Learning Enhancement
and Academic Development (LEAD) Centre
Case Studies
The case studies below highlight the excellent teaching and learning practices that are in place across MIC. Each case study provides a detailed description of the approaches implemented, the benefits and challenges of such approaches, and tips for those who wish to implement similar approaches in their own teaching. In addition, resources such as grading rubrics and assessment forms, have kindly been shared by the teaching staff in these case studies.
Using Generative Artificial Intelligence to Support Creativity in Arts Education
This case study outlines how Dr Laura McEntee used generative artificial intelligence (AI) to support creativity in arts education and to see how these new emerging technologies can co-exist within the arts. Focusing on the strands of creating, performing and presenting and responding and connecting from the redeveloped arts curriculum 2024, the approach aimed to support students to create and perform puppet shows, using AI to help. Students used curriculum drama concepts (NCCA, 2024) – Role and Character, Tension, Time, Place, Setting, Movement, and Sound – to devise a puppet show.
Video Analysis to Promote Innovative Pedagogical Approaches in the Context of Múineadh na Gaeilge
This case study outlines how Dr Conchúr Ó Brolcháin designed activities during his lectures to enable students to observe video content involving professional teachers engaged in effective language pedagogy with primary school pupils and to use a pre-designed Video Analysis Document (VAD) to record detailed notes on these observations. This content was viewed on the lecture room interactive white board but was made available on the institutional Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for anyone who wished to access on personal devices. Afterwards, students engaged in discussion and collaborative analysis about key pedagogical approaches in which they made connections with theoretical concepts in second language acquisition and also with their own pedagogical practices (past, present and potential future).
Creating Podcasts to Deepen Engagement with Global Citizenship Education
In this case study, Dr Brighid Golden describes the approach she took to developing a podcast series called Curious and Critical GCE, which explores approaches to global citizenship education (GCE) in order to prompt discussion and deepen engagement with GCE with students studying to become primary school teachers. The podcast series was developed as a companion resource to an edited book Curious Teachers, Critical Classrooms published in December 2023. In each episode, she interviews different educators about a specific aspect of GCE and their personal approach. The guests include authors from the companion book as well as other educators from the sector in Ireland. There are also three episodes with recent graduates from the B Ed programme, recorded just as they finished their degrees in MIC.
How Generative AI can Enable Students to Explore the Impact of Linguistic Choices on Literary Works
In this case study, Dr Chris Fitzgerald explains how he used ChatGPT to alter open access literary texts so that students could see both the ability of generative AI to achieve this and how small alterations can significantly change a literary work. Though he used ChatGPT as it is the most well-known large language model (henceforth LLM) and is free to use, other tools such as claude.ai may produce similar results. This helped students to see the impact of linguistic choices on literary work, which is a core objective of the module. After modelling the approach, students then used the tool to perform similar alterations.
Digital Mind Maps as a Tool to Support Student Learning
In this case study, Dr Fionnuala Tynan outlines how she sought to integrate a new technology to enhance her practice. She introduced digital mind mapping to first year Bachelor of Education students as a tool to support teaching and learning in the Autumn semester of 2022. This was framed using the conceptual framework of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) (CAST 2018), to provide an additional means of representing information, as a tool to promote engagement and also as a means of action or expression.
Developing Authentic Assessment and Enhancing Student Engagement through a COIL Exchange
This case study shares Dr Niamh Higgin's experience of creating an authentic assessment aimed at enhancing and sustaining student engagement in her health psychology module. She wanted her approach to assessment to be one that would challenge students to think about how the material they discuss in class is applied in a real-world context. She further embedded this approach into an international teaching collaboration, and in so doing sought to develop her students as global citizens.
Tracking Pre-service Teachers’ Development as Choral Music Leaders
This case study describes Dr Maria Varvarigou's use of video recordings as a way to help students track their development as choral music conductors. This assessment is authentic (McArthur, 2023) in the way that it closely resembles the activities of weekly instruction the students, as pre-service teachers, will undertake in their future careers as choral leaders in schools.
Using Student-Generated Video to Assess the Social Psychology of Pro-Environmental Behaviour
Dr Marc Scully sought to design an assessment that would help students to apply social psychological theory and research to contemporary social issues. To facilitate this, he asked students to work in groups of five to produce short videos intended for a general audience. The videos were to outline 'one small way' that viewers could change their behaviour to address the climate crisis, based on the social psychology of behaviour change. To encourage reflective engagement and consolidate the students’ learning, he also asked them to take part in a peer feedback exercise.
Cooperative Learning within Microteaching
In this case study, Dr Rosemarie Martin outlines how Cooperative Learning was implemented within the Microteaching component of the B Ed programme during the Spring 2023 semester. Cooperative learning involves collaboration, communication and interdependence among students to achieve learning goals. Within Microteaching students were facilitated to plan, prepare, teach and reflect on their practice in collaboration with their peers.
Authentic Assessment in Physical Education
In their module, Michelle Dillon and Dr Déirdre Ní Chróinín teach future primary teachers about social justice issues and how to begin to address these issues in Physical Education. Sometimes these ideas can feel out of reach for beginning teachers, so they used a combination of analysing physical activity participation experiences, case studies and scenarios, as well as observation and teaching with primary-school aged children to promote applied learning. In this case study they make explicit links between these activities and the module assessment.
Project Partners
The preparation of these case studies was supported by the Strategic Alignment of Teaching and Learning Enhancement (SATLE) projects, funded by the National Forum for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and the Higher Education Authority.
