Events Archive

Date: 25th March 2020

Time:13:00 - 12:00

Venue: Zoology

This event is now cancelled

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: How to engage students in a subject they might not have chosen.

Facilitator: Prof Celia Holland, School of Natural Sciences

Celia will facilitate a discussion about the challenges of teaching students a subject that they might not have chosen but is an important part of their training. She will emphasise ways in which to engage students and a process in which such a module became assessed entirely by continuous assessment with no examination component. She will also highlight issues such as the importance of recording how you perceive the success or otherwise of a given session or module and the dangers of over assessment.

Date: 20th February 2020

Time:10:00 - 16:00

Venue: Business School - Room 108 - Tangent

This event is now cancelled

National Forum Seminar Series: Enhancing Creative Curriculum Design and Assessment in STEM

Facilitator: Dr Chrissi Nerantzi, Manchester Metropolitan University

This seminar is aimed at academics in STEM disciplines who wish to increase the engagement of students in their learning and develop their own practice in a more creative direction. Creativity, including imagination, insight, and intuition are all involved in research, but are not necessarily acknowledged when teaching. This emphasis on ‘facts’ tends to ‘fix’ knowledge in place and denies the creative dynamism associated with the processes of learning. There is also a challenge to overcome the ‘fear’ of both students and lecturers of ‘letting go’ sufficiently to allow the creative process to unfold, to step into a place of ‘not knowing’ how things might develop. This seminar will aim to clarify, share and reflect on conceptions of, and approaches to, creativity in STEM.

Learning Outcomes

• Discuss concepts, theories and philosophies of creativity as applied to STEM teaching and learning in Higher Education
• Discuss the principles, purposes and challenges of creative curriculum design and assessment in STEM
• Develop and apply effective creative curriculum design and assessment strategies to promote student learning and development of graduate attributes in STEM

Date: 11 Feb - 24 Mar 2020

Venue: Webinars

National Forum: Programme Focused Assessment - Digital Badges

We are delighted to announce that TCD and UCD are teaming up in partnership with the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education to facilitate the PD Short Course for Programme-Focussed Assessment in a fully online format this Spring, claimed by a Digital Badge. This short course was developed by TCD and UCD as part of the Forum’s PD short courses initiative. The course will run for 6 weeks from February 11th 2020 and will provide participants with a strong introduction to Programme-Focussed approaches to Assessment, and enable them to identify appropriate assessment design interventions for subjects/programmes and to envisage how they might lead change with respect to programme level approaches to assessment.
The short course involves approximately 25 hours over the 6 week period, with a 5 hour add-on later in the course for those interested in becoming future facilitators of the short course themselves.

This free iteration of the short course is particularly aimed at individuals or groups of individuals who are interested in rolling out the PFA short course themselves as a facilitator at a later date (e.g. for staff in their institution). For more information on the Short Course more generally and how facilitators can implement it themselves, visit the webpage. Please note, since one of the aims of this iteration of the short course is to train future facilitators, we are limiting the number of participants per institution that can sign up to 3 should the PFA course be over subscribed. If we reach full capacity, we will contact the latest participants to register from each institution to notify them of the situation.
There is no cost involved for participants.

ABOUT THIS PFA SHORT COURSE (with Digital Badge)

Implementation of Programme-Focussed approaches to assessment cultivates student-centered learning by attending to integration, timing, load and range of assessments, clarifying the interconnectedness of modules and viewing assessment as a linked series of learning opportunities across the whole programme.  It provides an opportunity to assure that assessment across a programme is ‘fit for purpose’ in relation to the subject/programme outcomes, while also ‘future-proofing’ your teaching. As our learning environments become increasingly diverse, our practices must also adapt to reflect the changing landscape of higher education.  The PFA short course draws on evidenced-based national and international practice to support programme-focussed ‘evidence gathering’, design interventions and leadership in this challenging field.
Participants will be allocated to groups of three to form a ‘peer-learning triad’.  Triads will be given time/opportunity to ‘breakout’ during all webinars- in order to maximise opportunity for peer learning and to progress activities related to the award of the badge(s). Triads are likely to also interact online, e.g. on their forums or using online meeting rooms, at mutually agreed times between webinars.  Triad members will determine whether or not badges are ‘awarded’ to members within their own triad.
This PD short course will give you an introduction to the concept of programme-focussed approaches to assessment and invite you to review and update your own teaching and learning practice.

PARTICIPANTS ON THE SHORT COURSE WILL:

1. Discuss and investigate Programme-Focussed Assessment practices in a subject/ programme.
2. Debate different approaches to ‘knowing what’s going on in your programme’, such as assessment mapping, team dialogue, other evidence gathering tools
3. Identify appropriate assessment design interventions for subject/ programme.
4. Explore leadership of change in Programme Focussed Assessment

Date: 11th February 2020

Time:13:30 - 16:00

Venue: Room 119, Tangent, Business School

Registration closed

National Forum Seminar Series: Rewriting the script about pedagogic research in Higher Education

Facilitator: Prof Tansy Jessop, PVC Education at the University of Bristol, and TESTA Project Leader 

Academic Practice is pleased to announce the following seminar on Rewriting the script about pedagogic research in Higher Education led by Professor Tansy Jessop, PVC Education at the University of Bristol, as part of the National Forum Seminar Series 2020.

In this seminar participants will explore the status of pedagogic research in higher education, considering the challenges facing those who undertake it. Confusion exists about the relationship between the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL), pedagogic research and ‘real’ research. This seminar will enable participants to wrestle with debates about the merits of each, underlining the value of systematic ways of examining teaching.  It will make a case for the interaction between pedagogic research and practice as crucial in re-imagining approaches to teaching, learning, assessment and curriculum design. Gone are the days of trial and error or routine reproduction of teaching methods which worked in days of yore. Research and SOTL build confidence and capability among teachers to transform teaching and learning and adopt educational activities which are at the vanguard of practice. Pedagogic research has the potential infuse the institutional pedagogical agenda with dynamism, while providing mechanisms for reward, recognition and joy in teaching.

In this seminar, you will:

1. Explore the status of pedagogic research in higher education
2. Explore pedagogic research in relation to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
3. Discuss the influence of pedagogic research and SOTL on teaching and learning
4. Challenge participants to think about how to add value as pedagogic researchers.

Date: 11th February 2020

Time:9:30 - 12:30

Venue: Room 119, Tangent, Business School

Registration closed

National Forum Seminar Series: Engaging in meaningful change in assessment practice

Facilitator: Prof Tansy Jessop, PVC Education at the University of Bristol, and TESTA Project Leader

Academic Practice is pleased to announce the following interactive seminar on Engaging in meaningful change in assessment practice, led by Professor, Tansy Jessop, PVC Education at the University of Bristol, and TESTA Project Leader, as part of the National Forum Seminar Series 2020.  

The national emphasis on assessment for, as and of learning, and the implementation of programme-focused approaches to assessment in many Institutions across the country, has the potential to fundamentally change how we assess student learning.  Adoption of a programme-focused approach to assessment is a key recommendation of the Trinity Assessment Framework. This seminar draws on ten years of research and change from ‘Transforming the Experience of Students through Assessment’ (TESTA), in order to explore changing assessment cultures.  Using evidence, models and stories of change, the seminar will enable participants to weigh up the benefits of making programmatic changes, troubleshoot barriers, and identify enabling conditions for assessment culture change. In the midst of theories of change, the workshop will explore tangible and practical assessment ideas, and begin to expand the repertoire of approaches to programmatic assessment.

In this seminar, you will:

1. Explore the benefits of programme approaches to assessment
2. Define the challenges of implementing change in assessment practices at institutional level
3. Discuss enablers to engage staff to change assessment practices
4. Examine a range of tactics and approaches for making assessment more programmatic

This workshop will be of particular interest to DUTLs, Programme and Subject co-ordinators and those with responsibility for curriculum and assessment within a subject/programme.

Date: 12th February 2020

Time:14:00 - 17:00

Venue: Room 328, Business School

Registration closed

National Forum Seminar Series: If competency is the answer...have we asked the right question?

Facilitator: Prof Zubin Austin

This interactive session will focus on the rise of the competency discourse in both professional education and regulation - and some of the inadvertent and unanticipated consequences that have occurred.  The concept of engagement and the role of personal emotional intelligence in supporting  education and practice will be discussed with the objective of enhancing the quality of teaching, learning, assessment, and practice across the professions and the higher education sector.

Zubin Austin BScPhm MBA MISc PhD FCAHS is Professor, Murray Koffler Chair in Management, and Academic Director of the Centre for Practice Excellence at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the Institute for Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation - Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Professor Austin’s research focuses on the personal and professional development of the health workforce.  He has published over 120 peer reviewed manuscripts and authored four reference texts.  In 2017, he was installed as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of the Health Sciences, the highest honour for health services researchers in Canada.  He is the only University of Toronto faculty member ever to have received both the President's Teaching Award for excellence in education, and the President's Research Impact Award for the social significance of his research.  He has also been named undergraduate Professor of the Year on 18 separate occasions.

Date: 22nd January 2020

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: When the unthinkable happens, and we need to radically change teaching strategy and assessment to accommodate acquired disability’. 

Facilitator:Dr Helen Sheridan, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (Provost's Teaching Award winner 2019)

In 2012 the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences (SoPPS) received terrible news. One of our freshman students had sustained a C5 cervical break in an accident that occurred on holiday.  There was tremendous uncertainty as to how the future would play out for this student. We realised that there would be significant challenges ahead if we were to navigate a path for this student to complete a lab-based biomedical degree in Pharmacy. Today I would like to share this story with you and show how academics can radically change teaching and assessment strategies to accommodate acquired disability. Situations like this can  arise overnight for Schools within the University. Our experience may be of benefit. 

Date: 21st January 2020

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: Managing Expectations for Multicultural Classrooms

Facilitator: Dr Niamh McGoldrick, Global Officer, Schools of Chemistry & Physics

Understanding and managing expectations in a diverse multicultural classroom can be a challenge, especially when many students may be learning through English for the first time. Enabling all students to maximise their learning experiences often results in a richer classroom environment for both the teacher and the learners. This resource and seminar aims to enable academics to design and prepare their classrooms for a multicultural student audience by drawing from personal learnings and international best practice.

Date: 30th October 2019

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: Graduate attributes: Social constructions and lived experience of university students in Ireland

Facilitator:Ayeshah Emon and Virpi Timonen, School of Social Work & Social Policy

In this presentation, we explore how dominant understandings of students in Irish third-level education are reflected in national policies, filtered through the official and aspirational texts of Irish colleges, and negotiated and contested by students. Specifically, we investigate the attributes of the imagined third-level student in Ireland as reflected in national policies and promoted by higher education institutions, and compare these with the lived realities of students.

Date: 23rd October 2019

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: Best Practice in Student Assessment Development

Facilitator: Dr Niamh McGoldrick, Global Officer, Schools of Chemistry & Physics

Developing assessments for a diverse classroom is challenging. Assessment performance is a key indicator of student performance and allows staff to evaluate learning objectives and identify student misconceptions. In order to minimise these misconceptions, clear and consistent strategies can be implemented during assessment creation. This seminar will provide practical tips and strategies to support assessment design as well as opportunities to reflect on key learnings from international best practice.

Date: 22nd October 2019

Time:13:05 - 13:50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar: Rubrics in support of Learning and assessment: how to design and integrate to curriculum planning

Facilitator: Dr Cicely Roche, Academic Practice Teaching Fellow, School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences

This 45 minutes workshop will outline how rubrics can be integrated to curriculum design to support learning and assessment, in face-to-face and online environments.  Participants will work in small groups to complete a rubric template or sample rubric of their own, and share perspectives on challenges and benefits aligned with the approach.

Participant prework/preparation: Participants should be familiar with the the '4 key features of rubric; key benefits of using rubrics, and the six-step approach to the development of a rubric' as introduced in the 2018 TEP two-page resource 'Rubrics in support of learning and Assessment' (Roche, 2018).  This will be emailed to registered attendees in advance of the workshop and workshop activities will proceed on the assumption that participants are familiar with its contents.

Participants will be supported in the development of/ adaptation of rubrics for use in their own teaching and/or assessment - rubrics will be designed to includes the four essential features of a rubric.  Common barriers and challenges to the effective development and use of rubrics, and how those challenges and barriers might be overcome, will be explored.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

• Identify new, additional or improved ways to use rubrics in their own setting

• Develop a rubric for use in their own setting that includes the four essential features of a rubric 

Date: 11th November 2019

Time:9.30 to 1pm.

Venue: St. Patricks campus, Drumcondra.

Eportfolio Ireland

Keynote: Kristina Hoeppner, from Catalyst IT, New Zealand

A Connect & Converse session will be held to share eportfolio practice. The value of the Eportfolio Ireland community is to share experiences and seek to learn from others at these events. The format of Connect & Converse is a 10 minute presentation/discussion in small groups as participants rotate around the room. If you would like to share what you have been doing with eportfolio in your institution, what you would like to try, or would simply welcome feedback on your initiative from others in the field, please just send a 5 line description of would you would like to discuss by email to lisa.donaldson@dcu.ie Tables are limited.

Date: Thursday 22nd November 2018

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

Linguistically Responsive Teaching: Challenges and Solutions 

Facilitator: Sarah O'Brien, Assistant Professor, Centre for Languages, Speech and Communications Studies & Director of Trinity's Centre for English Language Learning and Teaching

The increased internationalization of Irish higher education mean that our classrooms have never been as linguistically diverse. While opening up dynamic possibilities for multilingual and multicultural exchange, internationalization also requires us to reflect on our communication methods and to consider their inclusivity and responsiveness. This workshop examines how linguistically responsive teaching strategies can be supported in the third-level classroom, sharing research and practical teaching strategies designed to identify and support the needs of students who speak languages other than English natively. 

Date: Thursday 15th November 2018

Time: 14:00 - 16:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration closed

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Date: Thursday 25th October 2018

Time: 14:15 - 16:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

This event is now cancelled

Strategies for enabling a shared understanding of assessment

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride, Academic Developer, CAPSL

Academic staff and students should have a shared understanding of the principles of assessment: its processes, terminology, methodology and standards of quality. Also, it is not always clear to students or staff how assessment can enhance learning, as the focus tends to be on how it measures achievement. In this workshop, we will explore the principles of assessment in the context of assessment for, as and of learning and consider how discussions of marking criteria and exemplars can engage students in developing their professional judgement in the disciplines.

Date: Friday 12th October 2018

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place 

Registration Closed

What is Transformative Education? An Example from Schumacher College

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride, Academic Developer, CAPSL & Philip Franses, Schumacher College, Totnes, Devon, UK.

This seminar presents a case study of teaching at Schumacher College as an example of an experiment in transformative education that was carried out by Mike and Philip while co-teaching on the MSc Holistic Science programme Chaos and Complexity module. MSc Holistic Science students come from a range of backgrounds and are generally seeking a new way of relating to knowledge, and engaging with the world’s problems.  The focus at the College is on interactive, experiential and participatory learning that encourages novel approaches to scientific investigation. Various non-traditional teaching formats, learning experiences and assessments are facilitated. Investigations are holistic in the sense that they are embodied as well as rational/intellectual and often result in different outcomes to traditional styles of research and reporting. Students are encouraged to blend the analytic-synthetic and the narrative-experiential as extensions and complements of each other in a coherent manner; e.g. involving the use of alternative creative formats such as personal narrative, artwork and experiential material alongside those normally used in scientific writing. Thus, intuitive insights, reflections and feelings that arise during the course of the work can be integrated. Assessments are designed to facilitate the expression of this new meaning and include not only scientifically rigorous traditional essays, but also creative pieces of art including poems, music and paintings. Students undergo profound changes in perspectives and perceptions about learning and participate more fully in the world. We will discuss what transformative education really means, what examples of it already exist at TCD and how it can be further facilitated.

Date: Thursday 11th October 2018

Time: 9:30-11:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place 

Registration Closed

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Date: Thursday October 4 2018

Venue: Arts Building Conference Room

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Registration Closed

Communities of Practice for Academic Staff Development in HE Teaching & Learning

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride, CAPSL

A Community of Practice (CoP) consists of a group of people who meet regularly in a safe, but challenging space to share a common focus, interests and goals, develop personal and professional relationships and a shared commitment. The members of a CoP develop knowledge and skills through sharing experiences. In the context of teaching and learning in higher education, CoPs can provide a foundation for collaboration and reduced isolation and enabling participants to develop their teaching capacities in specific areas of mutual interest to them.

In this seminar, CoPs will be introduced and will be elaborated upon using the example of the ‘New Directions Programme’ for staff development in teaching and learning at Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology (TIET) in India, which CAPSL is facilitating. The seminar will also explore how to establish and sustain CoPs at TCD in order to engage staff in fruitful and supportive communities for teaching and learning development and identify potential areas of interest for CoP establishment.

Dates: Sept/early Oct 2018

Time: Varies

Booking: Visit our eLearning calendar)

eLearning Programme – September/October 2018

Designing & Building a Blackboard Module – Tues 11th Sep 10am-12pm

• This introductory workshop is intended for those new to using Blackboard and will cover how to design and add content to a module [Location: IT Services training room, 200 Pearse Street]

Hosting Webinars Using Collaborate Ultra  – Thurs 13th Sep 10am-12pm

• The webinar will cover how to use Collaborate to host webinars with students and will give you a chance to practice the different features such as polling, chat and sharing content  [Location: online]

Online Tests in Blackboard – Thurs 20th Sep 10am-12pm

• This workshop will cover creating tests and questions, using question banks, choosing appropriate settings, and adding tests to a Blackboard module [Location: 3-4 Foster Place]

Designing & Building a Blackboard Module – Tues 25th Sep 10am-12pm

• This introductory workshop is intended for those new to using Blackboard and will cover how to design and add content to a module  [Location: IT Services training room, 200 Pearse Street]

Designing an Online Activity – Tues 2nd Oct 9:30am-11:30am

• This workshop will examine how to create an online activity, looking at examples in College. Participants will work in groups to come up with one idea, share their idea and collate peer feedback [Location: 3-4 Foster Place]

Designing & Creating Podcasts for a Flipped Classroom – Fri 5th Oct 10am-1pm

• This workshop covers how to design and create podcasts for a flipped classroom using Panopto within Blackboard. Participants will work in teams to create a podcast on reflective practice [Location: 3-4 Foster Place]

Creating Assignments Using Turnitin in Blackboard  – Wed 10th Oct 2:30pm-4:30pm

• This workshop will cover how to use Turnitin within Blackboard. It will cover how to provide detailed feedback, add annotations and how to evaluate the originality report to identify potential plagiarism [Location: 3-4 Foster Place]

Online Communication & Reflection – Fri 12th Oct 10am-1pm

• This workshop covers the online communication tools in Blackboard. Participants will work in teams to complete a sample scenario involving using technologies such as journals, blogs, discussion boards and wikis [Location: 3-4 Foster Place]

To book: Visit our eLearning calendar.

For any queries please email bblearn@tcd.ie.

Eportfolio Events in DCU

Eportfolio Ireland 13th February 2019 - DCU

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/designing-your-professional-portfolio-walking-the-walk-with-eportfolios-tickets-52933276856.

Documenting the Erasmus Student Experience through Eportfolio - 12th March 2019 (further information in New Year), DCU

Webinar on international experiences with eportfolio on April 30th, 2019, DCU (further information in New Year)

Date: Friday 21st June 2019

Time: 9:15 - 13:15

Venue: Knowledge Exchange, TBSI, Pearse St., Dublin 2

Registration is now closed for this event

Visiting Professor Zubin Austin, University of Toronto: 'If competency is the answer - what is the question?

This seminar asks 'If competency is the answer - what is the question?' - The format aims to enable structured consideration of "competency/ competencies", competence development, and practice-based preceptor-led assessment of ethics and "professionalism". Professor Austin's style is interactive, engaging and challenging, and we anticipate that it will be a lively, and thought-provoking morning.

9.15am to 10.30am     "If competency is the answer...have we asked the right question?"
This lecture will present different perspectives on "competency" including emerging constructs focused on personal development as a core competency.
10.30am to 11.30am   Lessons from the competency assessment literature.
In 2016, the College of Physiotherapists of Ontario commissioned Prof Zubin Austin to do a worldwide scoping review of competency assessment mechanisms to identify best and promising practices from different professions in different jurisdictions.  This presentation will review "lessons learned" from this scoping review to highlight options and opportunities for regulators and educators.
11.45am to 1.15pm    Challenges and opportunities in the assessment of ethics and
professionalism. This workshop will focus on practice-based preceptor-led assessment of practice-based ethics and "professionalism" competencies in Ontario.  An exploration of what we mean by the term "professionalism" will be central to the discussion.

Zubin Austin BScPhm MBA MISc PhD FCAHS is Professor, Murray Koffler Chair in Management, and Academic Director of the Centre for Practice Excellence at the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy and the Institute for Health Policy, Management, and Evaluation - Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. 

Professor Austin’s research focuses on the personal and professional development of the health workforce.  He has published over 120 peer reviewed manuscripts and authored four reference texts.  In 2017, he was installed as a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of the Health Sciences, the highest honour for health services researchers in Canada.  He is the only University of Toronto faculty member ever to have received both the President's Teaching Award for excellence in education, and the President's Research Impact Award for the social significance of his research.  He has also been named undergraduate Professor of the Year on 18 separate occasions.

This event has received funding from the FHS Dean's Visiting Professor Award 2019, and from the School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences.

Date: Wednesday 12th June 2019

Time: 10:00 - 12:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration is now closed for this event

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Date: Wednesday 5th June 2019

Time: 10:00 - 12:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration is now closed for this event

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement for Postgraduate Students

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Date: Thursday 30th May 2019

Time: 9:30 - 12:30

Venue: Trinity Long Room Hub

CAPSL & the Trinity Business School present as part of the National Forum Seminar Series: Students as self regulating partners in assessment: Design, development, implementation and evaluation.

Facilitator: Prof David Nicol - Research Professor, Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow and  Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, University of Strathclyde

In this seminar, Professor David Nicol presents a new framework and toolkit for feedback and assessment in higher education (HE). His presentation centres on different ways of engaging with students and supporting the development of many of their core self-regulatory attributes. He explores the theoretical underpinnings of his framework and argues that the traditional understanding and use of feedback in academic context hinders the creation of an optimum feedback environment to enable and support student learning. Prof. Nicol explores the transformative value of integrating and empowering students in feedback and learning processes. In particular, he emphasises the role of student’s self-regulatory attributes to help them develop informed judgments on their own learning and their learning needs. This workshop will take a design, development, implementation and evaluation perspective to guide academic-led operationalization of this practice.

Professor David Nicol, an internationally acknowledged expert on assessment and feedback in higher education (HE), has published widely on these matters and on change management in HE.  He was an expert consultant to the JISC UK Assessment and Feedback programme and has collaborated with academic institutions and partners in Italy, Denmark, Spain, Australia and the UK on numerous assessment projects. Current work includes leading a large assessment and feedback initiative at the Adam Smith Business School (ASBS) at the University of Glasgow. Some of David’s recent research on peer review can be accessed through the REAP website. Professor Nicol was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement (CAPLE) and Director of REAP, the Re-Engineering Assessment Practices project (www.reap.ac.uk), Although retired from the University of Strathclyde, David still holds an Emeritus Professor role there. He is still working with academic departments on assessment and feedback projects that relate to his research and he also recently led a project funded by JISC called 'Learning by Reviewing'.

Main References
Nicol, D.J., Thomson, A. & Breslin, C. (2014). Rethinking feedback practices in higher education: a peer review perspective. Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 39:1, 102-122
Nicol, D (2014). Guiding principles of peer review: unlocking learners evaluative skills, In K. Kreber, C. Anderson, N. Entwistle and J. McArthur (eds). Advances and Innovations in University Assessment and Feedback, Edinburgh University Press (available on request from author)
Nicol, D. (2011). Developing the students' ability to construct feedback, Published by the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education
Nicol, D. J. & Macfarlane-Dick, D. (2006). Formative assessment and self-regulated learning: A model and seven principles of good feedback practice, Studies in Higher Education, 31(2), 199-218. 

This event is funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

Date: Wednesday 22nd May 2019

Time: 10:00 - 11:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

Further Developing your Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

You are invited to attend this writing workshop on Developing Your Teaching Philosophy Statement as you have previously attended an introductory session in which you began to draft your teaching philosophy statement. In this workshop, you will further develop your teaching philosophy statement in a ‘safe space’ through sharing it and discussing it with colleagues.

Date: Wednesday 3rd April 2019

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Botany Lecture Theatre, Botany Department Building

CAPSL  Lunchtime Seminar:Creative approaches to teaching and learning in STEM subjects.

Facilitator: Dr Matthew Saunders, School of Natural Sciences

Creativity is a difficult attribute to incorporate into the design, delivery and assessment of STEM modules, as the term creativity is difficult to define and can be perceived very differently within the academic community. As a result, many individuals in STEM fields might not identify with the creative nature of their work but the consideration of this concept is important to encourage student engagement and active participation, leading to a deeper understanding of a particular topic. This seminar will consider how creativity can be incorporated into module design and delivery and will provide a perspective on how creativity can be assessed using examples from modules taught on the Botany moderatorship programme.

Date: Thursday 28th March 2019

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 0.73 in TTMI (Level -1 in the building) on St James’ campus

CAPSL  Lunchtime Seminar:Working with medical students to address their learning needs

Facilitator: Dr Matthew McGovern, School of Medicine

One of the problems encountered in undergraduate education for clinical health sciences is that students will have different exposure to clinical cases during work placements and clinical attachments.  As a result, the learning needs of individual groups of students may differ somewhat.  This is especially so in larger classes or niche medical specialties where the duration of clinical placements may be limited.  Here we present a simple approach to working with medical undergraduates to identify their learning needs and design subsequent teaching based on this feedback.  A combination of fishbowl discussion, in-classroom polling software and interactive lectures are used to design and deliver teaching content tailored to the learning needs of individual groups of students.

Date: Wednesday 27th March 2019

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Medium Seminar Room 1, Institute of Population Health, Tallaght

CAPSL  Lunchtime Seminar:Teaching in teams, and other techniques, to deliver medical curriculum content

Facilitators: Catherine Darker & Darach O Ciardha, School of Medicine

Uncertainty is ever-present in medicine.  Didactic teaching that presents facts as incontrovertible, perpetuating fallacies of infallibility of doctors must be resisted.  Rather, teaching should be ‘inclusive, exploratory and transformative’. However, it can be a challenge to truly integrate a genuinely held teaching philosophy into a busy and demanding curriculum, while being mindful of assessment and external accreditation bodies needs. Our teaching styles and shared philosophy seeks to leverage critical thinking and encourage the expression of differing opinions amongst students on topics such as inequity in health. This seminar will explore the pragmatic use of constructivist theory and scaffolding using a range of techniques such as co-teaching, clinical placements, seminars, flipped classroom, ‘pair and share’ etc.

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

ABC Learning Design Workshop

The Arena Blended Connected (ABC) Learning Design workshop will present a curriculum redesign method for modules and programmes. Central to the method is the inclusion of activities for both face to face and online delivery to enhance the students’ experience. The workshop in Trinity College will focus on the redesign of modules / programmes to enhance and transform assessment methods with different forms of activities including including e-assessment.

Teams will work together to create a visual ‘storyboard’ showing the learning activities and assessment required to meet the module / programme’s learning outcomes. ABC is particularly useful for developing new or revising programmes or those changing to an online or more blended format.

Learning outcomes -
- Describe and use an efficient activity-based learning design methodology
- Re/design course/module in 90 minutes
- Evaluate the suitability of the approach to their institutional context

Presenters - Dr. Clive Young and Natasa Perovic from UCL Digital Education.

Register on Eventbrite

Date: Tuesday 19th March 2019

Time: 10:00 - 12:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Dates: February 2019

Time: Varies

Booking: Visit our eLearning calendar to book a place.

eLearning Programme – February 2019

The eLearning team are running the following staff events in February 2019:

• Hosting Webinars Using Collaborate Ultra - Wednesday 13th February 10:00-11:30hrs
  Blackboard Collaborate Ultra is a real-time video conferencing tool that lets you add files, share applications, and use a virtual whiteboard to interact with your students from any location. This webinar will cover how to use Collaborate to host webinars with students and will give you a chance to practice the different features such as polling, chat and sharing content.
• Online Assignments Using Turnitin in Blackboard (Webinar) - Tuesday 19th February 10:00-11:00hrs
  This webinar will cover how to create an online assignment using Turnitin within Blackboard. You can join this session via any computer whether on or off campus.
• Designing and Building a Module In Blackboard (face-to-face workshop) – 21st February 14:30 - 16:30hrs.
  On completion of this workshop participants will have planned a clear module structure, built this structure in a Blackboard learn module and uploaded content into this structure. Participants will understand the importance of planning their module so it can grow and develop as their knowledge of the Blackboard system grows. This workshop will be held at 3-4 Foster Place, Room 1.03.
• Online Tests/Quizzes using Blackboard (face-to-face workshop) – 1st March 10:00 - 12:00hrs
  On completion of this workshop participants will have created an online test, selected appropriate question and test settings, explored all the ways questions can be added to a test and learned how to deploy a test in a blackboard module. How tests can be used as a teaching tool and how to encourage academic honesty will also be covered. This workshop will be held at 3-4 Foster Place, Room 1.03.

To book a place on any of these workshops please visit our online calendar at https://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/programmes-events/elearning-calendar.php

For any queries please email bblearn@tcd.ie.

Date:Thursday 21st February 2019

Time: 9:30 - 16:15

Venue: Global Room

Registration is now closed

National Forum Seminar Series: Learning from Student Success: Barriers and Facilitators

This seminar aims to engage students as partners in working together to identify how student success is defined and supported. Traditionally, the focus on student success has been in terms of grades, but there are as many views of success as there are stakeholders. Today’s graduates are heading into an ever-changing landscape and institutions need to know how to best support them develop the skills to successfully navigate that. For example, there is now wider recognition of the importance of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities in student success. This student-focussed seminar will explore how we can develop a more integrated view of success from both staff and student perspectives, which is based on shared responsibility and a more inclusive and all-encompassing view of success. The student voice will be highlighted through the three student presentations, which will provide different perspectives on success: looking back on first year, looking forward to the world beyond college and by alumni looking back at their student selves with the benefit of hindsight. A student panel and group work will also discuss ideas of success. In each case, we are interested in how perceptions of success change through the student journey. This could inform how we modify curricula, including how we prepare students for the transition to the world beyond HE.

The seminar is open to staff and students in all Irish Higher Education Institutions.

The full programme is available on https://student-learning.tcd.ie/assets/PDF/NFETL_draft_seminarprogramme_2019.pdf

Date: Thursday 31st January 2019

Time: 13:00 - 13:50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

CAPSL  Lunchtime Seminar: Under the threat of extinction: The intangibles of in-classroom teaching and why it is worth keeping alive

Facilitator: Dr Lina Zgaga, School of Medicine

The “online option” is making life better - and easier - for students and staff: students have easy access to relevant lecturers providing a seemingly infinite stream of facts and information, and lecturers have access to superior audio-visual learning aids, so they have a decreasing responsibility to provide knowledge and facts in the classroom. This seminar will explore the intangible aspects of in-classroom teaching and what place it should hold in the world of today in the context of the explosion in online learning.

Date: Wednesday 30th January 2019

Time: 10:00 - 12:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride: Academic Developer, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons.  In this session you will identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Dates: January 2019

Time: Varies

Booking: Visit our eLearning calendar to book a place.

eLearning Programme – January 2019

The eLearning team are running the following staff events in January 2019:

Designing and building a Blackboard Module (face-to-face workshop) – 9th January 10:00-12:00hrs.
Participants will work in groups planning a module structure, creating this structure in Blackboard learn and using the content editor to upload content into the structure.

[Book a place via our calendar]

Online Assignments Using Turnitin in Blackboard (face-to-face workshop) – 10th January 10:00-12:00hrs
This workshop will cover how to create, run and mark a Turnitin assignment from a Blackboard Module.

[Book a place via our calendar]

Online Assignments Using Turnitin in Blackboard (face-to-face workshop) – 15th January 14:30-16:30hrs
This workshop will cover how to create, run and mark a Turnitin assignment from a Blackboard Module.

[Book a place via our calendar]

All the above workshops will be held at 3-4 Foster Place, Room 1.03. Please note: this room is only accessible via stairs as there is no lift in this section of the building.

To book a place on any of these workshops please visit our online calendar at https://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/programmes-events/elearning-calendar.php

For any queries please email bblearn@tcd.ie.

Date: 17th April 2018

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Lunchtime Seminar: Bringing Technology into Large Student Cohorts - the unintended opportunities and challenges. (Please note, the seminar was originally scheduled for 13th March, this date has now changed)

Facilitator: Dr Mairead Brady, School of Business

Utilising a range of academic led technology based interventions including online simulations, in-class student response systems (www.socrative.com) and also student-led technology, this seminar will showcase the application and use of the technology in practice in a JS large cohort module. It will also provide insights into how academics can capitalise on this technology to support both student learning and engagement. Research findings from 166 students using these technologies will also be shared under three headings: the distracted student, the pen is mightier than the keyboard and how in class online feedback supports learning. 

Date: 26th April 2018

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Zoology Auk Room, School of Natural Sciences

Lunchtime Seminar: Lighting up the Laboratory

Facilitator: Dr Alice Witney, Dept of Physiology

Optogenetics (the expression of light-activated ion channels in neurons) is revolutionising modern physiology. In line with the Trinity Education Programme aims of new discoveries in disciplinary knowledge being delivered to undergraduates, the Dean's Award has enabled the development of laboratory experiments using optogenetic techniques that are appropriate for both undergraduate projects and small sophister laboratory classes.  

Date: 8th May 2018

Time: 10.00 - 12.00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr Cicely Roche, Academic Practice Teaching Fellow/School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences & Dr Michael Wride, CAPSL

Due to demand, we are running another workshop on Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement.
At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons. 
In this session you will begin to identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

https://www.tcd.ie/CAPSL/programmes-events/registration2.php

Date: 21st May 2018

Time: 10.00 - 12.00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Using Blogs for Authentic Writing Assignments - "A Totally New Experience"

Facilitator: Dr Stefanie Pohle is a visiting scholar from the University of Bonn, Germany. She studied English, History and Educational Science at the University of Bonn and Trinity College Dublin (1998/99) and received her Ph.D in Applied English Linguistics in 2009. Stefanie is currently working as a Research Assistant at the English Department of Bonn University. Her academic interests lie in the area of writing research and pedagogy, research methodology, pragmatics and discourse analysis.

Blogs are valuable for students to document and reflect on their learning processes. Blogs are also an excellent tool to encourage students to communicate to an audience beyond their teachers, unlike regular essays or term papers. In this workshop, Stefanie will give a brief insight into a blog writing project she has developed for students of the Master programme 'Applied Linguistics' at Bonn University. In the blog, called 'Language Matters' students write and publish texts about various applied linguistic topics for a teenage audience. This workshop will then explore how to create similar authentic blog writing assignments for your own classes.

In this workshop, you will:

• learn about didactic and technical considerations when using blogs in the classroom
• take away concrete ideas for your own course design
• find out what the first or next steps are for the implementation of blogs in your classes are and which support you may need

Date: 21st May 2018

Time: 13.00 - 13.50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Reflective Writing as Tool for Learning in Higher Education

Facilitator: Dr Stefanie Pohle, University of Bonn

Reflective writing (RW) has been suggested as a way to foster students' critical thinking, self-discovery, motivation, metacognitive abilities and comprehension, among other attributes. These findings, as well as Stefanie's own positive experience with writing reflective texts as part of her personal learning process, encouraged her to experiment with different RW assignments in her Applied English Linguistics classes (BA and MA level) at a large research-oriented university in Germany. Writing-intensive content courses are still relatively new to higher education in Germany, and even more so are attempts to prompt students to write reflective texts and engage in related writing-to-learn activities.

Date: 25th May 2018

Time: 09.30 - 16.15

Venue: Innovation Academy, 3-4 Foster Place

Symposium: Students as Partners in Assessment in Enquiry and Problem-Based Learning

Facilitator: Dr Michael Wride, CAPSL

This symposium will explore engaging students as partners in assessment in enquiry and problem-based learning. There will be a keynote speech by Dr Catherine Bovill, University of Edinburgh, on students as partners in assessment, talks on peer- and self-assessment in enquiry, problem-based learning with student midwives, and student perspectives of problem-based learning and assessment in dentistry. In the afternoon, there will be a panel discussion on student perspectives and experiences of assessment in enquiry and problem-based learning. Finally, a workshop will enable sharing of best practice in assessment of enquiry and problem-based learning

Further information and registration

Date: 20 - 20th June 2018

Venue: DIT Bolton Street, Dublin 1

Dublin eLearning Summer School, DIT Bolton Street: Teaching Generation Z

For those engaged with higher education and training in Ireland and beyond, the DIT Summer school provides a forum on the impact of all things digital on the higher education sector. This year the focus is on students who are now coming on to our campuses. Generation Z are broadly aged 5 - 19 years and characterised by an over-reliance on technology and 24/7 access to information. Do we understand them? What changes will they bring? Are we ready for them?

CAPSL Lunchtime Seminar & Workshop Series 2016-2017

Date: 11th January 2017

Venue: Parsons Building, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.

TCD School of Engineering in partnership with KTH are offering the following workshops in January 2017 with the theme of 'Teaching Development'.

• Designing Courses for Motivation
• Help your students to study in your course
• Intended Learning Outcomes and the Course Syllabus
• Assessment Methods

For further details and to register visit;

https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/teaching-development-workshops-tickets-28611246007

Date: 31st January 2017

Time: 13:10 - 13:50

Venue: Seminar Room 2, Fifth Floor, Institute of Population Health, Tallaght Map

Healthy Trinity Online Tool (H-TOT).

Facilitator: Catherine Darker, School of Medicine

The aim of the Healthy Trinity Online Tool (H-TOT) is twofold (1) to help to focus students on the importance of maintaining work-life balance throughout their career, through actively building this component into the undergraduate curriculum and (2) to deliver the health promotion aspects of the undergraduate medical curriculum in a way that it not only theoretical and evidence based but that includes practical applications from the outset.

The development of the H-TOT will provide this interactive health related educational piece, with the functionality to enhance students’ ability to self-manage a challenge and signpost students to existing College supports, services and infrastructure.

The H-TOT will be developed, using the College’s e-learning platform to achieve maximum reach and impact. All content and interactive materials will be developed using the software package Articulate and all materials will be hosted on Blackboard.

The seminar will discuss the underpinnings of the H-TOT and also demonstrate the tool in its current developmental form.

See podcast here

Date: 21st February 2017

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Auk Room, Zoology

Anatomy Education For The YouTube Generation: Pedagogical Considerations and Educational Strategies for Healthcare Students

Facilitator: Dr Denis Barry, School of Medicine

See podcast here

Date: 21st March 2017

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: TBC

Video cases of simulated patient encounters as an aid to learning communication skills

Facilitator: Clare Whelan, School of Medicine, Clinical Skills Tutor

The Clinical Skills Programme for students in the 2nd medical year incorporates a Communications module focused on clinical interview skills. This innovation is designed to enhance undergraduate medical students' ability to identify poor and good communication skills and their ability to reflect on patient encounter scenarios. This encourages critical thinking about day to day experiences and observations in the clinical area before they commence their clinical attachments which will hopefully be transferred into their experiences there promoting a critical thinking and reflective practitioner in the future. It is proposed to use e-learning as its main platform for delivery making it compatible with the Generation Z. It is envisaged that the programme will later be made available to the students in the clinical years so that they can continue to develop their communication and reflection skills at times when they have reduced/completed classroom teaching on the subject. This innovation may lend itself to a new mode of assessment of reflection.

Date: 19th April 2017

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Stanley Quek Theatre in TBSI

Videos in Medical Microbiology (VIMM)

Facilitator: Stephen Smith, School of Medicine, Clinical Microbiology

By its nature Microbiology is a practical subject, and thus laboratory classes underpin and further expand the student learning experience. The demonstration of experiments to students (particularly in large classes) can be somewhat challenging. I use the Biology Teaching Centre for my practical classes, and this affords me the use of a camera system linked to plasma screens to demonstrate techniques. Whilst this is a superb resource, I feel I could deliver an even better student learning experience. My idea is to record short videos of a variety of techniques that can then be shown in class or that the student can view in their own time. VIMM will be a suite of videos that are no longer than 90 seconds in duration. Complex procedures, will be broken down into smaller chunks to make for easier learning. The use of VIMM and the impact on learning will be assessed by student evaluation in Summer 2017. I will use VIMM in my teaching for year 2 Medicine and Human Health and Disease. The videos will be used live in class, but will be available on-line such that the students can view these in their own time. I can easily see the utility of these videos for colleagues teaching similar cohorts in Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Science. Thus, I am happy to share and disseminate VIMM with colleagues.

Date: Various

Time: 13:10 - 13:50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

• Wed Oct 5: Susan Kirwin, Student Learning Development Coordinator, TCD, International Voices to the Fore - Academic expectations of International students.
  
• Tues Oct 18: Andrew Costello, Assistive Technology Officer, Disability Service, The Trinity Inclusive Learning Principles - optimising student learning.
• Tues Nov 1: *Mark Monahan, School of Nursing & Midwifery, A service-user and expert-by-experience led multimedia teaching package about hearing voices.
  
• Tues Nov 15: *Eric Downer, School of Medicine, Department of Physiology, Interactive audiovisual animation for teaching embryology.
  
• Fri Dec 2: Tamara O’Connor, Student Learning Development, TCD, Teach students how to learn: Effective learning strategies to promote deeper learning.  
  
• Tues Dec 6: Mike Wride, CAPSL, Peer to peer feedback and assessment for enhancing student learning.
  
• Tues Jan 31: *Catherine Darker, School of Medicine, Department of Public Health & Primary Care, Healthy Trinity Online Tool (H-TOT).
• Tues Feb 21: Dr Denis Barry, School of Medicine, Anatomy Education For The YouTube Generation: Pedagogical Considerations and Educational Strategies for Healthcare Students
  
• Tues Mar 21: *Clare Whelan, School of Medicine, Clinical Skills Tutor, Video cases of simulated patient encounters as an aid to learning communication skills.
  
• Tues Apr 19: *Stephen Smith, School of Medicine, Clinical Microbiology, Videos in Medical Microbiology (VIMM).
• June TBC: *Marie Morris, School of Medicine, Education Division, A technology-enhanced approach to assessment using a remote tele-presence device.

• *Dean’s Award for Teaching Innovation, Faculty of Health Sciences

Tuesday 15th November 2016, Auk Room, Zoology Building

Registration Closed

An interactive audio-visual animation for teaching embryology.

Dr Eric Downer, School of Medicine, Department of Physiology.

Embryology is a core subject undertaken by Health Science students, with the aim to bring together core knowledge in Cell Biology, Anatomy and Physiology to describe the developmental process from fertilization to birth. For the 2015-16 academic year student feedback indicated difficulty visualising key embryological concepts in 2D, particularly embryonic folding/flexion and cell layer migration during gastrulation.

This project will develop an interactive audio-visual animation that will be implemented into the Junior Freshman curriculum for teaching embryology and will be assessed via pre- and post- animation surveys to determine if the audio-visual aid improves student learning in embryology. Furthermore, the collation of questionnaire data associated with the animation will be conducted by a Senior Sophister student as part of their final year undergraduate research project. Overall, this will explore how the animation can be used to supplement student education beyond the traditional classroom. This project will act as the first steps to develop a prospective pilot animation, which will be introduced in 2016-17, and will act as a platform to develop/implement new audio-visual teaching tools into degree programmes throughout the School/Faculty, including Medicine, Nursing and Occupational Therapy.

Date: Friday 2nd December 2016

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

Teach students how to learn: Effective learning strategies to promote deeper learning.

Facilitator: Tamara O’Connor, Student Learning Development

Many students rely on ineffective ways of studying information for their course such as re-reading notes, highlighting text or cramming for exams. However, there is a wealth of research on what works to improve learning. Teachers can help students to use more effective learning strategies that promote deeper learning and better retention; teachers can advise students how to learn the content of their course.

This seminar will describe the two most effective strategies - retrieval practice (practice testing) and distributed practice - as well as other strategies that have some evidence to support their usefulness. Participants will have the opportunity to discuss how these strategies might apply for the particular material the teacher wants students to learn. We also will look at examples of how teachers have incorporated the teaching of effective study strategies into their class teaching and explore how participants can apply this in their own teaching.

Date: Tuesday 6th December 2016

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration Closed

Peer to Peer Feedback and Assessment for Enhancing Student Learning.

Facilitator: Dr Mike Wride, Academic Developer, CAPSL and Adjunct Associate Prof, School of Natural Sciences.

There are great opportunities and advantages, in terms of understanding and engagement, to learners providing feedback on and assessing each other’s work. Using and/or developing assessment criteria takes students deeper into their learning and allows for feedback and reflection on learning and the sharing of what new meaning appears.

This seminar aims to introduce formative and summative peer assessment to academics who are considering implementing peer assessment in their teaching. It will provide a ‘theory into practice’ approach and will outline techniques and examples for using peer assessment more directly in the design of curricula and discuss making its use more explicit in the classroom in order to help students learn more effectively.

Date: Thursday 9th February 2017

Time: 10:00 - 16:00

Venue: Innovation Academy

Developing programme approaches to assessment and feedback through TESTA: From zoom to wide-angle lens

Facilitator: Dr Tansy Jessop, Professor of Research Informed Teaching, Southampton Solent University       

This workshop will explore why a programme focus to assessment and feedback is important for student learning. Taking a programme view adjusts the lens from ‘my’ module to ‘our’ programme, and from a teacher perspective to a student vantage point. TESTA is a research and change process which has been used in more than 50 UK universities and internationally to engender a culture shift in assessment and feedback. In this workshop, participants will take a hands-on approach to mapping assessment across the programme, and to interpreting data from the TESTA audit (the planned curriculum).

The planned curriculum meets the ‘lived experience’ of students in data from the Assessment Experience Questionnaire (AEQ) and student focus groups, which participants will explore in the workshop. Finally, the workshop will scope out the key changes that have occurred through TESTA, and how to effect these changes.

Date: Friday 10th February 2017

Time: 10:00 - 13:00

Venue: UCD

Inspiring changes in assessment and feedback through a programme approach (UCD, University College Dublin)

TESTA is a research and change process which has been used in more than 50 UK universities and internationally to engender a culture shift in assessment and feedback. This workshop will explore what is distinctive about TESTA and why many universities have found it compelling as a research and change process. Participants will analyse and interpret sample data from TESTA programmes as the starting point for troubleshooting problems in the assessment environment.

The workshop will explore a range of TESTA-inspired changes from case studies which remedy the broken and fragmented aspects of modular assessment.  These include illustrative examples of rebalancing summative and formative assessment; developing meaningful formative tasks which engage students; powerful feedback strategies which connect across modules; ways to clarify criteria and standards; and creating an integrated assessment diet.

Date: Tuesday 1st December 2015

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Using Music and Film in your teaching

Facilitator: Dr Daniel Geary, School of Histories & Humanities (Provost's Teaching Award winner 2014-15)

In this seminar, Dr Geary will lead a discussion about how to teach music, film, and other audio-visual material.  He will illustrate the effective use he has made of such sources in his own teaching such as using rock-and-roll to help teach the African American civil rights movement.  Participants will be encouraged to share their own experiences as well as consider how their teaching might benefit from the strategic use of music and film in the classroom.

Date: Tuesday 9th February 2016

Time: 13:10 - 13:50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

What is Transformative Education? The Example of Schumacher College

Facilitator: Philip Franses, Senior Lecturer, Schumacher College

This seminar presents a case study of the M.Sc. in Holistic Science from Schumacher College as an example of experiment and creative education and innovation in pedagogy.

Here the curriculum is holistic and able to overcome fragmentation of knowledge, thus providing a whole context to learning. It draws from Goethe’s ‘way of science’, Barfield’s ‘participation’ and Bortoft’s ‘dynamic ways of seeing’. Examples will be provided of the teaching and learning of physics and biology on the Chaos and Complexity module of the M.Sc. in Holistic Science.

In this approach the teaching enables students to come to their own personal meaning about the material through self-reflection. Assessments are designed to facilitate the expression of this new meaning and include not only scientifically rigorous traditional essays, but also creative pieces of art including poems, music and paintings. Students undergo profound changes in perceptions and in their ways of thinking and feelings about learning as revealed in student interviews. While the method has challenges, the students also gain a different perspective and learn to participate more fully in the world.

The talk concludes by asking the question: what is transformative education?

Further Reading
Franses, P. (2015). Time, light and the dice of creation; through paradox in physics to a new order, Edinburgh, U.K., Floris Books. 

Franses, P. & Wride, M.A., Goethean pedagogy A case in innovative science education and implications for work based learning, Higher Education, Skills and Work-Based Learning, 5, (4), 2015, p339 - 351
Journal Article, 2015 URL TARA - Full Text

Wride, M.A. & Franses, P. Creative Development of Meaning in Matter: Reflections on a Silent Pilgrimage. Lifewide Magazine Issue 15 (Our Creative Life), 2015,p48-50

Date: Friday 19th February 2016

Time: 10:00 - 13:00

Venue: Innovation Academy, 3-4 Foster Place

Creating outward facing assessment

Facilitator: Dr Dilly Fung, University College London

In a national seminar in 2015, Dr Dilly Fung spoke about the importance of a ‘connected curriculum’ as an innovative programme design that promotes a ‘throughline’ of research-based learning experiences. Building on this event, in this seminar, Dr Fung will return to the topic of a connected curriculum, this time focusing on assessment, and in particular the potential benefits of outward facing assessment as a form of public engagement.

Research on assessment points to the importance of assessment being relevant, authentic and interdisciplinary. But assessment typically remains within the institutional space.  This seminar will examine the potential for student assessment to be publically available as opposed to being a private product.  It will explore how we can design student assessments as outward-facing communications within real-world settings, creating assessments that mirror ‘public engagement’ in research, or that can encourage connections across modules and programmes and address interdisciplinary challenges within and beyond the institution.

Dr Dilly Fung joined UCL in October 2013 as the Director of their Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching (CALT). A Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she was previously Senior Lecturer in Academic Practice and Head of Academic Development at the University of Exeter. Focusing not only on teaching, learning and assessment, she engages with wider dimensions of academic practice, academic leadership and institutional change: these themes are also the subjects of her own research.

Date: Friday 11th March 2016

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Teaching the ‘real world’: Inviting society into our classrooms

Facilitator: Dr Ciaran O'Neill, School of Histories and Humanities. Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2015.

 As academics we have become accustomed to answering questions about how our research relates to the ‘real world’, and how much of a contribution our work has on the society we live in. The same questions are seldom asked of our teaching. This is changing, as have student expectations of how any given course relates to the job market. More and more, we are encouraged to move towards an employment-conscious curriculum. How can we channel this to advantage our students? How can we give them the confidence to broadcast their knowledge to a wider audience? Can we enhance employability while retaining the academic integrity of our teaching? How can we learn from practitioners outside of the university and integrate their knowledge into our classrooms?    Using examples from  the School of Histories and Humanities, this seminar will offer some suggestions and invite critical discussion on these fundamental issues.

Date: Tuesday 12th April 2016

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

How can we teach analytical skills more creatively? 

Facilitator: Dr Michelle D'Arcy

Usually in teaching analytical skills we put more emphasis on critical thinking than on creativity, even though creativity is a central part of the research process and useful for many different jobs. How can we teach analytical skills more creatively and using creativity? What are the benefits of doing so?   This seminar will provide a forum for discussion of these questions, with opportunities to hear about and share experiences of using creativity and applying creative teaching methods.

Maynooth University Library

Thursday, 27 November 2014

10:00 to 16:30

The Irish Network for the Enhancement of Writing are holding the following seminar:

From Emergent Scholarship to Academic Conversations: Increasing the visibility of your scholarship

This seminar will help participants navigate the sometimes complex world of publishing and learn about promoting their scholarship to broad national and international audiences. Topics covered include: selecting publishing outlets, bibliometric techniques (including how to use journal ranking tools calculating your H-index and setting up a researcher profile), open access, digital archival, major academic networks and blogs and micro blogs as methods of communicating scholarship.

The event is free but booking is essential

Date: Thursday 23rd October 2014

Time:13:00 -14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Peer Observed Teaching: In-House and Abroad

Facilitators: Dr Liz Heffernan and Dr David Kenny

Last year, the Law School introduced a pilot programme of peer observed teaching. This voluntary, informal programme encouraged staff members to team up to observe each other’s lectures and offer constructive feedback on teaching methods and practices. The reciprocal practice was designed to promote reflection among colleagues on the ways in which we teach and did not feed into any process of performance review. Participants were positive about the experience and the programme is being developed further in this academic year. In a separate initiative last year, two members of staff benefitted from grants from the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences that enabled them to travel to UK law schools to observe innovative teaching in particular law subjects.

In this session we will consider a range of issues relating to peer observed teaching. Drawing on the Law School’s recent experiences, we will consider the potential benefits of, and difficulties with, peer observation.

Wednesday 27th May 2015

Time: 13:00-14:00

Registration Closed

Encouraging autonomous student learning

Facilitator: Dr David Prendergast, School of Law

As University teachers we’re emphatically not just in the business of knowledge transmission. We want to inspire our students to be independent, self-sustaining, critical thinkers. And we are democratic and inclusive; we want to get all of our students on the path to life-long learning, not just those who are already primed to make the most of third level education. This takes skill and sensitivity in adjusting teaching methods across large and small groups and with students at different stages of engagement with their discipline.

This workshop will facilitate reflection on methods to boost students’ learning autonomy. We will explore the scope for practices and methods to travel across disciplines and I will relate some experiences of teaching law subjects at various levels. The aim is that you’ll identify at least one existing teaching practice of yours that you might amplify, as well as pick up at least one entirely new thing to try.

Thursday 14th May 2015

Time: 13:00-14:00

Registration Closed

Mindfulness in Higher Education Teaching

Facilitator: Sheila Cannon, School of Business

In this seminar, I will share my experiences of introducing mindfulness in undergraduate classes. I will review some of the literature on mindfulness, and focus on how to introduce it, student responses and the benefits that I found.

The benefits of mindfulness have been evidenced in research in a variety of contexts: in the workplace, in schools, in hospitals and in higher education (e.g. Brown and Ryan 2003 for an overview). Mindfulness in task performance has been associated with success (Shao and Skarlicki 2009), executive functioning (Zeidan et al. 2010), and cognitive flexibility (Moore and Malinowski 2009). Mindfulness in the workplace (Dane 2011 for an overview) has been associated with increased productivity and job retention (Dane and Brummel, 2013). Research in neuroscience, medicine, social and personal psychology suggest that mindfulness is associated with several positive outcomes, such as happiness, lower stress levels and increased well-being (e.g. Allen and Kiburz 2012).

But, how can teachers introduce and use mindfulness in their classes? I introduced a few simple techniques as part of a course, Personal and Career Development, introducing management skills to undergraduates. In this CAPSL seminar, we will practice mindfulness, and discuss simple ways of using it in the classroom. We will look at breathing exercises, life-map, body-scan, and journaling. The students overall found the experience of mindfulness in the classroom as beneficial. In particular, they described a heightened sense of purpose and engagement. I found that the group dynamic improved-the mindfulness exercises fostered trust between the students. And, they engaged with the material holistically, not just intellectually, which gave them great satisfaction.

Friday 24th April 2015

Time: 10:30 - 13:00

Venue: Innovation Academy, Foster Place

Registration Closed

Connected Curriculum: Research-based Education, programme design and student transition

Facilitator: Dr Dilly Fung, University College London

Tuesday 24th March 2015

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration is now closed

Developing creative teaching and learning approaches in your discipline

Facilitator: Dr Michael Wride, School of Natural Sciences

Creativity, including imagination, insight, and intuition are all involved in research, but are not necessarily acknowledged when teaching students. This emphasis on ‘facts’ tends to ‘fix’ knowledge in place and denies the creative dynamism associated with both the processes of learning and of carrying out research. There is also the challenge to overcome the ‘fear’ of both students and lecturers of ‘letting go’ sufficiently to allow the creative process to unfold, to step into a place of ‘not knowing’ how things might develop.

Participation in philosophical discussions and debates can open up creative thinking in students, and this will be discussed. Further, results of semi-structured, exploratory research interviews with science undergraduates, postgraduates and scientists will be presented.  Questions focused on participants’ interests in art and/or other creative pursuits (e.g. sports) and the extent to which these pursuits feed into their scientific work, including teaching and learning. Opinions on the ‘official’ scientific method, imagination, insight, creative scientists and creativity in nature were also solicited. The importance of strategies for preparing for creative teaching will be presented, and skills for obtaining a state of ease, relaxation or ‘flow’.  Indeed, the acquisition of skills ‘outside’ academic work was seen as transferring productively into the practice of science teaching and learning.

Comments from student self-reflective pieces obtained from an assignment following a session on problem solving and creativity will also be presented. The quotes from students contain real evidence of the transformative nature of this activity, particularly with regard to helping them perceive the relationships between art and science, the creative process of science and in using their skills to present their work creatively.

Finally, we will discuss the challenges associated with creative teaching approaches and options as to how to assess students’ creative output.

Friday 6th March 2015

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration is now closed

Promoting active student participation in lectures - challenges and techniques

Facilitator: Dr Niamh Connolly, School of Law (Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2014)

Why are lectures a valuable element of the university learning experience? Why don’t we just print out notes that clearly present our explanation and views on each topic for our students to read?
For me, lectures are valuable because live, face to face, communication between a teacher and learners allows us to use all the tools of human communication to engage directly with our students and bring our subjects to life for them. Besides, the dialogue in the room enables us to respond immediately to signals from the students. On this view, two-way communication, immediacy and responsiveness are at the heart of classroom teaching.  When our students actively participate, their involvement can enhance their learning experiences, reinforcing the intrinsic merits of classroom teaching. Such participation may involve interaction between the students and lecturer, or among students themselves. The learners benefit from engaging with the material and thinking for themselves during the class, as well as encountering other people’s differing perspectives.

An interactive learning session is a collaboration and our success in creating one depends on the willingness of our students to join in. Have you ever led a horse to water and wondered how to persuade it to drink? I wondered what our students think about active participation in lectures, and whether and in what forms they feel it helps them to learn better. To find out, I surveyed some Junior Freshman and Senior Freshman law students. Encouragingly, most of these students’ learning objectives seem to match well with their lecturers’ pedagogical aims. There is no sense that they wish simply to memorise a set of notes dispensed from the podium. Instead, they emphasise the value of critical thinking and engagement with different perspectives, and most of them welcome interaction during lectures as promoting these objectives. However, they also highlight factors that hinder their participation and potential pitfalls of an interactive classroom. It is, they point out, time-consuming. Some students hesitate to speak up for fear of being judged, while sometimes a small number of people try to dominate the group discussion.

In this workshop, I would like to discuss with colleagues from different departments the benefits and costs of increased student participation in lectures, the potential difficulties that we need to manage, and the strategies and techniques that we have used. The students’ survey responses offer useful prompts for us to explore. Our students are often more reluctant to speak up in large lectures than small classes. How can we design and conduct our lectures so as to encourage everyone’s active participation? We will consider a range of options, including questions and discussions, buzz groups and student panels, and any other suggestions that you would like to make.

Tuesday 3rd March 2015

Time: 13:00 - 14:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Registration is now closed

Using pragmatism as a framework to guide teaching and learning in higher education.

Facilitator: Dr Louise Gallagher, School of Nursing & Midwifery (Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2014)

In this seminar the notion of traditional pragmatism and its underlying philosophy will be explored as a framework to guide teaching and learning in higher education. Pragmatism is an educational philosophy that emphasises the utility of both knowledge and research, and applies these to each unique individual. Frequently students past knowledge and experiences are underdeveloped by modular systems of higher education. Pragmatism seeks to bridge this gap, by devising teaching and learning that recognises the student’s prior knowledge and experience as crucial to the learning process.

In this seminar we will consider the practical application of the students’ prior knowledge and consider how the student might best use the information to enhance their learning.

Various dates from February 2015

Registration is now closed

The Professional Special Purpose Certificate in Academic Practice

The Professional Special Purpose Certificate in Academic Practice is a level 9, non-major award that focuses on professional development in academic practice, integrating four interrelated facets: teaching, learning, research and leadership. It carries a credit volume of 15 ECTS.

This course offers a professional qualification in academic practice for staff in Trinity and is designed to be flexible, research-informed and practice-based. It encourages candidates to select their own professional development agenda in academic practice, and allows them to develop and evidence their academic practice, knowledge and values throughout their careers at times that are appropriate to them.

Upon completion of the certificate staff can undertake further modules to facilitate lifelong learning and help maintain high quality practice throughout their careers.

The Course is based on the premise that everybody educating our students in Trinity should be committed to and supported in achieving an excellent student learning experience.

Date:Monday 23rd September 2013

Time:10:00 -12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Introduction to Teaching in Higher Education

Facilitator: Dr Marian Fitzmaurice

This workshop will introduce you to planning for your teaching in Trinity and give you ideas and techniques to support you to become an effective lecturer.

Key areas of focus will include:

• Models of learning
• Identifying learning outcomes and planning your teaching
• Active strategies for teaching in Higher Education
• Effective communication
• Reflecting upon ways to best support your students’ learning.

Date:Monday 23rd September 2013

Time:13:00 -15:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Module Design and Assessment

Facilitator: Dr Marian Fitzmaurice

Module design and assessment methods have a significant effect on the learning strategies adopted by students. Effective design can ensure that programmes meet identified educational needs and that teaching methods and assessment strategies are selected to achieve programme objectives. This workshop will focus on the process of deciding the structure of a module from learning outcomes stage through development of teaching-learning experiences and effective assessment.

Key areas of focus will include:

• The relationship between module planning, teaching strategies and assessment
• Assessment for learning - what kinds of knowledge, skills, abilities, values are we seeking evidence of?
• Reflection on current practice and planning for effective assessment

Date:Wednesday 25th September 2013

Time:10:00 -12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Designing Lectures (large group teaching)

Facilitator: Dr Marian Fitzmaurice

This session will focus on approaches to large group teaching, and involving/engaging students in the learning process.

The following topics will be considered:

• identifying important features of a successful lecture
• discussing different strategies and activities which can be used to enhance the ‘traditional’ lecture
• considering ways to manage interaction in large classes
• reflecting upon ways to best support the learning of students in large classes.

Date:Wednesday 25th September 2013

Time:13:00 -15:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Supporting research-led teaching through supervision

Facilitator: Dr Marian Fitzmaurice

Research-led teaching is at the heart of TCD’s teaching philosophy, where students become part of a genuinely research-inspired curriculum. In this workshop participants will be introduced to approaches to good practice in effective supervision at both undergraduate and postgraduate level.

Key areas of focus will include:

• Strategies to support students throughout the different stages of the research process
• Supervision as a form of teaching
• What constitute a productive research environment
• Planning and managing the supervisory process

Date: Friday 28th March

2014

Venue: School of Nursing

& Midwifery,

Trinity College Dublin.

From Dissertation to Publication: a practical workshop on re-purposing writing with Professor Sally Brown.

Professor Sally Brown
Sally is Emerita Professor of Higher Education Diversity in Teaching and Learning at Leeds Metropolitan University and was until July 2010 PVC (Academic). She is also a Visiting Professor at the University of Plymouth and Adjunct Professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast and James Cook University (both in Queensland, Australia). Sally has worked in education for more than forty years and was, for five years, Director of Membership Services for the Institute for Learning and Teaching, prior to which she worked at the University of Northumbria at Newcastle for almost 20 years as a lecturer, educational developer and Head of Quality Enhancement. She is a National Teaching Fellow and was awarded a £200,000 NTFS grant for three years to research Innovative Assessment at Master’s level. She is widely published, largely in the field of teaching, learning and assessment.

Date:Monday 24th March 2014

Time:12:00 -14:00

Venue:
Davis Theatre, Arts Building

Registration Closed

Study Smart sessions for Academic Staff in Trinity College 

Using Microsoft Word & PowerPoint effectively

Word 12- 1

This part of the workshop will show you how to create document and project outlines, assist proof reading, merge documents and use marking/commenting tools effectively.  It will also showcase effective ways to publish and distribute documents to classes.

&

PowerPoint 1-2

This part of the workshop will give you practical advice on how to use PowerPoint to edit video and images, use master slides, transitions and animations and create engaging and successful presentations, keeping your audience focused on your message. It also includes best ways to distribute content post - presentation. 

Date:Wednesday 5th March 2014

Time:12:00 -13:00

Venue:
Synge Theatre, Arts Building

Registration Closed.

Study Smart sessions for Academic Staff in Trinity College 

Using Microsoft Word & PowerPoint effectively

Word

This part of the workshop will show you how to create document and project outlines, assist proof reading, merge documents and use marking/commenting tools effectively.  It will also showcase effective ways to publish and distribute documents to classes.

&

PowerPoint

This part of the workshop will give you practical advice on how to use PowerPoint to edit video and images, use master slides, transitions and animations and create engaging and successful presentations, keeping your audience focused on your message. It also includes best ways to distribute content post - presentation. 

Date:Wednesday 19th & Thursday 20th September 2012

Time:Various

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Introduction to Teaching at Trinity for New Academic Staff

Introduction to Teaching at Trinity is a cross-discipline two day programme for academics who are new to teaching at Trinity College Dublin, or for those who wish to update their teaching skills. It will provide participants with the opportunity to meet other lecturers new to Trinity and to discuss and evaluate pedagogic approaches to teaching at third level. It will introduce participants to the approaches advocated by Trinity to curriculum design, assessment, lecture design and delivery, large group teaching, scholarship of teaching, and teaching evaluation.

Attendance: The course runs over two days. We request that participants are able to attend the course in full before booking a place. CAPSL provides certificates of completion to participants to evidence their continuing professional development in teaching practice.

Date:Monday 8th October 2012

Time:14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Small Group Teaching

Facilitator: Dr. Anne Markey, School of English

In this interactive workshop, participants will be encouraged to consider educational arguments for supporting learning in small groups. They will also consider effective strategies for planning, delivering and managing small group sessions.

Date:5th & 6th November 2012

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
TBC

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding a block of protected time to progress their writing for publication. By participating in this writing retreat you will benefit from two full days to focus exclusively on your writing for publications output (journal article/book chapter/review etc). This non residential writing retreat will be held during reading week, in a quiet and comfortable venue that is off campus and away from the distractions of the office. The vast majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing, although each session is framed by a short writing prompt to act as a springboard to your writing. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second afternoon.

The writing retreat will provide you with the opportunity to progress or complete a tangible piece of academic writing for publication (i.e. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.

As places are limited and the retreats are always over-subscribed, participants must be free to attend both days in full. Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:
Thursday 15th November 2012

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date:Thursday 22nd November 2012

Time:10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Interactive Lecture Design & Delivery

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The lecture in its many forms is still the most commonly used method of delivering instruction in higher education today. There presently are many calls to move away from the traditional lecture to interactive varieties as such an effective lecture can be one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of an educator’s work. The time and effort invested in planning, structuring and preparing can lead to students interacting, discussing, questioning and working together.

Date:Wednesday 16th January 2013

Time:12:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator. It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, professional or pedagogical reasons. 

In this session you will begin to identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, and begin to draft your statement.

Date:27th & 28th February 2013

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding a block of protected time to progress their writing for publication. By participating in this writing retreat you will benefit from two full days to focus exclusively on your writing for publications output (journal article/book chapter/review etc). This non residential writing retreat will be held during reading week, in a quiet and comfortable venue that is off campus and away from the distractions of the office. The vast majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing, although each session is framed by a short writing prompt to act as a springboard to your writing. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second afternoon.

The writing retreat will provide you with the opportunity to progress or complete a tangible piece of academic writing for publication (i.e. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.

As places are limited and the retreats are always over-subscribed, participants must be free to attend both days in full. Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:Friday 8th March 2013

Time:10:00 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Interactive Lecture Design & Delivery

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The lecture in its many forms is still the most commonly used method of delivering instruction in higher education today. There presently are many calls to move away from the traditional lecture to interactive varieties as such an effective lecture can be one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of an educator’s work. The time and effort invested in planning, structuring and preparing can lead to students interacting, discussing, questioning and working together.

Date: Monday 11th March 2013

Time:
13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Active Learning in Large Lectures

Facilitator: Prof. James Wickham, Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2012

Students use lectures for many purposes: sleeping, meeting friends, etc.  From time to time they learn from lectures.   Yet to the extent that students merely passively sit in lectures this is quite infrequent: as ways of merely communicating information lectures are rather ineffective.  This workshop considers simple, low-tech ways in which students can actively learn in lectures: how we can build small group teaching into large (>100) lectures.

Date: Tuesday 12th March 2013

Time:
13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Large Group Teaching

Facilitator: Dr. Daniel Faas, Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2012

Large group teaching creates particular challenges around student participation and engagement, especially among heterogeneous groups of Freshman students. This workshop discusses a variety of student activities to encourage interaction, foster student interest and develop independent learners including movie and news extracts, a show of hands, in-built questions, working in pairs, and reflection on a session. It demonstrates how we can make lecture topics more relevant and authentic to students thus moving away from conventional large-group lecturing styles.

Date:Wednesday 13th March 2013

Time:
10:00 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date: 8th April 2013

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Assessment (School Specific)

Facilitator: Dr. Marian Fitzmaurice

Date: Wednesday 8th May 2013

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Long Room Hub

Using Threshold Concepts as a transformative approach to assessment and feedback

Facilitator: Prof. Ray Land, Centre for Academic Practice, Durham University

Over the last decade the notion of threshold concepts has become increasingly widespread as an analytical tool for thinking about student learning in higher education, about why students might experience conceptual difficulty, and about the key transformations that students need to undergo in a programme of learning within a specific discipline. 

A threshold concept can be seen as a crossing of boundaries into new conceptual space where things formerly not within view are perceived, or as a portal opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.  Successful negotiation of such thresholds opens up new conceptual terrain in which new understandings and perceptions come into view, and access is gained to new discourses.  This frequently entails encounters with ‘troublesome knowledge’ – knowledge which provokes a ‘liminal’ phase of transition in which new understandings need to be integrated and, importantly, prior conceptions relinquished.  This often requires a discomfiting change in the subjectivity of the learner.

This workshop will explore the implications of threshold concepts for our approaches to assessment and feedback in our courses. For example it will consider thresholds as a potential means of streamlining assessment through identifying the critical components of a learning journey; how we might construct a meaningful assessment process for students for whom, in many instances, what is to be assessed lies outside their prior knowledge and experience; or how might we get away from traditional assessment regimes in which a student can produce the ‘right’ answer while retaining fundamental misconceptions.   

This will lead into a participative assessment (re)design exercise to identify and implement effective principles of assessment and feedback in our own courses in order to optimise student engagement. 

Date: Wednesday 15th May 2013

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Innovation Academy

Habits of Highly Productive Writers

Facilitator: Associate Professor Helen Sword, The University of Auckland, New Zealand

‘Publish or perish’ is the mantra of the successful academic. Yet few academics have been explicitly trained as writers, and fewer still have been schooled in the intricate art of maintaining research productivity without sacrificing work-life balance.  Helen Sword, author of Stylish Academic Writing, has interviewed more than 90 successful academics from across the disciplines to find out about their professional formation as writers, their daily work habits and their habits of mind.  In this interactive workshop, she will present a smorgasbord of evidence-based strategies for colleagues who aspire to write more confidently, stylishly, engagingly, daringly or simply more prolifically.

Date:
Tuesday 28th May 2013

Time:
9:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing for Academic Journals

Facilitator: Prof. Rowena Murray, University of the West of Scotland

This workshop will cover the following topics: targeting a journal, getting started, analysing abstracts, writing an abstract, outlining, drafting, and dealing with feedback from reviewers.  There will be some writing and discussion activities, and participants are encouraged to bring laptops to use at this workshop.

Date:
Tuesday 28th May 2013

Time:
13:00 - 16:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Book Proposal

Facilitator: Prof. Rowena Murray, University of the West of Scotland

This workshop will introduce a template for book proposals.  There will be analysis and discussion of a completed, successful proposal.
Discussion points could include: finding a publisher, writing for specific audiences, making the case for your book, and other issues raised by participants. 

Date:Tuesday 13th - Thursday 15th September 2011 (2.5 days)

Time:Various

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Introduction to Teaching at Trinity for New Academic Staff

Facilitators: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell & Dr. Anne Markey

Are you a new academic about to begin teaching for the first time?

Who is it for?
This is a foundation course created for new academics, new to teaching. The focus is very much on developing skills to offer you a confident start in your first teaching role. The course provides practical advice and approaches to practice, set within the teaching and learning context of Trinity College and Ireland.

What is involved?
Attendance- The course runs over two and half days. The course is always heavily subscribed and we request that participants are able to attend the course in full before booking a place. We provide certificates of completion to participants to evidence their continuing professional development in teaching practice.

Participation- The sessions are highly participatory with a focus on working in small groups, engaging in active learning and exploring teaching and learning through discussion with peers from diverse discipline areas. You will also have the opportunity to do some microteaching. This is optional, but most past participants identified this as a really valuable and distinctive component of the course.

Date:Tuesday 27th September

Time:10:00 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Small Group Teaching

Facilitator:Dr. Anne Markey, School of English

In this interactive workshop, participants will be encouraged to consider educational arguments for supporting learning in small groups. They will also consider effective strategies for planning, delivering and managing small group sessions.

Date:Starts Wednesday 28th September

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Accelerated Learning - Advanced Learning and Adaptive Problem Solving Techniques: Practical Lessons from Cognitive Science

Facilitator: Dr. David Delany, CAPSL

In this practical workshop participants will learn novel advanced deep learning and adaptive problem solving techniques derived from research in cognitive science into the development of superior mental performance. Particular attention will be paid to the application of these techniques to improving both research and teaching skills.

Derived from findings in cognitive psychology the course principles and techniques are designed to accelerate and deepen the meaningful learning, creative thinking and deep insight skills of researchers in both the sciences and the humanities. Puzzles and case studies illustrate the application of the techniques to fundamentally improving the depth and quality of our thinking in areas as diverse as neuroscience, business, law, the fine arts, genetics, philosophy, and engineering.

Dr. Delany is a neuroscientist with a research focus on novel brain training interventions for psychiatric disorders and cognitive enhancement. He also runs this course for academics and researchers in a wide range of external institutions including Cornell University, New York.

You must be able to attend all dates.

Wednesdays 28th September, 5th, 12th, 19th, 26th October, 2nd November

Date:Monday 10th October 2011

Time:10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date:Monday 24th October 2011

Time:10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Alternative Assessment Strategies

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys

Assessment has been described as the single most important factor influencing the quality of students’ learning in higher education. If this is the case, then as a lecturer it is important for you to consider:

• Whether your assessment tasks are encouraging productive approaches to learning in your students;

• Whether you are developing your students’ intrinsic motivation by the very nature of the tasks and by ensuring that there is a variety of assessment tasks in a programme.

This session:

• offers the opportunity for you to look critically at your assessments; 

• provides information on the range of assessment tasks that can be used in modules.

Date:Monday 24th October 2011

Time:14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Developing Student Motivation through Active Learning

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys

This practical session shows how a range of active learning strategies, for use in large group teaching, can have a positive effect on students’ motivation and readiness to engage with the subject, with the lecturer and with each other.

Participants will have the opportunity to:

• review how far their current practice affects their students’ motivation;
• experience and appraise a range of strategies for active learning;
• plan for how to implement suitable strategies for use in their teaching.

Date:Monday 7th November 2011

Time:12:30

Methodologies and Management of Students in Research with Community

To book your place at this seminar, email roisin.mcgrogan@tcd.ie.

Date:7th & 8th November 2011 & 9th & 10th November

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
The Cliff Townhouse, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (ie. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.  

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Prospective participants must be available to attend both days in full. As places are limited preference will be given to those:

• writing for publication
• who have not attended a previous writing retreat (though we will be happy to accommodate you if we have places)

Please identify your writing task on registration.  Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:Monday 5th December 2011

Time:12:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

Date:Friday 16th December 2011

Time:12:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

CAPSL, as part of the Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance (DRHEA) would like to offer 3 places to academic staff from Trinity College Dublin on a 5 ECTS credit module: ‘Online Teaching’.

This module aims to equip those engaged in teaching in higher education with competence in teaching online, with the ability to identify opportunities to use technology to enhance their teaching and to gain enhanced educational technology skills.

On successful completion of this module the learner will be able to

• Evaluate their own teaching with a view to identifying opportunities to incorporate educational
  technologies to support student learning.
• Critique a range of educational technology tools to determine suitability for their own teaching and
  appropriate to their own competence level with technology.
• Synthesise pedagogic and technology skills and strategies to design effective learning opportunities in an online learning environment.
• Reflect on the experience of being an online learner and how this might influence their own teaching approaches.
• Produce a portfolio of tools, approaches and techniques, to enable them to incorporate increased
  utilisation of educational technology in at least one module which they teach.
• Produce a plan, with timelines, tasks, and evaluation plans for use of appropriate technologies described in their portfolio.

Date:9th January 2012

Venue: Online

eModerating Online Activities for Education (8 weeks online)

Facilitator:Ms. Catherine Kane, eLearning

In this workshop we will examine how to use online Discussions and Blogs in our eLearning modules paying particular attention to eModerating, students support, eAssessment and eActivities. This course will run online over 8 weeks (there is no face-to-face session). You will have to contribute to activities which will take between 20 minutes and one hour per week.

This course is very flexible and does not require you to be available at fixed times. It is an opportunity to experience eLearning as a participant while also learning how to build online activities for your own students.

This workshop is based on the research work of Dr Gilly Salmon

Date:24th January 2012

Time:14:00 - 17:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Deterring and Detecting Student Plagiarism         

Facilitator: Dr. Sharon Flynn, NUIG

Sharon will lead a discussion around student plagiarism, why we should be concerned and what we can do to address it.

• Awareness and Concerns
• Thinking about plagiarism
• Reasons behind student plagiarism
• Internet plagiarism
• Deterring plagiarism through assessment design
• Resources – where to find them

Date:25th January 2012

Time:14:00 - 16:00

Venue: ISS Training Rooms, 200 Pearse Street

Getting started with Turnitin

Facilitators:Ms. Catherine Kane, eLearning & Ms. Jade Barrett, Academic Practice

This workshop will help you;

• create a user profile
  
• add classes and assignments
  
• submit papers
  
• check the originality reports
  
• use grademark

Date:31st January 2012

Venue: Online

eModerating Online Activities for Education (8 weeks online)

Facilitator:Ms. Catherine Kane, eLearning

In this workshop we will examine how to use online Discussions and Blogs in our eLearning modules paying particular attention to eModerating, students support, eAssessment and eActivities. This course will run online over 8 weeks (there is no face-to-face session). You will have to contribute to activities which will take between 20 minutes and one hour per week.

This course is very flexible and does not require you to be available at fixed times. It is an opportunity to experience eLearning as a participant while also learning how to build online activities for your own students.

This workshop is based on the research work of Dr Gilly Salmon

Date:Starts 3rd February 2012

Time:9:30 - 12:30

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing for Academic Publication Programme (six session programme)

Facilitated by: Dr Ciara O’Farrell (CAPSL)

 “Writing for Academic Publication” * is a multi-discipline programme which offers time and space to focus on and develop your individual academic publications. It encourages academic writers of all levels of experience in publication become part of an active writing community.

The programme supports academic writers throughout the writing for publication process. It encourages participants to adopt new writing behaviours and develop writing strategies to reach publication targets.

Through focused discussion, writing activities and writing time, this programme aims to help you manage your individual writing journeys through to completion of a paper for submission for publication. Each workshop is based on a theme that reflects the writing process, but also includes specific individual writing time.

For: Academic staff members of TCD
Participants should be able to commit to the whole programme which take place on the following dates: 3rd February, 24th February, 9th March, 30th March, 20th April & 11th May.

* WfP programme adapted from Murray and MacKay, 1998; Murray, 2001; Murray and Moore, 2006
Murray, R. & Mackay, G. (1998) Supporting academic development in public output: rejections and propositions, International Journal for Academic Development, 3, pp. 54–63.
Murray, R. & Morss (2001) Studies in Higher Education Volume 26, No. 1, 2001
Murray, R and Moore, S (2006), The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach, Open University Press

Date:7th February 2012

Time:11:00 - 13:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

A Lecturer Prepares: The Role of Performance in Teaching and Learning

Facilitator:Dr. Nicholas Johnson, School of Drama

Speaking in front of audiences is often a daunting part of the modern lecturer's life. Blending roundtable discussion with practical demonstration, this workshop will explore some core strategies from actor training that can benefit the academic. Beyond the technical tools of public speaking, this workshop will explore how envisioning a lecture as performance can enhance teaching and learning practice.

Date:15th February 2012 (change of date from 8th February)

Time:10:00 - 13:00

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

eLearning Effective Design

Facilitator:Ms. Catherine Kane, eLearning

This workshop is designed for Academic Staff thinking of developing an eLearning project.

It is an introduction to elearning covering the following;

• What is Web Based e-Learning,
  
• What are some of the problem that might occur,
  
• How do you start planning your e-Learning project,
  
• What is meant by the term Instructional Design
  
• How can you apply this to your own projects,
  
• What delivery methods and approaches might you follow
• How and when should you evaluate your eLearning project.

Participants are asked to have an idea they want to develop in mind when they book a place as there will be time in the workshop to start planning your project.

Date:27th & 28th February 2012

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
TBC

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (ie. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.  

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Prospective participants must be available to attend both days in full. As places are limited preference will be given to those:

• writing for publication
• who have not attended a previous writing retreat (though we will be happy to accommodate you if we have places)

Please identify your writing task on registration.  Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:
5th March 2012

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Interactive Lecture Design & Delivery

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT

The lecture in its many forms is still the most commonly used method of delivering instruction in higher education today. There presently are many calls to move away from the traditional lecture to interactive varieties as such an effective lecture can be one of the most exciting and rewarding aspects of an educator’s work. The time and effort invested in planning, structuring and preparing can lead to students interacting, discussing, questioning and working together.

Date:
15th March 2012

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Motivation to Learn

Facilitator: Dr. Janine Stockdale, School of Nursing & Midwifery (Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2011)

A theoretical way of designing your classes so that your students are motivated to learn, developed by a Professor of Educational Psychology and Instructional Design at Florida State University. 

Date:21st March 2012

Time:13:00 - 13:50

Venue: Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Large Group Teaching: Challenges and Strategies

Facilitator: Dr. Desmond Ryan, School of Law (Provost's Teaching Award Winner 2011)

In this session, we will consider the challenges facing those teaching large groups (in excess of 100 students) and explore strategies for coping with these challenges.

Issues to be addressed include group identity and co-operation; encouraging in-class participation; use of alternative assessment methods in large group contexts; provision of feedback to individual students in large group classes; the role of large group teaching in the context of other forms of teaching.

Date:
22nd May 2012

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing for Academic Journals

Facilitator: Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will cover the following topics: targeting a journal, getting started, analysing abstracts, writing an abstract, outlining, drafting, and dealing with feedback from reviewers.  There will be some writing and discussion activities, and participants are encouraged to bring laptops to use at this workshop.

Date:
22nd May 2012

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Book Proposal

Facilitator: Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will introduce a template for book proposals.  There will be analysis and discussion of a completed, successful proposal.
Discussion points could include: finding a publisher, writing for specific audiences, making the case for your book, and other issues raised by participants. 

Date:Wednesday 15th - Friday 17th September 2010

Time:Various

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Introduction to Teaching at Trinity for New Academic Staff

Facilitators: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL & Ms. Ann Lahiff, Institute of Education London

Are you a new academic about to begin teaching for the first time?

Who is it for?
This is a foundation course created for new academics, new to teaching. The focus is very much on developing skills to offer you a confident start in your first teaching role. The course provides practical advice and approaches to practice, set within the teaching and learning context of Trinity College and Ireland.

What is involved?
Attendance- The course runs over two and half days. The course is always heavily subscribed and we request that participants are able to attend the course in full before booking a place. We provide certificates of completion to participants to evidence their continuing professional development in teaching practice.

Participation- The sessions are highly participatory with a focus on working in small groups, engaging in active learning and exploring teaching and learning through discussion with peers from diverse discipline areas. You will also have the opportunity to do some microteaching. This is optional, but most past participants identified this as a really valuable and distinctive component of the course.

Date:Monday 18th October 2010

Time:9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Alternative Assessment Strategies (Summative)

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys

Assessment has been described as the single most important factor influencing the quality of students’ learning in higher education. If this is the case, then as a lecturer it is important for you to consider:

• Whether your assessment tasks are encouraging productive approaches to learning in your students;
  
  
• Whether you are developing your students’ intrinsic motivation by the very nature of the tasks and by ensuring that there is a variety of assessment tasks in a programme.

This session:

• offers the opportunity for you to look critically at your assessments; 
  
• provides information on the range of assessment tasks that can be used in modules;
• gives guidance on how to determine which tasks are most suitable for your students.

Date:Monday 18th October 2010

Time:12:45 - 14:15

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Choice of Assessment Methods within a Module

Facilitator: Dr Geraldine O’Neill, Senior Lecturer, UCD Teaching and Learning

In considering alternative approaches to assessments in a programme, many lecturers have explored the practice of allowing students some choice of assessment methods within a module. The benefit of this approach is it allows students to play to their strengths and it is in keeping with a more student-centred approach to higher education. However, the concerns for students and staff are often focused around equity of workload and grades, etc.

This session:

• Presents how this approach is being used, and researched, in a range of modules in UCD( HEA Training of Trainers Funded Project
• Explores and gives guidance on the issues of equity of workload/grades; programme versus module approach to assessment
  
• Allows opportunity to discuss/debate this approach in your modules and programmes

Date:Monday 18th October 2010

Time:14:30 - 17:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Small Group Teaching

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys
 
This practical workshop provides participants with the opportunity to consider: what small group teaching can achieve; how to overcome barriers to effective small group teaching; the skills needed to be an effective teacher of small groups; and techniques and methods to encourage discussion.

By the end of the session, participants will be able to:

• List the components of an effective small group teaching session;
• Review their current practice in small group teaching;
• Make plans for how their develop their practice in small group teaching.

Date:2nd November 2010

Time:12:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

Date:8th & 9th November 2010

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
The Cliff Townhouse, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (ie. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.  

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Prospective participants must be available to attend both days in full. As places are limited preference will be given to those:

• writing for publication
• who have not attended a previous writing retreat (though we will be happy to accommodate you if we have places)

Please identify your writing task on registration.  Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Writing for Academic Publication: Six month programme

Facilitated by: Dr Ciara O’Farrell (CAPSL)

 “Writing for Academic Publication” * is a multi-discipline programme which offers time and space to focus on and develop your individual academic publications. It encourages academic writers of all levels of experience in publication become part of an active writing community.

The programme supports academic writers throughout the writing for publication process. It encourages participants to adopt new writing behaviours and develop writing strategies to reach publication targets.

Through focused discussion, writing activities and writing time, this programme aims to help you manage your individual writing journeys through to completion of a paper for submission for publication. Each workshop is based on a theme that reflects the writing process, but also includes specific individual writing time.

For: Academic staff members of TCD

The programme will take place on Mondays 9.30 – 12.30 on the following dates in Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place :

November 15th, 29th
December 13th
January 17, 31st
February 14th, 28th
March 14th, 28th
April 11th

Participants should be able to commit to the whole programme.

* WfP programme adapted from Murray and MacKay, 1998; Murray, 2001; Murray and Moore, 2006
Murray, R. & Mackay, G. (1998) Supporting academic development in public output: rejections and propositions, International Journal for Academic Development, 3, pp. 54–63.
Murray, R. & Morss (2001) Studies in Higher Education Volume 26, No. 1, 2001
Murray, R and Moore, S (2006), The Handbook of Academic Writing: A Fresh Approach, Open University Press

Date:Wednesday 17th November 2010

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Structured Ph.D programmes - are they worth the trouble?

Facilitator: Professor John Kelly, School of Chemistry, Recipient of a 2010 Provost Teaching Award (Lifetime Achievement Award). 

The last few years has seen a growing interest in the development of structured Ph.D. programmes – an initiative which has been supported (not always financially) by Government agencies.

The lecturer has had a long term interest in developing graduate courses to enhance the education of our research students in the School of Chemistry.  However the question in the title is pertinent, especially in these times of financial cut-backs.  Amongst the questions we might ask are:-

• What do the students gain from such a structured programme?
• What do the research group leaders gain?
• What advantages/opportunities accrue to the School/Department?
• Can we afford to establish such programmes?

I hope to reflect on my experience helping to establish Dublin Chemistry, the joint Graduate Programme of the Schools of Chemistry in TCD and UCD, and to engage in a more general discussion of the benefits or otherwise of such structured Ph.D. programmes.

Date:Friday 19th November 2010

Time:10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date:Wednesday 8th December 2010

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Novel Assessment Methods – Some Examples in Practice

Facilitator:Dr. Eleanor Denny, Director of Undergraduate Teaching and Learning in the School of Social Sciences and Philosophy, and a lecturer in the Economics Department. Recipient of a 2010 Provost Teaching Award (Early Career). 

This short seminar will describe a range of assessment techniques Eleanor utilises in her undergraduate courses – in Economics, Finance and Mathematics modules.  It will cover both summative and formative assessment techniques and detail the pros and cons of each of the assessment methods for both the students and the lecturer. The presentation will be followed by a conversation with seminar attendees to discuss the assessments and their wider implications and possible uses in other disciplines.

Date: Six Session Course, starting 19th January

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Accelerated Learning - Advanced Learning and Adaptive Problem Solving Techniques: Practical Lessons from Cognitive Science

Facilitator: Dr. David Delany, CAPSL

In this practical workshop participants will learn novel advanced deep learning and adaptive problem solving techniques derived from research in cognitive science into the development of superior mental performance. Particular attention will be paid to the application of these techniques to improving both research and teaching skills.

Derived from findings in cognitive psychology the course principles and techniques are designed to accelerate and deepen the meaningful learning, creative thinking and deep insight skills of researchers in both the sciences and the humanities. Puzzles and case studies illustrate the application of the techniques to fundamentally improving the depth and quality of our thinking in areas as diverse as neuroscience, business, law, the fine arts, genetics, philosophy, and engineering.

Dr. Delany is a neuroscientist with a research focus on novel brain training interventions for psychiatric disorders and cognitive enhancement. He also runs this course for academics and researchers in a wide range of external institutions including Cornell University, New York.

Six Session Course (you must be able to attend all six dates):

Wednesdays: 19th Jan, 26th Jan, 2th Feb, 9th Feb, 16th Feb, 23rd Feb

Date:24th & 25th January 2011

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
The Cliff Townhouse, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (ie. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.  

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Prospective participants must be available to attend both days in full. As places are limited preference will be given to those:

• writing for publication
• who have not attended a previous writing retreat (though we will be happy to accommodate you if we have places)

Please identify your writing task on registration.  Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

27th January 2011

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Lunchtime Seminar: Opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking for undergraduate learning

Facilitator: Prof. Paul Coughlan, School of Business. Recipient of a 2010 Provost Teaching Award

Meyer and Land (2005)*suggest that within each discipline, field or profession there are threshold concepts which integrate and define the scope of the academic community with which a student is engaging. These threshold concepts can be considered like passing through a portal, or conceptual gateway, thus opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something. Such concepts lead to a transformed way of understanding within a discipline.  Such concepts have five attributes: they are transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded and troublesome.

This presentation builds on insights from the literature on threshold concepts to present a perspective on undergraduate teaching and learning. The presentation is based upon experience of teaching an established final-year university undergraduate course in the area of managing product development. It highlights the problems that students encounter in trying to understand how new product development works in practice and prompts those teaching as to how they might reflect on their approach.

*Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (2005), Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning, Higher Education, 49, 373-388

Date: 7th February 2011

Time:13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Lunchtime Seminar: Teaching and assessment strategies to promote critical thinking

Facilitator: Dr. Jacqueline Hayden, Department of Political Science. Recipient of a 2010 Provost Teaching Award

Despite leaving university with excellent degrees social science graduates may still lack real life skills such as the ability to think in terms of problem solving. Some may still not have learned how to marry the intellectual branches of the disciplines they have studied and thus cannot adequately offer interdisciplinary solutions to the problems they are asked to tackle in the workplace. This situation is often compounded by essay based teaching models where graduates do not learn how to communicate complex information verbally.

In this seminar, Dr Jacqueline Hayden will talk about how the Department of Political Science has responded to this issue. She will talk about the small group learning strategies she uses in her 4th year class – Important Issues in Contemporary Politics. Her seminar will focus on problem based learning strategies that allow students to self-select topics for research and presentation which promote self and peer evaluation. She will outline the teaching methods she uses to move students on from essay writing to designing problem based research proposals. Jacqueline will also discuss how podcasting has facilitated student’s evaluation of their presentations and how innovative assessment procedures facilitate the delivery of a more nuanced picture of a student’s skill set.

Date:11th February 2011

Time:10:00 - 13:00 for Academic Staff

Date:18th February 2011

14:00 - 17:00 for Postgraduate Students

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date: 15th February 2011

Time:11:00 - 12:30

Venue: South Training Room, BLU Library complex

Making your module, programme, or individual teaching practices inclusive and accessible to all

Facilitator: Ms. Michelle Garvey

This event will provide a demonstration of web resources created by the Trinity Inclusive Curriculum (TIC) strategy to support and guide staff seeking to enhance inclusion within their modules, programmes, or individual teaching practices. Each participant will have access to a computer, allowing the opportunity to explore these resources themselves.

TIC was devised with the aim of embedding inclusive practices within the mainstream College curriculum though the creation of web resources and training activities. In November 2010 TIC launched an online self-evaluation tool, supported by a resource website(https://www.tcd.ie/disability/teaching-info/TIC.php).

This tool allows all staff involved in student teaching, supervision, and assessment to evaluate their practices for inclusion, and users receive a report of suggested actions upon completion. The tool is supported by the TIC resource website, which combines guidelines and AV materials to guide users as they seek to enhance inclusion.

Date:1st & 2nd March

Time:9:00 - 16:30 both days

Venue:
The Cliff Townhouse, St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2.

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (ie. your research and organization is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.  

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Prospective participants must be available to attend both days in full. As places are limited preference will be given to those:

• writing for publication
• who have not attended a previous writing retreat (though we will be happy to accommodate you if we have places)

Please identify your writing task on registration.  Lunch is provided on both days.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:7th March 2011

Time:12:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

Date:
22nd March 2011

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing for Academic Journals

Facilitator:Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will cover the following topics: targeting a journal, getting started, analysing abstracts, writing an abstract, outlining, drafting, and dealing with feedback from reviewers.  There will be some writing and discussion activities, and participants are encouraged to bring laptops to use at this workshop.

Date:
22nd March 2011

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Samuel Beckett PC Lab, Arts Building

Writing a Book Proposal

Facilitator:Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will introduce a template for book proposals.  There will be analysis and discussion of a completed, successful proposal.
Discussion points could include: finding a publisher, writing for specific audiences, making the case for your book, and other issues raised by participants. 

Date:
13th April 2011

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Curriculum Design and Development

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys

Module design is a key factor in influencing the quality of student learning. This session focuses on important questions to consider in the design of a new module or the redesign of an existing one.

It will include:

How module design can shape students’ approaches to learning;
Writing useful module outcomes;
Aligning outcomes, assessment and learning and teaching methods;
The role of assessment and feedback;
Guiding the students in their non-contact hours.

Date:
13th April 2011

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Learning Through Reflection

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys

Date:
7th September 2009

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

How to Get the Most from Mentoring

Facilitator: Dr. Hilary Geber, Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD), University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and currently Visiting Research Fellow within CAPSL

This workshop provides a basic understanding of mentoring and how it can be used for career and personal development of academics in College. The need for mentoring and resulting benefits are explored. How to get the most from formal or informal mentoring partnerships is discussed and some practical suggestions for setting up successful partnerships are made. This workshop is best suited to academics and researchers with less than three years experience.

Date:
11th September 2009

Time:
9:15 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Embedding Research Led Teaching in the Curriculum at TCD

Facilitator: Dr. John Willison, University of Adelaide

• What does ‘research led teaching’ mean in the context of TCD?
  
• In what ways may research led teaching be useful at the undergraduate
  level?
  
• How can we maximise the benefits of research led teaching, without
  requiring extra resources?
  
• What are assessment implications of research led teaching?

The seminar will provide opportunity to discuss these questions, and the workshop will enable the application of research led teaching concepts to the curriculum.

Part 1: Analysing  Research Led Teaching for TCD

Research Led Teaching at TDC may be best understood in the context of each school, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to its definition. This session uses an analytical model to enable multiple perspectives of Research Led Teaching, so that you may determine if school-based definitions are possible, useful  or indeed a requirement for success. First, conceptualizations of Research Led Teaching will be overviewed, and then these will be analysed using the Research Skill Development (RSD) framework, a model being used to frame aspects of research led teaching in 20 disciplines in Australian universities.

Part 2: Applying Research Led Teaching at TCD

This session will apply either the Research Skill Development framework, or other concepts emerging in the morning, to specifics of research led teaching in the disciplines, schools or across disciplines. This will entail consideration of the shape curricula may need to take to realise the potential of research led teaching.

Date:
16th October 2009

Time:
9:30 - 16:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Teaching to Improve the Quality of Student Learning

Facilitator: Prof. James Wisdom

The research into how students learn and how course design influences the quality of learning has been developing rapidly in recent years. This one-day workshop has been designed for experienced academics who want to improve the way they teach and how they design their modules and programmes.

It is a practical workshop and will explore how research and new understandings can be applied to areas such as course design and assessment, selecting and using appropriate teaching methods, providing feedback on students’ work and evaluating teaching and learning. It allows participants to consider the fitness of existing and suggested approaches for differing class sizes and disciplines.

Time: 10:30 - 12:00

Date: 2nd November 2009

Venue: Regent House

Debates about the future of scholarly publishing are not a new phenomenon, and the research monograph in the humanities and social sciences has long been a focus of particular concern.  Yet the sense of crisis has sharpened in recent years, and changes in the market and in technology have resulted in some fundamental shifts in academic publishers’ business.  Digital media offer new opportunities, but have arguably introduced at least as many problems as they have solved.  The most fundamental issues for the sustainability of scholarly publishing relate to the larger workings of the academic economy - involving not just publishers but funding bodies, research assessors and tenure committees, libraries, and all the wholesale and retail links in the international distribution chain between publisher and reader.  As part of that broader picture, we need to understand the varying pressures of supply and demand, together with recent changes in the economy of print publishing and developments in electronic publishing. 

In this wide-ranging lecture, based on 15 years’ publishing experience in both university-press and commercial-academic sectors, Josie Dixon reviews the state of the market and the strategies scholarly publishers have developed to ensure the survival of their business.  She outlines some of the new challenges brought by digital technology, including some fundamental questions relating to copyright, access, and intellectual property.  While these issues are being played out most dramatically in the sciences, it is clear that they are already encroaching on humanities and social science publishing, and likely to have a major impact in the coming years.

Date:

2nd November

Faculty of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences - Room 3.19, Aras an Phiarsaigh

4th November

Faculty of Health Sciences - Montgomery Lecture Theatre, Trinity Centre, St. James's Hospital

5th November

Faculty of Engineering, Maths & Science - Room 3.19, Aras an Phiarsaigh

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Supervising Postgraduate Research Students

Dean of Graduate Studies - Prof. Carol O'Sullivan

The Dean of Graduate Studies, with the support of CAPSL, will coordinate three workshops on postgraduate research supervision, one for each of the three Faculties.

These are open to all members of the Academic staff, whether they are new or experienced supervisors, and also to administrative staff who are involved in supporting and monitoring research students.

Topics covered will include the role of the supervisor in admission, progression and examination of research students: regulations, issues and case studies.

There will be opportunities for discussion and Q&A

Date:
17th November 2009

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 2.04, Aras an Phiarsaigh

Teaching with Emotional Intelligence

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys, Birmingham City University

This session invites participants to consider to what extent they need to have a developed emotional intelligence in order to be effective in their work with learners. If learners’ feelings influence their readiness and ability to learn, then the lecturer should be able to respond to, and influence positively, the feelings of learners. This session will assist participants in gauging the importance of emotional intelligence for them and will suggest simple strategies for its use with learners. It will also give guidance on how to develop emotional intelligence further.

On completion of this session, participants will be able to:

• Explain the importance of using emotional intelligence in teaching
• Review their current use of emotional intelligence as a teacher
• Draw on strategies for the further development and use of emotional intelligence in their teaching.

Date:
17th November 2009

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Room 2.04, Aras an Phiarsaigh

Developing Student Motivation Through Feedback

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys, Birmingham City University

Whenever a student receives feedback on their progress or on their completed assessment tasks, that feedback has the potential to have an impact on the student’s motivation. This impact can depend on factors such as the timing, the content and even the tone of feedback. This session explores the alternative ways in which students can receive feedback and invites participants to critically review their current practice in this area.

This session provides participants with the opportunity to:

• Review the likely impact on student motivation of their current approach to feedback on students’ work;
• Plan to adapt their practice relating to feedback on students’ work in order to improve student motivation.

Date:
16th December 2009

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

This workshop will run again in Hilary Term.

Date:
12th Jan 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 3106, Arts Building

Getting started with Problem-Based Learning

Facilitator: Dr. Deirdre Connolly, Department of Occupational Therapy

Are you interested in ways to engage your students in active and challenging learning experiences?

Do you want to know more about problem-based learning (PBL)?

This half-day workshop is aimed at those who are interested in finding out more about PBL and ways in which you can incorporate PBL into your teaching practices. It will give a general overview of what PBL is, how to get started with PBL, factors to consider with respect to resources, preparing students and staff, student assessment etc. There will also be an opportunity to experience PBL in action.

Date:
Five Session Course starting 2nd Feb 2010 - 9th Mar 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Developing a Reflective Teaching Portfolio for Continuing Professional Development

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

CAPSL is pleased to announce our eighth series on developing reflective teaching portfolios for your continued professional development.

In these workshops you will learn how to structure and write an evolving portfolio that provides evidence and evaluation of your work as a lecturer, and that acts as a vehicle for fostering reflection on the art and practice of teaching and learning. By the end of the programme you will have written a Teaching Philosophy Statement and at least two entries for your portfolio.

Peer support will be an integral part of the experience of this programme as you will share and critically review the reflection and writing process with other participants.

The dates the course will run are as follows, when registering, please ensure you can attend all dates.

• 2nd February 2010
  
• 9th February 2010
  
• 23rd February 2010
  
• 2nd March 2010
  
• 9th March 2010

A Certificate of Completion will be awarded by CAPSL to participants who successfully complete this programme at our end of year event.

Date:
Four Session Course starting 4th Feb 2010 - 25th Feb 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Advanced Reading

Facilitator: Mr. Ronan McCarthy

Advanced Reading will increase participants’ ability to absorb, retain and recall information. This course gives participants the skills and strategies to manage the huge volumes of information that so many people have to deal with everyday. It is a fully participative, constantly evaluated, instructor led course broken into 4 x 3hrs sessions. 

The dates the course will run are as follows, when registering, please ensure you can attend all dates.

• 4th February 2010 -
  Identifying and eliminating bad reading habits.
  
  
• 11th February 2010 -
  Learning and exercising advanced reading skills.
  
  
• 18th February 2010 -
  Concentration and Memory.
  
  
• 25th February 2010 -
  Developing Flexible Reading Strategies in accordance with individual needs and styles.

Date:
5th March 2010

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Teaching with Emotional Intelligence

Facilitator: Prof. Alan Mortiboys, Birmingham City University

This session is designed as a follow up to the workshop run at Trinity in November 2009.

The November session invited participants to consider to what extent they need to have a developed emotional intelligence in order to be effective in their work with learners. It included the opportunity to investigate strategies for the development and use of emotional intelligence in their teaching.

This session is offered in response to the feedback from November. It continues the focus on recognising and working with emotions in teaching and learning with the goal of improving the quality of students’ learning and giving teachers more satisfaction in their work.  It provides the opportunity to explore further how to have a positive influence on the feelings of learners and also how to recognise and manage your own feelings as a teacher and determine how far to be open about these.

Date:
10th - 12th March 2010

Introduction to Teaching at Trinity for New Academic Staff

Facilitator: Ms. Ann Lahiff, Institute of Education London

Are you a new academic about to begin teaching for the first time?
Who is it for?
This is a foundation course created for new academics, new to teaching. The focus is very much on developing skills to offer you a confident start in your first teaching role. The course provides practical advice and approaches to practice, set within the teaching and learning context of Trinity College and Ireland.

What is involved?
Attendance- The course runs over two and half days. The course is always heavily subscribed and we request that participants are able to attend the course in full before booking a place. We provide certificates of completion to participants to evidence their continuing professional development in teaching practice. Participation- The sessions are highly participatory with a focus on working in small groups, engaging in active learning and exploring teaching and learning through discussion with peers from diverse discipline areas. You will also have the opportunity to do some microteaching. This is optional, but most past participants identified this as a really valuable and distinctive component of the course.

What do past participants say they enjoyed about the course?

“I enjoyed the microteaching session. Getting feedback from your peers and those in other disciplines is a rare opportunity.” (January 2008)

“Top tips…some of these I would have never realized, even if I had years of teaching.”

“Observing even the way this course was done gave me lots of ideas for both giving small group tutorials and large group lecturing.”(October 2006)

Date:
19th March 2010

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date:
23rd March 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Teaching in a Cross-Cultural Environment

Facilitator:Ms. Louise Staunton, Irish Council for International Students

When you have non-native English speaking international students in your classroom, there are several important issues and classroom management strategies related to effective communication that you may need to keep in mind to help all students have a positive learning experience. International students bring a broad range of cultural perspectives to the learning environment, and this diversity has the capacity to enrich teaching and learning in the University.

The half day workshop is designed to address the needs of international students as learners. The workshop will introduce issues of cultural awareness to those who teach international students, as well issues involved in cross-cultural communication.

Workshop Aim:
To discuss and explore strategies for improving the international student experience in a teaching and learning environment, while simultaneously improving interaction between home and international students.

Workshop Objectives:
Teaching in an intercultural setting means using strategies to work creatively with different cultural worldviews, and bringing an international perspective into the curriculum. Therefore, at the end of the course you will be able to:

• Review and discuss the literature available on teaching international students;
• Plan for and offer better support to international students and those involved in teaching;
• Identify the main barriers in terms of teaching, e.g. language awareness, non-verbal behaviour, learning styles, communication skills, academic writing etc;
• Identify and solve problems with the help of others in the workshop.

This course is suitable for:
Those involved in teaching, tutoring and supervising international students.

Date:
8th Apr 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Staff Development Room, House 4

Writing for Academic Journals

Facilitator:Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will cover the following topics: targeting a journal, getting started, analysing abstracts, writing an abstract, outlining, drafting, and dealing with feedback from reviewers.  There will be some writing and discussion activities, and participants are encouraged to bring laptops to use at this workshop.

Date:
8th Apr 2010

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Staff Development Room, House 4

Writing a Book Proposal

Facilitator:Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will introduce a template for book proposals.  There will be analysis and discussion of a completed, successful proposal.
Discussion points could include: finding a publisher, writing for specific audiences, making the case for your book, and other issues raised by participants.  Participants are encouraged to bring laptops to this workshop.

Date:
9th Apr 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing for Academic Journals

Facilitator:Dr. Rowena Murray, University of Strathclyde

This workshop will cover the following topics: targeting a journal, getting started, analysing abstracts, writing an abstract, outlining, drafting, and dealing with feedback from reviewers.  There will be some writing and discussion activities, and participants are encouraged to bring laptops to use at this workshop.

Date:
12th & 13th Apr 2010

Time:
9:00 - 16:30

Two Day Writing Retreat (non-residential)

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

A common frustration for academics is finding quiet time to write for publication.  Participating in a writing retreat can help you to benefit from dedicating a block of time to focus exclusively on your academic writing.

The aim of this retreat is to provide you with an opportunity to work on or complete a piece of academic writing that you have already developed (i.e. research and organisation is complete). For this reason we ask you to identify your writing task on registration.   Preference will be given to those writing for publication.

The retreat will focus exclusively on writing. The majority of your time will be spent in intensive, individual writing. However, this is a task-orientated process and you will be asked to identify achievable writing outputs at the beginning of the retreat. Structured peer groups will help you to set goals and encourage progress over the two days. There will also be a peer review exercise built into the second day.

Places are strictly limited to 14.

Date:
20th April 2010

Time:
10:00 - 12:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Writing a Teaching Philosophy Statement

Facilitator: Dr. Ciara O'Farrell, CAPSL

At some point in your academic teaching career, you will be asked to write a statement about your approach to teaching and the rationale behind what you do as an educator.   It may be for promotion purposes, or for personal, political, professional or pedagogical reasons.  

In this session we'll help you identify and articulate your teaching philosophy, provide examples of teaching philosophy statements, and spend time drafting your statement. 

Date:
21st April 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Enhancing your Presentation Skills in an Academic Environment

Facilitator: Dr. Roisin Donnelly, DIT Learning and Teaching Centre

The fact that for most people, even experienced academic presenters, getting up and presenting in front of an audience can be an uneasy experience. For today’s academic, it is important to be able to communicate thoughts and ideas effectively, using a variety of tools and medium. Happily, presentation skills are something we can learn and as a result, we want to make dynamic, lively, memorable and effective presentations in our academic environments.

Whether it is presenting your research at a conference, giving Key Note speeches, making presentations to pitch ideas internally, in fact whether you are persuading, educating, or informing, this interactive workshop will provide participants with practical advice on how to improve their presentations in front of an audience. It will focus on the key stages of preparation, structure, delivery, handling question and answers and the all-important use of visual aids and current presentation technologies.

Date:
21st Apr 2010

Time:
13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Opening Doors to Digital Learning

Facilitator: Ms. Catherine Bruen, Centre for Learning Technology

Open Educational Resources (OER) are digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research (OECD, 2007).

• Learning content: full courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals.
• Tools: Software to support the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content including searching and organisation of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities.
• Implementation resources: Intellectual property licenses to promote open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content.

The National Digital Learning Resources (NDLR) Service for Ireland is evolving. In 2010, the new service will be launched with some fundamental changes that will impact the future way staff of Irish Higher Education Sector, work, collaborate and develop learning resources as individuals and as members of subject discipline SMART COPs.  The new NDLR service is based on the delivery, development and support of open educational resources (OER).  To facilitate this, the NDLR now supports the use of Creative Commons (CC) Licenses and thus is aligned with the core principles of ccLearn.   The fundamental change to the usage of the NDLR is provided by the ‘open access’ to its resources via a new environment promoting more collaborative partnerships with national and international institutions, organisations and industry.

This workshop will focus on how NDLR is looking to the future to support the use of open digital content for improving the quality of teaching resources; enhancing associated teaching practice; encouraging a reduction in the cost of teaching via sharing and reuse of digital resources, and above supporting  collaborative development and sharing of resources across the education sector in Ireland and internationally, embracing partnerships with research and industry.  The OER Movement means that anyone, anywhere may view and utilise the resources under the Creative Commons Licence permissions. This reveals new possibilities for subject discipline networks to utilise the impact of digitised materials offered freely and openly to collectively raise the bar for learning design and use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.

Date:
Four Session Course starting 27th April 2010 - 18th May 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Advanced Reading

Facilitator: Mr. Ronan McCarthy

Advanced Reading will increase participants’ ability to absorb, retain and recall information. This course gives participants the skills and strategies to manage the huge volumes of information that so many people have to deal with everyday. It is a fully participative, constantly evaluated, instructor led course broken into 4 x 3hrs sessions. 

The dates the course will run are as follows, when registering, please ensure you can attend all dates.

• 27th April 2010 -
  Identifying and eliminating bad reading habits.
  
  
• 4th May 2010 -
  Learning and exercising advanced reading skills.
  
  
• 11th May 2010 -
  Concentration and Memory.
  
  
• 18th May 2010 -
  Developing Flexible Reading Strategies in accordance with individual needs and styles.

Date:
5th May 2010 - 9th June (Six week course)

Time:
10:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

Accelerated Learning Course: Practical Lessons from Cognitive Science

Facilitator: Dr. David Delany

On this advanced thinking skills course participants will learn how to use novel deep learning and adaptive problem solving techniques derived from research in cognitive science into the development of superior mental performance.

The course is based on findings in cognitive science into the nature of expertise, and is rationally designed from first principles to accelerate the development of levels of insight, problem solving, and innovation associated with elite experts.

Puzzles and case studies are used to illustrate the use of the techniques to systematically enhance the depth and quality of the meaningful learning, creative thinking and deep insight skills of researchers in both the sciences and the humanities. Examples are drawn from areas as diverse as neuroscience, business, the fine arts, genetics, philosophy, and engineering.

Participant feedback has been extremely positive, and has lead to several research collaborations in the schools of law, business, and engineering.

Dr. Delany has also successfully run the course for staff and postgrads in a range of other institutions, including Cornell University, New York.

As the course is based on novel advances in the theory of learning and problem solving, the underlying ideas have been presented at several academic conferences, both national and international.

The course will take place on the following dates. Please ensure you can attend all dates before registering.

Wednesday 5th May 2010
Wednesday 12th May 2010
Wednesday 19th May 2010
Wednesday 26th May 2010
Wednesday 2nd June 2010
Wednesday 9th June2010

Date:
14th May 2010

Time:
9:30 - 12:30

Venue:
Ui Chadhain Theatre, Arts Building

Smarter Lectures - making learning happen in large-group settings

Facilitator: Prof. Phil Race

In many contexts, student numbers continue to increase, not least as a result of widening participation policies. It is well established that just sitting in traditional lectures is not the best way for students to achieve high learning payoff. This workshop will explore how we can refresh the teaching approaches we use in large-group contexts, to maximise students’ learning then and there, rather than merely hope that they will go away and learn later from our handouts and their notes.

We will look creatively at what we can get students to do even in crowded lecture theatres or large classrooms, to keep them learning actively. We will look at the value of expressing intended learning outcomes near the start of each session, so that students are aware of what they should be gaining from the session, and returning to these outcomes near the end of each session to help students to reflect on the progress they feel they have made. We will also look at how to address the physical constraints of the learning environment in lecture theatres or large classrooms, and how we can get students to work participatively even in large groups. We will analyse some of the most prevalent problems we have when working with large groups, and seek creative solutions to the most common of these problems.

Intended learning outcomes

After participating in this workshop, you will be better able to:

1.      Put learning outcomes to work in large-group teaching.
2.     Address in your large-group teaching seven straightforward factors which underpin successful learning;
3.     Make large group contexts an active learning experience for your students;
4.    Address some of the problems we often find in large-group teaching contexts;
6.     Analyse which of your teaching actions maximise the learning payoff for your students.

Date:
14th May 2010

Time:
14:00 - 17:00

Venue:
Ui Chadhain Theatre, Arts Building

'Making Summative Assessment Work with large numbers of students'

Facilitator: Prof. Phil Race

Assessment takes up a great deal of our time and energy - and also a great deal of students' time and energy. Yet it can be argued that assessment is broken in higher education nowadays. It takes too much of our time marking it all. And it doesn't always measure the right things. And students say that the feedback they get is too late, and too little.

In this workshop we'll look at the causes of summative assessment having become broken in higher education, and work creatively towards solutions for mending it, so that it is fit for purpose for students, and manageable for us, even with large groups.

Date:
18th May 2010

Time:
10:00 - 13:00

Venue:
The Dorothy Stopford Price Seminar Room, St. James's

Cancelled

Assessment and Modularisation

Facilitator: Dr Ciara O’Farrell

This workshop will explore the role of assessment in a modularised system. It will consider assessment at both module and programme level.

In the workshop you will reflect upon and refine approaches to assessment in order to aid student learning. You will identify the challenges of assessment and analyse the basic principles that underlie good assessment practices in a modular system. 

It will be an interactive session, its intention being to provide a forum for academic discussion on the role of assessment and modularisation within the contextual reality in which we operate.

Date:
20th May 2010

Time:
12:30 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

APSL & WiSER Workshop: Academic Writing Groups

Facilitators:Ms. Caroline Roughneen, WiSER & Ms. Fiona Lithander, Clinical Medicine

To follow up on the recent CAPSL workshops on academic writing with Dr. Rowena Murray, WiSER and CAPSL are together hosting a workshop to introduce the concept of writing groups.

The workshop will cover how to set up and participate in an academic writing group in order to improve your writing output. Attendees will learn about writing groups, discuss the benefits of joining one and learn about the practical guidelines of setting one up.  Following the discussion, a number of writing groups will be set up for attendees wishing to join one.

Why join an academic writing group?
The current literature indicates that academics who are members of academic writing groups have increased publication output.

Writing group members can also:

• Learn to receive and give constructive feedback
• Learn some useful writing habits and skills
• Develop a stronger sense of yourself as a writer
• It compels you to get some writing done before the next meeting of the group!

WiSER and CAPSL have already set up a number of writing groups which have been successful in meeting their aims, i.e. improving writing output.

Is it for me?
It is for any member of academic or research staff, from any discipline, interested in improving academic writing output – be it writing an abstract, journal article, book, conference paper, a grant proposal etc.

Date:
27th May 2010

Time:
13:00 - 14:00

Venue:
Room 1.03, 3-4 Foster Place

CAPSL in association with the National Academy (NAIRTL) invites you to attend the following public seminar:

Dr Richard Baker, Australian National University : ‘Linking teaching and research at ANU’

This presentation will reflect on how student learning can be enhanced through integrating teaching and research. Examples will be given from initiatives at the Australian National University (ANU) to enhance the research intensiveness of the undergraduate experience. 

Examples will include:

1. initiatives associated with ANU’s membership of the International Alliance of Research Universities
2. advanced research intensive undergraduate degrees offered by ANU
3. two interdisciplinary ANU courses that the speaker facilitates – one field based in Vietnam and the other taught at ANU in collaboration with the national government on “Unravelling Complexity”.  For detailed course web pages for these two courses including numerous examples of student assessment items – http://fennerschool-people.anu.edu.au/richard_baker/teaching.html

This event is being organised as part of the National Academy’s objective to promote excellence in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and to recognise those who are both exemplary teachers and innovative researchers in Higher Education in Ireland. For more information on the National Academy’s activities please visit www.nairtl.ie

Date:
15th June 2010

Time:
9:30 - 13:00

Venue:
3051, Arts Building

Assessment Showcase: Call for presentations

In response to suggestions from academic staff within Trinity College, CAPSL is proposing to facilitate a seminar on different summative assessment practices currently used within Trinity.  Its objective is to showcase various forms of assessment that lecturers consider to be conducive to student learning, and to see whether these assessments, or their principles, can be applied in different disciplines or contexts.

The proposed seminar format is that a number of academic presenters would give a short overview of a particular form of assessment that they consider being effective and beneficial (10 minutes), to be followed by a facilitated conversation with the wider group (15 minutes). The discussion will be expected to focus on ways to improve student learning through assessment.  Presenters may also wish to get feedback on their assessments, and ideas on how to develop or enrich them.

The chosen assessment can be innovative, or an alternate take on a more traditional method.  For this seminar we will focus only on summative assessment (i.e. assessments for which marks are awarded, counting towards an end-of year mark).

If you think you might like to present an assessment, please contact ciara.ofarrell@tcd.ie or capsl@tcd.ie .

Date:
15th June 2010

Time:
9:30 - 13:00

Venue:
3051, Arts Building

A light lunch will be served.

CAPSL Assessment Showcase

Facilitator: Dr Ciara O’Farrell, CAPSL

This CAPSL seminar focuses on innovative summative assessment practices currently used within Trinity (i.e. assessments for which marks are awarded, counting towards an end-of year mark). Its objective is to showcase various forms of assessment that lecturers consider to be conducive to student learning, and to see whether these assessments, or their principles, can be applied in different disciplines or contexts.

Six lecturers from Trinity (see below) have offered to present a short overview of a particular form of assessment that they consider being effective and beneficial (10 minutes each). Each presentation will be followed by a conversation with seminar attendees to discuss the assessment and its wider implications and possible uses across faculty (15 minutes).

Book review and class presentations (BCECON)
Dr Micheal Collins
Department of Economics / School of Social Science and Philosophy

Mathematics for intending primary teachers - a reflective portfolio
Ms. Elizabeth Oldham
School of Education

Investment trading project
Dr. Eleanor Denny
Economics/Social Science and Philosophy

Statistics for Linguistics and Language Study: Bridging the gap between statistical theory and practice
Ms. Denise O’Leary
School of Linguistics, Speech and Communication Sciences

The application of service learning in a social entrepreneurship context.
Dr. Denise Crossan, responsible for the Initiative on Social Entrepreneurship in College
Social Entrepreneurship, School of Business

Case Writing Assignment
Dr Jim Quinn
School of Business