Community Engaged Learning and Teaching is considered to be transformative for students and practitioners, underpinned by civic participation in community and society. One of the strategic themes of the UCD Rising to the Future Strategy is “Building a Healthy World” a core objective of which is to “continue to build our engagement locally, nationally and internationally”. Community Engaged Learning (CEL) and Teaching affords the University an opportunity to build and strengthen strong partnerships with social and community organisations in a meaningful and transformative way. It provides faculty, students and community organisations opportunities to engage in a symbiotic manner, learning from each other whilst bridging the gap between academic learning and the lived reality(ies) of society.
#OpenTeach: Professional development for Open Online Educators
About this initiative
The #OpenTeach: professional development for open online educators’ project aims to address the challenge of effectively supporting the professional development of part-time educators involved in teaching online higher education programmes. Generally, the project aims to generate new knowledge about effective online teaching practice and to harness this new knowledge to support the professional development of online teachers and to more effectively support online student learning experiences. Specifically, this project aims to develop the digital and pedagogical competencies of the 90 DCU Connected (https://www.dcu.ie/connected/index.shtml)online teachers, enabling them to create a positive and supportive learning environment for our students. The project has a number of phases. Firstly, we are conducting an analysis of our online teachers’ professional development needs and a critical synthesis of the relevant literature. Then, we will design and create a suite of open access evidence-based digital guides on best practice for online teaching. Using the digital guides, we will develop an open online course which will be piloted, evaluated and adapted. The resources will follow an open first philosophical approach. #OpenTeach19 https://openteach.ie/
Lead organisations
Affiliated organisations
Linked open educational resources
Initiative details
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