The future of digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions
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Gaebel, Michael
Brown, Mark
From March to June 2020, EUA conducted its survey on digitally enhanced learning in European higher education institutions within the framework of DIGI-HE, a three-year project funded by Erasmus+. This survey is, among others, to serve as a timely update to EUA’s 2013 survey on e-learning and to map development trends of digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions over the past seven years. Planned already in 2019, it coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, and the forced closure of university campuses, which bring additional meaning and importance to the resulting data. The survey gathered 360 responses, from all 48 countries across the European Higher Education Area. While 60% of institutions responding are multidisciplinary universities, the sample is diverse, comprising technical, specialised and online universities, and also non-university institutions. Results from the survey are currently under evaluation – first preliminary findings have been presented to the Bologna Follow-up Group in July . The report will be published in October 2020. During this session, some of the key findings of this survey will be presented, which focus on institutional strategy and governance, curricula and modes of delivery, assessment and recognition, staff support and professional development, infrastructure and resources as well as anticipated changes due to the new public health measures to curb the spread of covid-19. As higher education institutions rethink their provision methods to adapt to these unprecedented times, namely through increased means of distance learning, implementing a robust and sustainable digital learning and teaching strategy is crucial to ensure high quality education which will serve learners not only during this public health emergency but also well into our post-covid future. The findings of this survey will therefore shed light on the barriers to and enablers of digitally enhanced learning and teaching in European higher education institutions as well as useful measures to rethink and improve such institutional strategies into the future. Findings from the survey will be presented in small sections – allowing for comments from a panel of two to three university representatives (about 20 minutes). Participants can participate through opinion polls and through the chat. The final part of the session (10 minutes) will discuss questions and comments from participants. - Michael Gaebel, Director of EUA’s Higher Education Unit (presenter of the survey results) - Mark Brown, Dublin City University - Another one or two contributors are still to be confirmed
 So it's not the classroom perspective that you get here. It's the perspective of institutional leadership and institutional support and transformation on digitally enhanced learning. And one of the activities of this project that is funded by the Erasmus program is a survey on digitally enhanced learning on teaching in European higher education institutions. And I have actually put up one of the questions that we also had in the survey as a poll here, and many of you have already answered to that. So I just leave that open for a couple of seconds and maybe I run a second poll then we will share the results with you later. But the survey has been doing in the period from March to June. So right when the COVID crisis took up, we conducted via a survey to institutional leadership data across Europe on the state of play and perspectives for digitally enhanced learning. We had more than 300 responses, fairly good dissemination, 48 countries. So it's the entire European higher education area. And responses also come from different types of institutions. So we have technical colleges, art schools, online universities, but mainly there are I would say conventional universities. And as we conducted already a similar survey in 2014, we are also able to show some longitudinal data. The report will be launched in mid-November this year, we hope, and will be widely disseminated. So you will have access to that. But some of the emerging data we will show you already here today. So I just take the moment, I close the poll now, but I also try to launch a second poll. No, I can't do that for whatever reasons. Good. Right. Moment. So we had the one poll on the enablers, and we have a second poll now on the disablers. And I hope you can see that while I continue to run the slides. Let's see if that works. So much as an introduction to the survey, we will try to look on three things here. One is the state of play of the institutions. And we asked them really to report the situation that they had before the crisis. We gave them some extra questions where they commented on their actions during and in response to the crisis. We will discuss a little bit about the enable and enable as a barrier. So that's the polls that you're currently filling and how to move forward, how to get beyond them. And then we will also have a bit of an outlook on Corona and beyond what this new normal could actually be. And here is the first finding that we wanted to share. It's the moods of delivery that we see throughout Europe. So this is what you can see. 75% of institutions are currently offering blended learning either throughout the institution or in some faculties. We haven't seen a major increase here compared to 2014, but we would say it's really the predominant and ongoing trend. Everybody agrees to that. The question is done to understand better what this blended learning actually is. What is also not entirely new, but where we think to have seen a quite an increase is short non-degree online courses. So micro credentials, as you would call them, probably are just certificates. This is interesting because it turned out to be the most frequent type of online provision. So that's what if there's a pure online course, then it's usually micro credentials. And what was also interesting that institutions, unlike full online degrees, they do not only have one or two of them, but some of them had a dozen or even more. What is important here that they are not only delivered online, but even more so in blended or in conventional mood. So online, yes, but many more actually blended and conventional. And they also seem to have a clear target. This is about lifelong learning and professional development. I think that's an interesting finding also in a time when you can clearly see a strong European policy interest into these courses. On the fully online degrees, we can't see a major increase there. It's more or less the same 35, 38% that we had in 2014. But what is interesting, this time we looked more on regional data and we found major differences. So some regions are put out here in Northern Europe, where it is actually offered by 60% of the institutions. And then we asked for the first time also about virtual mobility. And as you see, it's about one quarter of the institutions that offer that currently. That will be interesting to see also as currently, it's actually a replacement of physical or it might be a replacement of physical mobility, given the situation that we are all in still at the moment. But in the future, of course, we hope that it is not replacing physical mobility, but this becomes an additional opportunity for international exchange and mobility. I stop here for a moment and ask Mark, Mark, do you recognise that from the perspective of your institutions? Yes, I think the particular stand out for me is the growing trend to blended education. And I've actually just posted a link there to something we're doing right now on blended education. But I've also in case you want to mine through and have a look at the results of the 2014 survey, you will see I put the link into that in the chat box. The one thing I would say that I think a survey like this is challenging to probe deeper. And it's an unanswered question for us when we talk about blended education is to what extent institutions are using this as a strategy to disrupt the nature of the curriculum to enhance and really infuse the digital experience teaching and learning as the thing from just blending in a very comfortable and light or weak way. So the word blending itself was challenging for us to know how we might define that. And we know that different institutions define that quite differently. It's of course taken on a completely new meaning along with other terms like hybrid post or since the COVID experience. But for me, that's one of the most important is that just because institutions say they are committed to blended education or blended learning, that can mean many different things. Yeah, no, I agree. And we are not particularly happy with that. And I know EDTU and others have made efforts to better define that. And we might actually look at that in for future ways. Hybrid, we didn't have that on the radar when we did this. Today, we would have asked that as well, because that becomes more and more the case that institutions offer basically students the opportunity either to have it online or to come to campus. I think what one has also to take into consideration that from some of the institutions and in particular from certain regions in particular Eastern Europe, we also still get the message that they have some restrictions on use of digitally enhanced learning. So they are either either it's not counted at all, or it is you can only use it in small doses, so to say homeopathically, then you get away with that. But for example, I talked yesterday to a Croatian colleagues and who said as soon as they go over 50% online, they have to reaccredit the course as a completely different process. Yes, Michael, if I just come in Ireland, there's a little unique in the European context, because about four years ago, we developed some guidelines through the Quality Agency QQI for blended education. But we're talking barriers in the poll at the moment. I think people have identified that you can actually only select one out of the options. So just select your top area, then all three if you wish. But one of the barriers is that often institutions define academic workload or teaching workload by the hours of contact. And therefore, there's actually very little incentive to substitute face to face with a digital experience. And so more often what happens is that something is added on to what's already done. And so that's when I was referring to what extent is that really disruptive by truly changing the nature of the student experience. It was clearly disruptive in the crisis for systems where students had to be physically on campus to be counted as learners. So I go to the next slide then. This is a bit about our strategy and governance. And what we found is compared to 2014, we have a relatively high increase in institutional strategies. So as opposite to no strategy or strategies driven only by faculty at faculty level, or even which we still had in 2014 and which has disappeared now, individual, our staff of the university are in charge for the digitalization. So that doesn't exist apparently. Most institutions have some kind of a strategy. I think we had only 12% which hadn't related, I think, is that we also see an increase of centralized and shared responsibilities for digitally enhanced learning. That doesn't mean that the whole teaching is managed top down, but that they're basically structures and resources which are managed and shared throughout the institution. And as you can see that jumped up from 75% to 93. And the interesting part is we have here in the sample, we have some institutions which have a fairly decentralized governance structure. So we still don't know what happened there. Have they recently moved to a more centralized governance structure altogether? Or do they basically just acknowledge the need to do that for digitally enhanced learning? Because it is so resource intensive because it requires so much technological environment maintenance. And I mean, to put it one example, you don't want to have 40 different content management systems being used at your institutions. But this is what we actually saw at some institutions. Any reflection from Ireland on that? I think often these surveys raise as many questions as they do provide us with answers. But the benchmarking I think is very interesting. The greater commitment to strategy, I suspect is going to be something we will continue to see in the post-COVID-19 experience. For those of you who are in leadership roles, and by that I don't mean senior institutional roles because everyone at different levels can play a leadership role, there is a fundamental question when it comes to strategy about whether you need to have a separate standalone strategy. And this was something that we grappled with in the design of the survey. For example, my own institution has chosen not to have a separate strategy but infuse it or embed it into its existing strategies. So if you were to go to look for a strategy on blended education or digital learning, you won't find one. But it is there. And you could argue that that's a more mature approach. It depends, I think, very much on the culture of the institution, the type of leadership. But it is pleasing to see the level of distributed leadership, I guess, is what I'm interpreting with the less centralized or the fact that there is more people engaged in the participation in governance because I would go back again through my own experience working with other institutions. It's too easy to think that all you need is a strategy and maybe someone to own the strategy and then you can tick that box. Yeah. That's, I mean, our survey results are a little bit biased because they are provided by leadership, you know, and of course leadership developed the strategies and also think that everybody embraces them. But it's good that you point on the stuff and stakeholder participation in governance of digitalization. That was a new question. 65%. We found that actually interesting. And I think that's also a good moment when I can share, I close the second poll now and I share the results of the first one. I hope you can see that. Can anybody see that? Not yet. I'll try that again. No, this should normally be shared. Why can I not see them? Daniela, can you see them? Oh, and one of the participants just wrote they cannot see them either. Ah, okay. I'll try that again. But it says here that I shared them. How do I do this? Maybe I have to change something here? Just as you're doing that, Michael, I don't have the right see that to share them. But I think a related survey that we had in Ireland, the National Survey, that issue of the extent of which people who are involved in teaching, but maybe not leadership roles, perceive a sense of agency and influence in the policy and the strategy. Actually, that was quite low in Ireland. So whilst most institutions have been much more strategic, it would appear that we haven't been as successful in engaging the whole community within the organisation and beyond. So there is some work to be done there, I think still, because we all know that if this strategy is not owned by everyone, then it's not really likely to be successful. Yeah. Okay, then I just read out, I'm really sorry, but we are all newcomers on this tool and also the tech support didn't really know on how to do that. So I read you out the results. So we have 32% for proactive participation of staff and students. And then the next one is professional development and training and then major investments in equipment and infrastructure. So these were the top three. And if you can bear that in mind, so participation of staff and students, professional development and major investments. And then with that, I go to my next slide where you can see the top enablers that we got out of our survey and they pretty much aligns, you know, so proactive participation of staff and students came out as really the number one enabler and professional development as the second one. And then the third one, and here I said it comes from institutional leadership, the strategies came first, but the fourth one would have been indeed investments in infrastructures and equipment. So this aligns here. And we also have a look then at the barriers and there it's lack of staff resources, lack of external funding opportunities, difficulty to devise a concerted institutional approach. And I just check if I can show the results of the second poll here. Of course, even if I share them, you will not be able to see them. So I read them out for you. Difficulty to devise a concerted approach for the entire institution comes out first. So that's the highest followed by staff motivation is 28%. Staff motivation is actually the highest one. And then followed by the strategy or a concerted approach for the entire institution. And then the next one would have been lack of staff resources. Also there, I mean, I can see quite a similarity with the, it really aligns very much with what we found here quite similar. What we found interesting about this that was a survey on digitally enhanced learning, but the enablers and the barriers which are very much aligned are actually about strategy, people and investment. So not about technologies. And then I have another point here, which is on measure. So we also asked institutions, what does them actually help them in their situation? And then what you can see is clearly it's peer exchange within the institution. So somehow working across the compartmentalized structures, enabling people to work together into exchange and also national and international training opportunities. And the third one is then collection and analysis of institutional data. So have a kind of reality check, what is really happening and being able then to respond to that. So it's mainly peer exchange and collaboration, which is highlighted here. Again, nothing which is very specific now for digitally enhanced learning. I could have probably run this also for other issues like internationalization or learning and teaching in general. I think we get similar responses. Mark, any comments? Well, I think you made the important observation earlier that the survey required someone in the institution, a single person, typically in a leadership role to have responded. So when you talk about barriers and enablers, it's often useful to differentiate between direct and indirect ones. And then more importantly, probably is taking a sort of ecosystem approach for recognizing macro, meso, micro, and even nano level barriers, the nano level being you, the individual. The barriers will have a different flavor depending on where you sit within your organization and the role you play. But having said that, I don't see any surprises here. We know that professional development and training is still a major challenge, particularly impactful professional development that ultimately impacts the student experience. So I think this reinforces that there's still a reasonable amount of work to be done. Perhaps the only other thing I would say, and again, it depends on your position and perspective, often in addition to enablers, I think Stephen Downs is the author of this, sometimes language of attractors. One attracts you and another is an enabler. So an attractor might be the opportunity to earn external income because of a new initiative. And so that might be an attractor for someone in a senior leadership role, but it may have no bearing on someone who's doing the student based teaching, if you like. So again, complex is important. Right, yeah. I just see here in the slide actually that a colleague from Bremerhaven shared that they had a blended learning approach, which was basically came from a professor who had an interview on how to improve this and that it actually never comes from the top of the institution and that there is no view on education, innovation. I think that's absolutely right. I mean, from all what I have seen in my data, and Mark may comment on that from institutional practice. That's what we also see. And the innovation comes from staff and students, but not from the institutional leadership. But we see an important role of the institutional leadership to ensure that these innovative approaches are actually taking up a matured mainstreamed and also properly resourced. Michael, there's a body of literature that also talks about the importance of middle out. So if we're distinguishing here between bottom up and top down, the role of the middle out is very important in the context. And what I mean by that, a sentence for teaching and learning, other surveys that have shown how those sorts of centres do play a role. They're a bit of the glue that connects up the faculty staff with the central leadership team. But I absolutely agree about the importance of effectively winning hearts and minds and the engine room of innovation coming from the real core of the university or institution when you're working. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And there's another comment which makes the point that how to understand the difficulty to devise a concerted institutional approach. But I think it's exactly like you proposed it here. During the pandemic you were under the pressure to do that. We know that a lot of it has been enabled by individual teachers and students. But that's actually not a good approach and runs risk of putting too much burden on their shoulders. So they actually need the structures and support to be resilient in such kinds of situations. I'm moving on to our, that's actually the last slide now. And we are actually already in the discussion, Corona beyond Totzenau Normal. When we asked the institutions in May and June, they were, I think, still partly under shock. Some came back and triumphed and said we found ways. It was terrible the first two weeks, but now we are running it and it's not ideal, but it works actually quite well. So what we have seen, of course, 90% had pivoted to remote emergency, as it is often called. But also student surveys showed that the dissatisfaction, I mean, there was of course dissatisfaction. It was not ideal. And there's also, it made certain digital divides and also how your social impact can impact your social background, can impact your access to education, comes to play. But overall, it seemed to have worked about all right. But we are now going into a new phase. The pandemic continues and institutions will have to find ways of how to deal with that. Some institutions, some of the things that the institutions indicated already in the survey was that they want to enhance existing structures. So 90% indicated that they offered already online library access, but of these, 65% said that it has to be enhanced. So clearly in the stress test of the pandemic, what they offered there was not enough or not good enough. And three quarter also said that they had concrete plans to enhance digital capacity. And practically all said they had to explore new ways of teaching, of course you had. But we also have some anecdotal evidence of institutions which really started to rethink their curricula, not only in view of the current crisis, but also in the future in view of more flexible and better quality provision in the future. And they also involved to quote one example, they involved for example students in that as course and curriculum designer and also as testers of courses and of assessments. Any views on that Mark? Of course you have. Wow, very, very interesting to see the number of institutions reporting they are going to look at new ways of teaching. Of course look at new ways of teaching is not the same as embrace new ways of teaching. And I guess we're into speculative territory when we start talking about post COVID. But I do believe that there are going to be some very important legacies. And in fact what we're doing right now as a form of professional development, there are just many more opportunities at less cost I should add in all sorts of ways, including the carbon footprint that's been monitored. One other observation I would make and there's a comment in the chat box about this is the pressure that has been placed on those people that we've seen who are the real engine room of innovation in the COVID experience. And I think it doesn't necessarily show up in this survey yet, but showing up all over the place that there's a greater recognition of the emotions and the effective side of learning. And that's not just for our teachers, our instructors, but I also think for our learners. So it'll be interesting how we blend, if you like, using blend in a slightly different way, the technology with the emotional aspect of learning going forward. Okay, what, that's interesting. And I think that's also what we heard and also that you become much more aware also of the whole social background of your students and the conditions under which they learn, taking also into consideration that a good part of the learning takes actually place off campus. One concern is then now a concern that there is a kind of backlash on digitally enhanced learning. I mean that as many colleagues may have felt, I mean we're talking to the people who see that actually as an opportunity who triumph and say we made more progress than before in four years or so, but there are a lot of colleagues who probably don't feel really comfortable with it and want to go back to campus as soon as possible. So is there a risk that we brand now digitally enhanced learning as a kind of emergency mood? And as soon as you can, you go back to campus and you fall back into the old ways of doing it? Well, I'm thinking with an eye at the time, Michael, that's a great question probably to end with. People may have their own responses, but who knows? I'm sure there are some people longing to go back to the way things were. And I guess my final observation would be borrowing a cliche in some respects or a slogan, culture each strategy for lunch. So we can have all the new strategies and plans and post COVID-19 to a few ways of teaching, but whether your institutional culture will enable those will be very important in terms of the outcome. Well, thanks so much. And I think I fully agree on that. And we also see that there is a lot of awareness for that. Hence the emphasis on participatory approaches involving staff and students. I think the great, the $100 question here is how do you actually do that? So okay, we are coming to an end. So thanks, Mark, and thanks Daniela for supporting us. And thanks to all of you for being here and participating actively. And sorry for the glitch with the polls. Maybe we can share them in another way. We try to get them to you. There was actually a question if the slides will be shared too. And I can let you know that we will have on our website after the festival or the information about the different sessions. So you can actually get this information afterwards. Great. Thanks so much.
 So it's not the classroom perspective that you get here. It's the perspective of institutional  leadership and institutional support and transformation on digitally enhanced learning.  And one of the activities of this project that is funded by the Erasmus program is a  survey on digitally enhanced learning on teaching in European higher education institutions.  And I have actually put up one of the questions that we also had in the survey as a poll here,  and many of you have already answered to that. So I just leave that open for a couple of  seconds and maybe I run a second poll then we will share the results with you later.  But the survey has been doing in the period from March to June. So right when the COVID  crisis took up, we conducted via a survey to institutional leadership data across Europe  on the state of play and perspectives for digitally enhanced learning. We had more than  300 responses, fairly good dissemination, 48 countries. So it's the entire European  higher education area. And responses also come from different types of institutions.  So we have technical colleges, art schools, online universities, but mainly there are  I would say conventional universities. And as we conducted already a similar survey in  2014, we are also able to show some longitudinal data. The report will be launched in mid-November  this year, we hope, and will be widely disseminated. So you will have access to that. But some  of the emerging data we will show you already here today. So I just take the moment, I  close the poll now, but I also try to launch a second poll. No, I can't do that for whatever  reasons. Good. Right. Moment. So we had the one poll on the enablers, and we have a second  poll now on the disablers. And I hope you can see that while I continue to run the slides.  Let's see if that works. So much as an introduction to the survey, we will try to look on three  things here. One is the state of play of the institutions. And we asked them really to  report the situation that they had before the crisis. We gave them some extra questions  where they commented on their actions during and in response to the crisis. We will discuss  a little bit about the enable and enable as a barrier. So that's the polls that you're  currently filling and how to move forward, how to get beyond them. And then we will also  have a bit of an outlook on Corona and beyond what this new normal could actually be. And  here is the first finding that we wanted to share. It's the moods of delivery that we  see throughout Europe. So this is what you can see. 75% of institutions are currently  offering blended learning either throughout the institution or in some faculties. We  haven't seen a major increase here compared to 2014, but we would say it's really the  predominant and ongoing trend. Everybody agrees to that. The question is done to understand  better what this blended learning actually is. What is also not entirely new, but where  we think to have seen a quite an increase is short non-degree online courses. So micro  credentials, as you would call them, probably are just certificates. This is interesting  because it turned out to be the most frequent type of online provision. So that's what  if there's a pure online course, then it's usually micro credentials. And what was also  interesting that institutions, unlike full online degrees, they do not only have one  or two of them, but some of them had a dozen or even more. What is important here that  they are not only delivered online, but even more so in blended or in conventional mood.  So online, yes, but many more actually blended and conventional. And they also seem to have  a clear target. This is about lifelong learning and professional development. I think that's  an interesting finding also in a time when you can clearly see a strong European policy  interest into these courses. On the fully online degrees, we can't see a major increase  there. It's more or less the same 35, 38% that we had in 2014. But what is interesting,  this time we looked more on regional data and we found major differences. So some regions  are put out here in Northern Europe, where it is actually offered by 60% of the institutions.  And then we asked for the first time also about virtual mobility. And as you see, it's  about one quarter of the institutions that offer that currently. That will be interesting  to see also as currently, it's actually a replacement of physical or it might be a replacement  of physical mobility, given the situation that we are all in still at the moment. But  in the future, of course, we hope that it is not replacing physical mobility, but this  becomes an additional opportunity for international exchange and mobility. I stop here for a  moment and ask Mark, Mark, do you recognise that from the perspective of your institutions?  Yes, I think the particular stand out for me is the growing trend to blended education.  And I've actually just posted a link there to something we're doing right now on blended  education. But I've also in case you want to mine through and have a look at the results  of the 2014 survey, you will see I put the link into that in the chat box. The one thing  I would say that I think a survey like this is challenging to probe deeper. And it's  an unanswered question for us when we talk about blended education is to what extent  institutions are using this as a strategy to disrupt the nature of the curriculum to  enhance and really infuse the digital experience teaching and learning as the thing from just  blending in a very comfortable and light or weak way. So the word blending itself was  challenging for us to know how we might define that. And we know that different institutions  define that quite differently. It's of course taken on a completely new meaning along with  other terms like hybrid post or since the COVID experience. But for me, that's one of  the most important is that just because institutions say they are committed to blended education  or blended learning, that can mean many different things.  Yeah, no, I agree. And we are not particularly happy with that. And I know EDTU and others  have made efforts to better define that. And we might actually look at that in for future  ways. Hybrid, we didn't have that on the radar when we did this. Today, we would have asked  that as well, because that becomes more and more the case that institutions offer basically  students the opportunity either to have it online or to come to campus. I think what  one has also to take into consideration that from some of the institutions and in particular  from certain regions in particular Eastern Europe, we also still get the message that  they have some restrictions on use of digitally enhanced learning. So they are either either  it's not counted at all, or it is you can only use it in small doses, so to say homeopathically,  then you get away with that. But for example, I talked yesterday to a Croatian colleagues  and who said as soon as they go over 50% online, they have to reaccredit the course as a completely  different process. Yes, Michael, if I just come in Ireland, there's a little unique in  the European context, because about four years ago, we developed some guidelines through  the Quality Agency QQI for blended education. But we're talking barriers in the poll at  the moment. I think people have identified that you can actually only select one out  of the options. So just select your top area, then all three if you wish. But one of the  barriers is that often institutions define academic workload or teaching workload by  the hours of contact. And therefore, there's actually very little incentive to substitute  face to face with a digital experience. And so more often what happens is that something  is added on to what's already done. And so that's when I was referring to what extent  is that really disruptive by truly changing the nature of the student experience.  It was clearly disruptive in the crisis for systems where students had to be physically  on campus to be counted as learners. So I go to the next slide then. This is a bit about  our strategy and governance. And what we found is compared to 2014, we have a relatively  high increase in institutional strategies. So as opposite to no strategy or strategies  driven only by faculty at faculty level, or even which we still had in 2014 and which  has disappeared now, individual, our staff of the university are in charge for the digitalization.  So that doesn't exist apparently. Most institutions have some kind of a strategy. I think we had  only 12% which hadn't related, I think, is that we also see an increase of centralized  and shared responsibilities for digitally enhanced learning. That doesn't mean that  the whole teaching is managed top down, but that they're basically structures and resources  which are managed and shared throughout the institution. And as you can see that jumped  up from 75% to 93. And the interesting part is we have here in the sample, we have some  institutions which have a fairly decentralized governance structure. So we still don't know  what happened there. Have they recently moved to a more centralized governance structure  altogether? Or do they basically just acknowledge the need to do that for digitally enhanced  learning? Because it is so resource intensive because it requires so much technological  environment maintenance. And I mean, to put it one example, you don't want to have 40  different content management systems being used at your institutions. But this is what  we actually saw at some institutions. Any reflection from Ireland on that?  I think often these surveys raise as many questions as they do provide us with answers.  But the benchmarking I think is very interesting. The greater commitment to strategy, I suspect  is going to be something we will continue to see in the post-COVID-19 experience. For  those of you who are in leadership roles, and by that I don't mean senior institutional  roles because everyone at different levels can play a leadership role, there is a fundamental  question when it comes to strategy about whether you need to have a separate standalone strategy.  And this was something that we grappled with in the design of the survey. For example,  my own institution has chosen not to have a separate strategy but infuse it or embed  it into its existing strategies. So if you were to go to look for a strategy on blended  education or digital learning, you won't find one. But it is there. And you could argue  that that's a more mature approach. It depends, I think, very much on the culture of the institution,  the type of leadership. But it is pleasing to see the level of distributed leadership,  I guess, is what I'm interpreting with the less centralized or the fact that there is  more people engaged in the participation in governance because I would go back again through  my own experience working with other institutions. It's too easy to think that all you need is  a strategy and maybe someone to own the strategy and then you can tick that box.  Yeah. That's, I mean, our survey results are a little bit biased because they are provided  by leadership, you know, and of course leadership developed the strategies and also think that  everybody embraces them. But it's good that you point on the stuff and stakeholder participation  in governance of digitalization. That was a new question. 65%. We found that actually  interesting. And I think that's also a good moment when I can share, I close the second  poll now and I share the results of the first one. I hope you can see that. Can anybody  see that? Not yet. I'll try that again. No, this should normally be shared. Why can I  not see them? Daniela, can you see them? Oh, and one of the participants just wrote they  cannot see them either. Ah, okay. I'll try that again. But it says here that I shared  them. How do I do this? Maybe I have to change something here? Just as you're doing that,  Michael, I don't have the right see that to share them. But I think a related survey that  we had in Ireland, the National Survey, that issue of the extent of which people who are  involved in teaching, but maybe not leadership roles, perceive a sense of agency and influence  in the policy and the strategy. Actually, that was quite low in Ireland. So whilst most  institutions have been much more strategic, it would appear that we haven't been as successful  in engaging the whole community within the organisation and beyond. So there is some  work to be done there, I think still, because we all know that if this strategy is not owned  by everyone, then it's not really likely to be successful. Yeah. Okay, then I just read  out, I'm really sorry, but we are all newcomers on this tool and also the tech support didn't  really know on how to do that. So I read you out the results. So we have 32% for proactive  participation of staff and students. And then the next one is professional development and  training and then major investments in equipment and infrastructure. So these were the top three.  And if you can bear that in mind, so participation of staff and students, professional development  and major investments. And then with that, I go to my next slide where you can see the  top enablers that we got out of our survey and they pretty much aligns, you know, so  proactive participation of staff and students came out as really the number one enabler  and professional development as the second one. And then the third one, and here I said  it comes from institutional leadership, the strategies came first, but the fourth one  would have been indeed investments in infrastructures and equipment. So this aligns here. And we  also have a look then at the barriers and there it's lack of staff resources, lack of  external funding opportunities, difficulty to devise a concerted institutional approach.  And I just check if I can show the results of the second poll here. Of course, even if  I share them, you will not be able to see them. So I read them out for you. Difficulty  to devise a concerted approach for the entire institution comes out first. So that's the  highest followed by staff motivation is 28%. Staff motivation is actually the highest one.  And then followed by the strategy or a concerted approach for the entire institution. And then  the next one would have been lack of staff resources. Also there, I mean, I can see quite  a similarity with the, it really aligns very much with what we found here quite similar.  What we found interesting about this that was a survey on digitally enhanced learning,  but the enablers and the barriers which are very much aligned are actually about strategy,  people and investment. So not about technologies. And then I have another point here, which  is on measure. So we also asked institutions, what does them actually help them in their  situation? And then what you can see is clearly it's peer exchange within the institution.  So somehow working across the compartmentalized structures, enabling people to work together  into exchange and also national and international training opportunities. And the third one  is then collection and analysis of institutional data. So have a kind of reality check, what  is really happening and being able then to respond to that. So it's mainly peer exchange  and collaboration, which is highlighted here. Again, nothing which is very specific now  for digitally enhanced learning. I could have probably run this also for other issues like  internationalization or learning and teaching in general. I think we get similar responses.  Mark, any comments?  Well, I think you made the important observation earlier that the survey required someone in  the institution, a single person, typically in a leadership role to have responded. So  when you talk about barriers and enablers, it's often useful to differentiate between  direct and indirect ones. And then more importantly, probably is taking a sort of ecosystem approach  for recognizing macro, meso, micro, and even nano level barriers, the nano level being  you, the individual. The barriers will have a different flavor depending on where you  sit within your organization and the role you play. But having said that, I don't see  any surprises here. We know that professional development and training is still a major  challenge, particularly impactful professional development that ultimately impacts the student  experience. So I think this reinforces that there's still a reasonable amount of work  to be done. Perhaps the only other thing I would say, and again, it depends on your position  and perspective, often in addition to enablers, I think Stephen Downs is the author of this,  sometimes language of attractors. One attracts you and another is an enabler. So an attractor  might be the opportunity to earn external income because of a new initiative. And so  that might be an attractor for someone in a senior leadership role, but it may have no  bearing on someone who's doing the student based teaching, if you like. So again, complex  is important. Right, yeah. I just see here in the slide actually that a colleague from  Bremerhaven shared that they had a blended learning approach, which was basically came  from a professor who had an interview on how to improve this and that it actually never  comes from the top of the institution and that there is no view on education, innovation.  I think that's absolutely right. I mean, from all what I have seen in my data, and Mark  may comment on that from institutional practice. That's what we also see. And the innovation  comes from staff and students, but not from the institutional leadership. But we see an  important role of the institutional leadership to ensure that these innovative approaches  are actually taking up a matured mainstreamed and also properly resourced.  Michael, there's a body of literature that also talks about the importance of middle  out. So if we're distinguishing here between bottom up and top down, the role of the middle  out is very important in the context. And what I mean by that, a sentence for teaching  and learning, other surveys that have shown how those sorts of centres do play a role.  They're a bit of the glue that connects up the faculty staff with the central leadership  team. But I absolutely agree about the importance of effectively winning hearts and minds and  the engine room of innovation coming from the real core of the university or institution  when you're working. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And there's another  comment which makes the point that how to understand the difficulty to devise a concerted  institutional approach. But I think it's exactly like you proposed it here. During the pandemic  you were under the pressure to do that. We know that a lot of it has been enabled by  individual teachers and students. But that's actually not a good approach and runs risk  of putting too much burden on their shoulders. So they actually need the structures and support  to be resilient in such kinds of situations. I'm moving on to our, that's actually the  last slide now. And we are actually already in the discussion, Corona beyond Totzenau  Normal. When we asked the institutions in May and June, they were, I think, still partly  under shock. Some came back and triumphed and said we found ways. It was terrible the  first two weeks, but now we are running it and it's not ideal, but it works actually  quite well. So what we have seen, of course, 90% had pivoted to remote emergency, as it  is often called. But also student surveys showed that the dissatisfaction, I mean, there  was of course dissatisfaction. It was not ideal. And there's also, it made certain digital  divides and also how your social impact can impact your social background, can impact  your access to education, comes to play. But overall, it seemed to have worked about  all right. But we are now going into a new phase. The pandemic continues and institutions  will have to find ways of how to deal with that. Some institutions, some of the things  that the institutions indicated already in the survey was that they want to enhance existing  structures. So 90% indicated that they offered already online library access, but of these,  65% said that it has to be enhanced. So clearly in the stress test of the pandemic, what they  offered there was not enough or not good enough. And three quarter also said that they had  concrete plans to enhance digital capacity. And practically all said they had to explore  new ways of teaching, of course you had. But we also have some anecdotal evidence of institutions  which really started to rethink their curricula, not only in view of the current crisis, but  also in the future in view of more flexible and better quality provision in the future.  And they also involved to quote one example, they involved for example students in that  as course and curriculum designer and also as testers of courses and of assessments.  Any views on that Mark? Of course you have.  Wow, very, very interesting to see the number of institutions reporting they are going to  look at new ways of teaching. Of course look at new ways of teaching is not the same as  embrace new ways of teaching. And I guess we're into speculative territory when we start  talking about post COVID. But I do believe that there are going to be some very important  legacies. And in fact what we're doing right now as a form of professional development,  there are just many more opportunities at less cost I should add in all sorts of ways,  including the carbon footprint that's been monitored. One other observation I would  make and there's a comment in the chat box about this is the pressure that has been placed  on those people that we've seen who are the real engine room of innovation in the COVID  experience. And I think it doesn't necessarily show up in this survey yet, but showing up  all over the place that there's a greater recognition of the emotions and the effective  side of learning. And that's not just for our teachers, our instructors, but I also  think for our learners. So it'll be interesting how we blend, if you like, using blend in  a slightly different way, the technology with the emotional aspect of learning going forward.  Okay, what, that's interesting. And I think that's also what we heard and also that you  become much more aware also of the whole social background of your students and the conditions  under which they learn, taking also into consideration that a good part of the learning takes actually  place off campus. One concern is then now a concern that there is a kind of backlash on  digitally enhanced learning. I mean that as many colleagues may have felt, I mean we're talking  to the people who see that actually as an opportunity who triumph and say we made more progress than  before in four years or so, but there are a lot of colleagues who probably don't feel really  comfortable with it and want to go back to campus as soon as possible. So is there a risk that we  brand now digitally enhanced learning as a kind of emergency mood? And as soon as you can, you go  back to campus and you fall back into the old ways of doing it? Well, I'm thinking with an eye  at the time, Michael, that's a great question probably to end with. People may have their own  responses, but who knows? I'm sure there are some people longing to go back to the way things were.  And I guess my final observation would be borrowing a cliche in some respects or a slogan,  culture each strategy for lunch. So we can have all the new strategies and plans  and post COVID-19 to a few ways of teaching, but whether your institutional culture will enable  those will be very important in terms of the outcome. Well, thanks so much. And I think I fully  agree on that. And we also see that there is a lot of awareness for that. Hence the emphasis on  participatory approaches involving staff and students. I think the great, the $100 question  here is how do you actually do that? So okay, we are coming to an end. So thanks, Mark, and thanks  Daniela for supporting us. And thanks to all of you for being here and participating actively.  And sorry for the glitch with the polls. Maybe we can share them in another way. We  try to get them to you. There was actually a question if the slides will be shared too. And  I can let you know that we will have on our website after the festival or the information  about the different sessions. So you can actually get this information afterwards.  Great. Thanks so much.
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