EQI Researchers successfully bid for Evaluation of TU Dublin Students Learning with Communities Programme
EQI Researchers Dr Aideen Cassidy, Dr Anne Rowan and Prof Joe O'Hara successfully bid to evaluate the TU Dublin Students Learning with Communities Programme.
TU Dublin’s Programme for Students Learning With Communities supports Community-Engaged Research and Learning (CERL) in the curriculum. This programme supports academic staff to collaborate with underserved community partners (local groups, not-for-profit organisations, charities etc) to co-develop real-life engaged research and learning projects for students to work on with community partners for mutual benefit – exchanging and co-creating knowledge, enhancing research, and teaching, and supporting community goals. CERL supports our academics and community partners to think across their respective boundaries and address the most pressing local challenges together, to deliver concrete outputs or processes that meet the goals of all parties.
The supports provided by the programme include:
- Meeting community partners and collecting ideas for projects that they’d like students to work on to further their goals
- Meeting lecturers and exploring how they could fit community-engaged research and learning projects into the modules they teach, to enhance student learning and support community goals
- Making introductions between lecturers and community partners with common interests, and facilitating project planning meetings, as well as offering troubleshooting supports during projects if needed
- Offering capacity-building workshops and programmes (locally and internationally), and networking opportunities
- Running an annual awards event to recognise students and community partners for their achievements on each year’s projects.
EQI has been engaged to conduct and write up an external evaluation of this programme with stakeholders, including recommendations for the university to take forward when developing new supports for community-engaged research.