Hi everybody, Joe for jaspyscasebrakes.com coming at you with 2018, 2019 flawless basketball, one box, random hit break number 11 from jaspyscasebrakes.com. So here's what I'm gonna, first of all, big thanks all of these folks right here for getting into the action and congrats to the winners right here winning those spots and those cello pack breaks. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna open up the case first and then we'll type in the hits where it says the hits right there on the bottom of your screen. Then we'll randomize names, randomize hits and put them in the randomizer results tab right there. So let's pop this baby open first. There it is, remember this is 18, 19 flawless basketball. So let's pop this open, up end this, like this. We're gonna select a die, like that one over there. Think it in myself, I'll need a little bit of room here. There we go. One, two, three for the top briefcase, four, five, six for the bottom briefcase. Just show you right here, slide this this way, it's a one. So it's gonna be the top. So this will be for a break 11 which we're currently about to do right now. And this will be for break 12. Rh, random hit break number 12. So we'll save that for next time. I might even be able to run that back tonight. All right, so now let's pop open this guy here. Let's see what we have right here. Nice, 18, 19 flawless. I'll have to make sure that I pulled out the right briefcase.  Trying to get to four, but I usually don't last that long. All right, oh, we only had, oh, okay. Oh, there should be eight in here then. Got all sorts of interesting things happening here. All right, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And remember, this particular, there's only, I think basketball usually has two in case. So there's one on each side, eight cards here, one on each side. So there's no combos or anything. We're perfect with the 10. All right, and when I type these in, they're gonna be typed in in the order that I'm pulling them. 14 out of 15, Jimmy Butler. That's a great patch there. It's pretty nice. 14 out of 15. That must be part of that logo right there. Still pretty cool, all right. That upside down, so I'll type those in order. There's Koran Butler. 10 out of 25. Nice Koran Butler. Oh, that was his timbre, that got me confused, right? I was like, there's no MBE in Philadelphia, but yeah, that's his Timberwolves gear, but if this was a teen group break, that'd go to the Sixers. There's Koran Butler wizards. One out of 15, Reggie Jack's momentous autographs. Five out of 20, Bob Lanier. Enshrined signatures. It kind of has a neat autograph there. A little pistons in a row. We've got Fred Van Vliet, four out of 10. What patch is that? RTH? Earth? North. That's gotta be North. We the North. Fred Van Vliet. I got that one. All right, yeah, that's right, Oliver, there it is. All right, Kevin Love, 13 out of 25, momentous autographs. Ooh, and someone's getting a train whistle. It's a one of one, Clyde the Glide Drexler. Someone's gonna get a train whistle there. Michael Jordan in the last dance. Well, a little motivated against the trailblazers. When he won the MVP, Michael Jordan thought he should. And then proceeded to dismantle Clyde Drexler. All right, and there's two color patch, nice Bradley Beale autograph, 11 out of 15. So that's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and then the two encased. The autograph's on this side, so I'm gonna do that side first. So you can see on the top camera, you can see the two encased cards right there. I'm gonna do the left side right here first. And it's a double diamond, two out of 10, Lamarcus Aldridge. Pretty nice. Two out of 10, so if you, two plus 10 equals 12, eBay one of one, obs, and bang. Luca Donchich, on-card autograph, 17 out of 25. Boom. Someone's gonna get that rookie, Luca Donchich. Remember, this is 18, 19, flawless. There you have it. All right, there you go. Naturally mined, not lab grown. So I'm gonna pause the video, type in all of the hits. When we come back, we'll have the hits all typed in, then we'll do the randomizer. Then we'll see what happens. Stay tuned. I'll be right back. And we're back. I've got the hits all typed in right here. So there's, you can see the 10 hits right there. 10 in the bottom right-hand corner. So let's copy this list. And then we're gonna see what the randomizer results are gonna be. Let's pop them in here. Once again, good luck to these folks right here. Kinda nervous. We've got a nice hit in there, that Luca Donchich. Let's roll it and randomize each list a hard six, three and a three, six times for each list. Your names first. One, two, three, four, five, and sixth and final time. After six, a couple canes down to Orion. Three and a three, six times for the hits. One, two, three, four, three, five, and sixth and final time. After six, the Donchich is on top. Wow. So Kane Anderson with a spot that he bought straight up. So there's six, there's six, and there's the results. With the spot that he bought straight up gets the Luca Donchich, 17 out of 25. Kane also won a spot. Got the Jimmy Butler Relic 14 out of 15. Ryan, you got the Kevin Love Auto. 13 out of 25. Matthew Shear with a last spot mojo. The Bob Lanier Auto, five out of 20. Ryan, you got the LaMarcus Aldridge double diamond.  All aboard the Big Hit Express. Woo-hoo. You got the Clyde, the Glide Drexler, one of one autograph. Quinton with the Koran Butler out of 25. Kane has the Fred Van Vliet 4 out of 10 auto, patch auto. Joe Andreessen with the Bradley Beale patch auto, 11 out of 15, and Ryan with the one out of 15. Reggie Jackson Autograph. And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. We have the second half of this briefcase. I'm pretty sure it'll be another random hit break. Maybe Trey Young on the other side. We have, I remember some cases where we've seen two dodges in the same full case. Not common, but it has happened before. So there you go, ladies and gentlemen. That's a nice one. Great hit, Kane. Excellent hit. Thanks for getting in. Thanks for trying, everyone. Really appreciate it. I'm Joe. I'll see you next time for the next break. Bye-bye.


Around Dodge City and in the territory on west, there's just one way to handle the killers and the spoilers, and that's with a U.S. Marshal and the smell of gun smoke. William Conrad, the story of the violence that moved west with Young America, and the story of a man who moved with it. I'm that man, Matt Dillon, the United States Marshal, the first man they look for and the last they want to meet. It's a chancey job, and it makes a man watchful, and a little lonely. If you just look, I didn't use coffee.  Get this here stuffed to Texas before the law starts sniffing around after us. Will you get that saddle on your horse? Well, what do you mean we ain't? I mean we're heading straight for the border and we ain't making no stops. Now listen here, Ollie, you told me if I come into this with you, I could take Molly along. It's not a side of different.  It wouldn't do no such things. Molly can ride even with you any time. A woman gets in the way. Now that's always to it. I ain't going without her.  I ain't going to help carry that gold, but you can't have it without we stopped for Molly. She ain't even got a horse to ride. We took them both. Oh, you're good enough at stealing. Oh, I should have never took you on this job. You couldn't have pulled it without me, Ollie. And I ain't going all the way to Texas without her. All right. Just get a move on. And if we don't find a horse by noon, the deal is off. That's fair enough. But I'll find one, don't you worry none about that. How's that, Mr. Dumb? Hang on to that bar of soap. How come you brought it all? Got a chance to take one. That's right, Mr. Dumb. That is exactly right. Inviting I believe in being prepared. Well, that's fine, Chester. But how about letting me use it for a while? You're pretty well lathered up. Poor short thing, Mr. Dumb. I didn't mean to make a pig of myself.   Yeah. Any water would look good after that three-day ride. I guess you're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You're right. You've got three-day ride. So I guess you're right. Can you swim good, Mr. Dumb? I like to keep a float. That's real nice. I can swim real strong myself. Well, that's how you do it. Well, there's just one thing wrong. I swim so strong, I keep going under the water. You better stick to the land. Oh, yes, sir. I mostly do. Hey. Somebody's coming, Mr. Dumb. Yeah. Maybe somebody else wants a bath. I reckon they do, they're coming towards us right now, heading for our horses. Hey, those horses are low. I'm eating brides. Hey, he's taking your gun, Mr. Dillon. This here is Mr. Dillon, the U.S. Marshal from Dodge. They're getting away, Mr. Dillon. I know it, Chester. We're not in a position to do much about it. I saw folks who was mean in my time, but I ain't never saw nothing beat this. Taking a man's boot, leaving him stranded right on the prairie. Why, that ain't hardly human. All right. What do you mean by all right? Well, there ain't nothing all right about it. Having your stuff through like that? Look, you just quit talking about it, Chester. Mr. Dillon, all I'm saying is... A whole day and a night of belly, it cannot be enough for you. Dillon, if you feel that way about it... That's exactly the way I feel about it, Chester. That's right. Very well, sir. And I just won't talk none at all. Good. Never.  Chester. And still up and we'd please set and rest for a spell. Bucked off your horses? Will you give us a lift, Doc? Well, if I ever saw a sign to compare it to you two. Doc, we want a lift. We need to hear about this at the long branch. Let me look at you. Where are your boots? Never mind, Doc. Just give us a lift, will you? How long have you been walking? A night and a day, Doc. And that's an awful long time. Let me see your feet. I sure will. Well, get in. Get in. What are we waiting for? I think I'd better get your feet up to my office, right away. Some for you, Chester? Thanks. It's meant to be. I tell you, I've never seen a pair of feet to beat me. Suppose you quit talking about it and write it up in a medical paper instead. Oh, well, I'm sorry, man. I guess you just assume not hearing more about it. Yeah. But you have no idea who did it. I've never seen them before. Would you recognize them? I'm not sure. The light wasn't very good. We weren't exactly close. Well, I ain't never gonna forget them. I can tell you that. Chester, when you spot them, you just let me know. That's all I ask. Yes, sir. Don't I sure will do that? Well, you'd better hope you don't spot them. For a few days, at least. Oh, how's that? You're not gonna be able to do much walking. Well, I can walk, Doc. Not very much, you can't. Those feet of yours are in bad shape. And, uh, I'll just tell you something else. No, what? You're not gonna be able to get your boots on for about a week. Oh, what kind of a doctor are you? I don't know what kind of a doctor I am, but I know one thing for sure. Yeah?  Now, listen, Doc, that's enough. It'd be easy to overmatch. No, let me tell you. You spill that water. Well, you must be feeling like yourself again, Matt. How's that, Kitty?   Well, I guess I haven't been too easy to have around. Well, you're never easy, but this week you've been worse than usual. Well, I'll say this for you, Kitty. Man, it's a hard time getting a swell headed around here. I should think you'd thank me. I don't know why. Well, it'd be a shame if you couldn't get your hat on now that you've just started being able to wear boots again. Oh, that's very funny, Kitty. Oh, sorry, Matt. You're walking all right again now, aren't you? Well, I'm glad. That was a terrible thing. Yeah. Well, I'll be. Kitty, excuse me a minute, will you? I sure. There's a man at the bar over there I want to see. Doesn't it? It might be. I'll be back. Want another drink, Marsha? No, thanks. I'm not all right now. Well, anytime. You, young fella. Me? Mm-hmm. You're new in town, aren't you? Just riding through. Well, where you headed? Well, I ain't decided. Nice pair of boots you got there. Yeah. Well, you see.  Well, no, no, they ain't. Why don't you walk over to the table and back, huh? I ain't gonna. I said walk. Well, sure, Marsha. Sure. Yeah, they're a little wobbly all right. Why don't you get them? They was my paws. A paw giving to me. They're mine, aren't they? Well, now. They're my boots and your name's Harb. Yeah. Yeah, Marsha, you're right. I'm glad you found out. You weren't very anxious to help me find out. Yes, I was. I was scared as all. I was even thinking to come to see you. This isn't my office. Well, I figured maybe a couple of drinks and I wouldn't be so scared. All right. Tell me the story. I want to lead you to him, Marsha. Oh? Who is he? He's my brother, Ollie. He told me if I'd help him with a hold up, I would never have to worry no more. I see. He's run off from me. With the money? Well, I don't care so much about the money. The thing I can't abide is he run off with my girl. Oh, do you know where they went? Sure I do. There's a old spread. My pa used to work in Texas. That's where he's heading.  No, I sure do, Marsha. He ain't got no right to my girl. How about the money? Well, like I say, I don't care too much about the money, Marsha. Uh-huh. Can we start today? They got an awful good start on this. I'll let you know.  Sure. Ain't we wasting time? You just do what I say. Don't leave town. All right, Marsha. If you say so. I say so. I've been wondering something. Yeah? Figure when I get to pounding like this, I might just well come right on out with it. All right, Chester. Come right on out with it. What is it? What do you want? What is it? I'll see it. I've been wondering why we were just sitting here in Dodge instead of heading to Texas after that ollie bean like his brother wants. Well, that's a long way to Texas, Chester. Well, sure it is. But my gracious, don't...  Oh, we're not sure of that. Not sure of that. He stole our horses and our guns and our boots, didn't he? Yeah, he did that all right. But I'm not sure that government would think I ought to ride all the way to Texas after your boots. Well, but what about the hold up? Well, that's just it. What about it? What do you mean by that? I mean, we don't even know if there was a hold up or maybe just trying to get us to go after ollie with it. Well, but why would he make up a story like that? Well, he could have done it to get even with ollie for running off with his girl, couldn't he? Well, yes, or you could be right about that, but... Oh, hello, Miss Kitty. Hello, Chester. Matt. Hello, Kitty. Is it time for me to take you to lunch already? Oh, you don't sound very eager. I just had breakfast. Well, as a matter of fact, I came about something else. Oh, how's that? I was passing the telegraph office, and Mr. Hightower asked if I'd bring this to you. Oh. There you are. Thank you. Good news? Well, Chester may think so. Oh, Lammers don't. We can take that trip to Texas you've been so anxious for. That's all? The Bane brothers not only pulled a stage hold up, but they killed a man while they were at it. All right, come on. I reckon that was a pretty mean trick. Taking your boots away like that. Pretty mean? A man that'd think up something like that? It's no more than a cannibal. It was Ollie's idea, but then I don't think much of your brother. I didn't think much of him anyway, of course, but, oh, Ollie's a mean man. Oh, how did you put in with it, then, Hart? Were you talking about the hold up? I reckon it don't make no sense no more, Marshal, but it was the first time Ollie ever treated me like I was worth anything. Yeah, he beat me and he cuffed me all the time when I was growing up. He never had no use for me. I shouldn't think you'd have had any use for him, either. He was big and strong, Marshal. Yeah, Ollie could do about anything. I guess when he asked me to help with a hold up, I... I guess I figured he was getting some use for me. But he didn't, Marshal. As soon as he didn't need me no more, he ran off with my girl. Oh, he doesn't mean bother, Ollie. We'll get him, won't we, Marshal? Yeah, I expect we'll get him. That's good.  He'll want you for the hold up and the killin' also. What, Marshal? You'd have been smarter to make a run for it by yourself instead of ever coming near Dodge. Well, I wanted you to get him. And I'm gonna try. It ain't right for a man to run off with his brother's girl. That's right, Marshal. See them trees over there? Yeah. And the place is just behind them. All right, we'll write up to them and look it over from there. Yes, sir. I'm going up there, Marshal. That might not be too smart, Harve. I just wanna go and get him a girl before the shooting starts. Man has a right to do that. Yeah, I guess he has it that. All right, go ahead. Thanks, Marshal. Wait a minute. What's the matter? I want you to remember something. If you don't come right out, I'll have to come in after you. Sure, I know that. I'll come right back. Beating while you still got a hold. I'll stay close to the trees and I'll cover me. Yes, sir. I killed Ollie. I never shot a gun before, but I killed Ollie. Take a look, Chester. Yes, sir. He's dead, Mr. Dillon. Check the other one, will you? They don't have to look, Marshal. I know right away when Harve died. Yes, ma'am, I guess she did. She's right, Mr. Dillon. Man don't have no right to shoot his brother. No, he doesn't. Man don't have no right to run off with a woman, neither. And beat her and be mean to her. But mostly a man don't have no right to shoot his brother. You should have let the lords take care of it, ma'am. No, Marshal. I owed it to Harve. He wouldn't have expected it. I could have helped him before and I didn't. I thought it was smart to come with Ollie. Ollie, he wasn't fit to shine Harve's bolts. No, Marshal. I owed it to Harve. Whatever it cost. It's time you refresh. Enjoy a frosty, ice-cold Pepsi Cola. Sociability, Charlie. All right, Kay, how's this? Pepsi is light. Refreshes without filling. You like to refresh? Have a Pepsi right now. We'll offer it to everybody, Charlie. I will. Enjoy Pepsi at the fountain. It's delicious at home, too. Have one at lunch or with a snack. At the beach or at dinner. Wherever you go, wherever you're thirsty, Pepsi is there. In our BeSociable song. BeSociable, look forward. Keep up to date with Pepsi. Drink light, refreshing Pepsi.  For the weekend, have plenty of Pepsi around. Pick up an extra carton today. See, Kay, I'm sociable. With Pepsi, everyone is. Hi, Norman McDonnell stars William Conrad as Matt Billon, U.S. Marshal. The story was specially written for Gunsmoke by Marion Clark with editorial supervision by John Meston. Featured in the cast were Sam Edwards, Gene Bates, and Lauren Stubbkin. Harley Bear is Chester, Howard McNeer is Doc, and Georgia Ellis is Kitty. This is George Walsh inviting you to join us again next week when CBS Radio presents another story of the Western Frontier. When Matt Dillon, Chester Proudfoot, Doc, and Kitty, together with all the other hard-living citizens of Dodge, will be with you once more. It's America growing west in the 1870s. It's Gunsmoke.


There are over a quarter of a million students participating in higher education, many of them attending an institution similar to this. Lecture theatres, labs and corridors buzzing with the sounds of vibrant communities. That all changed in March 2020 with the global pandemic. I remember we were here in our offices in the Royal Irish Academy, myself and the team we were getting ready for our first online meeting with the National Forum Associates because of what was happening and the restrictions at the time. And we heard the announcements. We threw the agenda of the meeting out the window and we met with our associates. Nobody knew what was going to happen. Nobody knew what the future was going to be like. And we were there saying, you know, how can we support you? What can the forum do for you? Because we were all, we all were in this together. At the time we were also trying to organize the launch of the Irish National Digital Experian Survey which we had collected in October prior. And little did we know how valuable that data set was going to be for the sector as they made decisions around digital over the months that followed. Initially I think it went to this absolute uncertainty, the shock factor of all of a sudden the doors are being closed and locked and how long was this going to go on for? Would it be just for two weeks or was this going to move into the future in a long capacity? Or how were we going to shift our teaching into an online environment where some people had expertise and other people were maybe beginning to learn more about that field? How were we going to do this across the board with every student? I think my thoughts went straight to the students. How all the assessments that we had lined up, how would we communicate with them? What technology platform would we use? We use virtual learning environments and institutes have won. But now we have Teams and Zoom, we have all these different platforms that we're familiar to many. So we had to certainly work out which one was the best and which would work for the students. How would we communicate with the students? How would we engage? What about the circumstances that they have? So for example, some had no broadband, some had no laptops, some were thousands of miles away from home and all of a sudden they're in rooms, in busy houses, noisy broadband issues and here we were trying to work out ways in which we could work in synchronous or asynchronous ways with our students. So it was this shock of how were we going to achieve this momentous task that was ahead of us with almost a blank page in front of us, a blank canvas as to how we were designing it. COVID-19 was the iceberg that few could have predicted. No one was truly prepared for the devastating effects it was to have on the education sector. A few were competent swimmers, some treaded water, but for many it became a fight for survival grasping onto anything as they tried to stay afloat. When lockdown happened I was head of student support services in TU Dublin City campus and really just in one day the whole world turned upside down and we all had to learn new technologies and new ways of supporting our students and for us initially the key thing, the big risk for us I suppose was our students who were using the counselling services and the health services and we had to learn new ways of supporting them through Teams and Silver Cloud and then after that it was the students who didn't have the technology to access the online classes and the teaching staff were great, they were very much in touch with the students and they identified the students who needed support. Our head chaplain had an essential workers pass and he was able to drive through deserted streets and deliver mobile phones and laptops to the students who needed them and then we got some additional funding from the government and we were able to in a more structured way I suppose support students and the financial aid staff worked through the night to make sure that the students were supported but I suppose really I mean everyone in that period really pulled together, it was just phenomenal to see the work that people focused on and pulled together to make sure our students were supported and our students could continue to learn and progress and graduate and just continue with their lives. There was a very steep learning curve for everybody and especially for lecturers, the vast majority of whom would not have had any experience of teaching online. On top of that the speed at which everything happened meant they were practically swept off their feet and in the initial stages at least that was very disorientating. I know lecturers were putting in very long hours attending, training, redesigning classes and providing additional support to students. Professional staff too did a phenomenal job in transforming all those myriad of processes that enable teaching and learning to happen for the online environment and providing crucial support for lecturers and students. If you think in terms of the usual trajectory of moving courses online it usually requires an intensive planning, designing and development cycle that takes months if not years for just a single course. In response to the pandemic literally thousands of courses across the entire sector were adapted and delivered to give that continuity and structure that was so important for students and everyone while the pandemic was going on. When you stop to think about it it really was an awesome achievement. The pandemic accelerated the use of technology to access and deliver learning opportunities. It was in effect a real world experiment that allowed us to utilize a multitude of online blended and hybrid approaches to teaching, learning and assessment. Everyone had to learn how to use Zoom but then we also had to learn how to use other features of what we have as loop so that's somewhere where lecturers can put all our notes in our assignments and we had to learn how to use other parts of that. We all knew how to get things like PowerPoint presentations and class notes off but we also had to learn how to submit an assignment through it or how to do a quiz on it and it was something that certainly in science subjects we'd never done before. Even though no one has done this before at the time I was surprised that we were still in the college routine despite the fact that we were sitting at home. In my case I remember being a little bit worried about missing something important and being a class rep I felt overwhelmed with questions from my classmates. Pivoting to teaching in an online learning environment provided increased access to materials and potential for additional flexibility as students could work at their own pace. Learning via technology can also help students develop the digital literacies necessary for their future careers. It was a new challenge for many staff and students particularly given the speed at which they had to respond. Students really value the on-campus experience and have missed the live in-person interaction with their peers and lecturers but students also appreciated the flexibility and accessibility that online content and videos provided. As the pandemic continued and the country went in and out of lockdowns the phrase the new normal was adopted to describe many aspects of our lives but what would the new normal be for higher education? From a learning perspective we can look at two different ways in which we learn. The first we call it additive learning that simply that we add to what we know accumulates our different abilities and skills and the second is transformative learning and that's where there's a more fundamental change in our understanding of the world and when the pandemic happened and we shifted mainly to our homes to deliver our lectures and our teaching and we had to look at online methods what happened there was not additive learning but transformative in that our understanding of what it means to learn how to work with people has changed from a values perspective. So we have a new understanding now of learning and teaching and what the possibilities are and also what the challenges are and hopefully that will stand to us in the future. A sector characterised by considered researched and incremental change was overnight forced to begin remote teaching, learning and assessment. This dramatic shift resulted in both positives and negatives that posed a series of questions for students, staff and other stakeholders. Though still living through the pandemic in March 2021, 15 partners from across the higher education sector agreed to work together to answer one shared persistent and urgent question. In the context of COVID-19 what have we learnt and what does it mean for the future of teaching and learning in Irish higher education? In the next steps project we work together to try to understand the Irish higher education teaching and learning experience during the pandemic. With next steps we want to demonstrate the potential of broad collaborative projects of this nature. Want to contribute to conversations about higher education policy research and practice now and in the future. Want to work in partnership with the HGA and Minister Harris and we want our work to have a positive impact. We hope that our next steps outputs are seen not as the end of a project but as the beginning of where we want to go to from here. So you want to get involved because that's absolutely essential for us to sectorally work together to actually learn from the experience of the past 18 months. Actually work out what worked well for us what didn't work as well as we might have hoped and critically what issues and aspects might we want to maintain into the future. The partners combine the key insights and findings from almost 55,000 staff, students and external stakeholders. The numbers involved, the range of perspectives and staff roles represented and the referencing of previous consultations and reports provide a strong evidence base for the key messages and recommendations of the next steps project. What is clear from the findings is that how institutions and individuals address challenges was as important as what they did. Well I think when we look at teaching and learning in higher education it always needs to progress. That's why the term next steps is very appropriate because we're constantly improving and for that to happen there needs to be an enabling culture. By culture we mean the way we do things and that means that we're all the time looking at ways and means of improving our teaching and learning practices both at an institutional level and across the sector. While many staff and students struggle to cope with teaching and learning from home COVID-19 has also advanced some teaching practices in Irish higher education that are more informed by accessibility, flexibility, choice and autonomy. A deliberate emphasis on equity, diversity and inclusion must be preserved and further developed for teaching, learning and assessment so that all students and staff can succeed and thrive. Learning is as unique to humans as their fingerprints and in order to reach and teach the huge diversity of learners now in our physical and virtual classrooms we need to build more flexibility, more accessibility, more student voice and choice into how we design and deliver higher education spaces and programmes. Locally, quality, evidence-based and internationally recognised frameworks for inclusive teaching and learning such as UDL or Universal Design for Learning can guide us in how to achieve this goal and ensure that every single student has equitable pathways to success. Community, well-being, collaboration and partnership were themes which stood out in terms of what worked during the pandemic and what should be maintained into the future. So one of the few advantages to all the lockdowns was the fact that we could use online platforms to collaborate much more frequently as staff nationally and with students nationally. And I think the highlight of a lot of our weeks or our months was the time when the staff and students could come together and share insight and learn about each other's work and the way that students were responding to the work. And next steps is a great opportunity for us to keep that collaboration going and to learn more about each other in a collaborative space with student partnerships. Community and well-being supports are important for all students, including international students. And studying abroad can be challenging in normal circumstances, not to mind during the COVID-19 pandemic. International students experience, you know, changing culture, changing environment, after a new language, being away from family and friends. And this really contributed to isolation, I suppose, and feelings of loneliness as well. The pandemic has revealed the need and demonstrated our ability to work together for the common good. By tapping into the wealth of experience and expertise from across the sector, we can influence the future. Co-creating new ways of informing and making decisions of identifying priorities and developing coherent strategies. The beauty of the next steps project is that it's sector-wide. It allows all stakeholders across higher education to work together collaboratively to develop a shared understanding of what we might want to carry into the future of higher education. For Thea, in particular, we took the perspectives of the chief academic officers who are responsible for overall academic provision for their institutions. And we wanted to provide an opportunity for these key senior leaders to reflect on the experience of the past 18 months and to plan for the future. The National Forum Next Steps Project is a welcomed continuation of higher education sexual collaboration. And it was important for HECA that we could bring our unique perspective of higher education, our learnings from COVID-19 and our vision for the future of teaching and learning to the National Partnership Project. The success of working together and collaborating with partners has brought to the forefront many valuable insights for the future of higher education teaching and learning, particularly the importance of inclusion and ensuring that teaching and learning will be more accessible for all learners. One of the key findings coming out of our series of focus group discussions with heads of services across the universities such as IT services, libraries, heads of student services, heads of teaching and learning, and exams officers was the crucial role that these groups had played across the sector in helping informed decision making and really good decision making at key moments during the pandemic. This meant that services could continue, students could complete their courses, do their exams, graduate or progress as almost as normal, obviously in very different circumstances. We found too that student leaders were really good during the pandemic. They had good structures in place they could and they helped feed in from a student perspective to ensure that the decisions that were taken were beneficial to everybody and could work. Effective Student Partnership emerged as central to institutional responses to the pandemic with the backing and participation of senior leaders student partnership was prioritized. Students were consulted regularly their voices were listened to they participated in decision making and contributed as valued partners. We have a good culture of listening to the student voice in Irish higher education but more active student engagement in decision making means that students should be able to become partners who can shape change and not just provide opinions for staff to act upon through governance structures in the classroom, online and on campus and throughout the student learning journey. Students are experts in their learning experiences. When students work together and share their experiences with one another they can build a bigger picture of the kinds of positive changes the students can support in Irish higher education. When staff are open to partnership higher education becomes more responsive and proactive in shaping a shared vision for the benefit of all. Going forward students, staff and institutional leadership need to come together to plan the way to support more proactive approaches to student partnership. Students such as myself are experts in their learning experiences. When we work together talk share experiences with each other we can build a bigger picture. This picture contains the different kinds of positive changes that we as students can support and create in higher education. When staff are open to partnership higher education becomes more responsive and proactive in shaping a shared vision for the benefits of all staff and students alike. This approach will help shape not only our future learning experiences but also staff teaching and learning experiences. Where and how we teach, learn and assess changed during the pandemic. These changes revealed new opportunities and gave rise to some new challenges. When teaching moved online in March 2020 it was a shock to the system for all of us no matter how skilled we were using technology. Now over a year later we've learned so much. The move online meant that we had to reflect more deeply on our pedagogy and to really consider the skills that students need to navigate and participate in their learning. The higher education community in Ireland has been incredibly generous in supporting each other throughout COVID. Colleagues have shared experiences, resources, discussed challenges, provided peer training in the use of online tools and collaborated on new projects that support student success. We're now aware of choices and possibilities in learning, teaching and assessment which maybe we hadn't considered so much previously. We've seen the physical spaces of the campus are just one of an abundant number of ways through which learning, teaching and assessment are mediated and how we engage our learners. So the next phase has the potential to be very transformative as we rethink and redesign our learning environments both physical and virtual and they've traditionally been somewhat closed and now we have the space to make them open and inclusive. And that also means we can respond to a rapidly changing world and changing demographics where people will return to education in the future at different career stages and different life stages. COVID-19 crisis reminds us that approaches to internal and external quality assurance need to be flexible and agile. More generally, it reminds us that our qualification system needs to be capable of evolving to keep pace with society's changing lifelong learning and qualifications recognition needs. It's timely to reflect on the need to ensure the teaching, learning and assessment practices contribute to widening the diversity of learning pathways and the enhancement of the permeability of the qualification system. The pandemic brought sharply into focus the scale of the challenges that we may face nationally and internationally. Higher education has an important role in addressing many of these societal and economic challenges. The rapid pace of change will require multi-disciplinary expertise together with critical thinking, collaboration, communication and digital capabilities within our institutions and beyond. The world of work is changing. Higher education has an important role to play in helping our students to be work and world ready. Lifelong learning will continue to grow and develop as a feature of higher education. Through inquiry, interdisciplinarity and the use of appropriate pedagogies we can help our students to develop necessary attributes and transversal skills that they will need to thrive in the workplace and to contribute to communities and to address their urgent economic and social challenges. These key messages have implications for our higher education institutions and future policy development for the continued enhancement of teaching, learning and assessment. It is time to reimagine teaching, learning and assessment in higher education to capture not only what we wish to change from the innovations required as a consequence of COVID-19 but also how we can most effectively maintain and build on successful elements. The COVID-19 experience challenged many assumptions that had gone unquestioned for too long. Issues that had been seen as important but not time sensitive suddenly became urgent. Through the Next Steps Project the sector can build on the lessons learned collectively. It is an opportunity to re-examine old doctrines and reimagine higher education, not just for learners but for our whole society. The Next Step Report is a report of its time. The pandemic isn't finished. We know that. But what we've done is we've worked together to pull all the data that we have as a sector together to synthesize it and to collect the key messages in terms of what data is telling us to act as a starting point for further discussion and development. The report is just one part of what we've done. In tandem with the report we have also produced a number, a collection of Next Steps Insights each one developed by one of the partners that capture the actual context and the issues within their own particular context. What all of this does is it gives us key messages that we now know from what we've learned. And based on those key messages we've actually identified good practice and we've highlighted recommendations to improve strategic alignment. We've encouraged through these recommendations that we continue to review, we develop and we continue to collaborate. What COVID did was to show cracks in the higher education system. And there's now an urgency to actually deal with some of those. And what Next Steps does is situates us really well to continue the conversations, to enable us to enhance teaching and learning for our students into the future. Changes to how we live, learn and work have occurred as a result of COVID-19 and it'll take time to understand these changes and plan accordingly for what happens next. We're at a crossroads in the development of Irish higher education. It's not one of divergence but of convergence. And it's together we begin the journey and take the next steps.


Hello and welcome. In this lecture, we are going to see how to sort arrays of strings and how the same techniques can be generalized to sort arrays of other data types as well. Here is a quick recap of some of the relevant topics that we have already studied. We have looked at the sorting problem in general. Specifically, we have seen how to implement selection sort and merge sort in C++ for arrays of integers. And we have also studied how to count the number of basic steps when sorting an array of integers. In this lecture, we are going to see how to sort arrays of strings and we will see that the same technique basically generalizes to sort arrays of other data types as well. In fact, all of these techniques use the same underlying principles, whether you are sorting integers or strings or other data types. There is only very minor difference in C++ programs that actually implement sorting for these different data types. We will also take a very quick look at some other techniques for sorting. We are not going to go into the details for other techniques for sorting, but it is important to know that there are other techniques for sorting beyond what we have learned in the past few lectures. So here is some food for thought. We have looked at techniques for sorting arrays of integers, but what if we wanted to sort arrays of other data types like floats, doubles, strings, more complex data items. So well, as you might have already guessed that the technique that we have used for sorting arrays of integers should work almost unchanged for sorting arrays of floats and doubles as well. However, would it work for sorting arrays of strings and what about more complex data items? So the question is that do we need to reinvent sorting techniques based on what are the data types that we have in our arrays? Fortunately, the answer to that is no. Almost the same techniques that we have studied for sorting integers are also going to work in these other settings. So let us quickly recap how we went about sorting integers. Here is an unsorted array of integers and we have seen techniques how to convert it into a sorted array of integers where the sorting is in decreasing order. Well, in selection sort where we wanted to sort the array in decreasing order, how did we go about our business? What we did is we first selected the largest element in the unsorted sub array. Since we want decreasing order, we selected the largest element. Then we put this selected element at the top of our sub array of interest and then we said that we have a remaining problem and we wanted to sort the remaining unsorted sub array using the same technique. And if you recall, this was the C++ code for doing selection sort for integers. We basically had a simple loop here in which we said that at any point of time, a current top through a n minus 1 is the unsorted array and the value of current top kept increasing from 0 through n minus 1. And in each iteration of the loop, we found out the index of the maximum element. Why was it maximum? Because we wanted to sort the array in the decreasing order. So we wanted to find the index of the maximum element in the part of array a between indices current top and n minus 1. And we found out that index and just swapped the elements of array a at current top and current max index. And we just kept iterating through this when current top finally becomes n. We know that the array is sorted. Now how did this function find index of max look like? Well, this is how it looked like. We have already studied this in an earlier lecture. There is a simple loop here which iterates from the start to the end of the sub array of interest. And in each iteration, it checks where the current array element is greater than equal to the currently maximum array element that has been seen. Why are we using greater than equal to? Because we wanted to sort there in a decreasing order. And if the current element is indeed greater than equal to the current maximum element seen so far, we updated current max index with the current index in this loop. And finally, we returned current max index. Well, the question is can we use the same ideas to sort strings? Suppose instead of an array of integers, I had an array of names like Ravi, Tejas, Anu, Biju, Banti and Surya. And I wanted to sort them in the lexicographic order or in the dictionary order. So, the name that would appear first in the dictionary Anu should appear at the top of the sorted array. The name that should appear next Biju should appear next and then Banti, Ravi, Surya and Tejas. So, the question is can we use the idea that we used for sorting integers to actually sort arrays of strings as well? Well, let us see how we might actually use something like selection sort, same idea as we did for selection sort and integers. If we use the same idea to do a lexicographic sorting of this array of names, how might it look like? So, we have this unsorted array of names and then we wanted to sort them in lexicographic order. So, we would find the lexicographically first element in this unsorted array. Here it is Anu and then we would put the selected element at the top of the sub array of interest for us now. And then we will be left with the remainder of the array and we want to sort this remaining unsorted sub array using the same technique. So, well it looks like if we can select the lexicographically first string in an unsorted sub array, we can just repeatedly execute this process and end up sorting this array of strings using the same ideas as we used for sorting an array of integers using selection sort. Now, how do we select the lexicographically first element in an array of strings? The answer is pretty much the same as we did for integers. We basically iterate over the array and keep comparing or ordering pairs of elements and we just keep track of the lexicographically earliest element that we have seen so far. So, what this means is that if we could have a function which could lexicographically compare a pair of strings, then we can indeed iterate over this unsorted array and use this function to find the lexicographically earliest string. And once we have this facility to do this, we can actually use selection sort to actually sort an array of strings. This looks wonderful. So, all that we need is the ability to compare two strings and find out which is lexicographically earlier. Now, how are we going to do this? For the time being, let us assume that we have a function available to us. Let us call it lex earlier, it takes in two strings, recall string is a C plus plus data type. So, it has two strings as input parameters and it returns a Boolean value and the return value is true if and only if string S1 appears lexicographically before S2. Now, we will see later when we study strings, how to implement the body of this function, but for the time being, let us just take this contract view of this function. So, if I use that function, here is how selection sort in C plus plus for strings might look like. We have almost the same program that we saw earlier, except that now we are going to sort an array of strings. Instead of having current max index earlier, I now have a variable which says current lexicographically first index and instead of finding index of the max element earlier, now I call this function which finds the index of the lexicographically first element in the current unsorted part of the array which is from current top to n minus 1. And then how does find index of lex first look like? Well, it is pretty much the same that we had earlier for find index of max, except that we are now going to pass an array of strings as an input parameter. We are going to use this variable called current lex first index instead of current max index, current index of max. And then we are going to simply iterate in this loop and we are going to use this function that we have just seen lex earlier to figure out if the current element of the array appears lexicographically earlier than the current lexicographically earliest element that I have already seen. And if so, we update current lex first index to i and iterate. Finally, when this function returns, we have the current lex first index, the index of the lexicographically first element in the part of the array between start through n minus 1. Now, it looks like we are now able to do selection sort with strings, but did we just get lucky with selection sort? Can we sort strings using merge sort as well? If I give you this comparison function lex earlier, let us see what were the steps in merge sort? We took an array of size n and divided into two sub arrays each of size roughly n by 2. And then we sorted each of these sub arrays recursively using the same technique. And the crucial step was to merge two sorted sub arrays each of size n by 2 to create one sorted array of size n. So, here is how our C++ program for merging sorted sub arrays of integers looked like. We basically had a merging loop in which we determined whether an element from the first sorted sub array or the element from the second sorted sub array should appear next in the overall sorted array. And then once we have determined whether the element should come from this sorted sub array or the other sorted sub array, we simply copied that element to this temporary integer array temp A. And at the end of it, we copied all the elements from temp A which are already sorted by now to the array A. The crucial part was this merging loop. How did it work? It was very simple when we have elements to see from both of the two sorted sub arrays. We just figured out which element should appear first and just copied that element to temp A and incremented the appropriate index. And if one of the sub arrays had already been fully seen, we just copied the elements from the other sub array. Now, if I were to do merge sort for strings, how would things look like? Well, it would be pretty much the same except that now these two sub arrays would be lexicographically sorted. I would have to pass a string of arrays as an input parameter to merge sorted sub arrays. I would have to have this temporary array of strings earlier, we had a temporary array of integers. And then at the end of it, we want the entire array between start and end minus 1, between indices start and end minus 1 to be lexicographically sorted. The merging loop would be almost the same that we saw earlier except that we have to use this lex earlier function over here. Now, what about arrays of other data types? I mean by now you must have figured out that what work for integers pretty much work for strings modulo that compares an operator. So, this should now work for other data types as well. All we need to do is to define an ordering function or operator. We use greater than equal to for integers when sorting in decreasing order. We use lex earlier for strings when sorting in lexicographically increasing order. We need to define a similar operator if I want to sort an array of another data type. The rest of it is exactly the same. Now, are there other sorting techniques out there? Yes, of course there are and these are some of the important other sorting techniques quick sort, heap sort, insertion sort. All of these can be implemented in C++. However, we will not have time to study all of these in this course. But I do want to point out that sorting is an extremely interesting area of study in computer science and in programming. So, in summary in this lecture, we looked at how to sort strings and we saw the key use of a comparison operator for lexicographic ordering between strings. We also saw that the same ideas basically can be used to sort other data types if I have an appropriate comparison operator. And we also had a very brief glimpse of sorting techniques beyond what we have already studied. Thank you.