Change appears to have been the only constant over the last year, and there is no sign of that stopping anytime soon. As summer beckons and the hope of normality resuming becomes more and more of a reality, many of us will look forward to getting back to our regular routines as quickly as possible. Of course, the season is not the only thing that has changed – as anyone who has recently visited the EDTL website would have noticed. Our website has received a complete facelift, making it easier than ever to find the resources you need.

Our webinar page has received a similar treatment. Due to our ever-expanding back catalog of webinars, we wanted to make it easy to find ones which are of interest and relevance to you. You can now filter webinars by topic and date, so you can find what you are looking for at the click of a button. Clicking on a webinar will bring you to a new page which contains the webinar, speaker bios and any resources and further reading mentioned throughout the webinar as well.

Furthermore, as part of the EDTL’s commitment to ensuring the student voice is key in their work, we recently launched the Your Education, Your Voice, Your Vision survey aimed at students. This survey campaign is taking place across a variety of different platforms, from Facebook to TikTok, with the aim of discovering how students picture the future of learning. We are not concerned with the minute details when it comes to looking for responses to this survey – just the ideal student experience. This campaign is currently ongoing and we are looking forward to reviewing and sharing the findings.

Pillars of Learning

UCC EDTL lead Cliodhna O’Callaghan (@cliodhnacal) organised a hugely successful series of digital education sessions for UCC staff members over the last few months based on student feedback. Here, Cliodhna discusses these sessions and plans going forward for further digital training.

Teach Digi ‘Ag Caint’ is a UCC staff digital education training series organised by Clíodhna O’Callaghan, Project Lead for the IUA EDTL Project in UCC and is informed and underpinned by the student feedback as collated in the UCC Students Union Survey, October 2020… continue reading.

Establishing a Shared Agenda for Designing Technology-Friendly Inclusive Higher Education

Klavdija Zorec PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at DCU. They are currently working on The DEPTH Study, which aims to investigate ways to enhance technology use for students with disabilities. Earlier in the year, a focus group was arranged featuring academics, university stakeholders and students. Klavdija discusses the DEPTH Study, the focus group and what the project will look like going forward.

The Irish Research Council-funded DEPTH Study, an inter-sectoral research collaboration between DCU, AHEAD, and the ALL Institute in Maynooth University has five main aims in relation to ensuring that universities are as technology-friendly as possible for all students… continue reading.

The Year That Was: Student Interns on their EDTL Internship Experience

Over the course of the last academic year, the EDTL Student Interns have been hard at work both at a national and university level, creating resources and offering guidance that they wish they had access to as a student. As we approach the end of this academic year, the Student Interns reflect on the opportunity to be an EDTL Student Intern and what the role has offered them.

Whether it has been hosting webinars, creating infographics or running an Instagram page aimed at students, it has been quite a year for the EDTL Student Interns. By both contributing to the EDTL Project as a whole as well as working with the individual EDTL team within their universities, all of the student interns were able to make an impact and contribution on both their own university and the wider digital teaching space… continue reading.

The Future Classroom

IUA EDTL Student Intern Ruairi O’Gallchoir discusses what they think the classroom could (and possibly should) look like as the opportunity to go back to the pre-Covid world looms.

There is both a sense of optimism and trepidation as we freewheel towards normality, even though it probably is a bit farther away than many of us would care to admit. Regardless, there is a hope that by the time September has arrived this year that the idea of being fully-remote by necessity will be a thing of the past… continue reading.

Student Voice Webinar Roundup

It is no secret that the student is at the core of the EDTL approach, and so over the last few months we have hosted several webinars where students were given an opportunity to give their thoughts and answer questions on digital teaching and learning. This is a collection of these webinars and what insights you can expect to find in each one.

The EDTL webinar series has been running for over a year now, and the EDTL Student Intern have contributed several webinars of their own. These webinars are designed to give viewers an insight into the student perspective of online learning and an opportunity to ask any questions they would like a student perspective on as well… continue reading.