One strand of the EAT-PD: Enabling Academic Transitions through Professional Development was the development of Early Career Lecturers. The Teaching and Learning Unit launched the Early Career EAT-PD: Enabling Academic Transitions through Professional Development Call to new and early career staff in early 2020.
The focus for this group of colleagues was to expose new lecturers to a range of research-based teaching strategies that can be used to enhance lectures and support learning, with participants encouraged and supported to both trial and reflect on these strategies. Early Career staff participated in the semester-long programme (1hr/week timetable alleviation) to develop active learning techniques and reflective practice. By investing early in their development, the programme built confidence to focus on student-centred learning whilst recognising this investment will continue to reap rewards far into the future as a significant number of students will experience the tools and techniques developed as these colleagues are just starting their lecturing career.
In Semester 2, 2019/20 and Semesters 1 and 2 of 2020/21, we recruited for and successfully delivered the first three iterations of this pilot programme to over 40 early career academic staff from across a variety of disciplines. Although SATLE 2019 funding was received whilst CIT and ITT were autonomous institutions, the TLU collaborated with colleagues in Kerry, resulting in the Early Career Lecturer programme being offered to colleagues across all campuses.
Due to the success of the programme, EAT-PD: Enabling Academic Transitions through Professional Development Programme for early career lecturers has now been main schemed and this semester-long teaching and learning strategies CPD programme for new and early career lecturers at MTU will be offered annually.
The following provides an overview of the current version of this programme:
What were the intended benefits of this professional development opportunity?
The programme provided opportunities for participants to:
- Integrate proven, high quality teaching strategies into their regular teaching practice
- Develop their teaching practice using feedback from students, feedback from peers, self-reflection and through engagement with the literature
- Develop a personal understanding of what is meant by “student-centred learning”
- Build their professional network by meeting and working with early career staff from across the university.
What did participants learn about and discuss?
Staff participating in the Early Career Lecturer programme engaged in a semester-long development programme (1hr timetable alleviation) incorporating research-based, active learning teaching strategies including:
- Pause Procedure
- Minute papers
- Polling tools
- Peer instruction
- Testing effect
- Small group discussions
Participants were asked to implement these strategies in their classrooms and were provided opportunities to practise as part of microteaching and peer-observation sessions during the programme. Each iteration (of which there were 3 during the initiative period) concluded with an individual reflective account. The project team submitted a successful ethics application to research the impact of the programme and this is ongoing using a mixed methods approach of pre-/post-surveys and focus groups. The programme was developed and facilitated with in-house expert input from colleagues in the Teaching and Learning Unit.
How are the outcomes of the initiative being embedded beyond the life of the funding?
As noted, due to the success of the programme, the EAT-PD: Enabling Academic Transitions through Professional Development Programme for early career lecturers has now been main schemed and this semester-long teaching and learning strategies CPD programme for new and early career lecturers at MTU will be offered annually.
The programme has informed and been informed by the development of a National Forum Digital Badge, ‘EnTICE – Enhancing Teaching through Interactive Classes to Engage Students‘ ensuring the learning from SATLE 2019 can be made available to colleagues across Ireland.
What did participants say about the programme?
Feedback from participants was extremely positive, despite the disruption caused by COVID-19, and indeed a number of participants commented that the programme really benefitted them during the crisis as it enabled them to utilise some of the strategies learned and observed to enhance their remote teaching.
