Education Commons^™

Considering The Shift In Lecturer Roles As Key Skills And Competencies Are Fostered In Higher Education Students Today, Frances Boylan, Muireann Okeeffe, Mary O'Rawe

Conference papers

The need to develop the skills in students for smooth progression from higher education into employment are even more important in today’s economic climate. Students need to be increasingly adaptable and entrepreneurial in their ability to locate and create employment opportunities. Consequently, efforts are afoot throughout the higher education sector to develop measures to ‘broaden the curriculum’ addressing the holistic development of the student. In an attempt to prepare these students to manage their work and learning throughout all stages of their lives, lecturers now recognise the importance of fostering key skills and competencies. However, supporting and implementing these measures …

Engaging Students In The Classroom: How Can I Know What I Think Until I See What I Draw?, Paul Donnelly, John Hogan

Conference papers

Recognizing the world into which our students will emerge upon graduation, a world characterized by constant change, and our belief in the need to develop our students as “critical beings” (Barnett, 1997) and as “citizens capable of governing” (Giroux, 1997: 259), we embrace a critical pedagogy that is not just about theory (Dehler, Welsh & Lewis, 2004), but can also be implemented experientially in the classroom through the use of freehand drawing. With this as context, our aim in the classroom is to create a learning space where our students develop their capacity for critical self-reflection. As such, we use …

Get Smart! An Evaluation Of An Initiative In Personal And Professional Development Among First Year Undergraduates, Mary O'Rawe

Teaching Fellowships

The third level learning environment today is characterised by many demand and supply-led challenges. Problems of student engagement, motivation and ability to perform in a third level education environment are well documented, as are the opportunities and challenges posed by new modes of delivery. Knight and York highlight the importance of developing a strong set of personal skills, understandings and personal attributes that make graduates more likely to gain employment and to be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefit themselves, the community and the economy

In response to this complex relationship between the expectations of industry, student and academics …

Using Formative Feedback To Support A Blended Learning Programme, Noel Fitzpatrick, Bernadette Burns, Brian Fay

Teaching Fellowships

Formative feedback has been well documented as a means of promoting and engaging learning. Indeed, for effective feedback the timely nature of feedback is essential. This project outlines the development of formative assessment as integral part of a blended learning programme. Using the existing BA Visual Art Programme (Sherkin Island), this project developed, used and evaluated innovative student feedback mechanisms. The project focused on the development of formative feedback for first year modules on the programme with special emphasis placed upon the written elements of the course. The BA in Visual Arts is a majority practice based programme in Fine …

Building Information Modelling Incorporating Technology Based Assessment, Maurice Murphy, Lloyd Scott

Teaching Fellowships

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is currently being developed as a virtual learning tool for construction and surveying students in the Technological University Dublin. This advanced technology is also used to develop a technology based assessment practice for enhancing the learning environment of construction and surveying students. A theoretical design framework is presented in this paper, which combines advanced technology and assessment theory to create a virtual learning environment. This is based on the move from teacher-centered to student-centered learning, which attaches a higher degree of importance on what students know, understand, and can do as a result of their educational …

Improving Core Mathematical Skills In Engineering Undergraduates, Michael Carr

Teaching Fellowships

A large number of engineering undergraduates being their third level education with significant deficiencies in their core mathematical skills. Every year, in the Technological University Dublin (DIT) , a diagnostic test is given to incoming first year students, consistently revealing problems in basic mathematics. It is difficult to motivate many students to seek help in the Maths Learning Centre to address these problems. As a result, they struggle through several years of engineering, carrying a serious handicap of poor core mathematical skills, as confirmed by exploratory testing of final year students

In order to improve these skills in engineering students …

Improving The Quality Of Pbl Modules In An Engineering Programme, Gavin Duffy

Teaching Fellowships

Engineering programmes have a strong reputation in the delivery of technical knowledge and skills. Graduates need equally high levels of competence in personal and professional skills to not only improve themselves and meet the existing requirements of employers and professional bodies but to also help them manage the inevitable changes that society is facing in an increasingly populated world. The need to move from traditional to student-centred learning in the context of engineering education was the motivation for this project. This can be facilitated through the use of group-based,problem –driven learning as this offers high integration of technical and non-technical …

Developing A Pedagogic Approach To Enhance Student Learning Before, During And After International Work Placement: Teaching Fellowship 11, Frank Cullen

Teaching Fellowships

The report commences with a brief overview of the Fellowship research and provides insight into the benefits of mobility. Erasmus mobility is viewed as a means to promote the Department of Culinary Arts in the international culinary arena via the student’s skills and performance. It is clear from this research that the international internships provide exceptional opportunities for students to integrate and learn in different cultural environments. It is argued that this research addresses many of the unanswered issues related to internship before, during and after the experience: issues of knowledge, identity, integration and the student’s personal development. This research …

Action Accounting 'Untying The Accountancy Knot, Alice Luby

Teaching Fellowships

Action Accounting ‘ Untying the Accountancy Know’ is an innovative cross-faculty collaboration to develop e-learning activities to enhance and improve the learning experiences of students. The cross-faculty Action Accounting project team was established in 2008 and includes accountancy lecturers from the College of Business and the College of Arts and Tourism as well as members of the Learning Support Services and the Learning Teaching & Technology Centre.

Accounting lecturers had observed that many first year students had been struggling with the accounting modules and this often resulted in high levels of examination failure and low retention rates. They also recognised …

Curriculum Development For The Delivery Of A Standardised Business Research Methods Module, Conor Horan

Teaching Fellowships

The goal of this project is to provide a framework for a revised delivery of Research Methods across the College of Business. This project considers a number of issues and misconceptions that needed to be overcome regarding the delivery of Research Methods (RM) as a module and the recognitions of RM as a discipline. This includes the misconception that “commonality” of the student cohort was required for the delivery of RM and the issue of student disengagement. The outputs of this project are Module Descriptors for a generalised Research Report, case studies representing best practice in other institutions and the …

An Examination Of The Use Of Blended Learning To Support Improvement Of Engagement And Retention Of Part-Time Postgraduate Level Students Using Student Edited Podcasts, Deirdre Lawless, Damian Gordon

Teaching Fellowships

Part time students must content with a large number of logistical factors which may inhibit their ability to attend all required instruction sessions. The vast majority of part-time students are in full –time employment and due to either family or work pressure may be unable to attend all classes. This can have a significant impact on the student learning experience. Students can quickly fall behind, become de-motivated and can increasingly seek deferrals from with examinations or the programme itself. Given the current economic climate it is to be expected that the numbers of students interested in upskilling will be increased …

Development Of Student Centred Physics Labs From Years 1 To 4, Robert Howard, Cathal Flynn, Francis Pedreschi

Teaching Fellowships

Physics laboratories, with their usual relaxed atmosphere combined with the exploratory nature of physics should help to create a student centred learning environment in which the students develop the necessary lab skills. However in reality most physics labs, especially in years 1 and 2, are recipe driven and the students follow a set of instructions from a manual which require no or minimal student exploration of the physics involved. The assessment methods also appear to be misaligned as they often only asses the product (report and logbooks) and not the desired learning outcomes of the module./p>

During this project we …

Formative Assessment Structures In First And Second Year Architectural Technology To Enhance Student Learning, Catherine Prunty, Maire Crean

Teaching Fellowships

The multiplicity of learning and teaching theories and strategies that a teacher can use to assist the process of developing greater student learning and engagement is very broad and it can be overwhelming determining what best suits a teacher’s particular environment or the type of learning required to be undertaken by the learners. However some in particular stand out from an Architectural Technology perspective that we believe will benefit many other taught project based Engineering and Built Environment courses.

While the subject “Architectural Technology” is often very closely associated and allied with Architecture, it is in fact quite different. The …

The Correlation Between Attendence And Achievement, Adrian Davis

Teaching Fellowships

In a global context it is generally accepted that the retention and associated completion rates for first year students is an area for concern in third level institutions. One are of particular interest is the low levels of completion on some degree programmes. Earlier studies of a similar nature have indicated that these students who attend at high levels not only pass examinations but also attain higher grades. Whilst attendance itself is not the cause of learning, even the most basic exposure to new material has a positive effect on learning.

The purpose of this study is to ascertain the …

Do Eportfolios Foster Creativity? An Evaluative Study In A Professional Development Context, Roisin Donnelly, Muireann Okeeffe, K.C. O'Rourke

Conference papers

The nurturing of creativity as a key skill in students is a current and topical issue due to the potential important economic and social benefits it can imbue. This paper outlines a case study in progress in an Irish higher education institution, which initiated as an evaluation of student ePortfolios and transformed into an examination of creativity within students ePortfolios. The context for the research is a group of postgraduate students using ePortfolios to build evidence of their learning experience on the programme. This research seeks to explore the notion of learner empowerment through creativity in ePortfolio use, specifically if …