Fellow, Lecturer, School of Enterprise Computing and Digital Transformation

Email: Lorraine.Carmody@tudublin.ie

Lorraine is a full-time Lecturer with over ten years’ experience in the Department of Computing, Tallaght Campus, and has been involved in designing, developing and delivering modules and programmes in full and part-time mode, for minor, major and special purpose awards. She coordinates the Bachelor of Science IT Management 3rd year project and experiential modules.

 

A career development programme for students to develop transversal and personal skills

 

The fellowship sought to establish a career development programme to develop transversal and personal skills, improve social media presence, prepare professional CV’s and be successful at interviews. This would be achieved by providing learners with relevant industry/enterprise events, talks, seminars, webinars and workshops and to encourage students engage directly with enterprise. the opttion of one-to-one mentoring with Enterprise. was investigated and students were also provided with the opportunity to complete an industry recognised credential (e.g., CCNA or AWS Cloud Practitioner) to demonstrate experiential learning. A pilot programme to design, develop and implement an IT Industry Certification (e.g., IT Risk Fundamentals from ISACA) was also investigated.

 

The Student Transformative Learning Record (STLR) was also introduced into the module and practice. This is a learning initiative that allows students to gain formal recognition for learning experiences gained inside and outside the classroom (e.g. for Class Assignments that their lecturer has assessed, attendance at campus events which are tagged for transformative learning and creation of reflections based on part-time working and/or volunteering

 

The project commenced with research into existing frameworks and best practices in the domain of Work Placement/Experiential Learning across TU Dublin internships to identify possible commonalities, synergies or other beneficial processes and information. The findings were that there were no undergraduate programmes delivering Industry Certifications as part of Experiential Learning across the University in part time mode.

Investigation was carried out into online Career Tool applications with focus on CareerPlus which is provided by the Irish Computer Society (ICS,2021). A meeting was held with eight Y2 part time student who were encouraged to become members and complete their Career Profile and Career path. This will be further assessed in September 2022.

 

A Career Development programme was developed with an External Consultant and piloted with a group of 10 students. The results and feedback was very positive: A hybrid approach was designed for the delivery of the AWS Cloud Practitioner Certificate was offered as an option to eligible students. A number of Industry talks, and events were hosted and a joint programme was planned to take place in TU Dublin Tallaght campus in June ’22, with ISACA to deliver the IT Risk Fundamentals to staff, students and enterprise.