Date: March 19th

Time: 14:00 – 17:00

Venue: The North Wing Council Room, Main Quadrangle, UCC

Presenter(s): Master’s graduates representing the Four Colleges of UCC as follows:

College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences : Dr Mike Cosgrave and Mr James Cronin

College of Business and Law: Dr Karen Neville and Dr Noel Woods

College of Science, Engineering and Food Science: Dr Niall O’ Leary and Dr Siobhán O’ Sullivan (CIT)

College of Medicine and Health: Dr Fiona McLeod and Dr Eleanor O Sullivan

Introduction to the Series: Dr Marian McCarthy, Ionad Bairre, The Teaching and Learning Centre,UCC

Concluding Reflection re implications for SoTL: Mr Daniel Blackshields, Teaching Fellow: Reflective Practice , UCC

Event Details:

This seminar marks the inaugural session of the Master’s Voice Series at UCC, designed to celebrate ten years of the Accredited Programme in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at University College Cork. Since 2004, 335 staff have achieved the Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 53 of whom hold a Master’s degree in this field. Another 100 staff are currently in the programme.

This session, which will be video-recorded, opens up scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) approaches across the four Colleges of UCC, and other participating services and institutions, capturing a multiplicity of disciplines , contexts and issues. Over the past decade, staff across the disciplines set out to investigate their teaching from the perspective of their students’ learning. Their journey charts their transition from remediation, where teaching is seen as a ‘problem to be fixed’ (Bass 1999), to investigation, where teaching is integral to research. Teaching, as research, is beset with uncertainty (Shulman, 1998) posing infinite questions and challenges and is, therefore problematic and developmental. It is to this investigative journey that this series speaks, in the hope of promoting further debate and reflection and charting new ways of interrogating and documenting pedagogy.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this Seminar participants and those reviewing the session should be able to :

  1. Recognise teaching as a valid form of research and scholarship in all disciplines and for all staff who teach
  2. Identify teaching and learning issues emergent in the various case studies presented
  3. Participate in discussion around these teaching and learning issues
  4. Critique teaching from the perspective of student learning and its layers of evidence
  5. Evaluate the role of SoTL approaches in accredited, professional development programmes for staff.

Contact: Dr Marian McCarthy, Co- Director, Ionad Bairre, The Teaching and Learning Centre, The West Lodge, University College Cork.

mmccarthy@ucc.ie