"Maths anxiety is a psychological phenomenon in which a person experienced fear, tension, or discomfort when faced with mathematical tasks or situations. It is a common problem among students in higher education, particularly in subjects that requires a strong mathematical foundation such as physics, engineering, and economics. Maths anxiety could have a range of negative effects on a student's academic performance and well-being and could also have wider implications for a student's academic and career prospects. Joined the Irish Branch of the Mathematical Resilience Network for a Maths Anxiety Awareness Day workshop!"

"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 tired of giving lectures and feeling like you’re the one doing all the work? Would you like to create a more positive learning environment for yourself where students are more involved and engaged in their learning? This was a highly interactive and engaging workshop that was divided into two parts to address these issues and provide some valuable insights into what can be done. Part one, involved discussions around: Why active learning could be part of your teaching What is active learning and what it might look like in your teaching context How you could engage in active learning in your classroom Some colleagues shared how they are currently using active learning strategies within their own teaching practice to engage their students in MTU Cork together with some other simple strategies that require little preparation. Part two, involved participants putting some of what they had learned into practice. They were asked to consider a module they teach and examine how they typically structure a lecture and what opportunities there are for students to engage during the lecture. They then redesigned their first lecture for this module to integrate some generally applicable AL strategies that they felt might work for them, their students, their discipline and the concepts they wanted their students to learn. To conclude, they were introduced to the Active Learning Movement, a new TLU initiative that will provide ongoing support to Lecturers should they be interested in implementing Active Learning (AL) strategies in their classrooms.

"Universal Design for Learning is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments and learning spaces that can accommodate individual learning differences. This workshop focused on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in CIT - if you are looking for ways to ensure that your classroom is as inclusive as possible and create a teaching and learning environment that is accessible to all, then this workshop helped to give you some tools and ideas on how to make this a reality! In the context of UDL, attendees: Examined and reflected on their own lectures and/or assessments Gained some insight into current best practice Obtained some practical and easy ways to create a more inclusive teaching and learning environment"

Many lectures can be designed to follow a similar structure and being aware of this structure can help you to design effective lectures. In this session we will look at some recommended practices for structuring a typical lecture. A central aim is to engage those students that attend so that learners leave with the feeling that the lecture was worth attending.

"Designing and managing in-class discussions is more challenging than the pause procedure or minute paper, but there is convincing evidence that collaborative learning works. This session will model an in-class discussion and discuss some of the evidence that supports this strategy."

"The spacing effect refers to the process of spacing a topic that is to be learned over time, rather than teaching the topic in an intensive session. The implication for our modules is that rather than teaching all of LO1 in weeks 1 and 2 (for example) we should consider if it is possible to divide the topic and teach some in week 1 and then revisit (perhaps in greater depth) later on in the semester. The topic is then spaced out over the semester. The available evidence tells us that this is a more effective strategy. This session will explore this strategy in more detail and present some of the evidence that supports this strategy"

"Having students retrieve information from long-term memory on a regular basis, is known to have a positive impact on learning. This is especially true when learners need to put a bit of effort into that retrieval process. Hence providing opportunities for learners to take tests (e.g. computer based multiple choice tests) can be a very effective strategy. This session will examine some of the evidence in favour of testing and discuss options for using this strategy."

"The generation effect refers to a broad range of techniques that require learners to generate information on a topic e.g. create a presentation or predict an outcome. There is a growing body of evidence which shows that having learners generate information is more effective than if they simply read the information. This session will review this body of evidence and discuss ways in which we could incorporate this strategy into our day-to-day teaching."

"The teaching strategy peer instruction was popularised by Eric Mazur to support the teaching of physics to undergraduate students at Harvard and is now one of the most widely used instructional strategies in undergraduate physics education. It has wide applicability outside of the physics discipline. This session will demonstrate peer instruction in action and discuss some of the evidence in favour of its effectiveness."

Quality feedback (i) recognises what is good (ii) identifies limitations and (iii) suggests how the work could be improved. Shifting feedback responsibility from instructors to learners. Self-assessment & peer-assessment

While presenting learners with the assessment criteria and standards is good practice - they don’t necessarily result in learners developing a good understanding of the criteria and standard. This session explores the importance of dialogue around assessment and how a shared understanding of assessment requirements can be developed by applying rubrics to exemplars.

If our learners are to become more independent and develop the capacity to assess their own learning they must know what the assessment criteria and standards are. This session presented different types of assessment rubrics. Examples of different rubrics or marking sheets were presented so that these can be critiqued, and good practice identified.