President's Awards for Teaching Excellence

Back row: Iain McMenamin, Tom Brady , Colm O'Reilly 
Front Row: Caroline McMullan, Gillian McMahon, Nora Brophy, Valerie Davitt, Regina Connolly, Ray Walshe

DCU Annual Teaching and Learning Day and Presentation of the President’s Awards for Teaching Excellence

Innovation and excellence in teaching and learning at DCU were celebrated at the annual Teaching and Learning Day on May 27th. The day’s events commenced with a thought-provoking keynote address by Professor Dai Hounsell, Professor of Higher Education at The University of Edinburgh. Entitled ‘Could Do Better? Enhancing feedback to Students’, Professor Hounsell explored the need to provide quality feedback on student learning and performance as well as the difficulties and challenges to achieving this with increasingly large class sizes, levels of part-time working and fewer opportunities for student-lecturer interaction. He also suggested innovative ways in which such obstacles may be overcome.

The second part of the proceedings comprised of a ceremony to recognise the individuals who were nominated for ‘The President’s Awards for Teaching Excellence’.  Five staff were nominated in the Teaching Support category and 11 academic staff were nominated in the Academic category.
Nominations are made by students and colleagues to highlight and reward excellent teaching and teaching support. Academic staff, once nominated, are requested to submit a short teaching portfolio and other supporting evidence, the Learning Innovation Advisory Panel recommends the recipients for the awards.

The recipients of the 2008 awards were Nora Brophy from the School of Computing in the Academic category and Michael Tyrrell, School of Mechanical Engineering, in the Teaching Support category. All nominees were presented with Newbridge Silverware desk clocks, with the two award recipients also receiving Louise Kennedy crystal vases and financial bursaries.

Congratulations to all nominees and in particular to the overall winners!

Nominees for the Teaching Excellence academic category were
Tom Brady, Nora Brophy, Regina Connolly, Abdul Ghani Olabi , Sarah Ingle, Bipin Kumar , Gillian McMahon , Iain McMenamin , Caroline McMullan, Sheamus Sweeney ,Ray Walshe 

Nominees for the Teaching Support category were
Valerie Davitt, Bernadette McCulloch, Colm O'Reilly, Philip Smyth, Michael Tyrrell 

The morning’s events concluded with poster presentations of a wide variety of teaching and learning innovations across the university.

Jean Hughes
Head of Learning Innovation Unit
May 28th 2008