Irish Higher Education Institutions Research Articles

Longitudinal impact of an online interdisciplinary perinatal mental health module on Healthcare Professionals’ knowledge, skills, attitudes and confidence: A qualitative evaluation

Aim/objectiveThe current study aimed to explore the following research question; ‘What is the longitudinal impact, if any, of an online interdisciplinary perinatal mental health module on HCP knowledge, skills, attitudes and confidence’. BackgroundResearch suggests that one in five women/people will experience a mental health issue during the perinatal period. Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) play a critical role in identifying, supporting and referring those who disclose health or psychosocial concerns in pregnancy or after birth and consistent research findings highlight the need for appropriate targeted perinatal mental health education among this cohort. To address this need, a thirteen-week (Masters Level) interdisciplinary online module in perinatal mental health was collaboratively developed between one Irish Higher Education Institution and national mental healthcare specialists. The module aims to develop HCP knowledge, skills, attitude and confidence in sustainably supporting women/people and families experiencing perinatal mental health issues. However, a recent scoping review concluded that there was insufficient evidence with respect to the longitudinal impact of such courses on HCP practice. Design/methodsThe study design adopted a qualitative descriptive design that used online individual interviews for data collection. The evaluation was informed by the Kirkpatrick and Kirkpatrick Evaluation Model. The study group consisted of six voluntarily self-selected perinatal mental health module participants. Longitudinal impacts of the module were explored 8–10 months following module completion. Thematic Analysis was undertaken using Braun and Clarkes Framework. Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the author’s Higher Education Institution (HEI). ResultsFindings revealed several interrelated and reinforcing themes that had an impact on the longer-term application of enhanced knowledge, skills, attitude and confidence in practice. These were; pedagogical features of the interdisciplinary perinatal mental health education module, sociocultural and professional influences, persistent enthusiasm and commitment to improve care in spite of systemic obstacles and, ongoing need for perinatal mental health education. ConclusionsProvision of targeted, agile and manageable professional education courses on perinatal mental health care will continue to be required. However, despite sustained commitment and enthusiasm to implement enhanced knowledge and skills, systemic obstacles continue to exist and these may have an impact on the efficacy of such courses in the longer term.

Patterns of Sexual Harassment: An Intersectional Approach to Reported Victimization in a Campus Climate Survey of Students at Irish Higher Education Institutions.

This study explores how identifying with multiple minority groups relates to sexual harassment victimization (SHV) among students in higher education institutions in Ireland (n = 6,002). Results show that gender nonconforming and female students were more likely than males to experience SHV. Bisexual or queer and gay or lesbian students were more likely than their heterosexual peers to experience SHV. Students with a physical or cognitive disability were more likely to experience SHV than those who reported no disability, and white students were more likely than minority ethnic groups to experience SHV. When controlling for sexual orientation, gender, and disability status, students who identified as both gay and lesbian and reported a cognitive disability were 8.5 times more likely to experience SHV. Victims of SHV reported having lower scores on perceived institutional support items than those who had not experienced SHV.

Data collection and outcome measurement in student counseling services in Irish higher education institutions: Counselors’ views on challenges and facilitators.

With increasing concerns around student mental health, student counseling services (SCSs) in higher education are being challenged to show evidence of their contribution to the personal and academic development of students through evidence-based approaches including systematic data collection and standardized outcome measurement. This study aims to document data collection and measurement processes in SCSs in higher education institutions (HEIs) in Ireland and to explore the opinions of staff in SCSs on the feasibility and functionality of a standardized national database for SCSs to enhance robust data collection and measurement across the sector. Twenty-three interviews were conducted and thematically analyzed with staff in SCSs in 22 HEIs (85% of publicly funded HEIs). Findings revealed that the process of data collection in SCSs is mainly focused on individual counseling with variations among SCSs in collecting clients' demography, presenting issues, and clinical and educational outcomes. Lack of human and financial resources, no access to an electronic data management system, negative opinions about standardized outcome measures, and concerns over data protection and misuse of data were impeding factors for systematic data collection in SCSs. There is strong support among SCSs for the establishment of a national database which is facilitated by secured funding from the Higher Education Authority, a strong sense of community and trust among student counselors, and a history of data collection through the Psychological Counsellors in Higher Education Ireland association. Findings offer insights into challenges and facilitators for robust data collection and measurement at a national level. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Learning from Each Other: Comparing the Experiences of First-Generation Migrant, International, and Domestic Students at Irish Universities

Despite the potential for mutual learning, improvement of service provision, and the advancement of policy, research on first-generation migrant students and research on international students have remained stubbornly separate. This paper makes the case that education research would benefit from leveraging data on international students and that internationalization research and practice should more often include first-generation migrant students. To explore the benefits of this proposition, this article explores differences in the experiences of Irish-born domestic students, first-generation migrant students, and international students at Irish higher education institutions, using Eurostudent VI data collected in 2016. These comparisons show that first-generation migrant students report lower levels of preparation for the domestic labor market than both Irish-born domestic students and international students. International students are faring well on other indicators too, as they report higher levels of academic satisfaction and feeling more prepared for the international labor market than both first-generation migrant students and domestic students. Results also suggest that the academic satisfaction of the three groups of students is shaped by both common as well as divergent factors, indicating that interventions aimed to support each group may require additional tailoring. However, limitations of both quantitative and qualitative approaches to documenting the experiences of international students need to be considered as findings from this study and similar studies are used. By comparing the experiences of the three groups of students, this paper highlights the experience of first-generation migrant students, often overlooked in international higher education studies.

The Role of Community-Engaged Learning in Engineering Education for Sustainable Development

This paper presents the positive experience of facilitating over 300 community-engaged engineering projects at an Irish higher-education institution. The projects are framed by a research orientation, a commitment to civic engagement, and building university–community partnerships, city–university partnerships, and partnerships with other official agencies, so that community users can provide real learning problems and contexts for students and researchers and benefit from the results. The paper highlights how well the outlined approach fits with the ideas of engaged scholarship and civic professionalism, and facilitates sustainable development. Students recognise the long-term value of engaging with community partners, understanding their future role in the community as engineers, reinforcing the idea that their work can respond directly to real needs in the community, while promoting the sustainability agenda at the same time. The approach presented in this study will not only enable the development of future models for embedding sustainability in engineering programs, but will also equip future engineers with transferable skills to ensure that sustainable development goes beyond university courses and is practiced every day.

Blurring the distinction between the researcher and the researched: Doing Collective Memory-Work online in Covid times

Collective-Memory Work (CMW) is a method of research and learning that relies on a group working together on a topic of shared interest. It aligns with other qualitative approaches such as participatory and feminist research methods, collaborative auto-ethnography, narrative inquiry, and emancipatory adult learning. In CMW participants write short stories from their own memory on a theme agreed in advance. The stories are subsequently scrutinized by the group via detailed textual analysis and recursive discussion. Due to COVID restrictions in 2020, a planned CMW workshop at an Irish higher education institution had to be delivered online. The purpose of this case study is two-fold: first it provides an overview of the CMW approach and how it is implemented in practice, detailing the concrete activities carried out in the workshop. Second, the case study provides insight into running a workshop of this kind online, and the perceived benefits identified by participants of adopting such an approach. We argue that CMW generates an egalitarian group dynamic, encourages active listening, and enables the co-creation of textual analysis in a spirit of collectivity and mutual respect. We suggest that CMW is a versatile method that can be usefully deployed within and beyond academic settings.

Engagement of International Students at Irish Higher Education Institutions

Existing research paints a mixed picture of how international students fare academically following a transition to a host higher education institution. Most studies that have examined differences between domestic and international students’ engagement treated international students as a homogenous group. Less evidence is available on the experiences of international students from different regional groups. Drawing on Irish Student Engagement Survey data, this article explores the extent to which international students’ engagement differs from that of their Irish peers, and whether there are differences across regions of origin. The findings indicate that while international students are highly engaged compared to their Irish counterparts, regional differences persist when the data were disaggregated. The paper is of potential interest to policymakers and higher education institutions, offering insights into how the provision of services and supports to international students could be better targeted.

Eportfolio in Ireland: A landscape snapshot of current practice

This article reports on a study that explored eportfolio practice in Irish higher education. The aim of this research was to gain a landscape snapshot of eportfolio practice and technologies across Irish Higher Education Institutes (HEI) and to address a gap in the literature that there is little empirical evidence about how Irish HEIs engage and adopt eportfolio in practice. The project adopted a mixed method approach and was framed by two research questions: RQ1: What are the features of eportfolio practice in Irish higher education? RQ2: What are the experiences of Irish higher education practitioners in adopting eportfolio? Data was collected from seventy-nine participants from a range of Irish HEIs using an anonymous online survey. The four central themes that make up the study’s findings highlight key issues related to institutional engagement with eportfolio including features of eportfolio practice; technology underpinning eportfolio practice; enablers of eportfolio adoption and barriers to eportfolio adoption. The findings of this study indicate that Irish teaching staff use eportfolios with their students primarily for assessment, reflection, to support placement experiences and to develop student employability skills. There was also evidence that staff are using eportfolios for personal and/or professional purposes. Furthermore, it is particularly noteworthy that hardly anyone in the study reported evaluating their eportfolio practice. In addition, our findings indicate that the implementation and adoption of eportfolio by Irish HEIs has been quite uneven, the majority of institutions were reported to be at the early stages of adoption. While this study provides useful insight regarding the institutional and staff perspective, the research team do acknowledge that the student voice was not captured in this instance.

Academic Satisfaction of International Students at Irish Higher Education Institutions: The Role of Region of Origin and Cultural Distance in the Context of Marketization

Internationalization of higher education has increased the diversity of the student body at higher education institutions. There is evidence that the experiences of international students vary according to their region of origin, but trends on a larger scale remain underexamined. Drawing on Eurostudent VI data from the Republic of Ireland, this article investigates how academic satisfaction varies between students from different global regions of origin and from national settings with distinct cultural distance characteristics. Results suggest that international students have higher levels of academic satisfaction than Irish students, but that differences between students from diverse regions of origin persist. In addition, international students originating from a national context with high power distance, irrespective of levels of individualism, have higher levels of academic satisfaction compared with Irish students. Furthermore, self-perception of being a detached customer rather than an equal partner in education has the strongest association with academic satisfaction, suggesting that commercialization trends affect both international and domestic students.

Exploring the potential of digital teaching portfolios to support in/non-formal professional development for those who teach in Higher Education

It is broadly recognised that professional development (PD) to enhance academic practice amongst those who teach in Higher Education (HE) encompasses a range of approaches; while there is an established culture of accredited PD provision – particularly for early-career academics – literature points to a preference among more established faculty for non-accredited or informal PD activities such as workshops, projects, conferences, professional dialogue, experimental approaches or activities related to the scholarship of teaching and learning (Ashgar and Pilkington 2018; Kálmán et al. 2019; Spowart et al. 2017). The provision of accredited PD is now commonplace in the Irish context and many Irish HE Institutions offer programmes in academic practice at Graduate Certificate, Diploma or Masters Level (Maguire et al. 2017; Maguire et al. 2015). However, evidence also points to a long-standing culture of engagement in in- and non-formal PD activities among Irish HE teachers (Kenny et al. 2015). This has been recognised in the Irish National Professional Development Framework which is underpinned by an ‘acknowledgement of the spectrum of activities that could be considered under the umbrella of PD’ (National Forum 2016a; National Forum 2016b). Thus, a considerable amount of the professional learning that is undertaken to enhance academic practice takes place through experiential or work-based practices including communities of practice, conversations with colleagues and practice-based innovations (Knight et al. 2006; Nerantzi 2015; Warhurst 2008).
 Furthermore, there is a growing body of literature highlighting the use of portfolios to support academic professional learning activities and reflective practice in Higher Education (Costelloe et al. 2019; Hamilton 2018; Hoekstra and Crocker 2015; O'Farrell 2007; Pelger and Larsson 2018). Described as ‘a purposeful collection of evidence, consisting of descriptions, documents and examples of what is good teaching for the teacher’ (de Rijdt et al. 2006, p.1086), portfolios are being used in multiple ways to support PD: to provide evidence of a quality approach to professional development, to document teaching practices for the purposes of promotion, to showcase and reflect on academic practice and to provide evidence of engagement with PD activities. An eportfolio adds an extra dimension to the affordances of a more traditional portfolio through the potential inclusion of multimedia artefacts such as audio, video and text to capture, share and reflect on academic practice. 
 Bearing in mind the Irish HE context and the recent introduction of the National Professional Development Framework, this paper will explore the potential of eportfolios – and specifically digital teaching or professional practice portfolios – to support, document and evidence the wealth of non-accredited and in/non-formal professional learning undertaken by HE teachers to enhance academic practice. Drawing on semi-structured interviews carried out with Irish HE teachers in three institutions in the Mid-West region, this paper will consider how digital teaching portfolios offer a space to capture, evidence, reflect on and share the wealth of practice-based and in/non-formal PD in which HE teachers engage.

Navigating unChartered waters: anchoring Athena SWAN into Irish HEIs

ABSTRACT The UK Athena SWAN (AS) Charter was extended to Irish Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in 2015 to provide a catalyst for change towards gender equality and to transform institutional cultures, through AS Gender Action Plans. This paper charts: the journey of Athena SWAN to Ireland; its rate of adoption by Irish HEIs; and its impact on the sector. Drawing upon the perspective and contribution of Trinity College Dublin, as an institutional case study accelerator, the paper examines some prevailing critiques of the Athena SWAN Charter and demonstrates how some of these shortfalls have been overcome in the Irish HEI sector, most notably through linking Athena SWAN awards to sectoral and research funding.

The disconnected: COVID-19 and disparities in access to quality broadband for higher education students

The COVID-19 pandemic forced many higher education institutions (HEIs) across the world to cancel face-to-face teaching, close campus facilities, and displace staff and students to work and learn from home. Given the persistent nature of the pandemic, many HEIs have continued to deliver courses online and/or use a blended learning approach. However, there are concerns around differences in student access to digital learning resources while at home, including high quality broadband connectivity. This is important, since variation in connectivity may impact the type of online/blended model that faculty can deliver or constrain student engagement with online content. In this context, this paper combines national data on the domiciles of students enrolled in Irish HEIs with detailed spatial data on broadband coverage to estimate the number of higher education students ‘at risk’ of poor access to high quality internet connectivity. Overall it finds that one-in-six students come from areas with poor broadband coverage, with large disparities by geography and by HEI. It also finds that students from the poorest broadband coverage areas are more likely to be socioeconomically disadvantaged. As a result, this paper recommends that HEIs use their detailed registration data to help identify and support at-risk students. In particular, the results suggest that some HEIs may need to prioritise access to campus facilities and services to less well-off students living in poor broadband coverage areas.

Developing a Practical Framework of Sustainability Indicators Relevant to All Higher Education Institutions to Enable Meaningful International Rankings

Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) sustainability assessments are receiving significant attention in the academic literature, with ever more complex grading and ranking systems being developed. This paper aims to provide national policy makers with a simple set of indicators to facilitate measuring progress towards sustainability for the HEI sector, within the context of national sustainability data collection efforts. Candidate indicators were identified and assessed from the two most subscribed to HEI sustainability assessments, namely, the UIGreenMetric and STARS, to develop a sector specific indicator set. This resulted in a final set of 12 indicators, covering on-site energy, greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste, water, travel, education, research, and governance. The proposed indicator set was then compared to publicly available data for Irish HEIs, to identify gaps in data collection, which found that direct campus energy use and associated Scope 1 and 2 emission data alone were collected with sufficient rigour. The described indicator set has the potential to be applied to guiding national sustainability transitions globally and offers a template for accelerating sustainability data collection efforts for the HEI sector.

The Internationalisation of higher education in Ireland and its impact on language policy: a qualitative document analysis

This paper studies the effect of internationalisation in Irish higher education on the language element of policies and strategies, and provides an insight of the current approaches towards language in higher education. The author explores the language-related trends over time in national public records, as well as the current linguistic targets reflected in European, national and institutional strategies by means of Qualitative Document Analysis (QDA). The evaluation shows a shift from the focus on inward mobility and the efforts for meeting international students’ linguistic needs, to an internationalised higher education system that requires the expansion of outward mobility and domestic students’ linguistic repertoire. Although Irish higher education institutions (HEIs) present the perfect context for becoming leaders in linguistic internationalisation practices, the scant consideration given to language in institutional strategies together with the lack of explicitness in existing national strategies result in language prevailing as a major issue for both, international and domestic students.

Badge of honour? An exploration of the use of digital badges to support a partnership approach to faculty development

This article describes a professional development initiative facilitated through a transformational partnership model. In this context, we discuss our experience of piloting an online continuing professional development course in the area of online teaching, which offered a digital badge for successful participants. The course was the result of a partnership between three Irish higher education institutions and a national agency that had initiated a nation-wide scheme to create and disseminate a range of open access collaborative professional development courses to promote the professionalisation of teaching and learning, with a specific digital badge being available for each course. We investigated the interplay between the digital badge issued for the course we piloted, and other potential intrinsic and extrinsic motivators. Digital badges appear to be a weak motivating factor in initial enrolment and engagement, although for some participants, they did motivate continued engagement and completion. We discuss implications in relation to internal and external drivers and motivations around professional development. We also offer reflections on the larger context in which badges might be used or valued by course participants in their professional environments.
 Implications for practice or policy:
 
 For digital badges to motivate learning, educational developers and institutions need to associate them with intrinsically meaningful rewards.
 Partnership between higher education institutes and non-accrediting bodies can drive the development and wider acceptance and use of digital badges as a tangible and agreed currency of learner and learning achievement.
 Learners benefit most from digital badges when they are linked to and facilitate the development of personal identities associated with disciplinary and professional communities.

‘You’re thrown in the deep end’: adult learner identity formation in higher education

ABSTRACT For many adult learners transitioning into higher education is an intense experience that challenges their sense of themselves. This article reports on a study that examined the discourse of thirty-four undergraduate adult learners at the start and end of their first year in two Irish higher education institutions. The study focused on participants’ evolving sense of who they were in the new educational context and how they incorporated this new adult learner identity into their existing identity portfolio, their overall sense of who they are. The key finding in this discursive psychology analysis of interview data was that participants engaged in two interrelated forms of identity work across their first year: constructing an identity formation narrative, about becoming adult learners; and ongoing, day-to-day identity management. The study illustrates how these adult learners experienced varying degrees of identity struggle, which had to be minimised if they were to maintain a consistent and coherent sense of themselves.

Measuring the mathematical problem solving and procedural skills of students in an Irish higher education institution – A pilot study

In 2010 the Irish second level mathematics curriculum underwent a period of significant change when a new mathematics curriculum was introduced. Some preliminary research has been carried out into the impact, if any, that this mathematics curriculum is having on students mathematics performance which have suggested that students’ procedural skills are declining year on year however their problem solving skills may have improved (Treacy and Faulkner 2015). Additional research in this area also highlighted that students willingness to engage in problem solving activities may have improved (Prendergast et al 2017). However preliminary analysis on the impact of the reformed mathematics curriculum, if any, on students’ performance in higher education noted that further research was needed in this area to definitively establish what is happening. This research therefore aims to explicitly determine whether the procedural and problem solving skills of beginning undergraduates are changing over time as a result of the reformed mathematics curriculum introduced in second level education. A paper based diagnostic test designed and developed is used in an attempt to determine this. This paper will detail the piloting of this diagnostic test with a group of higher education students in the Irish context.

The path to professorship: reflections from women professors in Ireland

The under-representation of women in senior echelons of the academy is well-documented internationally. In the Irish context, the issue of gender equality has reached the active policy agenda relatively recently, largely triggered by a number of high profile lawsuits and the subsequent setting up of an expert review panel and a gender equality taskforce, both issuing landmark reports [HEA 2016. National Review of Gender Inequality in Irish Higher Education Institutions. http://hea.ie/assets/uploads/2017/04/hea_review_of_gender_equality_in_irish_higher_education.pdf; HEA 2018. Higher Education Institutional Staff Profiles by Gender. July. http://hea.ie/assets/uploads/2018/01/Higher-Education-Institutional-Staff-Profiles-by-Gender-2018.pdf]. Data on the barriers women face moving through the entrepreneurial university have slowly emerged, with now a more sophisticated understanding of the gendered nature and impact of neoliberal values and managerialist practices. But what of those women who do make it to professoriate level? What do they identify as the key enablers which facilitated their progression? Part of a national study of women professors in Ireland, in which 21 women, three in each of the seven universities nationally were interviewed, this article is based on the narratives of 10 women located in faculties of Social Sciences and Humanities, all of whom had made strategic choices not to engage in leadership/management roles. Three key themes were generated during the analysis of their testimony: the importance of academic mentors, sponsors and networks which helped position them for advancement; the value these women placed on research rather than management/leadership tracks; and the strategies they employed in order to reach the level of full professor.

Attendance policies on university language degrees: exploring attitudes, and measuring relationships with performance and progression

ABSTRACT This paper explores the attitudes of undergraduate language learners and their lecturers towards the introduction of an attendance policy in an Irish Higher Education Institution. It also analyses the relationship between the introduction of this policy and student performance (average grade) and progression (pass rates). The policy was introduced on a pilot basis on thirty core language modules delivered on first or second year undergraduate programmes. They consisted of language modules in German (beginners and intermediate), French (intermediate), Spanish (beginners and intermediate), Chinese (beginners) and Japanese (beginners). The findings suggest predominantly positive attitudes towards the attendance policy among both staff and students. They also indicate a positive impact on performance and progression in some modules, in particular first year beginner languages where attendance has been an issue in the past. The paper considers the implications of these findings both for this field of research and for practitioners particularly in university language learning contexts.

Determining Textbook Cost, Formats, and Licensing with Google Books API: A Case Study from an Open Textbook Project

The rising cost of textbooks for students has been highlighted as a major concern in higher education, particularly in the US and Canada. Less has been reported, however, about the costs of textbooks outside of North America, including in Europe. We address this gap in the knowledge through a case study of one Irish higher education institution, focusing on the cost, accessibility, and licensing of textbooks. We report here on an investigation of textbook prices drawing from an official college course catalog containing several thousand books. We detail how we sought to determine metadata of these books including: the formats they are available in, whether they are in the public domain, and the retail prices. We explain how we used methods to automatically determine textbook costs using Google Books API and make our code and dataset publicly available.