Learning Innovation Unit, Dublin City University
Learning Innovation Unit
AISHE Conference 2009
By Barry McMullin, School of Electronic Engineering
The All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE) is a scholarly organisation for all those involved and interested in teaching and learning in higher education on the island of Ireland. It originated in a Colloquium on University Teaching and Learning, held at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, in December 1998, with support from the HEA and participation from all nine Irish universities and the DIT. AISHE was formally established in March 2000, and has operated since then as an individual membership organisation, working to facilitate the development of all aspects of teaching and learning in Irish higher education. Since 2002 AISHE has also been recognised as the representative member for Ireland of the International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED). AISHE has now built up a strong and enthusiastic membership across the Irish Universities, Institutes of Technology, and other colleges and organisations engaged with higher education all over the island.
AISHE pursues its mission through a variety of activities, including seminars, workshops, publications, and provision of online community fora and services. The AISHE annual conference, in particular, has been running since 2004, and has established itself as a premier venue for practitioners, from both Ireland and abroad, to present scholarly work on all aspects of teaching and learning in higher education. The 2009 conference took place in NUI Maynooth, on August 27-28 and very much lived up to the high standard established in previous years.
The conference format has three elements:
- Plenary sessions with invited keynote speakers.
- Parallel oral presentation sessions.
- Poster presentations spanning the full duration of the conference.
Keynote speakers this year were:
- Val Chapman of the University of Worcester, UK: Val's talk was entitled Disability is not a choice - inclusive teaching is and gave a very stimulating and constructive introduction to the challenges, opportunities and rewards of designing our learning activities to engage the widest possible diversity of learners.
- Prof. Bairbre Redmond, Deputy Registrar For Teaching & Learning at UCD: Bairbre took up the timely topic of Rewarding Teaching Excellence. Her presentation summarised recent experiences at UCD in seeking to recognise and enhance the role of teaching excellence in academic work. The UCD Teaching Fellowship Scheme was specifically discussed, highlighting the important added benefit of collegiality and collaboration among teaching fellows.
- Dr. John Willison, of the University of Adelaide, Australia: John's presentation on Discipline, Diversity and the Development of all Students' Research Skills was focussed on a project which he is currently leading, called Research Skill Development (RSD) and Assessment in the Curriculum. This centres around the ways that academics conceptualise and implement the explicit development of their students' research skills within undergraduate and taught masters curricula. (All participants were provided with a convenient one sheet summary of the RSD framework - but it is also freely available for download!).
Abstracts of all presentations - keynote, parallel oral session and posters - are available via the conference web site. All presenters were also invited to submit full papers, or other supplementary materials, to be included in the proceedings, and these are also in the process of being published online.
The conference “fringe” featured two other significant events:
- During the opening session of the conference,
AISHE Vice-president Sylvia Huntley Moore formally launched the
inaugural issue
of the All Ireland
Journal of Teaching and
Learning in Higher Education (AISHE-J). This is a very
important
development for AISHE, made possible by generous support from the Higher Education Authority.
AISHE-J is a peer reviewed journal which
welcomes the submission of manuscripts presenting original scholarly
work or
commentary in any aspect of teaching and learning in higher education.
It thus
provides a significant new niche for the promotion and dissemination of
the
scholarship of teaching and learning in Irish higher education. The
inaugural
issue featured a variety of both invited and submitted articles; and
I'm
particularly pleased to note that DCU was ably represented by Gerald
Cannon,
Mary Kelly, Colette Lyng, Mary McGrath of the
- On the evening of the first day, the conference also saw the official launch of a new book, Mapping Civic Engagement within Higher Education in Ireland, edited by Lorraine McIlrath, Alison Farrell, Jean Hughes, Seamus Lillis and Ann Lyons. This is the latest in the AISHE Readings (AISHE-R) series, which collects together, in book form, key Irish research in the scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Although officially described as an “occasional” series, it is noteworthy that this is now the seventh volume in what has become a very substantial and wide-ranging scholarly resource.
It is important to note that AISHE has adopted an open-access policy across all its publications; so all of the works mentioned above, including AISHE-C conference proceedings, the AISHE-J peer reviewed journal, and the complete set of AISHE-R books are all available, online, in full text form, with no charge or subscription requirement; and, further, may be freely distributed and reused under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence.
Of course, if you would like to contribute to the ongoing growth and development of AISHE, or even just want to stay in touch with its conferences, publications, and other events, you might consider showing your support by joining the society!
Links and further reading
All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE) website: http://www.aishe.org/AISHE-C 2009 website, including links to keynote biographies and online proceedings: http://ocs.aishe.org/index.php/international/2009/index
AISHE-J: http://ojs.aishe.org/
AISHE-R: http://www.aishe.org/readings/
International Consortium for Educational Development (ICED): http://www.osds.uwa.edu.au/iced
UCD Teaching Fellowship Scheme: http://www.ucd.ie/fellows/
University of Adelaide, Research Skill Development (RSD) and Assessment in the Curriculum website: http://www.adelaide.edu.au/clpd/rsd/
McIlrath, L. ,Farrell, A., Hughes, J., Lillis, S. and
Lyons, A. (Eds.) 2009 Mapping Civic
Engagement within Higher Education in