Knowledge Series

Professor Farrell has a wide portfolio, but mostly responsible for digital and online learning.

So, to our first question, what a journey for you from head of war studies at King's College, London through to Dean of Arts and social sciences at the University of London then here to Wollongong in law humanities and the Arts

and now deputy vice chancellor. I wondered when I was preparing for this discussion with your search area, which is in war studies, actually prepared for the task that you

had to take on most recently university in how we took our teaching remotely During covid.

Oh, correct. Question one. So I indeed, I was in London for over a decade as a professor of war studies at King's College London,

and in my research is on strategy and the conduct of contemporary war. So I guess in three ways, it you know, it is kind of relevant, has kind of helped in three ways.

I mean, the first is that the military are famously very good at planning. I mean, they do a lot of planning and we've been doing a lot of planning in this process.

I mean, we've been sort of neck deep in plans basically to get us through get us through this crisis and take taking the whole university into remote delivery.

And the interesting thing about it is that this sort of second point is the military are also very good at crises. You throw them into a crises and they're in their element.

And one of the reasons why they're in their element is because they do a lot of planning. So military plans almost invariably never survive.

Contact with the enemy is the expression they've plans or never what how things actually turn out. But it's because you do a lot of planning that you actually can figure

a way through a crisis. And we found ourselves thrust into this crisis very quickly, like many universities. And I'm very proud to say that, you know, I just have a fantastic

team around me and colleagues across the university just on a really terrific job, actually, in navigation our way through this crisis. I guess the last point I don't make is

the military of this idea of what in their military plans of what they called main effort. And that is you identify the one thing that you really want to focus your attention on,

because by focusing attention on this, you will achieve what you're trying to achieve any more. That would be victory quite early on.

The vice chancellor came out with a very strong statement, which was really a statement around main effort, where he said to the entire university community,

our focus is going to be on getting ourselves online for remote delivery and getting ready for our students so that we can give them the best possible experience.

That was that was the main effort of the entire institution. And I think that rallying call that the vice chancellor put out to everyone was very important and very powerful.

Face to face teaching for the University of Wollongong is a strength. Some might say our core strength started to move so quickly.

Planning crises call to action. But what did it really take for us to move and be so logistically quick to have that focus to move to remote delivery?

Yeah, indeed. I mean, so I think one of the things that Wollongong is very proud of is the quality of the student experience, the quality of the education we provide.

And, you know, consistently year after year, we do so well in those quality indicators, learning and teaching in the top universities in Australia.

So it's very important for us, you know, that when we went to remote delivery, we went online. But that was the best that we could possibly provide for our students.

I think there are two key things there that really, really took for us. One was staff engagement and mean we had to get staff to engage with online delivery.

And so that was a real challenge for us, which was because everybody had to do it. Every single teaching staff member had to actually get their heads around teaching

online, and they did. That was really important. So we we stopped classes for two week periods while we just trained up everyone.

And we had seventeen hundred staff participate in that two week period in training, which is incredible. And we we created your day online teaching course,

learning and teaching course for staff on all aspects of learning and teaching. And that's been running now since since late March. And we've had one hundred and fifty thousand visits to that site by staff coming of that state

, the training modules and use the resources everybody has engaged. And that's been a really amazing effort. And the other thing is, is the student experience.

I mean, we've been really, really focused on the student experience. And midway through the last semester, we did a survey of our students find out how we're doing

basically. And the results just, I thought were incredible. You know, all aspects of our learning and teaching, the quality of our pre-recorded lectures, the quality of the Real-Time

classes, quality of the online materials that we have on our Web sites, the staff, student directions, the student satisfaction ratings were between seventy seven and

eighty five percent, average of 82 percent satisfaction. That's incredible. What we actually think that tells us is that. What students were were telling us was I think many

of them had a really good learning experience, but I think for the most part what they were saying is we can see that you're really tried hard and they really appreciated that.

So I think that spirit of the staff really leaning in engaging and students likewise, you know, leaning in and engaging and realising that we're doing all that we can.

I mean, that's been incredible. I mean, it really has been a member of staff. The head of one school said this is the UOW spirit in action.

And I think it really was

I think you write about the spirit. It comes at many ways in terms of the university. There are many courses that have a practical component. So if we think for some students, that practical component actually takes place off campus, which includes

nursing education. And then for some of our students, it's actually labs and other types of practical. So if we think about students in science and engineering,

how did you focus around how those practicals would continue or be managed during this period?

Yeah, of course. I mean, that's that's obviously very challenging area, because some aspects learning, teaching actually aren't that difficult to put online.

But some areas like laboratory work or some of the practical works or workshops where invariably, you know, the physicality of what you're doing is actually this is core

to it that's more challenging to do online. And, you know, you gave examples of nursing education, great examples because both of those schools have had really

innovative leadership. You've got Tracy Maroney Professor, Tracy Maroney, who's who's head of nursing, and Professor Sue Bennett, head of education of both World-Class educators who do a lot of stuff that's online actually so happens.

And in both those schools, they've actually been doing a lot of stuff online. And in nursing, for instance, they've they they've done some quite experimental stuff through

online delivery of classes that are actually quite practical. And also, I have to say, in science and engineering, actually, they they move to a lot of a lot of work online.

So, you know, member staff went into the laboratory and did laboratory work, which they were streaming out to students. So in the spring semester, we are we are on track

to return about 15 percent of our subjects back on campus. And we're focussing on those priority subjects where really students will benefit by being on campus, which is labs

And the practise very positive because many of our alumni, we have very large numbers of graduates in nursing and education.

One of the scientists and engineers and they will be thinking about the current students who are our future alumni and how they what their experience be different

will have the practical skills. So I really appreciate you taking the time to elaborate on that particular challenge.

Do you think students are more likely to want to continue with the remote delivery and to full face to face or perhaps a blend moving forward?

What would you project going forward that students might be looking for for their education?

Yeah, I mean, obviously it will vary from student to student. Every student just has their own circumstances. I mean, broadly speaking, post graduate students tend to be

more favourably disposed towards online learning. And many of them have, you know, a mix of work applications and family obligations. And so the flexibility that online

offers really, really generally postgraduate students find that very advantageous. Whereas generally undergraduate students for the most part tend to be more disposed towards on campus teaching.

And that's because, of course, they not always, but they tend to be straight from school. They tend to be younger people.

And the university experience offers not just obviously the education, but the very rich social experience, the opportunity to build networks that last you your whole life,

the opportunity to build social capital and the skills to build social capital. And so that college campus experience is very important for that reason. But broadly speaking,

I mean, online does offer flexibility. And so I think there's considerable scope for us to do more on campus, to mix online with our own campus provisions. This kind of hybrid

you're talking about and what I would describe as blended learning and so know in many subjects, say, for instance, you might replace one as one part, the subject say, for instance, some lectures with online material,

and that offers flexibility, which even undergraduates appreciate, because undergraduates, once they do want the campus experience for the most part, many of them, they also value flexibility

because many of them work actually or many have. Many do have care applications.

And so I think, broadly speaking, we will see a lot more online going forward. But at the same time, we are all eagerly awaiting the return to vibrant campus life.

Theo what role do you see alumni playing in the future of education?

Very important role, actually. So we've been talking about online or remote delivery. That's where all the attention is these days. Just for now. But at the same time,

if you look at the government's agenda and they're very focused on jobs creation jobs and rightly so. I mean, just this week, you know, the treasurer was giving his effectually

many. Budget. And and the unemployment projections at the end the year are looking very serious. So anywhere between about nine point five to over 10 percent

unemployed. So the government is very focused on on creating job opportunities. And it's going to be challenging, actually. Add to Productivity Commission today, put out a report. It's really interesting. They looked at the what happened with employment after

the 2007 2008 global financial crisis. And what you had for the decade after that. Was that for young people, it became much more difficult for them to get the kind of jobs that they would expect to get.

So unemployment itself didn't really wasn't too bad beyond 2010, but actually job opportunities for young people as the kind of jobs they should have got given their their education status. That became a real issue.

And this is what what's referred to as scarring in the economy, long term effects of downturns. And we're facing the possibility of scarring. So in addition to online, the other area that are really focused on this is how do we better prepare students for

the future of work, given that we know what's going to change Industry 4.0? And how do we develop a portfolio of lifelong learning offerings? And there are alumni, a very important role to play because I think we have to reach out to our whole community

and involve them in the effort in co designing future lifelong learning offerings and also bringing bringing alumni in to support mentoring opportunities with our students and and potentially also into the classroom.

And I know and I know from my experience back in London, where we did quite a lot of this, is it happens that very often people really appreciate the opportunity to come back into university where they graduated and give something back

and have an opportunity maybe to mentor or to teach us small to give up a small amount of time to do that. And both students and alumni really benefit from that interaction. So I'd like to see what we can do in that space.

Exciting times ahead. And what comparisons do you see between learning institutions across the globe? What's interesting about covid 19 is that all institutions faced

the same challenges at the same time. What are your observations? Being able to see it? Not really. Just as one countries issue, but a global issue?

Yeah, it is very interesting. Covid 19 has been the great leveller. I mean, across all of humanity has been impacted and it's been a global shared global experience, albeit with with with local and regional differences.

And so in the education space, basically universities across the world have had to have had to close down their campuses. And they've done it at different rates. And that's the big, big difference, actually, is the rate at which they've closed down

campuses and broadly speaking, in the West. Universities have been able to close campuses really quite quickly, actually, because we had the resources to go online very quickly and our students had the resources to access online learning.

But in other countries in the global south, the race has been more mixed. And that's partly down to resources being able to deliver online regulation.

The regulatory bodies. So in some some countries online learning that the registry bodies have been less favourable towards online and having to change their view.

And also, of course, what's been quite important is that the country's experience of off the health crisis has been different. So the you know, broadly speaking,

the northern countries got hit earlier. I've coming out, coming out of China, but then spreading into Europe and North America. Those countries got hit faster and earlier

than that than the global south, which got him in his bed later. So that would have obviously impacted him when when campuses closed.

But broadly speaking, ever and ever, every university roughly ends up in the same place, which is going online,

certainly a once in a century experience across the globe. So what have you been doing personally to manage your stress during this time,

particularly around covid, but also turning a very large tanker from face to face to online teaching in a short period of time?

Yeah, I mean, of course. I mean, I have to say this. The what we've managed to achieve by moving in moved ninety nine point nine percent of our subjects online.

So that was incredible. It was just a huge a huge collective effort and also in terms of all of our student support. So that's the support provided by our Pro-Vice chancellor

students. Our provide jobs to students are a students accommodation services division, are information management technology services.

It's just been a massive collective effort. As one of my senior colleagues says, this is very much a team sport. And so it's part of that shared endeavour.

So that really helps with stress because you're all in it together and you're all pulling in the same direction. And so I think sharing those experiences with your colleagues has been has been very important.

And the other is I've taken up Scotland. So it's a game of Scrabble every evening. Listening to classical music is a great way to end the day and invariably losing to my wife. But that's OK.

It's a great de-stressor and it's very wise to keep raising. And then in closing, our final question, what leadership? Listen to me personally, take it away from this experience that you'll take forward.

Yeah, that's a nice question to end on. So first is, I think, around setting a clear direction. And that goes back to my point about structure diversity

, that you want to empower your colleagues and and the whole institution. You want to harness the energy, but you have to set a clear direction and where you're going. And I think that's what the vice chancellor did with his rallying call to say this is now

the single focus of the institution. So I think that's that's a really important lesson. I think also another lesson I would take is about believing in people.

I mean, it we we manage to make a success of this because our staff on our students all pull together. And I mean, for me, I know you, UOW has a terrific spirit.

Obviously, I've known that since since I've arrived. But I just didn't appreciate the depth of of that. And so it's it's seen that in action. And it's not just UOW of course,

many of the universities, we've seen similar things. And speaking to our fellow deputy vice chancellors and we will all get together and think of you swap war stories.

But I mean, others have likewise and other universities have said it's you know, see, it's been very challenging, the whole covid 19 crisis.

But it's been incredible time to be to be working in university has been a great privilege to see how the whole university communities and all the universities around Australia

have pulled together to get to get ourselves through this crisis and support our students. So for me, that's that's an important lesson.

What a delightful area to finish with. Professor Theo Farrell gave up his time so generously today to have a conversation with us.

We look forward to an update in the future once students come back to campus.

well we're here today with dr cassandra sharp

who is an associate professor at uow's school of law

her research relates to understanding the motivations expectations and

values of individuals as they respond to law in key crisis moments

a very pertinent topic as we continue to navigate our way through the COVID-19

pandemic which has thrown the world into a state

of heightened panic disease and anxiety welcome cassandra

well i think it's safe to say that 2020 has been a year like no other

and we've all had to adapt to changing circumstances

and new laws that have quickly introduced to be strictly enforced

so generally speaking how do you think the public have responded to the

restrictions that were introduced during the crisis well i think apart

from the hiccups that we had at the beginning with the toilet paper

stockpiling and the grocery hoarding i think australians have adapted

reasonably well as much as we can i think that given the uncertainty

around the the virus spreading quickly around the globe

and also around community transmission in those early days

we've did we've done the best we can to adapt as quickly as possible

i think wherever there is a kind of a trust

in our governments and our law makers that

their actions are appropriate and working we feel like we can

relinquish some of our freedoms in those moments so wherever we have that trust

and confidence we feel that we can give up a few of our

freedoms but i think that when we start to doubt

the imposition of restrictions then we might be a bit more reluctant

if we if we don't see that this is a huge

public health risk to ourselves and our loved ones

then we might be a bit more reluctant to have our rights diminished

absolutely certainly been a big time of adapting to change and i guess we're all

just doing the best we can in these times that's right

so what do you think about the way breaches of restrictions such as say

sitting down in a public place or lying on a beach which i know in the early

days was commonly moved on by police how do you

think that was handled by law enforcement agencies

i think at the start there were concerns that there was a potential for police

to to be heavy-handed in the issuing of fines

particularly in those areas which might seem to us

quite frivolous in the early days but i think that's

always going to be the downside of discretionary power when there are new

directions or regulations that are put into place that

impact upon our everyday activities we want to have this awareness and

assurance that there's going to be consistency

in application um of those those restrictions and

and a guidance on how we're to behave i can give you a

a personal example of that actually we were as a family during lockdown out on

a bike ride and we had gone for about an hour and

then we stopped in a park to have our snacks and we were quite a

distance away from anyone else just enjoying that time together as a family

when a police officer doing the rounds came over and encouraged us to move on

with our snacks and sort of said you know you probably should be moving on

and it was he was quite lovely it was all

fine there wasn't any angst and he certainly didn't mention fines or

penalties but we had a conversation about how

it's a really awkward sort of moment for the police officers in that regard and i

think the swiftness of the way that these

restrictions came into being they had a really

difficult job and so i think that in the end

we have to recognize that they had to adjust uh

quickly to those changes and i think now they've kind of moved on there's a shift

in focus potentially to those blatant disregard for the rules

where um you know people are having large house parties or 200 people and so

on so i think there's been a bit of a shift in focus

what is the usual process for introducing

temporary changes to law so in australia to change any law or to introduce a law

it needs to go through a parliamentary process so this is whether it's state or

federal that process is usually involves a lot

of discussion and debate and consultation and a lot of time

spent discussing the the impact of the new changes or the new law

and uh and how it will actually come into being and so

it's a time-consuming process from parliamentary

um discussion to approval to royal assent that can sometimes take

weeks months or even years in some cases with the COVID situation the

changes to laws at both the federal and state level

came into being within 24 hours to that point of being enforceable

so i think we can see how quickly things can move in a national emergency but it

usually is a time consuming process wow that certainly is fast in the scheme

of things isn't it and um is it unusual for the enhanced

police powers to be introduced so rapidly i mean

you did touch on the fact that you know it was a 24-hour process but

is this an unusual circumstance would you say yes it is

relatively unusual and that's because these

kinds of amendments to the law usually take a lot of time it's a rigorous

debate process that's what the process the parliamentary process is designed to

do it's its whole purpose and so it is relatively unusual to be

that fast the last time that rapid changes or

introduction to law has occurred with respect to police power was back in

2014 with the government's 16 point plan with respect to combating

alcohol violence so you might remember the one punch laws

that came into being which allowed police officers to

conduct drug and alcohol testing on suspected offenders

and those amendments were brought in within a week from parliamentary process

to enforceability and so at the time those laws those amendments were seen to

be a knee-jerk response to public demand but yes generally speaking um it isn't

usual for these types of um amendments to be so fast do you think

that there was adequate publicity and about the constantly changing state

of the laws during the pandemic you know i think there was criticism uh

in the early days too about you know potentially conflicting

messages and people weren't sure about what it is they can and they can't do in

their everyday lives particularly when out and about um but

you know we live in an age that's at the technology age where the

opportunities to communicate and disseminate information

is limitless almost and so i think they've done the state government and

the federal government and department authorities have done a

very concerted effort to bring

those uh changes and information to the awareness of the public

i mean if you think about it each of those departments have websites

uh that they're constantly updating there have been media releases there's

been briefings there's been press statements there's been campaigns

across all the major news networks and television and radio

advertisements and social media hashtags have been

deployed to help with that communication like um

hashtag ospol and hashtag coronavirus australia

i was going to say i think if you didn't know about what was going on in the

world right now you would have been you know virtually living under a rock so it

was certainly all consuming when it first came about

wasn't it um and then you mentioned social media

hashtags what role did social media play in helping

communicate the changing laws do you think well so as i mentioned

not only did the governments and the department the health department and all

those authorities have websites that they communicated their

changing impacts on but they also have a very strong social media presence

most of those departments have a facebook page and also

either instagram twitter or even some of them have youtube

channels it's so accessible and i think that's the key

to communicating key changes or information

in a rapidly changing environment it is so accessible i mean most people

have any of those platforms on their phones in the palm of their hand

almost daily you know all the time every day

and so we have this opportunity to disseminate information

to a wide range of people thousands and thousands of people

very quickly it is an environment where if you think about

it the social distancing requirements

and the isolation of this pandemic actually stimulated dependence on social

media for information so isolation when we really get down to

it fuels our dependence on digital technology to provide the

information that we're so desperately seeking in

those moments and i think that that individuals really rely on all of those

different platforms to get that information

because we're we're really um struggling to deal with life in those

times and that is a way that we can bring comfort to ourselves and awareness

in those moments absolutely it really makes you wonder

how it would have been without social media isn't it when you cast your mind

back what more than 20 years or two even less

15 years ago that's right you wouldn't have had

this uh mechanism to disseminate such information that's right we're living in

a wonderful age very powerful yes so how does social media commentary

actually challenge or transform understanding of the law

in times of crisis so with the proliferation of social media use with

so many people using social media and if

you think about it facebook has a 2.5 million

users instagram and twitter has uh between them 1.5 million users

with that proliferation of so many people using social media it is a key

way to not only disseminate information

but to transform ideas about how we are responding

to the various activities that are being impacted by

government restrictions and government action and so

um the the nature of social media is actually to amplify and intensify

the urgency with which we will respond in these situations and it acts as this

kind of conduit to facilitating the way in which

we express ourselves in in these moments my research certainly

shows that in the times of a crisis or

these significant events individuals do take to social media to share with

others their concerns or their critique or

their their um their responses and reactions to to

various uh activities of our governing authorities

if you take for example the mask at the moment it's a hot topic

people are trying to decide is the ma is wearing a mask

a moral right is it a legal obligation should the law

mandate the use of a mask this kind of debate is being critiqued

and discussed on a rolling basis on social media and and

it allows for that to be um facilitated amongst a wide range of

people and so what lessons do you think the

governments can take away from the way people have responded to the virus shut

down and the way information was shared on

social media about the restrictions so i think the link between crisis and

threat and government policy has been a real

topic in the literature over the previous years and and i think that the

research does indicate that we or individuals in society do

believe that we live in a dangerous place and that it's the role of our

governments and the law to protect its citizens and to keep them

safe it's really crucial that our policymakers and our

governments understand the way that individuals and

communities will respond to their actions to their

decision-making in that in that kind of crisis or event or

moment and i think one of the things that it would

be important for governing authorities to recognize is

that social media provides this unprecedented access

to our community's views on the way in which they're operating and the

the work that they're doing and how that impacts upon our daily lives

so the impact of law on an individual and a community

can be interpreted by looking at social media comments

it's it's the it's the place where you can go and see

publicly what people are thinking and feeling and responding in that way

it's like an immediate survey of public without having to actually do a survey

in a sense yeah and if there is if there is panic

and confusion and uncertainty and distrust that's

percolating in the public consciousness then it's a real opportunity for the

government and authorities to kind of calm fears and to take action quickly

absolutely well i just have one more question for you cassandra

the world as we know it has changed forever and it's likely we'll be

managing restrictions for some time yet how could authorities work with the

public to achieve more widespread compliance

and best case scenario outcomes i think particularly as the pandemic has

progressed people are becoming mentally saturated

overwhelmed and potentially confused about where do

we stand now with various restrictions i think clear and decisive and

calm communication was really important i think that crisis like these provide

the paradoxical potential to either unite or to divide

australians and i think that tapping into that

from the government perspective is really important the way

in which they access and use social media

will be key to facilitating one of those particular polarizing

responses the prime minister several years ago in

relation to security in 2017 said that

the public wants their lawmakers and their government to put the safety

of their people first and to know that they're doing

that and i think this is this is really important legitimacy is

crucial for engendering trust in the australian

public and so i think that it's a really

important aspect for our governments to take on

board to take note of where people are at with their decision

making and to respond and to tailor their

response for that and i think one thing i've noticed

lately is that people are becoming more numb

to instruction and to statistics and i noticed that with the advertising

from our governing authorities in recent days

that there's been a bit of a shift a shift in gears from

from say the mind to the heart so there was an advertisement that ran

where instead of actually touting instruction it was

a family a mum and a dad talking about their daughter who was working on the

front line during this pandemic and so it's

speaking through story to that idea that we need to take care

of one another and we do it not just for ourselves but for others

and so that's potentially a way to tap into

speaking to the community where they're at

social media is as it engages the whole being

the whole human person and so i think it's good for governments to do that too

fantastic well cassandra that's been so insightful thank you so much for

speaking with me today and we look forward to hearing more

about this fascinating area as social media continues to take shape into the

future