We recognise that learning happens outside of the University, experiences in life and work impact on what we know and what we can do as well as our personal and professional development. Some of this learning might be planned but much is unplanned and informal.
For us in higher education it is a challenge to identify and recognise this learning but it is also a real opportunity to work closely with employers and workplaces to integrate experiential and situated learning into the curriculum and to support the co-creation of personalised and flexible learning opportunities for students and workers and those who are both.
To support the resilience and employability of our graduates and to work to anchor employment opportunities in our region we need to open our gates and extend the campus into the workplace and the workplace into the University.
• Key takeaways :
Engagement with employers and employer representative groups can enhance the relevance and currency of our programmes and the employability of our graduates but it requires careful commitment
Learning is never finished – it is pretty much always a work-in-progress
Validating learning and ensuring that it is authentic and sufficient is a challenge
Professor Irene Sheridan leads the Extended Campus and the Enterprise Engagement and Experiential Learning Research Group in MTU. Her background is in Electronic Engineering and she has worked for almost a decade in electronics design and manufacturing roles. The Extended Campus is responsible for stimulating and supporting interactions with external organisations, and has developed customer relationship and case management systems for codification and mapping of engagement.
Irene is a Council Member of the ACEEU (Accreditation Council for Engaged and Entrepreneurial Universities), a Board Member of the Quality and Qualifications Authority Ireland (QQI) and Expert in the evaluation of Erasmus+ projects
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irene_Sheridan/research
The event takes place at:
07:00 Los Angeles time
09:00 Mexico City time
10:00 New York time
12:00 Sao Paulo time
15:00 London time
16:00 Berlin time
19:00 Dubai time
20:30 Delhi time
23:00 Beijing time
02:00 Sydney time