ABOUT Dublin City University

For over 40 years Dublin City University (DCU) has been providing adult learners all over Ireland, and beyond, with flexible access to higher education. In 1982, the National Distance Education Centre was established at DCU and for many years we offered university-level qualifications through more traditional ‘distance education’ forms of delivery. In 2004, the National Centre became 'Oscail – DCU Online Education' to reflect our early adoption and leadership in harnessing the educational potential of new models of online delivery. As Ireland's first University of Sanctuary we take our mission very seriously and are proud of our ground-breaking work in supporting the education of refugees and asylum seekers through Scholarships for online learning. In 2017, to further advance our mission and the international outreach of our expertise in online education, the NIDL established the Ideas Lab with a global strategic partnership with the FutureLearn platform. Notably, within the first six months of this initiative, more than 20,000 learners from over 130 countries registered for one of our online short courses. By the beginning of 2020, this figure had increased to over 70,000 learners. We continue to have a large team of highly experienced staff with considerable teaching and research expertise in the area of digital learning. Importantly, all of our online programmes are fully accredited and internationally recognised. DCU is consistently ranked in the top 100 young universities around the World and has become a global leader in the design and development of BOLD education. We are Ireland's only member of the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (EADTU) and play an active role in the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE). Our leadership in this rapidly growing area is further evidenced by being selected to host the 2019 ICDE World Conference in Online Learning, which attracted to Dublin over 800 delegates from more than 80 countries. At DCU, digital by design is very much part of our DNA.