Dr. Jen Harvey:

I would like to refer to what Professor Gallagher said about the actual purpose of higher education. This links in with the debate we have been having about the quality of teaching. We have moved on from the imparting of information. I think the role of educators in higher education is now much more than that. Our role is to equip our students to be lifelong learners when the information they are getting now is well and truly redundant. At a time when students can avail of extracurricular activities and many opportunities to engage with external communities, etc., the provision of an enriched educational experience must involve more than sitting or standing in a classroom.

As an institution, we have been involved in considering what teaching quality is in terms of granting awards to academic staff. I have been involved in various processes through the years and there is a challenge in defining quality of teaching. We have gone through models whereby students make nominations or academics submit portfolios. I have never been particularly comfortable with any of these measures. Last year we introduced a new model whereby students made 1,100 nominations for academic staff members. It was one of the most positive things I have ever seen because we heard about the inspirational teacher who really captured the essence of a problem and inspired students. For example, there was somebody who, in a moment of despair, did not know where to turn, and an academic had spent lots of time working with the student. Another academic had really built up a student's confidence. There were many such amazing examples. Linking into what Dr. Foley said, now an academic needs to be so many things to so many people and therefore needs to be able to support and inspire in everything he or she does.

I return to the argument that we need to be able to provide people with the toolkit with which they can do this. We now have to cater for students who use new technologies. The skills of being able to mediate and moderate online are very different to those of being able to inspire and engage students in a classroom or those of providing supports and one-to-one tutorials. That is an amazing skill set. Sorry, I am babbling but it is definitely something to support because most of the academics with whom I work and the ones who select to engage after the diploma want to try all these different things. Once they have the core skills, they want to review their assessment and feedback strategies, they want to know whether there is a continuing professional development course through which they can do this, they want to move online and they will ask whether there is an online course through which they can learn from a student's perspective. We should not generalise too much about everything. If we can provide academics with all these resources, that is key. It is not just always about general resourcing, it also involves where that resourcing goes and, linking into what Professor Gallagher said, getting parity of esteem between teaching and research - and nothing else. We must recognise the importance of that and the skill set that we give to our students or encourage them to develop while they are with us. It is much more than lots of information.