The overall vision for the ECAAP (Embedding Content Across Academic Programmes) toolkit is that it can be used at every level within a Higher Education facility to track and embed content in modules, stages and programmes and ultimately link the delivery of this content to graduate attributes. The objective of the first stage of this project is to explore the feasibility of creating such a toolkit, through a mixture of desk research and a worked example.

The aim of this seminar was to introduce ECAAPT, a simple means by which to embed and track content, such as academic literacies, across modules and programmes. This tracking and mapping tool can contribute to a more coordinated and cohesive approach to the teaching and learning of various skills in many disciplines. In addition, this tool has the potential to be used as a structure for building and developing new programmes in a coherent and logical manner. It should be possible to show where the content necessary to develop the desired graduate attributes are, or could be, embedded across all stages of a programme. This can be useful for simplifying programmatic review, as well as ongoing programme checks and coherency. It may also be useful to map existing content relating to any module or programme across departments or in relation to specific graduate themes/attributes. Use of this tool may also indicate where there are openings to develop further learning opportunities for students, and where there may be overlap in delivery. The session began with an introduction to the tool itself and how it works before we moved on to present a worked example. This was followed by an opportunity for questions and answers.

"Students need to use the internet to support their studies and are a group identified with low wellbeing and high loneliness. Re-Connect is a workshop that has been developed in MTU in response to research findings that highlight difficulties caused by problematic internet use for students. The workshop is being rolled out in MTU and aims to support students in developing awareness of their internet use and its affects. The workshop also enables students with tools which can help to develop healthy internet habits or redesign habits that are causing them problems. The workshop to date has got excellent feedback from staff and student participants and aligns exactly with the government strategy for healthy campuses. Student problematic internet use can be addressed in a way that few other issues affecting health and wellbeing are. The workshop has been developed to address a student need as evidenced by research, it is a university cross collaboration, developed with student input, honed with professional expertise empowers students to redesign those habits for wellbeing and academic performance. This workshop is designed for lecturers who might want to deliver the Re-Connect workshop with their students. This workshop was delivered by Oonagh O’Brien and Catherine Murphy, who gave an overview of the Re-Connect programme, the research that drove its development and they shared resources and facilitation techniques to enable delivery of Re-Connect to student groups. "

Are you involved in new programme development and about to starting to create new modules? Or are involved in programmatic review and revising some existing modules? If so, the following is a Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Module Guide developed by our colleague Ann Toebes, Curriculum Development Facilitator, provides suggestions for how UDL can be embedded in the curriculum via the module descriptor.

Do you wonder is there anything you can do from UDL perspective when you’re setting up your modules on Canvas? If so, you might find the following checklist useful:

MTU Teaching & Learning Unit

Are you putting together a slide deck for teaching purposes? You might consider using one of MTU’s new branded accessible templates! You can access these templates very easily. When you are creating a new PowerPoint presentation, you will see a new tab called Munster Technological University. Here you will find 6 possible templates - 3 black and grey and 3 colour that you can use to ensure that your slide decks are accessible. In each case, there is: - An accessible and sustainable version where the MTU logo only appears on the title slide - An accessible version with the MTU logo in the top RHS for those who might be creating a recording with Screencast-o-matic - An accessible version with the MTU logo in the top LHS for those who might be creating a recording with Zoom