DEVELOPING RESEARCH SKILLS AMONG UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS: CASE STUDIES FROM THE HUMANITIES AND SCIENCES AT DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY

According to Hakkarainen (2008), the challenge of European education is to devise ways of preparing learners for the knowledge economy and society, which are characterised by a rapid transformation of work practices and a requirement for new professional and personal competencies and skills. Indeed, productive participation in knowledge-intensive work requires that individual professionals, their communities, and organisations continuously surpass themselves, develop new competencies, The production of authentic and situational videos, voiced-over in both languages. A series of recorded interviews with Irish speakers living in Spain and Spanish speakers living in Ireland. Self-directed learning materials to reinforce key grammatical concepts, focusing on linguistic similarities and leading to contrastive analysis of cognitive competence and performance. A forum for discussion, communication that will support students' development of language portfolios by fostering reflection on the learning process. advance their knowledge and understanding as well as produce innovation and create new knowledge (Paavola and Hakkarainen, 2005, p. 535). Fostering the development of its students' capacity for producing innovation and creating new knowledge is at the core of Dublin City University's strategy for the enhancement of learning. More specifically, and in line with programme learning outcomes as defined by the National Framework of Qualifications, the development of research skills constitutes a critical learning outcome to be attained by all undergraduates. In the present academic year we are focusing on a preliminary investigation of the optimal methodologies for developing such reflective, multilingual educational scenarios and the identification of the 'best fit' and most sustainable and scalable technologies.