Learning Connections 2019: Spaces, People, Practice

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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/10692

Sponsored by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, the Learning Connections 2019 conference brought together learners, teachers, architects, designers and all who support teaching, from across third level institutions: from universities; institutes of technology; community; industry; government agencies; policy makers; and regulators, under the frame of learning connections. This conference is underpinned by the following research questions:

How can we connect across disciplinary boundaries, and break down barriers between academia, administration, community and industry to strive for optimal student learning in Third Level Institutions?
How can learning in different spaces - physical, active, virtual, off campus, enable all students, as global citizens, to think through and solve big problems?

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 7

Modularity and interdisciplinarity: Confucian insight for STEM-related disciplines
(University College Cork, 2019) Power, Kevin J.; Supple, Briony; Delahunty, Tom
The modularity of the education system is generally geared toward a career-specific path for individual students. While varied subject choices and extracurricular activities can provide students with a rich range of experience, increased specialisation can create a sense of separateness between disciplines which may result in the neglect of engagement between fields which are otherwise mutually informative and insightful. A greater openness to interdisciplinarity would have the benefit of exposing specialists to fresh ways of viewing familiar subjects with a further potential to inform and inspire new and mutually beneficial pathways of education and learning. I illustrate the potential of an interdisciplinary approach in the context of the climate crisis. STEM-related disciplines can draw practical insight from compatible and well-founded philosophical principles e.g. Confucian leadership principles which warn against overconsumption, encouraging the kind of environmental awareness which could avert or mitigate the environmental and societal impact of climate change.
Sports law in motion: The Sports Law Clinic @UCC - A unique learning and teaching space for student engagement, dynamism and creativity
(University College Cork, 2019) Parkes, Aisling; Ó Conaill, Seán; Supple, Briony; Delahunty, Tom
UCC Sports Law Clinic is the only undergraduate clinic of its kind in the world (https://sportslawclinic.wordpress.com/). It was initially founded and developed by Dr Aisling Parkes and Dr Seán Ó Conaill (UCC School of Law) in 2015, established on foot of an Irish Research Council New Foundations Award. The Clinic not only provides undergraduate law students with an exceptional research experience, as well as an extraordinary learning experience in terms of skills development and application of law to facts, but it also provides a free legal information service to the wider community both within and outside of UCC. It is a student-led initiative and encourages students to be creative, innovative and to think outside the box. Through student research, overseen by Dr Ó Conaill and Dr Parkes as clinic directors, a much-needed pro bono information service in the field of sport is made accessible to the local community.
Student-produced video of role-plays on topics in cell biology and biochemistry: A novel undergraduate group work exercise
(University College Cork, 2019) Young, Paul W.; Supple, Briony; Delahunty, Tom
Group work or cooperative learning is a form of active learning that has potential benefits that extend beyond just being an alternative or improved way of learning course material. For example, Shimazoe and Aldrich (2010) identified six proposed benefits of active learning to students, namely (1) promoting deep learning, (2) helping students earn higher grades, (3) teaching social skills & civic values, (4) teaching higher order thinking skills, (5) promoting personal growth and (6) developing positive attitudes toward autonomous learning. There is evidence for the effectiveness of role-plays both in achieving learning outcomes (Azman, Musa, & Mydin, 2018; Craciun, 2010; Latif, Mumtaz, Mumtaz, & Hussain, 2018; McSharry & Jones, 2000; Yang, Kim, & Noh, 2010), but also in developing desirable graduate attributes such as teamwork, communication and problem solving skills [4]. The importance of such skills is widely touted by employers of science graduates, sometimes more so than discipline-specific knowledge, arguing in favour of the incorporation of role-plays and other forms of cooperative learning into undergraduate science curricula. Role-playing is probably not as widely used in the physical and life sciences as it is in other academic disciplines. In science the most obvious role-play scenarios in which students play the roles of people might be in examining historical figures at the centre of famous scientific discoveries or debates (Odegaard, 2003). In addition, role-plays fit well at the interface between science and other discipline when exploring ethical, legal or commercial implications of scientific discoveries(Chuck, 2011). However, to apply role-play to core topics in science or mathematics the roles that must be played are not those of people but rather of things like particles, forces, elements, atoms, numbers, laws, equations, molecules, cells, organs and so on. The learning scenarios for science-based roleplays in which the characters represented are not people are less obvious, probably explaining why the use of role-plays in science education is less common. Nevertheless, focusing on the life sciences, role-plays in which the characters are organelles in a cell or enzymes involved in fundamental cellular processes like DNA replication, RNA transcription and protein translation have been described for example (Cherif, Siuda, Dianne M. Jedlicka, & Movahedzadeh, 2016; Takemura & Kurabayashi, 2014). The communication of discipline-specific templates and successful models for the application of role-playing in science education is likely to encourage their wider adoption. Here I describe a videoed group role-play assignment that has been developed over a ten-year period of reflective teaching practice. I suggest that this model of videoed group role-plays is a useful cooperative learning format that will allow learners to apply their varied creativity and talents to exploring and explaining diverse scientific topics while simultaneously developing their teamwork skills.
UCC enters Cork Prison: Transformative pedagogy through arts education
(University College Cork, 2019) Cronin, James G. R.; Supple, Briony; Delahunty, Tom
This paper makes explicit processes of collaboration in a learning community partnership between Cork Prison and University College Cork (UCC). Cork Prison is a closed, medium security prison for adult males. It is a committal prison for counties Cork, Kerry and Waterford. The learning partnership has two objectives: firstly, to foster critical thinking strategies influenced by UCC’s application of the Project Zero Classroom, Harvard Graduate School of Education; secondly, to support student voices by promoting conversations on creativity resulting in the production of artworks exhibited during summertime on Spike Island, Cork Harbour, communicating prison as community in society.
Inclusion of research labs in Engineering as learning playgrounds
(University College Cork, 2019) Garcia Gunning, Fatima C.; Supple, Briony; Delahunty, Tom
Traditional teaching practices in Ireland for “hard”-science subjects, such as Physics or Engineering, are still prevalently based on whiteboard content delivery, PowerPoint-based methods, and sometimes, within under-funded purposed-built teaching labs, leaving very little manoeuvre or willingness to incorporate student interaction, in addition to a strong focus on end of semester exam based assessment of learning. Very often any deviation from traditional methods of teaching and assessment are perceived as “dumbing down” the course. The proposal of this Lightning Talk is to show how enabling flexibility in the teaching environment, by incorporating either topical research discussions or bringing a high-tech research lab to a teaching module, can stimulate student engagement, curiosity, discovery and learning. Moreover, the talk will also contain a discussion on using different assessment techniques, such as consultation surveys and reports, where a richer picture of true understanding can be drafted, and compare outcomes between report-based and exam-based types of assessment, showing no signs of “dumbing down”.

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