Transnational Education and Collaboratory for Health (TEACH CoLab)

The Initative Team

Initiative Lead
Waterford Institute of Technology

Primary Contact
Dr Niamh Murphy
nmurphy@wit.ie

Initiative Budget

€28000

Initiative Type

Overview

The overall aim of this T&L initiative, TEACH CoLab (Transnational Education and Community Health Collaboratory), is to develop a sustainable model for sharing good practice and effective approaches to teaching and learning across disciplines and institutions.

TEACH CoLab will strengthen network links between disciplines in WIT across three Schools using learnings from a pilot project conducted over the past 18 months with the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington (UW), Bothell, Seattle.

These interdisciplinary partnerships between Schools in WIT will also extend to our community health partners and staff in IT Carlow (in design and health). From our experience, the key to sustained activity lies in establishing a firm partnership between staff around strong academic commonalities and finding one hook, perhaps in one part of a module, where an assignment can be approached from different perspectives to meet a common objective.

Digital technologies play an important role in allowing students examine a specific subject or content through a cross-cultural-and ideally interdisciplinary – lens, working collaboratively to address globally relevant issues, and applying communication skills that help build rapport with others. We have been enabled in this through the University of Washington’s COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) system and its associated digital methodologies. This initiative will build on validated technology enhanced learning experiences and expand participation to staff on other programmes in the School and to community health partners.