Ireland – Digital Learning Dispatches

By Mark Brown

Speaking from Washington DC on the morning of Thursday 12th March 2020 the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Leo Varadkar, announced that all schools and higher education campuses across Ireland were to close at 6:00pm. This news was not totally unexpected, but the short notice caught many people by surprise and resulted in a flurry of activity within and across Irish educational institutions.

The campus and school lockdown quickly evolved to other sectors with the Government introducing new regulations requiring all bars, restaurants and shops to close. At the time of writing, Ireland remains in a tight lockdown situation until current restrictions are reviewed on May 18th, 2020. However, there is every indication that social distancing requirements will continue for the foreseeable future and seriously impact the start of the new academic year.

No alt text provided for this image When Dublin City University (DCU) hosted the ICDE World Conference on Online Learning back in November 2019 no one amongst the 800+ delegates from over 80 countries could have predicted the great onlining of Irish higher education in the weeks and now months since the Taoiseach’s announcement. The pivot to rapidly teach online has forced us to think around corners and fast-track the future (Brown, 2020). While history teaches us to be wary about making speculative claims about the future it is highly probable that online education will never be the same again (Brown, Costello & Nic Giolla Mhichil, 2020). In 2012, the New York Times declared it was the “Year of the MOOC” (Pappano, 2012) and now 2020 is likely to be known as the year when online education helped us to keep teaching and keep learning. With the benefit of hindsight there is a prophetic quality that rings remarkably true to this extract from Learning in the Light, a poem written by Réaltán Ní Leannáin for last year’s World Conference:

“We no longer stop learning when the darkness gathers,

Those old webs have crumbled in this era of light.

In an age of information, learning squats tight in our grasp, within reach of all.”

On the whole the Irish response to emergency teaching online in the face of darkness and incredibly challenging circumstances has been remarkably positive and relatively successful. The period from March 2020 to May 2020 can be described in three phases:

(i) get online quickly,

(ii) get organised to develop appropriate alternative assessments, and

(iii) get thinking about future scenarios and next steps.

While the Irish story of our response to the Covid-19 pandemic is still being written the unprecedented pivot to online learning will be etched forever into the history of higher education (Brown, 2020). As we pause, look to the future and enter a new stage, however, what lessons can we learn from the experience so far? Although the following reflections and five lessons drawing on the experiences of the NIDL team do not claim to be a definitive or representative account of how Ireland has responded to the Covid-19 global pandemic, hopefully they contribute to useful learnings and further conversations as we move forward.

You can read the five lessons and the rest of this blog post on Mark’s personal Linkedin account.

A lot can happen in a week! This time last week we were still coming to terms with the dramatic news from the previous day that all schools and college campuses across Ireland were to close at 6:00pm on Thursday March 12th. At the time few people could have predicted the impact of this decision as the Government adopted a serious response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking a little time out, this post briefly reflects on events of the past week and in particular the incredible response from Irish educators. Drawing on DCU’s response it offers a diary of insights and selected highlights from the experiences of the NIDL team.

Our preparations in the NIDL for the prospect of restricted campus access began in earnest on Sunday, March 8th, when we first produced our “Keep Teaching” guidelines for DCU staff. On Tuesday, March 10th, we produced a similar “Keep Learning” guide for DCU students. Over the next few days we developed and facilitated a series of additional online professional development events for staff, including two workshops on “The ABC of Teaching Online” and several “Using Zoom for Teaching” sessions. There was a large response to these workshops and no doubt they contributed, coupled with our considerable experience of online education through DCU Connected, to the relative smooth pivot on Monday, March 16th, to fully teaching online.

Although we developed a plan as early as the previous Monday to increase our frontline services to cope with a significant increase in demand for online teaching support, by the end of Monday, March 16th, only 5 ticket requests were waiting to be resolved. And as the week continued our Loop support team managed with a huge effort to stay largely on top of requests for assistance. By close of business of Friday, therefore, only 14 tickets remained to be opened and most of these are likely to be responded to by the end of the evening. A big thanks goes to the commitment of this small team who notably received a personal message of thanks from DCU’s President.

111 But the real story and success of the first full week of teaching fully online at DCU needs to be attributed to the incredible efforts of those who teach across all of our five faculties. There are some amazing stories that will hopefully get told when the time is right. For example, Loop was being used in particularly creative ways and on Monday alone there were over 700 separate live sessions in Zoom. This number had doubled by the end of the week with over 1,400 separate live events on Friday. The incredible response from educators in the face of such challenging and unprecedented circumstances appears to be a standout theme right across Ireland. Perhaps we only really learn about ourselves, and the values we hold, in times of adversity.

The NIDL team has also spoken throughout the week about our wider responsibility to the Irish education community. On Saturday March 14th, we launched the first version of a dedicated webpage designed to support educators moving to teaching online in a hurry. Our “Swiftly Moving to Teaching Online: Resource Bank” now contains a wealth of resources, including quality checklists, tips for online teaching, suggestions for alternative assessments and student learning guides. This resource continues to be updated on a daily basis.

On Monday, March 16th, we hosted in partnership with the European Association for Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and the European Distance and E-Learning Network (EDEN) a webinar on swiftly moving to teaching online which attracted several hundred participants.

Coincidently, a team in the NIDL was already scheduled to launch a free online course on Teaching Online as part of the #OpenTeach project. This course developed with funding from the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education starts this coming Monday with over 450 participants. However, over the last week to help meet the demand for resources on teaching online the team shared a number of video lessons from the keyface on relevant topics. The full suite of videos can be found on the Resource Bank along with a number of other useful guides on getting started with teaching online.

Also, on Monday, we first engaged with FutureLearn about the development of a new free online course for educators affected by Covid-19. After a rapid design and development process, this course was ready for its official launch on Thursday March 19th and in the first 24 hours attracted over 2000 participants from 125 countries. At the time of writing over 150 Irish educators have registered for the course. The FutureLearn course, ‘How to Teach Online: Providing Continuity for Students’ aims at providing evidence-based, just-enough, just-in-time and just-in-case practical learning for educators new to online teaching.

As part of the course and DCU’s support for this initiative, Professor Mark Brown was asked to provide his responses to 7 key questions about teaching online. Although there have been many lists of top tips for teaching online published over the past week, we share Mark’s response to these questions below as another small contribution to supporting the education community at this challenging time.

7 Key Questions About Teaching Online

What three key considerations should educators make when moving from face to face to online?

Firstly, take time to decide what type of online teacher you want to be. Don’t leave this to chance. Draw on your educational philosophy to identify a term or metaphor that best encapsulates how you would want your students to describe your approach to online teaching. For example, are you going to be a manager, guide, coach, facilitator, gardener, time traveller or something else more akin to your teaching philosophy?

Secondly, think about your online learners. Who are they? What needs are they likely to have? What skills and knowledge gaps are they likely to have? What prior experiences do they bring and how can you draw on them as a valuable online learning resource? Ask yourself, if I was doing this course as an online learner why would I be excited and even delighted to engage in the variety of learning experiences?

Thirdly, be creative in how you intentionally design for learning. What innovative online learning experiences can you embed in your course that might not be possible in a traditional classroom? With the luxury of more time avoid merely replacing one traditional method or technology with another in your online environment without any clear transformative advantage. Remember if you want to develop creative, innovative and highly imaginative learners, then we need teachers willing to apply these dispositions or “habits of mind” in the design of their online courses.

What’s the hardest lesson you’ve learnt when teaching online?

Adding too much “stuff” to my online course. Although with the best intentions of helping my students by giving them access to lots of links and additional resources, I discovered that inadvertently I was actually increasing their workload. Indeed, I was even placing their success at risk as a clear flag was needed to differentiate between essential and non-essential information.

What practical steps can set your learners up for success for learning online?

Make sure they have enough time. Set clear expectations in terms of the amount of time required for both directed and self-directed learning activities each week. Ensure your students understand whether they have enough time to continue their online study on top of existing commitments, particularly in light of changing circumstances. To this end, invite your learners to complete this “Do I Have Enough Time” calculator. And plan for the unfortunate fact that other life commitments may get in their way, including getting sick. So be flexible and show compassion to your learners.

What’s the biggest wrong assumption you’ve made when teaching online?

When I first started teaching online over 20-years ago I assumed that all you needed to do was put your lecture notes on the internet and open a bulletin board for discussion. With the benefit of hindsight, it was hardly surprising that very few students responded, posted comments or even asked questions. What I discovered is that you have to design for interaction and help your students learn how to ask the right questions. I would even go so far as to say more often than not the question is the answer!

What’s your best time saving tip for teachers?

Don’t waste your time creating lots of new content as your students are one of your best resources to help locate and co-construct the knowledge required to meet your learning intentions. In many respects, you are better to think of your students as the co-authors rather than the audience of your content. More to the point, embrace emptiness! For example, if you really want to be creative, then consider developing an asynchronous online role play where students drive interactivity in their assigned roles over a defined period, as they debate and try to resolve an authentic problem.

What’s your best time saving tip for students?

Don’t wait until you think you will have a block of long, uninterrupted, quiet, rested perfect time. You may be procrastinating. You do need some longer spaces of time but do also use shorter intervals when you can. Keep your train of thought going by refocusing on your learning in smaller slices of time. During that break, that queue, journey, or any other short space of free time you have. Develop new habits of how you use those in-between moments. Keep your focus on your learning, and remember why you are doing it and what your goal is.

What’s the one thing you’d recommend to educators new to teaching online?

Design your course as if you’re a learner. Think very carefully about the workload and new technical demands you’re placing on your students. From this learner’s perspective also consider the inherent value proposition in different types of activities you ask them to complete. When you’re done ask yourself: Is this a great looking course that I you would really like to take? Will it really grab my learners? While the best online courses have an X factor the main thing is your willingness to learn, innovate and remain open to trying new ideas. Hence, good online education begins with having the right mindset rather than depending on a strong technical skillset.

If you would like to hear more from Mark and other experienced online educators, or share your own lessons with people keen to learn, then we highly recommend that you register for the FutureLearn course.

Finally, as recently as November 2019, when the National Institute for Digital Learning (NIDL) at DCU hosted last year’s World Conference on Online Learning, few could have predicted in the space of just a few months that online education would become so crucial to the continuity of Irish education. Arguably, online education will never be the same. However, responding to a crisis is one thing but the challenge over the weeks ahead, and beyond, is to better understand and embrace the opportunities that new digital technologies offer for a more transformative model of education which prepares students for tomorrow’s world, today.