This resource describes the rational for, design of and implementation details associated with an initiative designed to support early career academic staff adopt evidence-based, active and inclusive learning strategies to enhance learning for ALL students.
Benefit of this resource and how to make the best use of it
This open educational resource (OER) provides an evidence-based, practice-informed model for supporting early career academic staff to adopt active, collaborative and inclusive teaching practices. Its primary benefit lies in making transparent the design, delivery and evaluation of a sustained professional development initiative that has demonstrable impact on teaching practice. By sharing not only the pedagogical resources (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.31151839) but also the programme structure, facilitation approaches and evidence of impact, this resource enables others to adopt longer-duration, active and collaborative models of academic development.
The resource is particularly valuable for academic developers and teaching and learning units seeking to design professional development that is feasible for staff with high teaching loads, aligned with institutional priorities, and grounded in the research on effective faculty development. The inclusion of authentic materials (e.g. session plans, activities, exemplars and reflective tasks), together with evidence of impact, supports informed adaptation.
Overall, this OER supports scalable, evidence-informed and context-sensitive approaches to teaching enhancement, enabling institutions to adapt proven practices while responding to their own disciplinary, cultural and structural realities.
This work is licensed under a CC BY-NC-SA license, allowing sharing and adaptation for non-commercial use with proper attribution, provided derivative works use the same license.
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O'Mahony, T. (26/01/2026). Enabling academic transitions through active learning: an open resource for developing early career teaching practice. National Resource Hub (Ireland). Retrieved from: https://hub.teachingandlearning.ie/resource/enabling-academic-transitions-through-active-learning-an-open-resource-for-developing-early-career-teaching-practice/ License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA).
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