Held in Semester 1 2019/20, this series focused on highlighting examples of innovative and interesting academic practice. Examples are really powerful tools for ‘seeing’ how theory can be translated into practice while simultaneously revealing some of the challenges involved in converting theory to practice.
The following are details of the sessions held together with links to the relevant resources:
|
Week |
Date |
Title & Descriptor |
|
7 |
Tuesday, 22nd October 2019 |
Enhancing Work Placement Presented By
Description Work placement is, at this stage, a mandatory element of many programmes within CIT and as such poses many challenges for those involved in the process, i.e. staff, students and potential employers. Catherine and Denise have been focusing on enhancing the work placement process within the Bachelor of Business (Honours) in Information Systems programme within their Department and in this session will discuss some of the developments that they have introduced. |
|
8 |
Tuesday, 5th November 2019 |
Using Peer Instruction to Develop Understanding in Mathematics Presented By:
Description Transposition, or the rearranging of equations, is a key topic in Mathematics but has wider application across Business, Engineering and Science. Students find this a tricky topic because they often don’t understand the underlying principles and consequently apply rules and procedures incorrectly. In this session, In this session, Catherine discussed some of the initiatives and resources that have been developed by colleagues in the Department of Mathematics to enhance learning and develop understanding and competence in this topic. The focus of the session was to demonstrate how an active learning strategy, peer instruction, is being used to enhance learning in this topic. Peer instruction is designed to engage students during class through activities that require each student to apply the core concepts being presented, and then to explain and discuss those concepts with their fellow students. The process has been shown to engage students, increase understanding of key concepts and support knowledge retention. While the examples presented will relate to Transposition in Mathematics – the teaching strategy can be effectively applied across disciplines to develop understanding of difficult topics. Useful Resources
All the following resources, presented during the seminar, are available here on the Department of Mathematics website and may prove useful when dealing with the topic of transposition in a module.
Visit Eric Mazur’s , a Harvard Physics Professor, website who popularised peer instruction, an evidence-based active teaching strategy. |
|
9 |
Tuesday, 12th November 2019 |
Using Canvas to support and enrich the student work placement experience Presented By
Description Work placement is, at this stage, a mandatory element of many programmes within CIT and as such poses many challenges for those involved in the process, i.e. staff, students and potential employers. In this session, Mary & Donogh, demonstrated the capabilities and suitability of Canvas, CIT’s recently adopted Learning Management System, to support students who are on work placement. It demonstrated how a range of tools can be used for providing information, assessing, communicating with and monitoring students. |
|
10 |
Tuesday, 19th November 2019 |
How do you bring a classroom to life as if it were a work of art? Presented By
Description Using phenomenological and performative action research methods as a way to explore space, place and context Collette and Bill outlined their recent research projects and showed how the research outcomes were introduced into the Year 1 curriculum. |
|
11 |
Tuesday, 26th November 2019 |
Summative Assessment in Canvas using Automated Grading Presented By
Description Canvas, CIT’s recently adopted Learning Management System, presents many opportunities from a teaching and learning perspective for both staff and students. From a staff perspective, Canvas can assist staff with:
In this session, Eamonn demonstrated the capabilities and suitability of Canvas to assessing students using automatic grading. He demonstrated how in some subject areas both lab-based written reports and traditional paper-based assessments can be almost entirely replaced by Canvas. |
|
12 |
Tuesday, 3rd December 2019 |
Making Academic Life Interesting through Projects Presented By
Description Team based learning (TBL) is an instructional method that puts students into roles of greater autonomy and responsibility for their learning. Groups are collections of individuals. Teams are groups who have developed a shared purpose and sense of collective responsibility. Groups evolve into teams when an instructor creates the proper conditions for effective collaboration. Well-designed tasks plus strategic course design create the conditions and environment that teach group members to listen to one another, value each other's contributions, learn from mistakes, rein in ineffective behaviour, and eventually trust in the team's ability to outperform any given individual. Tom outlined how weekly individual lab exercises were replaced with a semester-long team project and the impact that has had on student learning. |
