The 5th Learning Innova-tion Network (LIN) Annual Conference takes place on 11th October 2012 in the Ashling Hotel, Dublin, Ire-land. LIN, a sectoral pro-ject, is the network of ac-ademic professionals from higher education that support academic professional development (APD) for staff in the Insti-tutes of Technology and DIT. The LIN conference provides a forum to dis-cuss practice and theory in higher education. The conference theme is Inspiring Creativity, Inno-vation and Change in Higher Educa-tion. Abstracts are now being accepted for post-ers and oral presentations for each of the three sub-themes: Creativity Innovation Change We are seeking abstracts (300 words maximum) on each on the three sub-

themes of the conference for either oral presenta-tions or posters. We are particularly interested in papers that reflect prac-tice and issues of interest to lecturers. The opening session of the conference will be presented by Ewan McIn-tosh, (http://www.notosh.com/about/) who will consider innova-tions that are occurring in education currently and how these could be uti-lised in higher education in Ireland. The keynote speaker is Lord David Puttnam. Abstract Submission Abstracts being submitted for consideration to this conference must be sub-mitted on the abstract template (http://lin2012.exordo.com/data/message_attachments/3/Abstract_Template.docx). All abstracts must be sub-

mitted online here: http://lin2012.exordo.com The closing date for re-ceipt of abstracts is June 22nd 2012. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and you will know by 6th Septem-ber if your presentation has been accepted. If your abstract is accept-ed LIN retains the right to make final minor edits. We look forward to re-ceiving the abstracts and to an interesting and stim-ulating conference. Important dates: 22nd June 2012: Deadline for the Submission of Ab-stracts 6th September 2012: No-tification of acceptance of presentation 5th October 2012: Sub-mission of Presentations 11th October 2012: Con-

ference

Headlines

In this issue:

Headlines 1

LIN 2012 Call for Abstracts

1

Keynote Speaker 2

LIN Fund Project update

2

Eye on DIT 3

Events 11

LIN 2012 Call for abstracts

Update on LIN funded projects

Feature article on teaching and learning in DIT

LIN 2012 Call for Abstracts

David Puttnam spent thirty years as an independent producer of award-winning films including The Mission, The Killing Fields, Local Hero, Chariots of Fire, Midnight Express, Bugsy Malone and Mem-phis Belle. His films have won ten Oscars, 25 Baftas and the Palme D'Or at Cannes. From 1994 to 2004 he was Vice President and Chair of Trustees at the British Academy of Film & Tel-evision Arts (BAFTA) and was awarded a BAFTA Fellowship in 2006. He retired from film production in 1998 to focus on his work in public policy as it relates to education, the environment, and the 'creative and communications' indus-tries. In 1998 he founded the Na-tional Teaching Awards, which he chaired until 2008, also serving as the first Chair of the General Teaching Council from 2000 to

2002. From July 2002 to July 2009 he was president of UNICEF UK, playing a key role in pro-moting UNICEF’s key advocacy and awareness objectives. David is the present Chancellor of the Open University, following ten years as Chancellor of The Univer-sity of Sunderland. He is Presi-dent of the Film Distributors’ Asso-ciation, Chairman of North Music Trust (The Sage Gateshead), Depu-ty Chairman of Profero and a trus-tee of the Eden Project. He was Deputy Chairman of Chan-nel 4 Television from 2006 until January 2012. He was founding Chair of the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) and for ten years chaired the National Museum of Photography, Film and Televi-sion. He has also served as a trus-tee of the Tate Gallery, the Sci-ence Museum and many other

organisations. In 2007 he served as Chairman of the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Draft Climate Change Bill, having performed the same role on the 2002 Communications Bill. He has also been Chairman of two Han-sard Society Commission Reports on the relationship between Parliament and the Public; he serves as Senior Non-Executive Director on two pub-lic companies. David was awarded a CBE in 1982, a knighthood in 1995 and was ap-pointed to the House of Lords in 1997. In France he was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1985, becoming an Officer in 1992, and a Commander in 2006. He has been the recipient of more than 40 honorary degrees from Universities in the UK and overseas.

LIN 2012 Keynote Speaker—Lord David Puttnam (Queensgate) C.B.E.

Page 2 May 2012

Update on LIN funded projects

sources. The 5th annual LIN confer-

ence, which will host a key-note address from Lord David Puttnam and will be used to showcase the outputs from the LIN project since it began.

We are also planning to carry out an external evaluation of the LIN project. Strong collaboration has been cen-tral to the success of the LIN project since 2007 and this work continues and enhances that collaborative ethos.

and reusable learning re-sources on criteria based as-sessment, generic skills in higher education and aca-demic professional develop-ment. For upcoming webi-nars please visit http://www.linireland.com/events/moodle-webinars.html.

Presentations from leading educational experts such as Ron Barnett, Stella Cottrell, Mick Healey and Jude Carroll to stimulate discussion around some of the challeng-es that face higher educa-tional practitioners today such as enhancing the learner experience and teaching a more diverse group of stu-dents with restricted re-

In January of this year the Learning Innovation Network (LIN) provided funds for 9 projects that focussed on teaching and learning and which reflected the LIN values. These pro-jects are now underway and are progressing well. The expected outputs from these projects are: The development of two new

LIN modules; one online/blended module on research-ing educational practice and one focussing on teaching students with special educa-tional needs. Both of these modules will be incorporated intof the existing LIN frame-work.

The production of a number of case studies, teaching ma-terials, exemplars, webinars

The DIT Learning, Teaching & Tech-nology Centre (LTTC) was estab-lished in 1999 as the Learning, Teaching Centre (LTC) at 14 Upper Mount Street. The original aim of the LTC was to develop, support and facilitate good teaching and learning practices across the six fac-ulties of DIT. Since then, staff num-bers have increased and decreased as we have welcomed the Learning

Technology Team (LTT) in 2002, various SIF funded posts, an NDLR institutional coordinator and ILTA operations Officer. In 2009 the LTT merged with the LTC to become the Learning Teaching & Technology Centre.

Over the past ten+ years, the Cen-tre has aimed to raise the profes-sionalism, visibility, and status of

teaching and learning in DIT. Work-ing with new academic staff, as well as established staff who wish to develop their careers, deepen their teaching abilities and improve their students’ learning experiences, the Centre provides a rich seam of ex-pertise, resources and information about higher education, learning and teaching, eLearning and aca-demic professional development.

“Broadening the Curriculum” and, following a wide variety of presen-tations, work-shops, and mod-erated poster ses-sions detailing a wealth of innova-tive projects hap-

pening around the institute, a 15 minute voxpop clip of DIT colleagues giving their thoughts on what broadening the curriculum

One of the first events we organ-ised in May 2000 was the DIT Showcase of Learning and Teaching inno-vations. This one-day event, now held annu-ally in January, highlights inno-vative practices in teaching and learning across the DIT. It also provides an oppor-tunity for staff from across the insti-tute’s several sites to meet and ex-change ideas in an informal and informative manner. This year, the central theme was

meant to them sparked a valuable discussion on how DIT might ap-proach this challenge. The keynote presentation was given

by Dr. Kelly Coate from NUI Gal-

way. Her presentation was entitled

“The Curriculum and the Limits of

Imagination” and challenged

attendees to consider what the con-

cept of ‘curriculum’ actually

means, what its purpose is,

and how it should be

shaped (and by whom) be-

fore deciding whether it is

‘fit-for-purpose’ in the 21st

Century. http://www.dit.ie/

lttc/events/

ditannualshowcase/

Learning & Teaching Events

The Dublin eLearning Summer School won first prize at the UCISA awards in December, as the best practice case study in engaging with academics in the use of technology enhanced learning.

September saw us come joint second place for the 2011 ALT Learning Tech-nologist of the Year

Award.

In March 2011 we were presented with an award by the Irish Institute of Training & Development (IITD) for our MA pro-gramme co-designed with the Law Society.

In the last 12 months, we have won 3 awards!

Background

Page 3 May 2012

on

It’s now ten years since DIT estab-lished its elearning initiative in earnest, rolling out WebCT as its Virtual Learning Environment of choice and setting itself the goal of hav-ing a virtual presence for 50% of its under-graduate programmes by 2005. The mainstreaming of that three-year project and the subsequent estab-lishment of the Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC) indi-cated DIT’s wholehearted commit-ment to supporting staff in develop-ing their knowledge and skills for

the digital age. The use of infor-mation and com-

munication technologies to support and enhance interactions for learn-ing is now firmly established, and the LTTC is recognised for the quali-ty of its workshops (http://www.dit.ie/lttc/ ), seminars, webi-nars, one-to-one and one-to-many consultation sessions, and for

providing both telephone support and support online. Now, over 90% of programmes have an online com-ponent, with almost 2,000 modules active in Blackboard CE8™being accessed by over 800 staff and 17,600 students, transferring an average of 17.92 GB of data a day. This high level of activity generated 3,700 elearning-related queries from staff in the academic year 2010/11, a level of demand exceed-ed in the following academic year with 3,975 support calls being dealt with already by the end of March 2012! September and October are the busiest months followed by February, reflecting the modular-

eLearning at DIT

were streamed and archived online. Feedback showed that the week had exceeded expectations for 65% of the participants, that 100% of them found the elearning summer school a worthwhile experience, a good use of their time, and they would recommend it to a colleague. Participants now have the option of earning 5 ECTS credits through an associated DIT module. It is envis-aged that this course will provide the participants with the time and space in which to immerse them-selves completely in both existing and emerging learning technolo-gies. The finalised programme will soon be available from: http://www.dit.ie/lttc/

week was a resound-ing success and since then has become a permanent feature in DIT’s aca-demic cal-endar. To

date it has been attended by almost 500 academic staff from across the Dublin region and beyond. 2010 saw the eLearning Summer School expand to become the first ever Dublin eLearning Summer School under the auspices of the Dublin Region Higher Education Alliance (DRHEA). Approximately 50 staff representing the eight Higher Education Institutes in the wider Dublin area worked together that year forging links, fostering collabo-ration across the institutes, and stimulating thought towards a vi-sion for elearning in the Dublin re-gion. Twitter was introduced for the first time and the main sessions

This year, the

UCISA award win-ning 10th eLearning Summer School will run from June 18-22. DIT have been hosting the week long eLearning Sum-mer School since 2003. Initially, it was conceived as a way to provide WebCT training for DIT staff who had missed work-shops during the academic year but it quickly morphed into more of an ‘event’. That 1st summer school

10 years of the eLearning Summer School!

Page 4 Volume 1, Issue 1

We aim to offer ‘leading-edge post-graduate programmes relevant to learning, teaching and eLearning’. We believe we have begun the jour-ney of providing a tradition of scholarly, diverse, exciting and re-warding learning environments across our postgraduate pro-

grammes. Essential to this is the high-quality experience for partici-pants, which requires an environ-ment that fosters critical inquiry as well as innovation and creativity, and we believe we deliver on this score. Our current suite of pro-

grammes includes the Postgraduate Diploma in Third Level Learning and Teaching, the MA in Higher Educa-tion, and MSc in Applied eLearning. There are limited spaces left for September 2012 http://www.dit.ie/lttc/programmes/

from IT Sligo and IT Tralee travelling to these Centres to attend. We are currently offering 2 PDP 5 ECTS short modules as part of LIN AIT award.

As part of the building capacity phase of the development of the LIN PG Diploma, the LTTC delivered an off-campus blocked version of the DIT PG Cert in Athlone and Carlow Institutes of Technology with staff

sess a teaching qualification, or equivalent, are required to under-take the programme. As part of our Centre review process, we asked graduates to indicate whether the programme had impacted upon their teaching practice:

ways been the practitioner focus. Since its inception as a Postgradu-ate Certificate in 2000, 224 partici-pants have successfully completed the Programme. Currently we have 32 participants enrolled on this pro-gramme. Effective from 1 March 2006, all new academic staff ap-pointed to the DIT who do not pos-

Our Diploma aims to enable teach-ers to be effective, competent prac-titioners by providing them with a range of skills and knowledge to design, deliver and evaluate educa-tion programmes that can meet the needs of an increasing diverse stu-dent population. One of the strengths of this Diploma has al-

PG Diploma in Third-Level Learning and Teaching

LTTC PG programmes, APDs and workshops

Page 5 May 2012

My teaching style has altered dramatically after completing

the PG Dip. I have become more reflective; taking time to ac-

tively note down my feelings on a class, what went well (or

badly!) and what actions I need to take to improve in the fu-

ture. I now include as much group work and student-based

active learning in my classes as possible. These new methods

from the course were very helpful; not only to me, but also my

students became more engaged and attentive in lectures and

labs. Following the Diploma course has forced me to view my

teaching from a different angle and, as such, I believe it has

improved my teaching.

Barry Ryan Graduate 2011

Since completing the course I have found that my teach-

ing has become more student centred. Class time is

spent less on traditional lecturing, and more on student

activities, allowing students to work together to solve

problems, construct knowledge and teach each other. I

have integrated more technology into my teaching, in-

cluding ‘Clickers’, blogs, and wikis. I have a better ap-

preciation of the importance of feedback, and of good

alignment of assessment to learning activities and

learning outcomes. As an educator, I have become more

reflective.

Julie Dunne Graduate 2011

ers can subscribe to IJAP via RSS feed and have the latest articles delivered directly to their news feed reader of choice. If subscribers prefer to receive email updates, they click on the "RSS feeds" link. Volume 1 includes a wide range of articles including: ‘Irish Students and Facebook - Informal Learning Choices in a Web 2.0 world’; ‘Nurturing and Developing Creativi-ty in First Year Design Students’; ‘The role of Flickr in a National Li-

This coming June, the LTTC will be introducing IJAP, a new online Jour-nal at http://arrow.dit.ie/ijap/, which is free, unconstrained by space and accessible to all. The journal has a fresh, contemporary look, a user-friendly navigation sys-tem, and a ‘most popular papers’ feature based on the average num-ber of full-text downloads per day since the paper is posted. Initially, the journal will publish manuscripts on a rolling basis rather than in dis-tinct issues, and authors will reflect a range of experience as well as different approaches to the study and practice of learning and teaching, with specific topics focusing on is-sues that academic staff tend to face in their practice. Read-

brary Archives Context’; ‘An exami-nation of the experience of a group of Women returners to education’; ‘The effectiveness of active learning techniques in legal professional training lectures from the trainees’ perspective’; and ‘Using Gardner’s Theories of Intelligence in the teaching of early childhood educa-tion’. The editorial staff welcome articles from all disciplines and on a range of topics from curriculum development, learning technolo-

gies/media to educational leadership, teacher education and educational research and policy. For further details email the editors at: Roisin.Donnelly@dit.ie Martina.Crehan@dit.ie

Launch of a new online Journal for Irish Higher Education: Journal of Irish Academic Practice (IJAP)

gained in modules taken, and gives them the opportunity to develop and research their own ideas and interests and leave the institution with a show piece of work for po-tential employers. For more infor-mation and comments about this programme and to see examples of participants’ work please see: http://www.dit.ie/lttc/programmes/mscinappliedelearning/

has received approval from both external examiners and partici-pants. The applied nature of the programme is crucial to its success: the Applied eLearning project com-bines the participants’ knowledge and understanding of theoretical and practical aspects of eLearning

The programme was developed in 2007 as a response to the perceived need within Ireland for an accredit-ed professional development pro-gramme for academic staff involved in eLearning design and develop-ment. The curriculum, which re-flects the strong focus on the appli-cation of theory to professional practice as well as rigorous training in educational research methods,

Masters in Applied eLearning

Page 6 Volume 1, Issue 1

Our 5 ECTS Accredited Professional Development Short Course on Teaching Learning and Assessment has always been popular externally. We have offered the programme in ITB and 3 times in collaboration with the Law Society. In 2011, we decided to expand our repertoire of

offerings by designing 3 new short courses and making some of our existing Masters modules available as stand-alone courses. These APDs include Teaching in Virtual worlds (starting 17May), Technology-enhanced Learning Teaching & As-

sessment (18 June) and Supervising Undergraduate dissertations & the-ses (1Oct). Credits from these mod-ules can also contribute towards our other postgraduate qualifica-tions http://www.dit.ie/lttc/programmes/shortcoursesapd/

LTTC Accredited professional Development short courses

This programme is an ideal develop-mental route for staff in higher and further education wishing to deep-en their knowledge of the third lev-el sector and to develop their pro-fessional role. The first participants on the MA in Third Level Learning and Teaching were registered in September 2002. The MA in Higher Education is structured around key areas in higher education, and ena-bles participants to deepen their knowledge, develop their research skills and apply these skills to their educational interests and special-isms. Through the completion of a thesis they learn to develop and carry out educational research us-ing traditional and emerging re-search designs informed by a criti-cal awareness of developments at the forefront of policy and practice in higher education. For more infor-mation and student comments

about this programme please see http://www.dit.ie/lttc/programmes/mainhighereducation/

MA Higher Education, Professional Legal Education and Skills: Some years ago, building on the success of our partnership with the Law Society to design and offer our 5ECTS course in Learning and teach-ing collaboratively, we obtained funding to develop the MA pro-gramme in Legal Professional Edu-cation and Skills. The negotiated programme won an Irish Institute of Training & Development award in 2011.

Many of our graduates have gone on to win awards with

work conducted as part of our post-graduate programmes – In 2010 Michael Seery and his colleagues won a NAIRTL award for Excellence in Teaching and in 2011 he won the Jennifer Burke award for Innovation in teaching and learning. http://www.jenniferburkeaward.ie/ Here Michael describes the experi-ence of applying and then winning the award: http://youtu.be/_6bW66RLW28 To find out more about our pro-grammes and /or APDs Contact Lin-da Boyd (Linda.Boyd@dit.ie)

MA in Higher Education

Page 7 May 2012

DIT has supported an internal com-petition for Learning Teaching and Assessment project funding for over 15 years. Themes for the an-nually awarded projects are agreed by the Learning Teaching & Assess-ment Strategy Committee. In 2008, Dissemination awards for staff who have had a paper accepted for an education conference were intro-duced. In 2011/12, we funded 6 projects and 3 dissemination pa-pers. http://www.dit.ie/lttc/projects/

DIT Staff have been successful in obtaining national NAIRTL funding awards. Since 2009, fund-ed DIT projects have included ‘Untying the Accountancy Knot: design, development and imple-mentation of interactive anima-tions and simulations to support underperforming 1st year ac-countancy students, including those with dyslexia’ and ‘Facilitate: Irish network for En-

quiry & Problem Based Learning (EPBL)’. DIT staff have also been actively involved in the design of the NDLR Learning Innovation Projects (LIPs) and LINCS projects over the last 3 years. This year 10 LIPS are being supported and the Institute is involved in 3 national collabora-tive LINCs projects with other in-stitutions http://www.dit.ie/lttc/

Snapshot of other support for learning, teaching and assessment we provide across the DIT

In 2011, DIT established the Lead,

Engage, Achieve, Develop (LEAD)

Award. The module is designed to

encourage, promote and support

student development of a range of

employability skills through taking a

leadership role within extra-

curricular and co-curricular activi-

ties. The module is assessed

through the completion of a reflec-

tive portfolio containing evidence of

their personal skills development

during the module http://

www.dit.ie/lead/

DIT initiated Teaching excellence awards in 2003. Since then, the awards process has evolved. In 2009, we intro-duced and inte-grated a student nomina-tion process through use of an online survey. In 2011, the institu-tional Presidents Award for Excel-lence in Teaching was replaced by 4 College Teaching awards. These awards now involve two ‘nomination paths’ – students nominating staff and staff nomi-nating peers. College Teaching Awards are made at the relevant conferring ceremony http://www.dit.ie/lttc/awards/

DRHEA funding was also used to purchase sets of classroom re-sponse systems or ‘Clickers’. Through an annual competitive funding pro-cess, staff have been awarded a set of clickers and provided with training as appropriate. A blog is

used to share experience. http://ditclickers.wordpress.com/

College Teaching Fellowships were established in the DIT in 2009 under the auspices of the DRHEA SIF 2 project. In DIT, an annual research Fellowship is awarded to an individual or a team in support of their work de-veloping and evaluating a specific project that supports the en-hancement of learning and/or cur-riculum development at a pro-gramme, school or College level. One of our teaching Fellows Dr Michael Carr Dept of Engineering Science & General Studies, was selected as one of the five DRHEA Teaching Fellows to work on an integrated group project on the first-year experience as part of a collaborative Fellowship award to be conducted April -October 2012

http://www.dit.ie/lttc/projects/institutionalprojects/

Page 8 Volume 1, Issue 1

Part of the LTTC’s remit is to sup-port academic development and innovation in teaching practice. One of the main ways we support this is through the provision of regular workshops. Workshops are run on a weekly basis throughout the aca-demic year, usually three to four per week, encompassing short one-hour lunchtime sessions to formal three-hour lab sessions, with a small number of workshops running up to six hours (usually over two days). We try to be as responsive as possible to staff needs when de-signing the workshop schedule. Ex-amples of recently developed work-shops include: ‘Lecture capture with Echo360: What it is and how to do it’ and ‘Using social media in education’. While aware of the need to continually review and up-date our workshop offerings, we’re also conscious that some work-shops and skills are required by staff on an ongoing basis. Therefore sessions such as ‘How to help your students think: An introduction to PBL’, ‘Supervising Dissertations’ and ‘Introduction to webcourses’ re-main on the schedule from year to year.

We also survey staff after all work-shops to ensure that the content met their expectations. Again, this information is used to update both the training schedule and the con-tent of individual workshops. But

feedback can be awkward! It’s not unusual for partici-pants in the same workshop to give completely contra-dictory feedback, with one person saying “too slow!” and another “too fast!”. Also, staff can sometimes be a little aspirational in their feedback - Friday afternoon is often named by them as the time of week most suitable for workshops. But, perhaps unsurpris-ingly, Friday afternoon workshops tend not to have a great uptake! Quirks aside, getting feedback on workshops is an essential part of the process, and something we rely upon to keep workshops up to date and relevant.

Participation rates for staff across the DIT are generally good: since September 2008, we have run al-most three hundred workshops, with approximately 2,500 attend-ances. Almost 900 individual DIT staff have engaged with the LTTC through workshops*, with many staff attending five or more work-shops over the period – for exam-ple, twenty one DIT colleagues have attended more than 10 workshops! Interestingly, the DIT lecturer with the single highest participation rate has been recognised for innovation in teaching practice both within DIT and nationally. An important factor in participation rates is where the

workshop is run: because DIT is such a diverse campus with over 30 different locations, we try to move the workshops around each of the six main campuses, sometimes run-ning the same session on both the north and south side of the city in quick succession. Days and times are varied continually also in order to offer as much choice as possible, a common response to workshop feedback being the difficulty of har-monising workshop attendance with timetabled teaching hours.

Our most popular workshops are listed below –the left shows all attendances since 2008 while the list on the right shows the current academic year only, to reflect more recently developed and newly pop-ular workshops. For more infor-mation on our workshops please email lttc@dit.ie or see our website at http://lttc.dit.ie. All DIT LTTC workshops are open to staff from all Dublin Region HE Alliance institu-tions (http://www.drhea.ie/ )

Academic Development Workshops

Page 9 Volume 2 Issue 3

* the annual showcase of learning and teaching innovations attracts well over 100 academic staff each year

of Ulster STAR Project) and Dr Amanda Gibney, UCD Teaching Fellow. These all combined with recommendations emanating from the work of Campus Life to inform the creation of FYI DIT 10STEPS to engage our first year students – designed by Martina Crehan from the LTTC. http://www.dit.ie/lttc/events/specialevents/fyi-firstyearexperience/

The STEER (Student Transition: Expectations, Engagement, Re-tention) initiative focuses on the ‘DIT student experience’ with par-ticular reference to students in their first year of study. As well as a number of STEER workshops and presentations through this year, the team coordinated a ‘10steps to engage your first year students’ event on 30March. This event incorporated Keynote presenta-tions by Dr Tony Cook (University

We are looking forward to our third DIT annual Graduate Student Con-ference on 12 June. The purpose of this graduate conference is to dis-seminate educational research from across our two programmes – the MA in Higher Education and the MSc Applied eLearning (involving both present and past graduates), which is relevant and interesting to all DIT academic staff.

The theme of this year’s conference is Getting your Research Published: From Student to Scholar, and the keynote speaker is Dr Rhona Sharpe from Oxford Brookes University.

Background to the Conference: One of the aims of the graduate student conference is to build a network of research-informed par-ticipants across our LTTC pro-grammes. By encouraging such net-working, it is anticipated that this event will also reinforce partici-pants' understanding of the value of involvement in communities of

practice associated with academic disciplines and professions. This conference focuses attention on how learning and academic writing happens within the ‘Writing and Disseminating Research’ Module as well as how it is experienced in different subject contexts; specifi-cally it encourages participants to critically reflect on their thinking and learning about educational re-search in which they are currently engaged, and to share these reflec-tions with others by involving them-selves in this student-led confer-ence and resulting subsequent na-tional and international publica-tions.

For our very first conference (in 2010), Professor Gráinne Conole delivered a keynote on How to begin educational research. Last year, Professor Jon Nixon chal-lenged us about Seeing what is

questionable.

As well as colleagues from within DIT, delegates presenting as part of the conference have come from other institutions in Dublin and across Ireland: IADT, Dublin Busi-ness School, the Liberties College, the Law Society of Ireland, IT Blanchardstown, DCU, IT Carlow and Waterford IT.

Annual Graduate Student Conference in the LTTC

Page 10 May 2012

Student Transition: Expectations, Engagement, Retention

EVENTS

Page 11 May 2012

www.lin.ie

Students as Producers and as Change Agents

Athlone Institute of Technology

June 12th 2012 from 2.00pm to 5.00pm

Mick Healey

HE Consultant and Researcher

mhealey@glos.ac.uk; www.mickhealey.co.uk This talk will explore the theoretical basis for this approach and illustrate, with reference to many examples from different disciplines and countries, how students can be engaged throughout their undergraduate courses in pro-ducing knowledge, not just consuming it. By involving students in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), stu-dents may act as change agents to enhance the quality of teaching and learning practices and policies in their uni-versities. Too often students are simply the subjects of our SoTL research; by engaging them as co-researchers and independent researchers we can give them a more empowering and transformative educational experience as pro-ducers and as change agents. Register here: http://www.eventbrite.com/org/2195583247

Facilitate Enquiry/Problem Based Learning Summer School Registration for the Facilitate Enquiry/Problem Based Learning Summer School 2012 (24th and 25th May), which is now open, will close on 21st May. This year the summer school will incorporate the 'PBL.doc Symposium' Problem-based learning approaches to teaching academic writing. Day 1 of the summer school is ideal of anyone starting out with PBL or interested in refreshing their skills. On this day questions such as 'What is PBL?', 'How do I set up a PBL tutorial?' and 'How do I design problems?' will be addressed. If you would like to register for this event please click http://facilitatesummerschool.eventbrite.ie/ The Programme for the two days is also available from http://facilitate.ie/ If you have any queries about this event please email info@facilitate.ie

LIN 2012 – Call for abstracts open

http://lin2012.exordo.com

October 11th 2012

Ashling Hotel, Dublin

Keynote speaker: Lord David Puttnam