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Surviving & Thriving in the Online Space - the experiences of Staff and Students

December 2020

Conference: SEDA Winter Festival 2020

Authors:

Technological Higher Education Association

Ubotica

The Enhancing Digital Capacity in Teaching and Learning (EDTL) project is aimed at enhancing the digital attributes and educational experiences of Irish university students through enabling the mainstreamed and integrated use of digital technologies across the teaching and learning process. It involves the seven universities of the Irish Universities Association (IUA) and commenced in January 2019. In March 2020, most of the project team members were pulled into frontline technology support, as all higher education teaching, learning and assessment moved online. Recognising that a more blended provision of teaching was necessary for September 2020, the EDTL project team rapidly re-focused its activities, collaborating across institutions to develop shared resources, based on the existing project work, with a focus on pedagogy first and with the student at the very centre. The outcome of this response is the EDTL Approach for effective remote teaching. We will share our experiences on the development of the EDTL approach with a focus on the perspectives of both staff and students in managing the challenges of the remote context and the resources developed with a key focus on optimizing the student learning experience.

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Poster

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Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning in Irish Universities

November 2019

Sharon Flynn

The Irish Universities Association (IUA), the representative body for Ireland’s seven universities, is leading an ambitious project to mainstream digital in teaching and learning activities in Irish Universities, by addressing the professional development of all who teach or support teaching and learning. It recognises the valuable work already carried out in the universities to enhance digital ... [Show full abstract] skills of staff, and aims to build on this through a coordinated and collaborative approach. In this presentation we will share early results from a pilot, due to start in September 2019, taking place across the seven participating institutions.

Presentation

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Students as partners and co-creators in enhancing digital teaching and learning

July 2021

Enhancing Digital Teaching & Learning is a three year national project involving seven universities across Ireland and led by the Irish Universities Association. With an overall aim of enhancing the digital learning experience for Irish University students, through enabling the mainstreamed and integrated use of digital technologies across the teaching and learning process, student engagement ... [Show full abstract] throughout the project is essential. Building on initial success with the student associate intern as a full member of the project team, in summer 2020 a whole team of student interns was recruited across the seven universities. Working in partnership with university based project members, but also coming together at national level, the student intern team has ensured that student voices inform project direction and are a core part of project activities.

Conference Paper

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Enabling Change: Enhancing Digital Teaching and Learning in Irish Universities

November 2019

Sharon Flynn

The Irish Universities Association (IUA), the representative body for Ireland's seven universities, is leading an ambitious project to mainstream digital in teaching and learning activities in Irish Universities, by addressing the professional development of all who teach or support teaching and learning. It recognises the valuable work already carried out in the universities to enhance digital ... [Show full abstract] skills of staff, and aims to build on this through a coordinated and collaborative approach. Evidence suggests that engagement at the discipline level is key for meaningful and sustained change to occur. The professional development activities emerging from this project will work directly with discipline groups, both intra-and inter-institutional. Rather than working with or building individual technology champions, the needs and goals of a whole group can be addressed, thereby raising the digital skills of the group. The professional development activities will take a pedagogy first approach, rather than digital skills training. This means starting by identifying the needs and goals of the group before considering how technology could be used to support innovation and change. It is anticipated that a professional development programme will consist of: A framework for digital competencies providing a structure for professional development activities related to digital capacity across the sector; A connected and growing community of staff developers working within and between the universities to support academic skill development, and sharing expertise, knowledge and resources; A collection of resources, micro-credentials and modules that can be combined in a flexible way to build tailored PD programmes aligned to the framework.

Presentation

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Crowd sourcing student vision for the future of learning

May 2021

The Enhancing Digital Teaching & Learning project, led by the IUA and involving the seven IUA universities, is funded under the HEA Innovation and Transformation Programme. Commencing in January 2019, the project aims to enhance the digital attributes and educational experiences of Irish university students through enabling the mainstreamed and integrated use of digital technologies across the ... [Show full abstract] teaching and learning process. In March 2020, Universities were forced to shift their teaching online, leading to unprecedented changes in the delivery of education. The project team was ideally placed to respond to the challenges posed in the online pivot and provide support and resources for staff who teach. One of the goals of the project for 2021 has been to support and contribute to conversations about teaching and learning in Irish higher education in a post-Covid environment. Recognising that student voices need to be integral to the discussion, the team set about capturing as many voices as possible. A suggestion to crowdsource student opinion was proposed both for the capacity to reach a large audience but also to leverage digital technologies. This presentation describes the decisions that were made in the process used to put together the student campaign Your Education, Your Voice, Your Vision, a student led campaign run primarily on social media over the period 17th of April to 10th of May 2021. Initial considerations regarding a platform led the team to identify and test a number of possible systems that have been used, with various degrees of success, for other campaigns. Ultimately, due to tight schedules and discussions with the EDTL student intern team, it was decided to run the campaign using social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and Facebook, with a short survey also appearing on the project website. Our student interns were cast in short videos depicting aspects of student life. Polls were used to drive student engagement and gather data about their learning experience in an ideal world. Campaign partners, including the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), the National Student Engagement Programme (NStEP) and the National Forum, were instrumental in promoting the campaign which was targeted at all students in Irish higher education. In addition, university communications teams were briefed and supplied with all the social media assets. At the time of writing, close to 20,000 students have engaged at some level with the campaign. First indications are that there will be some very interesting results that can be used to consider how we can shape education in the post-pandemic future.