This INDEx Survey Final Summary Report outlines how INDEx Survey findings provided a source of evidence for the initial response to the COVID crisis, have supported data-informed decision-making in multiple ways, and represent an important baseline of pre-COVID teaching, learning and digital experience.
The National Forum has developed this one-page guiding framework to inform conversations at institutional level in the development of approaches to embedding student success. The framework identifies three key pillars for student success: enabling institutional capabilities, enabling institutional culture, and enabling institutional practices.
This Forum Insight provides an overview of the Digital Education Action Plan 2021-27: Resetting education and training for the digital age (DEAP), published by the European Commission on 30 September 2020. The DEAP acknowledges the key enabling factors for effective digital education and presents a vision for enhancing digital teaching and learning and for improving digital literacy and skills at all levels of education. This Insight summarises the key points of the action plan and references related work in the Irish higher education sector.
32 projects were funded across 25 Irish higher education institutions through the National Forum’s Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund from 2014 to 2018. These projects involved over 400 members of the Irish higher education community working collaboratively to engage a further 12,500 senior managers, staff and students in the enhancement of teaching and learning over a five-year period. This Forum Insight outlines lessons learned from a review of the impact of these projects regarding how impact can best be achieved, sustained, captured and communicated within the context of teaching and learning in higher education.
Following the closure of higher education institutions across Ireland on 12 March 2020, the entire higher education community mobilised at speed to ensure student learning could continue through online/remote teaching and assessment approaches. With a view to capturing what had been learned from this extraordinary semester, the National Forum reached out to key contacts across the sector. This briefing paper summarises the insights they shared and considers what their insights mean for the enhancement of teaching and learning in the near and longer-term future.
Across all countries and contexts, higher education institutions are confronted with the question of how to adapt and shape higher education in an increasingly digital, networked world. At a time of unprecedented global challenge, the importance of confident, supported engagement with digital technology has become clear. The findings of the Irish National Digital Experience (INDEx) Survey, presented in this report, provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the digital engagement, experiences and expectations of students and staff who teach across our sector.
Across all countries and contexts, higher education institutions are confronted with the question of how to adapt and shape higher education in an increasingly digital, networked world. At a time of unprecedented global challenge, the importance of confident, supported engagement with digital technology has become clear. The findings of the Irish National Digital Experience (INDEx) Survey, presented in this report, provide a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the digital engagement, experiences and expectations of students and staff who teach across our sector.
The Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund projects 2014-18 represented an investment of circa €4.74m over five years in teaching and learning in Irish higher education. The evidence presented in this report indicates that this investment resulted in enhanced learning experiences, advances in underpinning systems and structures and a culture of enhancement which has developed significantly in the years since 2014. In addition, Ireland’s international reputation as a leader in the area of teaching and learning was reinforced.
While some assessment components do not need significant adjustment in the move to online (including at-distance) learning, others require some additional thought and may need to be replaced/significantly adjusted. In support of the move to online/remote assessment in March 2020, this resource provides some indication of the kind of modifications that could be made for these common assessments. It is not an exhaustive list, but we hope it may be helpful in considering some of the available options.
Students can learn through many different but equitable assessment methods. An alternative online assessment is not a lesser form of assessment, but a different assessment to achieve the same aim. Some of the ideas in this Insight are worth considering in the design of alternative assessment methods for the online environment to ensure the quality and equity of the assessment. Developed to support the Irish higher education community in the initial weeks of the move to online/remote teaching and learning in March 2020.
