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UCD CELT Symposium 2023: Boosting Community Engaged Teaching and Learning in UCD

Community Engaged Teaching and Learning Symposium 2023: Boosting Community Engaged Teaching and Learning in UCD

Poster

The UCD CELT Symposium 2023 took place on February 8, 2023 from 9.30am - 16.00pm in UCD Campus. 

The second UCD CELT Symposium themed “Boosting Community Engaged Teaching and Learning in UCD” served to further enhance and bring together those in UCD who are already working with or interested in establishing community engagement as part of their work, whilst building on UCD international connections.

The symposium was split into a morning and afternoon session. The morning session included presentations and case studies from 3 UCD staff. The keynote speaker was given by a global expert in service learning, Dr Grace Ngai, Head of Service-Learning, Associate Professor, Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Grace's talk was themed "A walk through implementing high quality community engagement in higher education" (outlined below).

The afternoon session included a discussion facilitated by Professor Jacob Eisenberg where attendees got talking about what constitutes good community engagement and types of learning outcomes for students. 

 The UCD CELT Symposium 2023 was funded by the UCD Global Seed Fund.

The morning session included case studies from 3 UCD Lecturers highlighting examples of tremendous community engagement activities undertaken on their course. 

Dr Ellen Rowley: Drafting, Realising, Building: Tales of UCD Architecture in the Community

Ellen Rowley is a Lecturer/Assistant Professor in UCD School of Architecture, Planning and Environmental Policy qand is active historian with sustained impact in terms of public engagement, through broadcasting + other means including her work as guest consultant editor of RTÉ Radio 1 (Thomas Davis) lecture series on housing, ‘Making Home’ (2019/20). Each year as Spring emerges, Ellen Rowley under the UCD's School of Architecture runs a Masters studio, bringing a group of Year 4 architecture and engineering students to a live design challenge in the community. Called 'Design/Build' the studio engages a client who needs a structure. Over the course of fourteen weeks, the students listen and then develop a brief; design and present several iterations of the project, before fine-tuning the proposal and ultimately, building it and bringing it to its new site. Looking at three of these projects - from a public exhibition in 2021 to a shelter for an emergency accommodation in 2022 and on, to a current unfolding design for an inner-city housing community - Ellen's case study outlined the learning and the challenges inherent in such a creative and live teaching and building process.
Joe Houghton: Building on 15 years of community engagement in the MSc in Project Management

Joe Houghton is the Director of Project Management & lecturer at UCD Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dublin, Joe has been full-time teaching project management and other management subjects at Smurfit since 2005. Since 2008, students on the UCD Smurfit MSc in Project Management have been given the opportunity to work on experiential learning with companies and charities as part of their Masters programmes.  In that time they have raised over €750,000 for good causes, helped build capacity, created website and social media campaigns and really made a difference to many individuals, companies and charities. In 2022, Programme Director Joe Houghton added to the student opportunities by creating a brand new summer term module built around sustainability, the UN SDG's, and Design Thinking.  Using UDL and innovative collaboration tools, the module facilitated a student class spread around the world to create a 106 page report on Sustainable Development Goals, then use this to inform a set of individual/pairs assignments to "Make A Difference".

Joes case study took us an exploration of education linked to community and social good, where it was shared what works, and also some tools and resources to help listeners implement similar strategies into their own courses. 

Dr. Páraic Kerrigan Media in the Community: Developing Community-Engaged Learning and Career Pathways for Graduate Students

Dr. Páraic Kerrigan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information and Communication Studies at University College Dublin. Prior to this, he was an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Scholar and John and Pat Hume Scholar in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University, where he completed his doctorate in 2018. Páraic is a co-founder of the new programme in MSc Communication & Media in School of Information and Communication Studies. During his presentation he spoke in depth about this Industry-focused pathway and its focus towards employability. In addition Páraic highlighted how the module came about, the huge increase in students attending the course and its impact with community organisations looking to gain some media input.  

Theme: "A walk through implementing high quality community engagement in higher education"

We were honoured to have Dr Grace Ngai join us as our Keynote Speaker. Grace is the Associate Professor of Computing (Computer Science) and Head of the Service-Learning and Leadership Office at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). 

Dr Grace Ngai has been closely involved with the service-learning initiative at PolyU since its inception, and her service-learning projects have brought students to serve diverse communities in Hong Kong, mainland China, Cambodia, Myanmar and Rwanda. Her scholarly work focuses on, among others, examining the role and impact of service-learning and community engagement practices in different contexts. At PolyU, all undergraduates have been required to pass at least one service-learning subject to graduate since 2012. Today, PolyU’s service-learning programme is one of the largest worldwide, enrolling more than 4000 students in one of 70 subjects annually. Evaluation studies show that the programme achieves significant learning outcomes which persist after graduation. 

Creating and Maintaining Successful Community-University Collaborations

An afternoon panel discussion was facilitated by Assoc Prof Dr Jacob Eisenberg (UCD School of Business). Jacobs discussion aimed to answer the question: What Makes for Successful Community-University Collaborations? Using examples from their field experiences, attendees spoke about what might help create and maintain successful community-engaged learning projects, potential pitfalls and challenges and how they overcame them.

Asst Prof Dr Adamaria Perrotta represents UCD on the Campus Engage Community Engaged Learning Committee. Learn more about Community Engaged Learning here: (opens in a new window)https://www.campusengage.ie/

Niamh Byrne McKenna works with UCD in the Community which seeks to support and promote civic engagement across UCD and beyond. You can find out more here: https://www.ucd.ie/ucdinthecommunity/

The UCD CELT Symposium was funded by the UCD Global Seed Funding. 

Contact UCD in the Community

Coote Hub, First Floor, UCD Village Block E4
T: +353 1 716 2268 | E: ucdic@ucd.ie