Emerging technological higher education sector combines to transform student learning experience

A €40 million project funded by the European Union — NextGenerationEU aimed at transforming the teaching and learning experience in higher education institutions is drawing to a successful conclusion. The two-year National Technological University Transformation for Recovery and Resilience (N-TUTORR) project, co-ordinated by the Technological Higher Education Association, is an innovative collaboration involving the seven institutions in the technological higher education sector in Ireland.

“We’ve been engaged in a very ambitious programme of work across the newly emerging technological higher education sector since 2022,” says N-TUTORR national co-ordinator Dr Sharon Flynn. “The main aim is to transform the learning experience and make it better for students.”

The project has its origins in the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility established with the ambition for Europe to emerge stronger and more resilient from the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Tim Conlon, head of policy and strategic planning at the Higher Education Authority (HEA), the funding available from the facility offered an opportunity to build on the experiences and learning gained during the pandemic.

“The higher education system is very resilient,” he points out. “It manages to deal with crises and react and respond very well. Higher education institutions went to great lengths to protect students during the pandemic and students accepted the unusual circumstances. A survey carried out before the pandemic told us that only 20 per cent of staff said they were appropriately equipped to teach in a digital environment, yet six months later they were all doing it. There has to be some kind of learning from that.”

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That learning includes the ability to deliver education in different environments to different people. “We wanted students to be able to engage in the digital world as well as staff to be able to deliver education in it,” Conlon notes. “We also had an emerging technological university sector and we wanted to create an opportunity for partnership across institutions. Collaboration is very important.”

That resulted in the Department of Further and Higher Education Research Innovation and Science and the HEA putting in a bid for funding to rollout teaching and learning in a new way in the technological higher education environment. That was followed by the successful proposal for the N-TUTORR project from the seven higher education institutions.

Flynn explains that the project is divided into three separate workstreams covering student empowerment, enhancing staff capabilities, and digital ecosystems. A fourth workstream was added recently to secure and embed changes achieved to date.

The centrepiece of the student empowerment stream is the students as partners in innovation and change fellowship programme. These fellowships provide an opportunity for students and staff to collaborate on small-scale projects that will have an immediate impact on the student experience.

“We looked at opportunities to bring in the student view and work with them to enhance the learning experience,” Flynn adds. “The fellowship projects were very important for that. We kicked off in early 2023 by putting out a call for ideas from groups of students and staff for projects to improve the student experience in their own institution which would each receive funding of up to €5,000. We were inundated with proposals. We received more than 250. We originally intended to fund 100 but we got such a fantastic response that we increased the number to 130. The successful projects were announced in May last year and we held a showcase event in Croke Park in April of this year to demonstrate the fantastic impacts and outputs of projects.”

Several student champions were appointed to support the fellowships and other aspects of the N-TUTORR project. “They help with developing materials and resources for students and get involved in activities as well,” says Flynn. “We pay them for their time each month as it was important that we weren’t just selecting from a cohort of people who are privileged enough to be able to afford to volunteer. We wanted to involve the widest cross-section possible.”

Conlon emphasises the importance of student empowerment in today’s world. “It has always been a challenge to make the transition from second to third-level education. Students are going from rote learning to self-directed learning. They have to actively pursue their learning and studies. And now you have artificial intelligence [AI] and essay mills as well. It’s a very different environment. This stream helps give students an understanding of sources and resources and that’s very important.”

The second stream is focused on transforming learning, teaching and assessment by developing the capabilities of academic, management and support staff. “We are doing this through our communities of practice, N-TUTORR masterclasses, and other staff training initiatives,” says Flynn.

The third stream is concerned with providing the digital infrastructure to support the other streams. “We need to ensure the digital systems are in place to support assessment, academic integrity, and respond to developments like generative AI [GenAI],” she explains. “This is a very good example of the sector coming together instead of the seven institutions working alone to plot their own courses.”

It isn’t just a case of providing new equipment. “A lot of facilities in the seven partner institutions have been improved but there is a larger piece around using digital media to support online and hybrid learning,” she points out. “We didn’t just purchase new equipment or technology, we provided training as well. We also gave guidance on how to use the technology within the curriculum. A very holistic approach was taken.”

The project has been an unqualified success and met the performance indicators set for it, according to Dr Victoria Brownlee, senior manager, system development and performance management, at the HEA. “The milestone targets were set at EU level,” she explains. “Those targets were for 9,600 students and 4,000 staff to participate by April 2024. Overall, more than 13,000 students and over 4,000 staff were engaged. And these are distinct engagements with each student or staff member counted only once. The total number of engagements is likely to be much higher than that.”

Conlon believes collaboration between the partner institutions was critically important in achieving those targets. He points to the concept of coopetition. “They are competing for students on the one hand but need to collaborate and co-operate as well. N-TUTORR created a safe space and environment for them to tackle shared challenges collaboratively. They were not necessarily equipped to work together in that way before this but having looked at the shared challenges, they found a way to do it.”

Brownlee points out that this was the first time the newly established technological universities had worked together. “It took time to establish relationships and find ways of working together. A steering group involving representatives from the partner institutions was created and we met with the project management office every few weeks. Tim Conlon chaired the presidents’ group which provided project-level governance. This group offered an opportunity for presidents to discuss progress as well as opportunities and challenges within the project.”

That work will provide a basis for future collaboration. “The governance structure to work collectively and deliver projects now exists and relationships have been built between the institutions. We hope that will be sustained for the future.”

Flynn echoes those sentiments. “There has been huge commitment from across the sector including by the group of seven presidents and other leaders in each institution to ensuring the money was spent in the best possible way to really make a difference to students. A true sense of collaboration has been developed across the sector. There is now a real sense of collective achievement and a desire to continue that collaboration.”

Looking back on the Croke Park event, she describes it as a huge celebration. “We had 350 people in there on the day, many of them students. There was a real sense of joy and pride across the sector. It was absolutely fantastic. We have plans for another big showcase event at the end of the year.”

The project team will now look beyond the milestone targets. “Between now and end of year we will focus on the impact of the different projects and initiatives on the ground,” says Flynn. “We will be telling the stories about the fellowship projects and other activities that have been happening and how they have had a positive impact on the learning experience for students. These examples build upon the hands-on/active experiences that are a strength of the technological institutions.”

To read more about the range of projects supported by N-TUTORR visit transforminglearning.ie/fellowships