Lectures are still the most widely used teaching method in higher education today. As a method for enhancing learning, the lecture is frequently criticised as being ineffective as most students are passive and disengaged. Yet, lectures can be engaging and highly effective. This workshop aimed: Provide some insight into how students learn Identify some of the barriers to learning students commonly face Encourage participants to reflect on and critique their own lectures Provide some practical and easy ways to make lectures more successful Encourage participants to identify one, or more techniques, that they intend to adopt in the next academic year.

In recent years, the issues of poor referencing skills and plagiarism have become a significant concern for higher education practitioners. In many instances’ students are often unaware of the problems associated with plagiarism since copying from various sources has unfortunately become the norm. This problem is further compounded by the fact that many students often struggle to understand the importance and basics of essential referencing techniques. This workshop: Highlighted how CIT Library staff can assist academic staff convey the importance of referencing to their students, helping them to avoid various forms of plagiarism. Explained how online referencing software can be easily utilised to ensure effective and consistent referencing when completing notes, essays and assignments.

What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it’s not what teachers do, it’s what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn. In stories both humorous and touching, Ken Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students’ discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.

The TLU have developed a CPD programme entitled ‘EAT-PD: Enabling Academic Transitions through Professional Development' aimed at new and early career academic staff, i.e., staff that have been teaching full-time for three years or less (or some equivalent). This programme enables staff relatively new to teaching to develop their competencies in the classroom. The focus of this programme is to expose staff to a range of research-based teaching strategies that can be used to enhance lectures and support learning.

The TLU has developed the Master of Arts (MA) in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education which aims to equip its graduates with the knowledge, skills and competencies to: - Design, deliver, evaluate and reflect on quality, learner-centred educational programmes - Research key issues in teaching and learning in higher education (HE) - Contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

"For many of us, we start our teaching careers in higher education being ‘thrown in at the deep end’ being almost immediately immersed in preparing and delivering lectures, creating assessments, running laboratories and tutorials, marking student’s work, etc., without having had the opportunity to learn how to tackle such challenges. While a huge amount of research exists on teaching, learning, assessment and feedback, very few of us, especially in the first weeks of teaching, have the time or energy to invest in getting familiar with this research. The aim of this resource to present some of the most useful and relevant tips, ideas and tactics from the literature to help you cope well with those first few critical elements of your work in teaching in higher education. This resource is based on a resource developed by Prof Phil Race at Leeds Beckett University in 2006, which was subsequently made available as an Open Educational Resource through Creative Commons, and has been revised for Munster Technological University (MTU), with support and guidance from Marese Bermingham (Head, AnSEO – The Student Engagement Office; Head, Teaching and Learning Unit; Head, Arts Office) of MTU Cork Campuses and Prof Sally Brown, Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University, Visiting Professor at University of Plymouth, Liverpool John Moores University, Edge Hill University and University of South Wales"

In June 2021, a project entitled “UDL@MTU – Towards Embedding UDL Practices and Principles at MTU” received funding under MTU’s allocation of the Strategic Alignment of Teaching & Learning Enhancement Fund 2020. As part of this project, in semester 1 of the 2021/22 academic year, a local MTU iteration of the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (NFETLHE) Digital Badge “Universal Design in Teaching and Learning” was rolled out with twelve colleagues participating from across MTU. In order to complete the badge, participants learnt about Universal Design for Learning (UDL), reflected on their own practice and redesigned some aspects of a teaching activity they were delivering in line with the principles of UDL. They then had to implement and deliver the redesigned activity, collect some feedback from students in terms of their experience of the redesigned activity and submit a short ‘Redesign Activity Report’. Catherine O’Mahony, a lecturer in Tourism in Hospitality, was one of the twelve MTU badge participants.