Challenges in sustaining, supporting and enhancing long term collaborative relationships between HEIs and CSOs working on community based learning and community based research projects (5)

This presentation will present the challenges in sustaining, supporting and enhancing long term collaborative relationships between HEIs and CSOs working on community based learning and community based research projects. The Lifeline Project proposes the sensitive regeneration of a disused railway cutting in Dublin’s northwest inner city into a productive green corridor, public amenity and inter-model transport link. The LIFELINE project has been collaborating with Dublin Institute of Technology’s programme Students Learning with Communities (SLWC) on multi-disciplinary Community Based Learning/Research (CBL/CBR) projects since 2008. Since then staff and students across a range of programmes have been working with the LIFELINE project on a wide variety of CBL and CBR projects for example; Postgraduate students from Msc in Computing (Knowledge Acquistion & Modelling) have worked on individual research topics of significance to the LIFELINE and have produced research reports with their final disserations, Postgraduate students from Msc in Computing (Knowledge Acquistion & Modelling) have worked on practical projects like designing and building a website for the LIFELINE, undergradute final year students from the Bsc in Nutraceuticals worked on individual research topics of significance to the LIFELINE and have produced research reports with their final dissertations, Undergraduate students from the BSc Chemical Sciences with Medicinal Chemistry, tested soil and water in the community garden as part of LIFELINE project and produced research reports with their final dissertations, undergraduate students from the BSc Human Nutrition and Dietetics, carried out research on topics of significance to the LIFELINE and produced research reports through their dissertation, undergraduate students from the B.Sc Planning and Environmental Management, worked on a variety of community based learning projects with the LIFELINE, an undergraduate student from the BSc, Nutraceuticals in Health and Nutrition did a community based piece of research with the LIFELINE on: Urban Renewal: Choosing plants to benefit Health and an undergraduate student from the BA in Visual Communication programme did a community based research project with the LIFELINE on the topic of Designing Educational Packaging for the product lines arising from LIFELINE and it took form in a suite of final concept designs. These projects have contributed towards the development of student learning in a real life context, including their experience of applying their specialist skills towards the aims of LIFELINE.Through this application students engage in a socially innovative process where they increase their social awareness of issues facing the citizens in the northwest inner city in Dublin particularly in relation to health-care, bio-diversity and urban agricultue and their capacity to help address these issues through their specific discipline. The LIFELINE project with the input from students engagement has successfully responded to the fluctuating contextual influences on planning and sustainable development in this area of Dublin city. LIFELINE has recently won an award and resources to officially launch this project into the public realm. One of the most important challenges ahead will be developing new ways to effectively document and communicate our CBL/CBR to build cooperation between civil society and researchers, enhance knowledge production, build capacity and empower the northwest inner city community who are integral to the project’s success. The solution may be the development of an interactive web-based system designed to organize and disseminate cross-platform information gleaned from a range of systems. Key challenges facing the DIT SLWC programme in it’s support of multidisciplinary projects like the LIFELINE is the development of processes that build on their expanding catalogue of support to meet the level of commitment demanded by students, academic staff and community partners engaged in CBL/CBR on long term projects. These processes may include; working with each stakeholder to tailor their CBL/CBR for effective dissemination to appropriate stakeholders in the public realm as well as assisting community partners in the utilization of their research results to achieve tangible and positive change within society.For this presentation the programme for SLWC and the community partner who founded the Lifeline project will use their long-term collaboration as a case study.Their different perspectives will illustrate the key challenges each stakeholder faces.