Learning and Teaching at UCC: Strategic Planning-Policy and Practice

Dr Marian McCarthy , CIRTL /OVPLT

TAP Project, May 3, UCC.

mmccarthy@ucc.ie

University College Cork

University College Cork – the Context

• University College Cork – a University of the National University of Ireland – one of 7 in the Republic of Ireland. Located in Cork City in the province of Munster – a southern port city with a population of c. 200,000.

• UCC founded in 1845. Strong research profile. Student population of c. 20,000, 25% of whom are graduate students.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YWkQK03mZA

Crest of University College Cork

The four Colleges of UCC

Four Colleges

• College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences

• College of Business and Law

• College of Science, Engineering and Food Science and Technology

• College of Medicine and Health Sciences

CIRTL at the West Lodge

CIRTL ObjectivesStaffCPD

Access

FlexibleLearning

Talented Students

CPD for professionals

Research Led

Teaching & Learning

OVPTL

Provision of Continuing Professional Development for staff

Support innovative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment

Foster and conduct research into teaching and learning in higher education

Identify and develop structures to support teaching and learning

Collaboration with international universities

Provision of courses for visiting lecturers on teaching and learning in higher education

What are the opportunities for learning?

Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning (HE)

• Part–time online course

• TL 6003: Theories of Teaching, Learning and Assessment

• TL 6004: Practice Approaches to Teaching, Learning and Assessment

• NQF Level 9, 30 ECTS credits

• NUI Accredited Programme

PG Cert overview

Supporting teachers locally

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

PG Cert PG Dip Masters

The Mission of Universities has traditionally encompassed

• Teaching and Examining

• Research and Scholarship

• Engagement with the External Community

In 1990, Ernest Boyer (Carnegie Foundation) suggested that there are “four scholarships of the professoriate”

• The scholarship of Discovery

• The scholarship of Integration

• The scholarship of Application

• The Scholarship of Teaching

(Ernest Boyer Scholarship Reconsidered, 1990)

The Mission of Universities

Influences on Staff Development in Teaching & Learning: ‘95-’15

US to the West

• Ernest Boyer’s Four Scholarships of the Professoriate

• Research on T&L in Harvard Graduate School of Education – esp. Gardner’s Theory of MI and TfU

• Carnegie Foundation for Teaching and Learning – CASTL project

EU to the East

• Bologna and subsequent Declarations

• UCC’s involvement in EUA Quality Culture project and annual thematic groups and EU Learning Forum conferences

Ernest Boyer -Scholarship Reconsidered- Influence of US

“Teaching is a dynamic endeavour involving all the analogies, metaphors, and images that build bridges between the teacher’s understanding and the student’s learning. Pedagogical procedures must be carefully planned, continuously examined, and relate directly to the subject taught….

Great teachers … stimulate active, not passive, learning and encourage students to be critical, creative thinkers, with the capacity to go on learning after their college days are over”.

Many ways to integrate..

Research-led teaching and learning:

the curriculum is informed by the research

interests of the teachers

Research-oriented teaching and learning:

the teacher emphasises the processes by

which knowledge is produced

Research-based teaching and learning:

the curriculum includes activities in which

students actually conduct research,

through projects and other course work

Research-informed teaching and learning:

the curriculum is informed by systematic

enquiry into the teaching and learning

process itself

Lee Shulman (Carnegie Foundation)

Shulman’s theory of Pedagogical Content Knowledge

The transformation of subject matter for teaching occurs as the teacher

• critically reflects on and interprets the subject matter;

• finds multiple ways to represent the information as analogies, metaphors, examples, problems, demonstrations, and classroom activities;

• adapts the material to students’ abilities, gender, prior knowledge, and preconceptions; and

• tailors the material to those specific students to whom the information will be taught.

Research and Teaching

• “We need our best scholars to be our teachers , and we need them to give the same creative energy to teaching as they give to scholarship. We need to identify, support, and reward those who teach superbly. There is no antithesis between teaching and research. Great teaching can in fact be a form of synthesis and scholarship”.

• (Frank Rhodes “The University and its Critics” in W.G. Bowen and H.T. Shapiro (Eds) Universities and Their Leadership Princeton, 1998)

Bologna and subsequent communiqués- EU influences

• Bologna Declaration 1999

• Prague Communiqué 2001

• Berlin Communiqué 2003

• Bergen 2005

• London 2007

• Leuven 2009

• Bucharest 2012

• Bologna Process:

• Modularisation and Semesterisation

• European Credit Transfer System

• Programmes described in terms of Learning Outcomes

• Students centrally involved in university structures

• Student and Staff Mobility

• Programmes leading to Student Employability

Common Features of European Universities

Implications of Bologna Agreement

• A stronger student focus – need to shift towards student-centred learning. This involves encouraging use of learning outcomes and being explicit about what graduates are expected to know and be able to do, but also encouraging critical thinking and the active engagement of students. A particular effort has to be made to motivate and train academic staff to work within such a student-centred paradigm.

• “Universities commit to redoubling their efforts

• to introduce innovative teaching methods

• to reorient curricula in a dialogue with employers

• and to take up the challenge of academic and professional education, life long learning and recognition of prior learning.”

EU policy developments

Strong Universities for a Strong Europe. European Universities Association

More than 40 higher education institutions in Ireland, including

•7 universities

•DIT

•13 institutes of technology

•6 colleges of education

•(Partly) publicly-funded small colleges

•Private colleges

Higher Education in Ireland

“Its not sufficient for academics to be experts in their disciplinary area; they also need to know how best to teach that discipline. They need to have an understanding of learning theories and to know how to apply these theories to their practice.”

“All higher education institutions must ensure that all teaching staff are both qualified and confident in teaching and learning and should support ongoing development and improvement of their skills.”

Irish policy developments

National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030

“The roles of teaching and research should be afforded parity of esteem, and this should be reflected in resource allocation…at …system level.”

“Teaching in higher education is distinguished from teaching at other levels by its focus on the integration of research with teaching and learning.”

Irish policy developments

National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030

Report of a EU High Level Group on Modernisation of Higher Education - 2013

• … improving the quality of teaching and learning is not magic and does not necessarily need huge amounts of additional funding; and yet, which is maybe harder to achieve, does need a change of culture. … a wide range of excellent examples and comprehensive strategies at national and institutional level for improving the quality of teaching and learning exist in Europe.

The undergraduate curriculum of the future

• More flexibility of provision

• Broader focus – less specialisation, especially in First Year

• Greater interdisciplinarity

• Generic skills- critical thinking, communication skills, collaborative skills

• Innovative pedagogical approaches for learner engagement

• Adoption of service-learning / civic engagement

Extract from UCC’s Strategic Plan - 2001

• “There should be parity of esteem between teaching and discipline-based research, which should be formalised and validated by recognising effective and innovative teaching and learning practices by giving them the same status as research. Research into the teaching and learning process should itself be recognised and rewarded in the same way as all other forms of scholarship. There is a necessity to encourage and support academic staff in the scholarship and practice of effective teaching”.

Sustaining Excellence: UCC’s Strategic Plan 2013-2017

• High quality research-led teaching is at the core of our mission. … We will continue to pursue to excellence in teaching, learning and the student experience. We will strengthen our capacity to deliver teaching qualification programmes to greater numbers of staff and we will promote and recognise excellence in teaching. … We will develop greater opportunities for part-time and flexible learning. We will provide the necessary “future-proofed” infrastructure to improve the provision of research-informed open access Technology Enhanced Learning at UCC.

UCC’s Strategic Plan: Independent Thinking: Shared Ambition, 2017-2022

• Our key strategic aim is to deliver an innovative academic mission. The following goals will inform that mission:

• Goal One: Implement an academic strategy to deliver an outstanding, student-centred teaching and learning experience with a renewed, responsive and research-led curriculum at its core

• Goal Two: be a leading university for research impact

• Goal Three: Create value for our community and the world

• Goal Four: Attract, develop, support and retain staff of the highest quality

• Goal Five: Strengthen our infrastructure and resource base

Bologna’s influence in UCC

• Improved dialogue/interaction with society and workplaces

• Greater emphasis on lifelong learning and on developing lifelong learning skills

• A strong emphasis on social equity and social inclusion – improved and varied access routes

• Greater flexibility in approaches to teaching and learning (including blended learning)

• Modularisation and Semesterisation

• Modules and courses expressed in terms of ECTs and in terms of Learning Outcomes.

• Compatibility of programmes with national and European Qualifications Framework

Support for Teaching in UCC

Practical steps taken in UCC to demonstrate parity of esteem between teaching and discipline-based research:

• President’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching

• Awards for research into Innovative Forms of Teaching

• Explicit recognition of teaching in Promotions

• Regular “Quality Review” of Teaching by Departments

• Training and support sessions for staff on T&L

• Postgraduate Certificate, Diploma and Masters in T&L

• Dissemination of extracts from teaching and course portfolios of faculty from different disciplines.

• Setting up of National Academy for the Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning

European and International Collaboration

• UCC was involved in European and international collaborations on teaching and learning

• UCC was a member of the European University Association’s Quality Culture initiative on Teaching and Learning – (Learning Outcomes) in 2005/6.

• UCC was a member of the U.S. based Carnegie Foundation’s CASTL (Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning) Institutional Leadership programme.

• UCC worked with researchers in Project Zero in the Harvard Graduate School of Education on projects such as Multiple Intelligences, Teaching for Understanding etc.

In UCC, it was decided that-

Professional development should - be grounded in organisational strategy - have a balance between bottom-up and top-down inputs

CPD framework should be- created collaboratively- aligned with stakeholder expectations- embedded in institutional reward structures- formally recognised- certified

Examples of T&L initiatives

• Learning Outcomes project

• Certificated courses

• Enhancement of Graduate Education training

• Integrative Learning Project

• NAIRTL (Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning)

• New Strategic Plan Independent Thinking: Shared Ambition 2017-2022:

• A focus on a new Academic Strategy with 6 Priorities

• A focus on the Connected Curriculum and ultimately, the Connected University

Explosion of Knowledge??

• The explosion of Knowledge in recent decades can be compared to a jungle – where everything is growing out of control

• We need to “Tame the Wild”, without removing the excitement of discovery!

• Learning Outcomes help us to identify and articulate what students should know and be able to do when they graduate.

Taming the Wild? To what extent?

• We need to ensure that we do not go too far in “Taming the Wild”.

• We need (to some extent) to “wild the tame” as well, especially if our First Year students have been “too tame” in their learning to date!

• This is where the higher order Learning Outcomes are important.

What works in Staff Development?

• Working with people rather than working on people

• Recognising the complexity and craft nature of the teacher’s work

• Understanding that there are unique cultural differences in each school and how these affect development efforts

• Providing time to learn

• Building collaboration and cooperation, including providing opportunities for people to do things together, talking together and sharing concerns.

from Sergiovanni

What works in Staff Development?

• Sharing leadership functions as a team, so that people can provide complementary skills and get experience in role taking

• Organising developmental efforts around a particular focus

• Understanding that content and process are both essential – you cannot have one without the other

• Being aware of and sensitive to the differences in the world of teachers and that of others outside the teaching setting.

from Sergiovanni

Support for Teaching and Learning

“This support often takes quite small forms as well as large ones: setting aside spaces where faculty from within and across fields can convene and exchange ideas and practices …. ; providing modest budgets for food and drink that can nurture the bodies as well as the souls of participants; finding ways to make the collaborative intellectual and creative work of team teaching an attractive option; providing recognition and reward for scholars of teaching that are comparable to those afforded more traditional scholars; setting the expectation that teachers gather evidence of their students’ learning that goes beyond the students’ responses to end-of-course evaluations”.

(Lee Shulman’s Foreword in Mary Huber and Pat Hutchings The Advancement of Learning San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005).

Rogers Innovation Adoption Curve

The Challenges of Change

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it”.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1532)