On 6 June you have the opportunity to watch a live-stream of the first set of 2018 National Forum funded projects. The live-stream will be available for all 8 project review presentations starting at 9.00 until 15.15.
These projects were selected for funding as new initiatives with the potential to enhance teaching and learning in Irish Higher Education. All of the projects reflect one of the Forum’s four strategic priorities and show exciting new ideas within the project team developing them and across the presenters’ respective institutions.
Each presentation takes 15 minutes and might provide the spark for ideas for projects you have been considering as well. Please join us if you can and share in all the new ideas and innovative activity taking place.
Information on the international panel members is given below
International Review Panel
Christian Tauch
Head of the education department of the German Rectors’ Conference .
Christian Tauch worked at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland and at the European University Institute in Florence/Italy before joining the Technical University of Dresden (Germany) as director of the International Office. From 1995 to 2005 he was head of the international department of the German Rectors Conference in Bonn and from 2006 till 2010 he worked in the higher education unit of the European Commission in Brussels. Since then he is back with the German Rectors‚ Conference, where he is in charge of the education department, dealing inter alia with the implementation of the Bologna Process in German higher education institutions, qualifications frameworks, the shift from teaching to learning‚ how to increase completion rates in HE, cooperation with employers‚ associations on higher education issues, etc.
Patricia Staaf
Director of The Centre for Teaching and Learning at Malmo University, which also coordinates the work on widening participation.
Patricia holds a degree of Licentiate of Arts/Swedish, and started working at Malmo University in 1999, as a lecturer in Swedish as a Second language.
In her licentiate thesis, she combined her interest in teaching and learning in Higher Education with her interest in Widening Participation and Swedish as a second language, by studying language use in written home exams during the first academic year.
Since 2017 Patricia is chair for the national network of Educational Developers; SWEDNET and during the period 2011- 2018 she was chair for the Swedish network for Widening Participation in Higher Education; INCLUDE. In 2018 she was co-chair for a Peer Learning Group on Promoting Active Learning in Universities organised by the European University Association.
Dr Tuula Heide
Head of Learning and Teaching Services at the University of Eastern Finland and a Project Officer of DigiCampus (a project funded by the Ministry of Education, Finland).
At the University, Tuula is responsible for providing pedagogical and ICT training for university teachers. Furthermore, her responsibilities include providing pedagogical and ICT support for teachers and students at the university. For the DigiCampus project, she oversees several sub-projects (including 17 universities and including the digital learning environment and its’ support services, learning landscape, development of electronic examinations and the inclusiveness of especially digital education and services).
István Vilmos Kovács
Director of International Relations and Innovation in Corvinus University of Budapest.
István is responsible for internationalisation and building an entrepreneurial/innovation eco-system across the functions of the university.
As a Higher Education professional, Mr Kovács is engaged in several development areas of HE as teaching and learning, internationalisation, university-industry relations, social responsibility and quality management in HE. As chair of the Quality Committee of his faculty he was also responsible for the assessment and development of study programmes.
After a decade of secondary school teaching, he pursued a career as Head of Department of EU Affairs and Strategic Planning in the Hungarian Ministry of Education. In the last decade, he has been teaching subjects dedicated to innovation in HE, especially in the field of teaching and learning. He has been the national expert of several international projects as HEInnovate, a joint initiative of the EU and the OECD and the EFFECT programme of the European University Association.
Oisín Hassan
Vice President for Academic Affairs with the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), a national organisation representing over 374,000 on both sides of the border.
Oisín is a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast in Law with Politics, and has begun an LLM in Law and Governance. He previously served as Vice President Equality and Diversity (2015/16) and Vice President Education (2016/17) in Queen’s University Belfast Students’ Union, before election to USI.
In his role he works on developing the student voice in quality enhancement, building capacity in Students’ Union’s on education policy, and embedding an ethos of students as partners across Ireland. He also works on International Affairs within USI, representing students at the European Students’ Union.
Oisín sits on the Board of the QQI and on the Board of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning. He also works with various partners of USI, including SUSI, the HEA, and ISSE. He is Chairperson of the National Student Engagement Network set up under NStEP.
