very much in the yellow bit bottom left developmental incremental change within the culture making small incremental changes from what already exists the response to covid so emergency remote teaching ert as it's often called would sit at the top as responsive reactive and a change such as building a campus without staff offices would sit in the bottom right as radical innovative with its pros and cons and the the the key element there is is shifting any change that happens in the periphery if you like when we have evidence that it works that's a key part shifting those changes from the periphery to the middle so the concept there is from innovation to mainstream enhancement the new business as usual and that's pretty much what we did active blended learning at North Anthony is not something we do in addition to our job it is our job and that is the new business as usual and i think before i move on to the final bit of of the presentation it's probably anchor a good a good time to for you to to give me a bit of a summary of any questions or points in the chat so we can address those and then move on yeah that's perfect thanks for that i think there were there were a couple of questions one of them i think was from edward as well but he he said it can be left until the end and he was it was more in the context of he pretty much wanted an example of where it went from read this and come with come up with three points and what it looked like after the implementation sort of thing but basically he wanted to understand the model of how did it look when academics actually did it sort of thing so do you want me to address that first briefly and then we will do another question yeah yeah yeah we we provided extensive examples of what that might look like and of course what that looks like will differ from context to context from discipline to discipline and from person to person and even within a single person's own practice from the morning group to the afternoon group if you like but we we worked on the basis of what i would call flexible templates ways to turn a question like read this watch that come back with three key points which is perhaps an overused and abused approach to a slightly more structured focused benefits driven aligned approach which follows the a bit of a of a structure of an activity with its spark or initial point of focus at the top a purpose in one line the task itself brief an indication of time needed to complete the task and an ability to respond to somebody else's response to the task and we use that which is originally based on on on on gilly sammel's activity model but with with a number of improvements over time we use that as a as a as a flexible template as i said to guide the construction of a rather more sophisticated set of activities that go far beyond the the read this watch that so in brief that's how we did it and we scaled that up and we gave people the chance to to to have a continuum from very simple things that students can do in five or ten minutes to to many projects using the same template and that that seemed to work and that seemed to to to gain traction throughout disciplines not just in some disciplines but across the board um anchor anything else and yeah and one one question from Manish is about can you pretty much say what that that tactic means elsewhere sorry you cut out a bit can you say yeah so basically what Manish was asking was can you mention what didactic means elsewhere or didactic didactic yeah yeah sorry i can't say probably okay yeah the the didactics with an s at the end uh in in spanish italy and portuguese french and german danish and swedish at least those are the ones i i am aware of is an area of knowledge you have faculties of didactics in those countries in those universities and didactics means the study of teaching practices it does not mean teacher-centeredness it it means the study of teaching practices pedagogy on the other hand is a broader term that is has been used and that reconfigured across different cultures over the centuries and from its initial meaning of the science the art and science of teaching children it moved on to many other things and people use and again abuse the term pedagogy in all sorts of things so so for just to give you an example to illustrate the point the the the pluralization of pedagogy in other words pedagogies would be unthinkable in in in spanish or in portuguese it just wouldn't work it and it doesn't work because because his geographies wouldn't work either you can talk about teaching methods but pedagogy is is the umbrella term that covers all of that so i hope i've answered the the didactics question on that and i'm very happy to to to discuss that further but are there any other points anchor in the chat no that's it and i think one final question and probably colleagues have answered it but it's like will the can you share the slides with the participants attending i know we are recording this but if they want a copy yeah that's that's no problem the slides are available to all who want them yep no problem at all there's a comment from Samantha which intrigued me is she says about that she's been working eight and a half years in in h e and things that are bread and butter for for herself are still not embedded any sort of thoughts on on that maybe maybe useful for us so i i i'm sorry i did not understand the actual question no it was because i i taught secondary for eight and a half years so there are things in a secondary classroom and the pedagogies are very different and they're very active but i came in h e eight and a half years ago and was like what do you mean you're still talking to people for two hours and eight and a half years later it's still a belly show slow shift there were things that i just did uncovered in my pgce you know 17 18 years ago that are still kind of new and not embedded yet in in h e and it's kind of i get it's a slow moving ship but at the same time it's a bit sad and disheartening if that yeah i i understand and but but you see the you taught in secondary which means that you had focused proper pgce type teacher education program the vast majority of colleagues in higher education don't i'm bearing mind that professional recognition is not a teaching qualification it's just professional recognition so the the the the the the issue we find it across the sector international globally not just in the uk is is one where a lot of people are asked to do activities teaching activities without without a qualification that that enables them to do so many of them are brilliant at doing that anyway don't get me wrong but but that the the absence of of teacher education at higher education level and the confusion between teacher education and professional recognition prompted by these fellowships then that that adds to the problem it doesn't fix it and and i think we need to we need to be quite open about this as well and and understand that that teaching well is one of the key things we need to do in a university and if we don't do that very well and all we know is stand up and spout then we have a problem yeah um one one one final question ali um is from Edward he says does pedagogy imply that teaching of children is more developed than the teaching of adults uh no it doesn't imply that the term per se does not imply that at all what we what we do know is that in this country and in many other countries in order to teach children you have to have a specific license a specific qualification whereas to teaching higher education you don't if you have a master's a phd well you're fine actually you're not that fine perhaps you can do it very very well you can indeed you can do it brilliantly but the the prerequisites for primary and secondary school teaching are quite strict for teaching in he what you need is a higher degree and in essence with that and a bit of a bit of research and so on it appears that you're okay well my point is that and the literature corroborates this is that now many many colleagues are not okay and they do what they can which is often not really what i would call brilliant practice okay um so i think i think those were the questions we just go final 20 minutes early so yeah so again uh thank you for all those points and very happy to uh to continue to debate them after i i wanted to move slightly from active blended learning to ERT or emergency remote teaching um a few things to to say here uh my experience with years of embedding and practicing abl with colleagues on my previous institution uh that turned out to be an unexpected benefit an unexpected good very good thing in preparation for ERT so in march 2020 the jump from abl to let's go full online wasn't that painful the pivot wasn't that painful uh and um and the practices associated with online learning followed a lot of the principles that people had already acquired in relation to active blended learning so teach students centeredness activity uh interactions of the three types avoiding uh you know uh stand up and talk for an hour all of those things were already in place there were some other problems of course a a typical one is timetabling oh if i have a seminar or a session of any kind on Tuesday at three o'clock all i'll do is i'll put in a synchronous session on blackboard collaborate on zoom or google meet on Tuesday at three o'clock and that'll be fine that became an obvious problem as many of you will will will have seen in in your own institutions we had a process in place um sort of an on-the-fly stuff development process in place that addressed such things and again it goes back to redesign which was my first slide uh so redesign on the fly for an environment that that we were not expecting that we were not hoping for but that uh prompted immediate change um so challenges that that we found so there's two slides about this uh my experience there uh was and my experience from other projects uh is that staff took in a very autonomous way took charge of their own staff development which was wonderful they took charge of that development on the fly they they faced the problem and they tried different solutions and they were brilliant at doing this uh there was no or very little institutional direction from the 20th of march onwards things had to happen in a different way overnight and of course institutions didn't always have the opportunity to to to offer uh instant guidance on this uh people it has to be acknowledged that uh that implemented in ERT rather than what you would call proper planned properly designed uh online learning and so ERT was a beast that differs from what proper online learning is um the uh the the issue about uh the absence of teacher education in in HE was was present from the literature but from other projects as well and um nevertheless many of my colleagues and colleagues globally that we surveyed as part of the edgy COVID-19 project claim to be prepared uh at least mentally prepared pedagogically and technologically to face the challenge and that was actually quite reassuring although the results were not always the what what what we wanted in terms of teaching quality but they were they were prepared happy and willing to take the challenge on the second bit of of the staff challenges uh people requested consistently uh support communities they wanted to belong and one aspect of this is that is that synchronicity what we're doing now as part of Old South as a community of practice if you like uh synchronicity is an element uh that that that helps a little bit with belonging uh same time same place even virtually that helps attachment to colleagues attachment to students a very regular consistent point made by by colleagues globally is that goodwill has an end and it must um it it will stop uh so there is expected more than cash in in more than that is it's about recognition of the good work and that is a constant across across institutions globally which generates the notion that we have a book chapter coming out on this shortly on emergency professional development or EPD rather than ERT and um and this emergency professional development has a number of interesting characteristics and we can we can discuss that uh in in in another session uh just approaching the end of of my session colleagues is just just a few final reflections uh offered to you in the spirit of of sharing lessons learned rather than uh imposing principles on you uh so a few things that are some of which are obvious and you will be very very familiar with but a few things to consider let's not just replace things uh if i had to use the afternoon seminar i'll do a zoom session at the same time let's think again um let's not use synchronic sessions primarily to deliver content takes me back to my first slide again uh you can do many things with on and about learning deliver it is not one of them you delivering content is not what keeps communities together recording and uploading one hour lectures is not a good not a good thing and the point about read this watch that uh we've made enough i won't repeat that so um let's not mistake a content delivery for good teaching um start or continue planning failing to plan is planning to fail uh and uh storyboarding as i said before in the chiral and carpe diem approach that's that's a brilliant way of getting people engaged in re-planning um use synchronous session for motivation for tutorial support for consolidation for a cohesion and sense of belonging you can blend synchronous and asynchronous work even in short sessions do not apply the velcro approach add adding things simply because the blend is is bits of online and bits of face-to-face let's move away from there let's continue to use what we know from distance learning research we have institutions that have been doing this for decades and sometimes for a lot longer not just the OU in this country but there are similar institutions a lot a lot bigger than the OU that have been doing this for a long time and let's think about scaffolds in context not just promoting and bombarding students with content my final point is about pre-during and post-covid and and this is again based on some or an article i published ages ago but i kind of re um i retrieved it to to discuss this if we if we have two axes here the the x-axis the horizontal axis proximity with physical proximity and the y-axis is synchronicity the high high so the bottom the bottom left high proximity high synchronicity is pretty much at the heart of what most campus-based institutions do those institutions also do bits of the other things yeah and traditionally have done but the bread and butter the source of income the attraction the the the shared campus experience sits in the high high element of this now when COVID hit that changed because that that face-to-face-ness had to be removed and and we had to think of alternatives so that moved into something like this where a little bit a little bit depending on the period that we're looking at and when the regulations were relaxed a little bit of face-to-face continue but the majority of the activity did not happen face-to-face so we moved into the the top left primarily the high proximity for students who stayed on the campus and low synchronicity students on the campus but accessing sessions remotely and top right which is traditional distance learning students going home or to other places even to their home countries operating for the most part as distance learners and there's a little bit as well to be highlighted of the bottom right which is real-time provision for the geographically dispersed students but again synchronously low proximity high synchronicity what's likely to happen post-COVID well I'm not going to be very creative here I'm going to just say that we need to do more of the lot after this we will have to do more of everything we will have to do more and again this is an interesting funny thing that Blackboard Collaborate has done to my slide here but in essence we need to do more of the lot we need to continue with the face-to-face experience the campus-based sharing all of that that students so much want but we need to do all of the rest as well and we will have to live with this for a long time so I think it is a good opportunity for us to get ready for a few years if not longer of operating in multiple mode in multiple mode of study multiple mode of teaching note I'm not saying multiple mode of delivery which which is the word I don't like and this is this is what this slide tries to show we have to be to multitask in terms of modes of study across the different quadrants of this diagram and with that Anka I'm going to stop and I'm going to hand over to you for a summary of the many questions and things that might have been happening in the chat what I was talking so Anka that's perfect thanks Ali thanks for the presentation it always gets interesting I've attended this probably for the third or the fourth time and it's always interesting to listen to this so there were there were a few chats but I think most of it were answered but then there were a few questions as well one of the question again from Edward Edward is about how do you create a sense of belonging perhaps if there was a single viable never failing answer to that one I think I think we would all be rich but we but but there isn't and and this is again extremely context sensitive you create sense a sense of belonging in different ways across different contexts and the the if you like the one of the traditional answers to this is by by making sure that you engage stakeholders in good time that you share values and all of those things which are which operate at a very strategic level but when it comes to making them happen on the ground they are very very hard when it comes to learning and teaching the the the meaningful combination the meaningful blend of multiple learning environments multiple tools and multiple modes of study real time and not in a coordinated well planned way helps massively with a sense of belonging in my case I I really value the sense of belonging that is created through real-time activity although I I understand recognize and and and fully I am fully aware that that we cannot place too much emphasis and real-time activity in the times that we're sharing together but in my case it does help a lot well planned activity along the lines of what I described earlier with that flexible template all those things that we discussed in a in a in a in a self-paced manner within parameters helps with a sense of belonging for learners so it's not a case that you you do a 20 credit module and you start in in September and you say do whatever you want whenever you want between now and December well that in my experience does not help with the sense of belonging what helps is what I call often a flexible lockstep which is a contradiction in terms if you like but but it keeps people working on roughly the same things at roughly the same times and and whether you use a week or a fortnight as your unit of analysis keeping people roughly together helps with sense of belonging but what helps the most in my view is good teaching practice great I'll come back to the other two questions in a minute but I think the next question that Edward has asked sort of lines up with the first questions of he's he's asked how do you get by in when you are asking academics to do more of the lot with fewer resources and limited time um sometimes sometimes we have choices and sometimes we don't when uh this is the first ever pandemic that that has occurred in my lifetime and uh and I told many most of these these things are new to me and sometimes we don't have a choice and we have to understand that if we are true to our values of of inclusion and of not leaving students behind and not leaving colleagues behind then we need to be prepared for the unexpected and this is an unexpected situation and we we are asking more of ourselves we are asking more of our colleagues we're asking more of of our students and and I would argue that that the options are quite limited can we can we be in a position where we do not where we kind of cross out some of one of one or more of these quadrants and we say well sorry because we can't ask more of people and of students we will not do quadrant three and I find that very very difficult to to to say I'm very difficult to to to action so yes there will be an adaptation there will be a reallocation of priorities there will be a reallocation of tasks maybe there there will be a reallocation of of roles in in in institutions but we cannot simply argue we cannot do one of the quadrants simply because it's asking more so so it is difficult I don't have a a straight answer to that but the fact is for the time being and for the foreseeable future we will have all these scenarios happening unfolding around our practice and we can't get away from that perfect great the next question is from Mohammed he says he he quite likes what you did at North Hampton in terms of tying up and incentivizing the learning design with the fellowship and it seemed a good approach the question is was there a high uptake of the learning design training by staff in North Hampton before you left um not well there's two let's see if I understand the question right but but there's two bits to it one is the uptake of the scalable approach for people to put modules and programs through this and the answer to that is yes and we had a dashboard for that and we could see who had done what when uh who had facilitated what workshop with what output was it validated did it had problems all of that uh the uptake was was high not least because the benefits were highlighted uh not least because it was time well invested not least because because subsequently uh regulations included those things as as as requirements so there was a bit of carrot and a bit of stick there as well and the other bit of it is is is what about the facilitators and uh and to scale this up you need to scale up facilitation and and on that we had a significant interest from a central team that we recruited specifically for this but we also had a significant interest from academics themselves who see themselves and still are doing this as facilitators for such workshops in the faculties and that was uh that was very helpful because uh we had we had subject specialists doing this sort of thing having been trained to do this sort of thing in a in a in a in a very natural way having themselves been embedded in the faculties for many years so I think I would answer that question from those two angles that yeah that makes sense yeah makes sense cool that's great um and finally I think there's one yeah one last question is from Edward he says how do you get the balance of content online so students are not bombarded especially as every student might have different capabilities and work at different paces um um always hard to to to give a generic answer to getting the balance right that is that that alone is a perfect example of good teaching versus less good teaching it is down to the person making the calls there the facilitator the mediator so uh it is really down to them to establish what is what is a happy balance what is the right balance that my students will be comfortable with what is the right balance and let's go a step further uh to create an environment from which my students cannot escape without learning and and and that is at the at the heart of good teaching I wouldn't be able to to come up with a recipe for uh for getting the balance right you need to do these things but I would encourage you to think in your context how would you describe that balance have you tried this have you tried that has it worked has it not can you adjust accordingly and bear in mind the next cohort of students because teaching is unique will be different and the teaching act will not be replicated it will be new it will be a new one that will be the only one that your new students will have experience of that is what makes teaching so exciting that's great I think I think just listening I mean hearing comments from Samantha earlier where she was a bit worried and stuff I'm assuming and Samantha you can quote me over here based on your final comment you said love that which means not that you've converted up but I think it's helped sort of thing for you to to have steps going forward um one comment that Manish has made is is if we and I'll I'll repeat his comment is he says if we can crack quad four which was one of the option in your in your in your chart the others would be catered to a larger extent I would just like to get your comments on that and yeah I suppose is it's quadrant four uh the bottom right uh or bottom bottom right okay so so let me let me go back to um this let me go back to that so if I'm let me go back to to here to see if I we understand the question right um so if if quadrant four is indeed the bottom right uh then uh to be to be frank um the bottom right is not the one that worries me the most um the bottom right is is quite straightforward to implement technically easy to implement uh and I'm talking about this real time provision so so low proximity high synchronicity uh I'm not that worried about that because in any scenario that will not be the bulk of the study mode when we move post covid that will be a bit of it but the chunk of it I would argue would be the other three uh so I um it might be just me but uh the the um I don't think getting quadrant four wrong will destroy uh the rest of the good work if we make mistakes in quadrant four we can fix them uh but if we make mistakes serious mistakes in the other three we have rather more significant problems that would be my position great any other questions all right there is one which says post covid do you think that teaching will return to pre-covid yeah no uh some some would love that to happen and maybe they force it to happen um uh but uh no I think there will be many many interesting beneficial changes uh hopefully adapting many of the things that we've learned many of the practices we've used in the pursuit of doing more of it all uh we can't do more of it all unless we adjust practices and unless we apply things that we've learned uh and we continue to learn in this period uh to to our post covid scenario uh so um just just think about think about your time on campus I really don't think uh we will be uh on campus as much time as we used to uh and uh and that itself and the same is true of students um that that that itself will will signal a change in how we operate for all of our activities not just our scholarly activity or our teaching activity it will impact on many aspects of our day-to-day work and uh and therefore I don't think we will return to a pre-covid scenario uh as we understood it there will be a rather modified version of that right I guess yeah we've run past two minutes with the time so I'm going to pass it to Manish and yeah just pretty much and thank you very much Ali for for the presentation I I found it I find it amazing all the time anyways but I'm sure the others would have as well I'll pass it to Manish and yeah he can pretty much thank you uncle thank you Ali thank you uh Debbie and think marriage left so uh and then thank you first of all to to all of you who have come and spend the last two hours with us and hopefully it's been useful you know we we said that we look into what 2021 will be will be like and we probably can't do that without sort of bringing in what what we have just experienced which uncle very uh you know usefully sort of brought that out from from all different members today um I mean it's it'd be hard to to summarize everything but I'd say that you know the key things that were highlighted in uncle's session were the structures quite important for students especially when they are not out and about in front of you uh it has some advantages for obviously for engineers as I said but but I think more generally everybody likes a little bit of familiarity and so that they can get well once they get used to it everything is familiar but in a new world when you're suddenly going in a new place you you do get confused a little bit and only with several iterations of that newness that you become master of any new you throw a new world at any you know at this experienced person and they'll be fine so that kind of has an analogy with with level one level four level five level six if you throw something at level six student more likely more likely that they will be successful then the first year student who's coming off you know from a home environment and do a university campus environment so yeah I guess in in terms of yeah future sort of events and summaries we as I said earlier they will be monthly sort of tech Thursdays at the should be the last Thursday of each month where we can come back and discuss with us within the group as a group of friends really to help each other and support that's that's what the purpose of this network is is to provide a sort of a sounding board for your ideas regarding learning technology and and how to to take those forwards forward can I can I interrupt you money sorry Ali probably wants to add something so simply simply in in in the interest of leaving this group of colleagues with a bit of homework if you like a bit of something to think about just to so that you go away and you say well was he crazy what did he mean well I wanted to to ask a question and and and let you think about it as you as you go away in preparation for the next out south meeting particularly because this is the association of learning technology yeah so how do you thought about the concept of book enhanced learning or pencil enabled learning if not then why are people so fixated on the notion of technology enhanced learning is it just because of the novelty is it because of the new tools coming out all the time I would argue that basic technologies like the pencil and the book are far more powerful and enhancing than many of the toys that we see today and and in that context should we also think not just about technology enhanced but also technology undermined learning or technology weakened learning and just to think about is is book enhanced learning pencil enable learning something that we should think about or not that's a good good thing to to think about in the coming days and weeks I think technology is more of an enabler than then enhancer but you know it's but we want to we want to be in a place where whatever technology that you're using can actually make a significant enhancement but in in this case in the covid case I think it's been more of a more of a enabler isn't it because otherwise we wouldn't be doing any of the work that we haven't done so yeah we will we will mull on that for the for the coming sessions and see if we can come back to you and and report back saying this is what we have found but but on the on the on the topic of finding things and reporting back I think the research journals that are focusing on learning technology including the research in in learning technology the old one they from time to time call for for various systematic reviews some meta analysis where you actually put together evidence and you know to do to help future researchers so one of the things that I'm as I said in the beginning I'm very interested if people are are wanting to to form group of authors and then work together if you would like to do that please reach out separately or say it in the chat here on my email or whatever and we can look to run some sessions on systematic review and and to support you in researching that side of things and maybe even building and evaluating learning technology solutions because I myself have done some work on that before but we'll be interested to see if there are collaborations possible in future and lastly about the next few meetings as I said 29th of July is a Thursday of the next month I'm sure you will be somewhere on a beach somewhere by that time but but if not and if you're willing to tune in please you know for an hour we'll send you the details of the timing once we figure that out hopefully the same time same same place as as I was saying that gives the some sort of sense of belonging really that this is our community we meet every month on a set day set time but having said that we all have difficulties around our own calendars sometimes and we want to be flexible and yes so predictable that they will be going to be there on those dates likewise in September we'll have an event which will be similar to this one where we invited speakers so please if you have ideas suggestions for speakers to rope in for this session please let us know we'll try and contact them better still if you have already contacted them and they're willing to please let us know and what was it yeah the vacancies I think listen to mention in the beginning there are some officer spaces if people would like to engage a little bit more in the activities in planning things for for our future events we are just at the moment three people or four people actually but we need to we need to have two more offices so please feel free to to reach out for us on on that other than that I think we already gone 10 days over so I won't take too much more of your time so thank you thank you all for for your contributions today it's been very very useful and I hope it's a beginning of a very connected journey that we set about in the coming months and years okay listen that you don't want to do any further addition to what I've just said or no really just again to to echo what you said into thanking everyone so much for coming and for their contributions I certainly found it a really helpful and productive session thank our speakers particularly Ali that was just so helpful for me in terms of ways of thinking about it and so it's greatly greatly appreciated and really hope to see all of you at some of our future events okay great thank you for coming and we shall meet again next tech Thursday like July 29th great thank you all bye thank you bye bye bye so the recording is with you yeah yep