FAQs Community Partners

Community Engaged Research Learning is different to volunteering in that it is part of the student’s course work. The project must achieve module learning outcomes and the student receives university credits for their work.

This depends entirely on the type of project and the timeline agreement between the Community Partner and the lecturer. Previous projects have ranged from a few weeks as they were short projects within a course, and others have lasted several years, for PhD projects.

The project could run at different stages of the year and begin at any time. Most projects  begin in the Sept/Oct or January or February. The projects will end within an agreed timeframe which will be discussed during your first meeting with the lecturer prior to the commencement of the project. The Lecturer and Community Partner will co-sign a Timeline Agreement in advance.

You could be working with one student or a group of students, depending on the nature of the project which you will discuss during your first meeting with the lecturer prior to the commencement of the project.

Generally not, unless the project involves one individual as part of a work placement module.

This depends on the project. Research project outputs will often be in the form of a thesis with findings and results, with information graphics or other media used to convey the information found. The outputs of other projects will vary. You can discuss what the outputs will look like, and when you will receive them with the lecturer in your initial meeting.

If circumstances change for you or your organisation please contact a member of staff on the Programme for Students Learning with Communities. We will assist you and endeavour to support the smooth continuation of your project should this suit the circumstances.

You do not have to be directly involved in marking the students’ work. You may be asked to evaluate or give feedback on the project upon completion but this will be at the discretion of you and the lecturer and will be discussed between you both in your first meeting. We would encourage your participation in this process if you are comfortable in doing so, should the lecturer determine it to be of integral value to helping to ensure that the students complete the desired learning.

When the project is over, you may be contacted to provide feedback and/or participate in a joint review of the project. You will receive outputs from the project at a time agreed in advance with both you and the lecturer.

If nobody selects one of your project ideas we will keep your ideas in our project database for the next academic year and check in with you during the summer months annually to make sure the ideas are still live.

Prior to the commencement of the project, you will meet with the lecturer to discuss this. Part of our mission is to connect TU Dublin City Campus students and staff to local, national and international communities by linking learning with real life application, for mutual benefit. This means that the desired outcomes of the community partners are equally as important to the project as the learning outcomes for students and teaching outcomes for staff. In addition, there is often a mid-point meeting with students where they present their developing ideas. This can be an opportunity to make sure students are still responding in a way that is useful to the organisation.

Yes - in fact as a consequence of Covid-19, more and more projects are based entirely online.