Consultation Process

On the 12th March, Professor McSweeney ran an MS Teams Live Event for all UCC Staff. Staff received three emails, through the All Staff email channel, to invite them to this event. It was run as a Live Event instead of a meeting as it was thought there may be over 300 attendees, something which would not have been possible in a Teams meeting. In the end, 144 staff attended the session, participated in polls throughout, and submitted questions through the moderated Q&A system. All questions submitted were published and addressed in the event, although some required further details which will be provided on this site. 

In addition, staff were afforded the opportunity beforehand to submit feedback through a Google form if they were unable to attend the live event. Fifty-five staff did so and this feedback was incorporated into the live event.

Summary

Because of the open nature of many of the responses, it isn’t possible to address them all outside of the PDF, but the following may be considered to provide a fair summary of the more common points:

• On the pre questionnaire, Staff reported feeling proud, exhausted, challenged during the last year. There was also a deal of positivity about the sudden shift and lessons to be learned.
• Staff were divided on whether they felt digital education would form part of their ‘normal’ educational practice post Covid, with results showing a score of 5.6/10 from 91 respondents on a spectrum of 0 for little or nothing and 10 being fully online.
• In terms of the aspects that staff feel could become part of settled practice after Covid, pre-recorded lectures, flipping the classroom, flexible delivery and working, reflection on what is best delivered online and what needs to be delivered face to face were some of the more common responses.
• 83% of respondents felt positively disposed towards continued recording of lectures as set out in our Lecture Recording policy.
• The biggest challenge for townhall participants with online learning over the last year has been lack of engagement and lack of interaction.
• By comparison, those 55 prequestionnaire respondents also strongly identified too much workload and technical difficulties as significant problems in addition to lack of engagement.
• Support was probably the number one issue identified in terms of how UCC can assist those who teach in future – technical support, instructional design support, financial support. There were also calls for the purchase of discipline-specific hardware and software.
• In terms of assessment, it was a mixed bag, probably reflective of very varied local practice. However, continuous assessment and Canvas did crop up as positive elements in this section.
• For what didn’t work in online assessment, academic integrity loomed large in many forms.
• 60% liked grading online. 40% weren’t as enamoured of it.
• For teaching large classes, further discussion is needed as 63% expressed a reference for face-to-face while only 37% suggested going fully online.

Additional information, including a recording, mentimeter feedback and answers to all of the questions asked in the comments during the event are provided in the links below.