Professor Stephen Byrne:

Yes. I would concur completely with what Professor White has said. For undergraduates in particular, the student feedback and the feedback from the student union is that the students want a third level on-campus experience. We do a lot of hybrid learning across various programmes but we see more of the hybrid learning at the postgraduate level. One example is our RePIC, a collaboration across ten European universities through our European alliance. We have students in all ten institutions diving in and receiving material and course content from other institutions in Spain, Germany and France.

They may then choose electives to go to visit those institutions or they can choose to remain here. We see the hybrid and blended approach being more effective and successful at the postgraduate level rather than the undergraduate level. Our student union representatives tell us that the 18- and 19-year-olds prefer an on-campus experience so that they can learn with, from and about each other.