Programme

June 7th - Day 1: Room HG 22 School of Nursing, DCU
9:00: Opening : Prof. Brian MacCraith, President, Dublin City University

9:30 - 10:00 “Where is Ireland currently with respect to the Bologna Agreement” Dr. Deirdre Stritch, National Qualifications Authority of Ireland

10:00 - 11:00 Keynote: Prof. Bryan MacGregor, Vice Principal Curriculum Reform, University of Aberdeen

'Ambition and necessity: Reflections on curriculum reform at the University of Aberdeen'

The talk will cover why Aberdeen undertook Curriculum Reform and how it was done (including issues of process, research, consultations and the evidence base), and will outline the final proposals. It will also consider the external and internal reactions to the proposals. It will then examine the approach to implementation and evaluation, the development of graduate attributes and the monitoring of their achievement. Finally, it will report on early student and outline lessons to be learned.

11:00 - 11:30 Coffee and tea break

11:30 - 1:00 Parallel sessions
Room HG05: Maintaining programme and institutional distinctiveness
Dr. Brian Foley, TCD; Dr. Annie Doona, IADT
Chair: Prof. John Scattergood, TCD

This presentation will explore the issue of maintaining institutional and programme distinctiveness within the Bologna context. Trinity College and IADT are very different institutions in terms of tradition scale and focus , but both are facing the issue of how to maintain their institutional and programme distinctiveness whilst supporting the Bologna Framework . The adequacy of the Bologna Framework to reflect distinctiveness will be questioned. The debate around diversity and differentiation in the structure of higher education internationally will also be raised .

Room HG06: National and regional collaborative strategies in the reform of Irish PhD education
Prof. Julie Berndsen, UCD
Chair: Dr. Marion Palmer, IADT

The landscape of PhD education in Ireland has undergone a significant step-change since 2005, driven by a range of national initiatives to (i) provide enhanced supports for PhD students and supervisors, (ii) enhance governance systems within each institution, (iii) develop the framework for quality assurance of PhD programmes and (iv) maintain quality of the degree at a time when significant growth in PhD numbers in line with overall increased research activity was an explicit national objective.
The broader context for the resulting fundamental redesign and implementation of structured PhD education was influenced by developments in Europe associated with the Bologna process. This session
will focus on the national and regional collaborative activities which have been a key part of the developments in Irish PhD education and address some of the challenges associated with collaborative delivery and student and staff mobility.

Room HG07: Learning outcomes: The NUI Maynooth experience
Orla Hanratty, NUIM; Hilary Tierney, NUIM
Chair: Dr. Larry McNutt, ITB

This session will provide participants with an insight into the implementation of Learning Outcomes across NUI Maynooth university. The framework of the process will be outlined and the experiences of the departmental Fellows will be shared - particularly the challenges, benefits and practice implications. Our intention is to facilitate an interactive session responding to the interests of participants and to co-create an understanding of elements of good practice when implementing learning outcomes.

1:00 - 2:00 Lunch

2:00 - 3:30 Parallel sessions
Room HG06: Curriculum change and academic engagement
Dr. Jean Hughes, DCU; Morag Munro, DCU
Chair: Prof. Maria Slowey, DCU

This session will discuss the idea of curriculum change as a whole institution process which contrasts significantly with traditional approaches in HE which tend to located at school/department or even individual academic level/ It will explore the pros and cons of consistency and structured approaches and where the room still exists for academic freedom and disciplinary autonomy in curriculum development. Finally the opportunities for increased academic engagement with on-going curriculum development and teaching and learning in general in the context of curriculum development will be addressed.

Room HG07: Approaches to curriculum reform with attention to constraints and possibilities
Prof. Nóirín Hayes, DIT
Chair: Dr. Ekaterina Kozina

TBC

3:30 - 4:00 Coffee and tea break

4:00 - 5:00 Plenary session, HG22

Wednesday June 8: Day 2: All events in HG22, School of Nursing

9:30 - 10:30 Keynote: Dr. Anne Corbett, Visiting Fellow, London School of Economics and Politics European Institute

10:30 - 11:00 Coffee and tea break

11:00 - 12:45 Expert Panel : Implications for policy and practice

'Possibilities, problems, politics...and more possibilities: A few pointers from the history of European cooperation on higher education for the Bologna age'

Anne Corbett will explore the paradox of governments wanting European cooperation in higher education while continuously putting the brakes on the process of seeing what form that cooperation might take. This paradox faced members of the EU from its earliest days in the 1950s and it now includes EU neighbours as well. Anne will draw on some historical examples of the past five decades to show the kind of problems to which policy possibilities have been the solution, and how the politics play out. Is this paradox still holding true in the age of Bologna and Lisbon, which have vastly increased European policy coordination, at least formally? Or are there problems and possibilities which are being ignored?

Dr. Jim Murray, Director of Framework Implementation and Qualifications Recognition, National Qualifications Authority of Ireland
Mr Lewis Purser, Director of Academic Affairs, Irish Universities Association
Prof Anne Scott, Deputy President / Registrar, Dublin City University
Dr. Mary Canning, Deputy Chair, Higher Education Authority
John Vickery, Registrar, Institute of Technology Tallaght
Dr. Anne Corbett, London School of Economics and Political Science
Prof. Bryan MacGregor, University of Aberdeen

12:45 - 1:00 Closing: Dr. Jean Hughes, Director of SIF Programmes, Dublin City University

1:00 Lunch