Irish National Digital Experience (INDEx) Survey Report Launch Event

The National Forum, in partnership with higher education institutions across the country, held an online launch of the INDEx Report on 7 May 2020.

In autumn 2019, as part of the Irish National Digital Experience (INDEx) Survey, 25,484 students and 4,445 staff who teach across 34 Irish higher education institutions shared their digital experiences in order to inform and influence the future enhancement of digital teaching and learning in Irish higher education. The tagline for the INDEx Survey, ‘Let’s see where we are so we can build our future together’, reflected the collaborative and focused intentions behind the Survey.

During a time of great change, the INDEx Survey findings provide a unique record of the digital experiences of a diverse range of students and staff in higher education nationally – an important benchmark for our sector.

Student Success: Barriers and Facilitators

This report discusses the views of final year students and recent graduates who attended a TCD led, multi-institutional one-day workshop on what student success means to them, and what they identified as the facilitators of and barriers to achieving that success.
The findings were based on the analysis of four types of inputs for the seminar: written submissions by students on the theme prior to the seminar and student talks, panel discussion and workshop discussions on the day of the seminar.
Student success is a broad concept. It is different for and personal to each student and changes with the student’s journey from initial entry to college through to graduation. In order to have a framework to discuss the concept at the seminar, a thematic analysis was done of the written submissions which students submitted prior to the seminar.

Learning Analytics: Innovative Practices

This is a recording of the National Forum’s webinar ‘Learning Analytics: Innovative Practices’ from November 2019. Our second learning analytics seminar, this event provided presenters from Irish and European higher education to offer brief but highly informative and thought-provoking presentations on the innovative practices relating to data-enabled student success that they are currently engaged in. Presenters include Hazel Murphy from Waterford Institute of Technology who outlines the rich value of quiz data for enabling staff who teach to develop a data-enhanced practice, Pieterjan Bonne of Artevelde University College, who introduces some of the early key findings of the Erasmus+ OFLA (Onwards from Learning Analytics) project and Mark Glynn who gives an overview of how Dublin City University uses data gathered through Moodle to avoid assessment overload, identify students that may be at risk of underperforming and enhance the experience of all students.

Embracing alternative formats, assessment strategies and digital technologies to revitalise practical sessions in Science & Health

A report commissioned by the steering committee of the
“Technology Enhanced Assessment Methods (TEAM) in science & health practical settings”
project entitled:
Embracing alternative formats, assessment strategies and digital technologies to revitalise practical sessions in Science & Health
Author: Ronan T. Bree
Department of Applied Sciences, Dundalk Institute of Technology
Editors: Akinlolu Akande, Dina Brazil, David Doyle, Nuala Harding, Yvonne Kavanagh, Moira Maguire and Anne Mulvihill.

Introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) & Open Licensing

A National Forum webinar “Introduction to Open Educational Resources (OER) & Open Licensing” took place on 11 June 2019. The webinar provided an overview of open licensing using Creative Commons licenses and featured the published resource, the National Forum Open Licensing Toolkit (itself an OER).

Guest speaker Jennryn Wetzler, Assistant Director of Open Education at Creative Commons, defined open education and open educational resources (OER) and demonstrated how to use Creative Commons licenses to find, use, create, and share OER. Catherine Cronin, Strategic Education Developer at the National Forum, spoke about the power of open education to improve access, enhance teaching and learning, and improve equity.