In appreciation of the ongoing need for flexible teaching and learning professional development opportunities for staff, the National Forum’s PACT (Making a commitment to your PD) short course is being facilitated for the sector this autumn semester fully online for 6 weeks from 6 November. With the considerable demands on those who teach to adapt to evolving teaching and learning contexts, a focus on their professional development has never been more important. This course assists staff in being proactive in developing their professional role and ensuring they have structure around their professional development journey.
The PACT Facilitator team for this iteration of the PACT short course are Fionnuala Brennan from Waterford Institute of Technology, Sandra Flynn from University of Limerick and Mary Buckley, from National College of Ireland. The course involves approximately 25 learner effort hours over the 6-week period, averaging four hours per week with a five-hour add on later in the course for those interested in becoming future facilitators of the course themselves.
The National Forum’s professional development short courses were first established in 2017 as part of the sector-wide implementation of the National Professional Development Framework for All Staff Who Teach. The Framework was designed to guide staff who teach in higher education to plan, develop and engage in professional development activities. Each short course focuses on specific domains of the Framework, with the PACT course being an excellent introduction to how the Framework can be used to develop effective professional development strategies, and to develop a professional development learning community. Registration for this course will close on Friday 30 October. See more details and registration information here.
The open courses initiative continues to thrive and build on previous successful delivery, Most recently, a new exciting partnership model of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) open course was launched with AHEAD with over 700 staff who teach across the higher and further education communities registering to participate. Collaborating teams across the country are also continuing to develop other professional development short courses for delivery in late autumn 2020/spring 2021 across a range of teaching and learning areas: Getting Started with Online Teaching; Recognition of Prior Learning; Campus Engage-Community Engagement; Entrepreneurship Education; Student Engagement; Mentoring in Teaching and Learning; Reflective Practice; Designing Engaging Learning Experiences; Enabling Policies in Digital T&L; Academic Writing. The full complement of available open courses can be viewed here.
