Award winners for Presidents Awards
Dr Mark Glynn, Professor Brian MacCraith, Dr Dónal Mulligan, Pat Wogan, Dr John Buckley, Professor Patrick Flood, Charlie Daly, Deirdre O'Reilly and Anne-Marie Caherty (representing the GSA Project Team), Orna Farrell, Billy Kelly and Professor Eithne Guilfoyle

Presidents Awards Winners for Excellence in Teaching 2017

Teaching Support Category: Patrick (Pat) Wogan, School of Physical Sciences

“Pat leads by example, showing students what is possible, giving them the confidence to persist and never say die when dealing with a really challenging problem. He goes above and beyond the normal expectations to assist staff and foster student learning in this innovative and committed manner.”

“For me personally, he is a role model and the benchmark by which I judge excellence. Additionally, he is an outstanding educator due to his patience, modesty and open-mindedness. He is as essential to the physics department as electricity and I cannot think of someone more deserving of the President’s Award for Excellence.”

Team Award: General Sports Authority (GSA) Project Team - Dr Artemisa Jaramillo, Ms Caroline McGroary, Ms Rhea George, Ms Mary Finnegan, Dr Michele Lundy, Ms Ieva Masevic, Ms Justina Setkute, Ms Raja Clouse, Dr Ann Largey, Dr Audrey Nicholls, Dr Anne Morrissey

“I am writing these words with all the optimism in the world that we are going to witness a stronger Saudi generation in digital marketing/communication. What is even more promising is that we can use such intellect and power to serve a noble cause; getting people active!” (GSA Director).

“The student work received to date has been very timely and extremely well received. It has prompted a few ideas that the GSA are now looking to implement (e.g. Sports Ambassadors Program and Snapchat collaboration), which will contribute towards the achievement of our core objectives.” (Advisor to GSA).

Special Awards
Distinctive Approaches to Teaching: Dr John Buckley, School of Theology, Philosophy and Music

“John believes that musicological study is best taught from a range of perspectives rather than a single viewpoint. His approach involves placing the music in its historical and cultural context followed by a detailed analytical approach of selected scores. Listening skills are developed and students are encouraged to develop critical thinking and reflective commentary.”

“Music performance is a central activity and John is currently involved in mentoring and supporting over a dozen music groups.”

Distinctive Approaches to Assessment: Dr Dónal Mulligan, School of Communications

“To better reach students, Dónal has developed his own online tools for review, assessment, and feedback provision. These include a mobile-friendly personalised feedback tool that has proven immensely useful because of how it emphasises targeted areas for improvement, and explains common sources of confusion.”

“Furthermore, to enhance peer review of group work, he has developed a custom rubric based on best practice in the literature (Nicol 2014; Ashwin et al. 2015), and used a set of Google Forms to deploy it regularly, with significant success in this semester.”

Distinctive Innovation in Teaching: Charlie Daly, School of Computing

“Charlie loves experimenting with technology. In addition to ‘flipped classroom’ approaches, he uses group work coupled with short, computer-marked assessments. Students work in pairs and there is a real buzz in the lab as students discuss the exercises.”

“This year he developed a number of exercises that are programmatically-created only as the student receives them. This means that each student gets a different version of the exercise and so they are free to discuss the exercise with their peers. It also means that they can get a new version of the problem, should they desire.“

New Lecturer/Tutor Category: Orna Farrell, Open Education

“Orna’s role involves overseeing the teaching and learning of 308 online distance learning students and coordinating 15 part-time distance learning staff.”

“She conveys her enthusiasm and passion for the subject through energetic delivery and lively debate.”

"With an academic background in history and social science in higher education, Orna has implemented several new initiatives over the past 14 months: she has introduced new assessment types; created an online history tutorial resource; organised a 1916 webinar series, and delivered a 1916 webinar called "Google does 1916: an exploration of the Dublin Rising 1916-2016”.

Overall Winner for the President’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching: Professor Patrick Flood, DCU Business School

There are three interrelated areas in which Patrick excels:

First, students mentioned his impressive teaching style which includes telling inspirational stories about real-life cases;

Second, his students indicated that his reflective assignments have improved their understanding of their own personal development;

Last but not least, students appreciated the extremely useful feedback on their assignments and the fact that Patrick takes the time to have one-to-one conversations about their leadership skills.

Professor Flood’s teaching is in demand at the highest international level. His delivery imparts wisdoms that are real, memorable, and ultimately have tangible impact for individuals and their organisations. The true test of this is in the strong relationship he has with current students and long-term alumni.

He takes great pride in his positive evaluations and is very focused on ironing out any weaknesses that students might identify... If you want someone to explain Inspirational Leadership to your audience, go no further.