Dr Shivaun Quinlivan, University of Galway
The entire project team were delighted to have our work on inclusive learning recognised in this award. We heard the outcome the week before Christmas which was a lovely way to end the Semester and a nice early Christmas present.
The project was conceived of at a time when myself and my co-lead Professor Lucy-Ann Buckley were serving as Vice Deans in the College of Business Public Policy and Law, University of Galway. I was the Vice Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Professor Buckley was the Vice Dean for Teaching and Learning. We both had a keen interest in equality and inclusion as we actively researched in that area, and our roles offered us the opportunity to progress this project. We were very fortunate that we were able to build an amazing team of people from the Access Centre, the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, and other disciplines on campus. We had great support from the then Dean of College and members of the University Management Team, in particular the then President.
The Inclusive Learning project had a number of aims. First we sought to develop a model to empower the student voice – we did this through partnership and co-creation with students at all stages of the project. This contributed to a stronger culture of student partnership in the University. A second goal was raising staff awareness of issues experienced by students. An outcome of this project was the strong take up of Ally for LMS (now Anthology Ally), and while initially rolled out under our project, Ally is now centrally funded. We also led on UDL in the University, both through training staff and influencing policy at institutional level. The University has now adopted the Universal Design and Accessibility policy and has appointed a Universal Design Manager. Finally we wanted to provide an evidence base on the student experience of inclusion and exclusion, and to use that evidence base to influence policy and practice in the institution – for example the introduction of a student reasonable accommodation policy (now achieved).
We received significant institutional buy in. While it was not universal, it was more evident than not. That really helped to progress the reach and impact of this project. However, our overarching position is that educational inclusion needs to be centrally led and funded.
A second aspect of the project was the high level of engagement from staff. However, it was often the same people engaging, and that meant a cohort of staff who did not.
As for plans for the future, I am glad to say that while the project team has moved on, some to new roles, some to new institutions, we are all meeting up to decide on the best way forward for future projects. We would like to build on what we have achieved to date as we are all very committed to inclusive learning at third level.