Webinar: Creating and Sharing Open Educational Resources (OER)

A National Forum webinar “Creating and Sharing OER” took place on 28 May 2020. The webinar explored how to share resources that you have developed as open educational resources (OER) in order to facilitate sharing and reuse by others.

Catherine Cronin, Strategic Education Developer at the National Forum, facilitated the webinar and guest speakers Orna Farrell (Dublin City University), Iain MacLaren (National University of Ireland, Galway) and Gearóid O Súilleabháin (Cork Institute of Technology) shared their experiences of creating OER for previous projects funded by the Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund. The speakers discussed the use of Creative Commons licences, factors to consider when choosing a licence, and the advantages of openly licensing resources for reuse and remixing by others.

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.

Embedding Data Use for Supporting Students

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The National Forum’s ‘Embedding Data Use for Supporting Students’ webinar took place on Tuesday 28 April 2020. It is the third in an ongoing National Forum webinar series that looks at effective practices for using data to support students.

This event focused on the challenges and benefits of embedding data use into ongoing institutional practices. The speaker line-up featured Ed Foster, Nottingham Trent University, who discussed the university’s lessons learned in devising and implementing one of the UK’s pioneering learning analytics platforms, the NTU Student Dashboard. Closer to home, Dublin Business School’s Lee Richardson and Sarah Sharkey explored their experience of intervening with students who may be struggling, as identified by their home-grown early alert system. Speaker Jeremy Britton introduced University College Dublin’s Unified Service Model which uses data to ensure student queries and issues are addressed and resolved efficiently and consistently across the campus.

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.

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.

Learning Analytics: What Works?

This webinar explores innovative approaches to harnessing data, and the growing recognition of its potential to support whole-of-institution strategies for student success.

Primarily aimed at Ireland’s higher education teachers and policy-makers/managers, this interactive online event discusses what an effective data-enabled student success strategy looks like. It also explores a range of national and international best practice on dynamic data-led student success initiatives.

The speaker line-up includes Linda Hanna who discusses her experience of implementing a successful institutional learning analytics strategy at the University of Essex. The award-winning use of everyday software to provide personalised feedback to large student groups is presented by GMIT’s Dr Cormac Quigley. Dr Niamh Nestor and Diane Cashman explore UCD’s advanced learning analytics initiative.

Reverse Mentoring at DCU

A number of ‘Focus On’ document resources have been created as part of the Crannóg project. These resources curate existing materials into short “what you need to know”-style briefs on key topics in Leading in Teaching and Learning.

Leading in Teaching & Learning

A number of ‘Focus On’ document resources have been created as part of the Crannóg project. These resources curate existing materials into short “what you need to know”-style briefs on key topics in Leading in Teaching and Learning.