The Pelars Project

The Sun shines on DRS 2018!

DRS 2018 kicked off on Monday June 25th with the ‘PhD by Design’ session which was held in the Limerick School of Art and Design. The day began with the ‘messy introductions’ where an image of our PhD would appear in random order and when it appeared on screen you had 90 seconds to explain…

Designing for STEM officially launches in CIT

The Designing for STEM team at the Nimbus Research Centre, CIT are delighted to announce an exciting new ‘Designing for STEM’ programme which was launched on Monday, May 21st, at the Nimbus Research Centre, CIT. The programme was officially launched by Dr. Orla Flynn, Vice President External Affairs, CIT and Trish Brennan, Head of Fine…

What problems do teachers face when preparing learning material for the classroom?

I have engaged in preliminary groups discussions with STEM teachers to discuss the STEM curriculum in Irish Secondary Schools, the problems they face with completing the curriculum and the teaching methods they use. The main problem that occurred time and time again was time constraints on the teachers – they don’t have time to delve…

Revisiting and rethinking the structural elements of a Community of Practice

Over the past two months I have been busy working on writing a paper which I have now submitted to NordiCHI 2018. This paper is titled “Revisiting and rethinking the structural elements of a Community of Practice”. This paper describes a multi-phase study I conducted which I will briefly describe below. Phase 1 of the…

‘CIT initiative promotes technology to students’ – Cork’s Evening Echo

Thanks to Darragh Bermingham of the Evening Echo for a great article in yesterday’s Evening Echo newspaper about our new ‘Designing for STEM’ initiative! The aim is to engage students in STEM subjects through project-based learning using digital and non-digital materials. We are hoping to connect with more secondary schools going forward so if any…