Students Learning with Communities

This presentation will examine how using active learning, participatory and collaborative strategies in credit bearing, course-based work will help develop civic and social responsibility in all participants - students, staff and community partners. These strategies are central to community-based learning (or service-learning) and community-based research, which have been cited as best practice teaching and learning methodologies in the recent National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030. We will draw on our extensive experience of coordinating the Programme for Students Learning with Communities in Dublin Institute of Technology to deliver this paper. The presentation will explore experiences and ideas, challenges and opportunities that are particular to engaging students from a variety of disciplines in community-based learning and community-based research. It will look at collaborative approaches that can be tailored to individual students or group/class work. Participants will leave with a clear sense of what is involved in using this approach to teaching/research and simple steps to get started.