Tag: Higher Education

Policy and Strategy, Research

The NIDL Partners with ILTA and NMC for the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook > Ireland Higher Education

The National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University, the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA), and the New Media Consortium (NMC) have launched a collaboration to conduct research and publish a regional analysis that describes the emerging technologies, trends, and challenges that will impact higher education in Ireland. The first ever NMC Horizon Project Ireland will produce the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook > Ireland Higher Education, which will be released in March 2015 and jointly distributed free-of-charge, under a Creative Commons license.

With Dublin-based industry giants such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Houghton Mifflin-Harcourt enhancing Ireland’s reputation as the “Silicon Valley of Europe”, the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook > Ireland Higher Education will highlight technological advances in third level education in Ireland.

The NIDL, ILTA, and NMC have forged this relationship on their shared mission of integrating modern approaches and technologies into teaching and learning. Upon its release, the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook > Ireland Higher Education will become a foundation of research that supports education transformation throughout Ireland.

“Our collaboration with the ILTA and NMC is a strong step toward advancing contemporary models of teaching and learning in Irish higher education,” said Professor Mark Brown, Director for the NIDL. “The findings of this report, drawing on the collective expertise of leading Irish educators, will contribute to better understanding of how to take advantage of state-of-the-art new digital technologies that is based on world-class research.”

“This initiative will contribute a unique Irish perspective to inform the wider NMC Horizon Project by drawing on the experience and insights of national technology-enhanced learning experts” says Paul Gormley, Director of ILTA. “Employing the globally-applied NMC research methodology will offer exciting opportunities to identify commonalities and regional differences in higher education research and practice across an increasingly global landscape. The NIDL, ILTA and NMC collaboration could not be more timely in providing this comparative evidence-base.”

“The NMC’s cooperation with forward-thinking organizations such as the NIDL and ILTA is crucial to identifying which technologies, trends, and challenges are and will be impacting Irish institutions and practice in the next five years,” said NMC Chief Executive Officer, Larry Johnson. “We are looking forward to focusing our lens on Ireland and analyzing the unique technological and learning landscape of Irish universities.”

The report will apply the process developed for the NMC Horizon Project, with a focus on identifying and describing emerging technologies likely to have an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry in universities and colleges across Ireland. Beginning in November 2014, an expert panel of leaders in Irish third-level education will engage in discussions in a collaborative, virtual workspace to determine the top 12 developments in educational technology, along with nine key trends and nine significant challenges that will have the deepest impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry over the next five years. These 30 topics will then be further researched and detailed with in-practice examples from Irish institutions and educational programs in the 2015 NMC Technology Outlook > Ireland Higher Education.

To view the expert panel’s progress throughout the project, visit http://ireland.wiki.nmc.org/.

About the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at Dublin City University

The National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) aims to be a world leader at the forefront of designing, implementing, and evaluating contemporary models of teaching and learning. It has a mission of transforming lives and societies through listening, linking, and leading for a better future. The NIDL is committed to providing strategic leadership, building strong communities of practice, and enabling and contributing to world-class research. It supports a comprehensive suite of professional development opportunities in digital learning, from workshops to advanced postgraduate study. To learn more about the (NIDL), visit: http://dcu.ie/nidl/index.shtml

About the Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA)

The Irish Learning Technology Association (ILTA) [http://ilta.ie] is an independent voluntary community of professionals committed to the development and exchange of knowledge by sharing expertise and the promotion of best practice in technology-enhanced learning in education. It achieves this by conducting and commissioning national research projects, hosting the annual EdTech national conference, publishing the open access TEL Ireland Journal, and co-sponsoring the Jennifer Burke Award for Innovation in Teaching and Learning with DCU. To learn more about the ILTA, visit http://ilta.ie/

 About the New Media Consortium

The New Media Consortium (NMC) is an international not-for-profit consortium of learning-focused organizations committed to the exploration and use of new media and new technologies. For 21 years, the NMC and its members have dedicated themselves to exploring and developing potential applications of emerging technologies for teaching, learning, and creative inquiry. To learn more, visit www.nmc.org

Funding Calls

Brief Summary of Networking Event

The National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) hosted a Networking Event on Wednesday to discuss the Call for Proposals to the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund for Building Digital Capacity in Irish Higher Education. 47 participants attended the event from 17 different third level institutions. Billy Kelly, Dean of Teaching and Learning from Dublin City University, welcomed participants and then Professor Mark Brown explained the purpose of the event.

In his introductory comments, Mark drew on his previous New Zealand experience of several digital learning development projects to emphasise the importance of not leaving collaboration to chance. Mark also made it clear that the intent was to use this networking event as an opportunity to discuss ‘what’s right for Irish Higher Education as a whole, as distinct from what might be in the interests of a single institution’.

Networking Event

The first part of the event focused on better understanding the Call for Proposals. Some of the key points identified during the discussions from reviewing the written documentation included:

  •  Strong focus on collaboration
  • Strong focus on the enhancement theme of ‘teaching for transitions’
  • Value of a programme-based approach is emphasised
  • Role of assessment is emphasised
  • Importance placed on articulating a strong vision for building a digital learning culture (note bullet points under Section 2.2)

In reviewing the Actionable Steps, it was observed that Actionable Step 2 is essentially a call for funding for a clearly defined sub project. It was also noted from the response to questions on the website that the date for completion of this project has been extended (should read 30th June 2015).

It was pointed out that rightly all proposals are expected to have a lasting impact. While there is a section dedicated to impact in the online submission form a question arose how impact would be evaluated and whether the emphasis on lasting change was explicitly part of the selection criteria and scoring.

The strong focus on ‘teaching for transitions’ was once again identified in the criteria where it comes through in several places.

A number of other points noted during the discussion included the exclusion of overheads (see response to the relevant  FAQ on the website), how ethical issues may need to be considered in applications if students’ learning is potentially affected, and whether institutions with relatively immature strategies in the area (see Actionable Step A) could potentially be disadvantaged by criterion C.

In the second part of the event, staff from within the NIDL shared some of the potential projects they had already identified from preliminary discussions (see related slides for a list of these projects). Two of these initiatives were used as examples or case studies to see how they fitted the criteria. Participants were also invited to brainstorm and share their ideas for potential projects, and a diverse and interesting mix of initiatives was identified — ranging from MOOCs, developing e-textbooks, discipline-based OERs, online support tools for international students, and the promotion of digital literacy, to name a few.

The final part of the event considered the issue of finding suitable collaborative partners. There was an interesting suggestion put forward of using cloud technology as a solution to create a type of project exchange.

Based on the feedback and informal discussion that continued after the event most participants appeared to find the afternoon useful, and already there have been some follow up conversations about some of the ideas and potential collaborative projects. We welcome further feedback on the event and the opportunity to collaborate on submissions where projects align with our own interests.