Just down the street from Notre Dame’s O’Connell House, the DIT has its Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC). The LTTC is housed in a building to the left in the photo below:

Upper Mount Street, home of DIT’s Leaning, Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC).

The DIT has a fabulous and unique policy that every newly hired faculty member must complete a certificate program in Learning and Teaching in the first two years of employment at DIT.  Their teachers actually study how to teach. Part of what I’ve been doing here is researching outcomes of this policy and of the LTTC’s work.

The LTTC has contributed in incredibly valuable ways to the learning that goes on at DIT as well as in Institutes of Technology all across Ireland (there are 14 in all, and DIT is the flagship among them). You can read about professional development programs in these Institutes in a (free) book by Fitzpatrick and Harvey called Designing Together.

In fact, I’ll be teaching a course in May at the LTTC. It’s about using PBL (as in hands-on, group-based, project-driven approaches to teaching) and it’s for people who teach at the college level.  I’ll post more information about the course content soon.

I’ve included some photos from my recent visit to the LTTC to work on planning the class.

I visited the LTTC Friday, to prepare for a course I’ll teach in May.

The LTTC does a top notch job with professional development.

I’m also researching outcomes of its programs and policies.