CIRCLET Guide for Facilitators: Online Continuing Professional Development Module on Embedding Community Engaged Research and Learning in Higher Education Curricula

This guide contains all the resources needed to implement a postgraduate Continuing Professional Development (CPD) module for lecturers who wish to build, or enhance, community engaged research and learning (CERL) projects in the modules they teach, as part of the Higher Education curriculum. CERL (or service-learning, as it can be known) is a high-impact activity in Higher Education (Kuh, 2008), increasing student engagement and learning. CERL also supports community goals, and makes teaching more interesting for lecturers. This module is designed to build capacity among participants for CERL, including developing relevant knowledge, skills, attitudes and values. Our approach to this module aligns with CERL as a pedagogy, which involves authentic, experiential learning, driven by collaboration and engaged participation, and underpinned by reflection. This innovative postgraduate online module, on reimagining and redesigning modules/courses to embed CERL into the curriculum in Higher Education, was developed as part of the CIRCLET Erasmus+ Strategic Partnership project. The module work was led by TU Dublin, with significant support and inputs from the CIRCLET project team. There are three parts to this guide. Part 1 introduces the CIRCLET project, the module, the pedagogical approaches and resources required. Part 2 summarises each of the 9 session plans and part 3 contains the detailed session materials.