Professor Brian MacCraith:

A question was asked about collaboration with institutes of technology on the development of the new regional clusters, which is starting to happen. With our colleagues in Dundalk Institute of Technology and NUI Maynooth, we have particularly focused on investing in technology in lecture rooms whereby one can capture and broadcast lectures in real time or store them and pass them on. This allows us to avoid duplication and get more efficiency from the system. Students in one location can take lecture courses in real time from many other locations in the cluster, and this is an important development.

An important point that was not made is the vast array of open educational resources, OERs, particularly the Khan Academy, which is being piloted in Ireland. One of the major challenge for students, especially regarding retention, is mathematics. This is applicable at primary, secondary and third level, as Deputy Cannon is very aware. It comprises freely available, ten-minute videos dealing with all the concepts of mathematics from 1+1 up to complex calculus. We are mapping those resources onto the primary school and junior cycle curricula as a resource for teachers, parents and students, and because it is a social enterprise, it is all free. The space of open educational resources, properly mediated to teachers across all levels, will be a major advantage in this broader digital learning space.