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  Partnership in Work Integrated Learning: The Efficacy of a Partnership Model in Facilitating School Placement Based Learning and Assessment

  Casey, Elva; Hibernia College; Hibernia College (Infonomics Society, 2024-07-07)

  Work integrated learning (WIL) is an educational approach that integrates learning with practical work experiences. Within the structure of Initial Teacher Education (ITE) in the Republic of Ireland, WIL is facilitated through School Placement (SP). SP is widely recognised as sitting at the fulcrum of ITE. It is primarily valued by partners in education as the opportunity to put learnt pedagogy and foundational knowledge into practice within a school setting and as such is a form of authentic assessment. Moreover, it is an opportunity for student teachers (STs) to become socialised into the profession as active partners in educational practice. The Teaching Council, as the regulator of the teaching profession in the Republic of Ireland, has emphasised the role of the ST as researcher and pedagogical collaborator, moving the focus of SP away from a singular consideration of practice within the classroom and towards a whole school and system wide approach. This expands the potential scope of SP towards a reciprocal relationship whereby the ST has agency to impact on the actions of the site of practice by sharing new and emerging practice and pedagogy from their research and studies. However, beyond these lofty ideals, SP is a formative assessment and determines the success of STs in obtaining their professional qualifications. Given the centrality of SP to ITE, the prevailing lack of consistency and clarity around the partnership model, the roles of partners and the future of SP, are worthy of exploration. This paper presents current doctoral research and preliminary results on the impact of the partnership model on the efficacy of SP as a robust form of assessment and proposes the introduction of a new SP partnership framework
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  Digital literacy for all: Reflections on creating a short course in digital literacy

  Byrne, Ann; O'Dowd, Irene; Davey, Emberly (2024)

  In 2023, a small team at Hibernia College, composed of library staff and the digital learning department researcher, took the initiative to develop an online asynchronous digital literacy course for the college and wider community. This poster will address the rationale, process and outcomes of developing the digital literacy course. The availability of the course as an OER will be discussed, highlighting our interest in contributing to digital citizenship and the SDGs. The poster will also highlight some possible future directions that could develop and build on the work done to date. The poster was presented at the CILIP Ireland/LAI Annual Joint Conference held in Newry, from Wednesday 24th April to Thursday 25th April 2024. It was also presented at the ILTA EdTech Conference held in Sligo, from 30th May to 31st May 2024. It won Best Poster at the CONUL Conference held in Belfast, from Wednesday 29th May - Thursday 30th May 2024.
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  Digital literacy for all: reflections on creating a short course in digital literacy

  Byrne, Ann; Davey, Emberly; O'Dowd, Irene (2024)

  Presented at the A&SL LAI Conference, 21st of March 2024, Dublin, Ireland. In today’s internet-dominated interconnected world, where anyone with a phone can publish something and share it worldwide, critically assessing the integrity of information has never been more important or more challenging, and to do this successfully requires digital literacy skills. Inspired by global initiatives such as the United Nations SDGs and the European Commission’s DigComp framework, we created an open digital educational resource to help foster digital literacy within our institution and beyond. This project ties in with an ongoing academic integrity project within our institution; it also coincides with the increasing availability of generative artificial intelligence systems that can potentially spread misinformation at scale. In this context, we feel the project is a very timely one. In this paper, we reflect on the process of developing the course, share what we have learned along the way, and indicate future directions for the project.
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  Turning our critical faculties up to eleven: reflections on creating a short course in digital literacy

  O'Dowd, Irene; Byrne, Ann; Davey, Emberly (2023)

  “I believe virtually everything I read, and I think that is what makes me more of a selective human than someone who doesn't believe anything.” (David St Hubbins) Approaching life like David St Hubbins from This Is Spinal Tap (1984) was all very well back in the 1980s, but it is a less good idea in today’s internet-dominated interconnected world, where anyone with a phone can publish anything and beam it around the world. Critically assessing the integrity of information has never been more important or more challenging, and to do this successfully requires digital literacy skills. Inspired by global initiatives such as the United Nations SDGs and the European Commission’s DigComp framework, we created an open digital educational resource to help foster digital literacy within our institution and beyond. This project ties in with an ongoing academic integrity project within our institution; it also coincides with the increasing availability of generative artificial intelligence systems that can potentially spread misinformation at scale. In this context, we feel the project is a very timely one. In this paper, we reflect on the process of developing the course, share what we have learned along the way, and indicate future directions for the project.
• Digital literacy OER

  O'Dowd, Irene; Byrne, Ann; Davey, Emberly; Hibernia College (2024)

  Digital literacy refers to the effective use of digital media platforms when finding, evaluating and communicating information. This involves a variety of technical and cognitive skills and competencies. The aim of this course is to introduce three key facets of digital literacy and increase your skills and competencies in these areas. The course has three lessons: Information literacy, Digital wellness and identity, and Communication and collaboration. This course is shared as an OER which can be reused, adapted or built upon for educational purposes. This OER is licenced under CC BY-NC 4.0. If you have any queries about this OER please contact iasc@hiberniacollege.net
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  If You Build It, They Might or Might Not Come: How We Became Repository Detectorists

  O'Dowd, Irene; Byrne, Ann; Davey, Emberly (2023-06-20)

  Developing faculty and staff engagement with a new open-access institutional repository (IR) is a challenge often underestimated during IR implementation projects. The idea that “if you build it, they will come” does not reflect the reality of establishing a successful IR in a third-level institution (Ferreira et al., 2008). Factors that hinder the adoption of open-access IRs are many and varied, and a multi-pronged approach is required both to gain an understanding of these factors and develop a strategy to address them (Narayan and Luca, 2017; Tmava, 2022). For those involved in IR implementation projects, having surmounted the considerable hurdles of securing approval and funding for an IR and then developing the platform, the need for the development of such a strategy often comes as quite a surprise. However, it is arguably the most important part of ensuring a successful IR implementation. In this presentation, the genesis and continuing evolution our own IR engagement strategy will be reflected upon and our learnings shared for the benefit of those at a similar or earlier stage of the open-access IR journey. Crucial to our professional journey has been the process of replacing the hubristic “if you build it” metaphor with one suggesting a more incremental and infinitely less glamorous approach to the problem. Inspired by a popular television series (Crook, 2014-2022), we reflect on the role of IR administrators less as architects and more as detectorists. Informed by the reflective model of Experience, Reflection, Action (Jasper, 2013) and guided by Holliday’s (2017) thinking on the power of metaphor in theory and practice, we present a story of lofty idealism giving way to scuttling skullduggery; of the painful metaphorical journey from building a magnificent baseball stadium to squelching through a muddy field with a metal detector. It is also a story of how we were (almost) desperate enough to dress up in fish onesies and jump into the Liffey.
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  Bridging the gap: Managing an entire college’s continuous assessments using Moodle

  Lowney, Rob; Roche, Hilary (2019)

  Managing an entire college’s continuous assessments using Moodle.

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