Initiative Lead
Dublin City University

Primary Contact
Lisa Donaldson
lisa.donaldson@dcu.ie

€50000

Enhancement across Disciplines

In line with the National Forum’s strategic priority of professional development for staff, this T&L initiative focuses on augmenting educators’ skills in use of e-portfolios and the teaching of reflective learning processes.

The initiative aims to expand the use of e-portfolios across programme teams . E-portfolios are currently used as repositories for assignments across modules on programmes but the benefits of Loop Reflect, DCU’s e-portfolio platform, are not being fully realised due in part to the limited skills and confidence of the lecturing team.

Reflective learning is increasingly recognised as a critical mechanism through which students connect their learning across modules and contexts; they are better equipped for future challenges and are more likely to learn from failure when they engage in reflection effectively. Reflection is critical in building meaningful links in learning-feedback cycles, particularly in marrying academic with experiential learning. This initiative will have two principal outcomes:

1. Development of the skills of key staff across a number of disciplinary areas who will act as learning champions
2. The champions will establish a reflective learning community aimed at sharing best practice and developing colleagues’ skills in the use of e-portfolios and the design of reflective teaching and learning approaches. This will be followed by an evaluation of the effectiveness for students of explicit teaching in reflective learning skills