Category / Art/Arch/Culture

by shannonchance

Father Al and the Internationals

The chaplaincy of Dublin Institute of Technology, Fr. Alan Hilliard, Susie Keegan, and Suzanne Greene the administrative assistant, assist DIT’s visiting students, who come from all around the world. The chaplains organize trips and events in addition to providing helpful advice and pastoral assistance. 

So far this year, I’ve helped out with two events they organised–a trad music event at the back room of the Cobblestone pub, and a day trip to Glendalough national park and ancient monastic city.

by shannonchance

The Talented Don McClure Presenting at Maynooth University

As a young researcher, Don McClure lived in my Dublin flat while he was collecting data for his PhD. Now that he’s finished his project, and earned his doctoral degree, he’s working as an Assistant Professor at St. John’s University in New York.

Recently, Dr. McClure was selected to present his findings at a conference held at the School of Education at Maynooth University.   Today was the big day, so Aongus and I headed out to the institution bright and early to hear Don speak.

Both presentations in his session were superb, and afterward we had a chance to chat with Don over coffee.

As Don headed back to his sessions, Aongus and I went out into the day, to explore the campus.

Turns out, it was graduation day and the chapel was open to the public. What an amazing site!

I realized immediately that this was a significant design. Turns out, indeed one of a kind. The University’s website states:

Built between 1875 and 1891, this Chapel has 454 carved stalls, making it the largest of its kind in the world. 

The place reminded me of the wooden theater in Parma, with a Hogwarts sort of mystique. What a treasure!

The webpage is well worth a read.

by shannonchance

Dublin’s Botanical Garden in its Autumn Glory

img_5149-1The Dublin sun shone again today, making the Botanical Garden ideal to visit. The Victorian-age green houses, sprawling green lawns, and falling leaves drew crowds of enthusiastic park-goers. We strolled the paths, viewed plants from around the world (including many sorts of Venus fly-trap), enjoyed the sensations and colors,  and played in mountains of leaves.

img_5164Then, Aongus and I took a break in the Garden cafe for lunch, and wrapped up our trip to this part of town with a jaunt into the adjacent Glasnevin Cemetary for a stroll, a history lesson, and coffee (with his beloved “coffee slice”). By sunset, when we left the Cemetary, the gate back into the Garden was locked, so we took the side exit out, beside The Gravediggers pub and stopped in for a pint and a half of Guinness.

I’m the half pint!

by shannonchance

Research Methods of Forensic Engineers

 Catherine Simpson is here at DIT tonight describing the research she does as a Forensic Engineer. You can also call her an expert in thermal modeling and a Building Services Engineer.

She can make digital models of buildings and predict their future energy performance. She can also go into a functioning building to identify, analyze, and rectify errors in thermal performance. She says that very often, buildings do not end up performing the way experts predicted. These are skills she uses:

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Catherine says Forensic Engineers must avoid using clues as if they were actual evidence (of the problem and its causes). These are clues: complaints, anecdotes, consultant reports, BMS data, ad hoc solutions, staff theories, and staff observations. On the other hand, these are useful forms of evidence:

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Catherine models problems digitally and physically. She also develops theories that she can combine to test her theories:

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Catherine gave an example of a shopping mall that had a very windy atrium and a very steep heating bill. No one could identify the causes of these problems. But after six years experiencing these problems, the owners called her in.

With careful analysis of data she collected (using dozens of different routes, including studying air flow by blowing bubbles in crowded spaces where smoke tests couldn’t be used) she identified a number of problems. One was a poorly placed rotisserie oven that was triggering vents to open. Another problem was that the building controls “thought” the building’s vents were completely closed when many were only partially closed.

Catherine devised a £50k solution to closing the vents in winter that is saving the owner £60k every month, in heat alone. There were reduced wind drafts and reduced tenant complaints. She says it saved about £500k in capital and restored people’s confidence in the facility.

Here’s one tool she uses to measure air speed:

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She also uses thermal imaging to study air infiltration, like so:

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We use this kind of technology in our Energy Cube project. This is a picture from that class last week:


Catherine’s work involves fixing problems and also providing expert witness testimony. Forensic engineering seems fascinating! Catherine is a veritable Nancy Drew.

Forensic engineering, she says, is like a jigsaw. You’re given clues, you find evidence, simulation gives context, you test theories, and ultimately prove a solution. She obviously loves her job!

by shannonchance

Research Methods of Philosophers

Philosophy symposium 1

Philosophers sometimes use primary documents in ways not much different from the historians I mentioned in my previous blog. According to Yale:

Primary sources provide first-hand testimony or direct evidence concerning a topic under investigation. They are created by witnesses or recorders who experienced the events or conditions being documented. Often these sources are created at the time when the events or conditions are occurring, but primary sources can also include autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories recorded later. Primary sources are characterized by their content, regardless of whether they are available in original format, in microfilm/microfiche, in digital format, or in published format.

For historians, primary documents include photographs, letters, news clippings and the like. For philosophers, I’d say they could include original texts where an idea first appeared in written form. As a social science researcher, I myself am collecting audio-taped testimonies of female students who have first-hand experience of first-year engineering education. All three of these examples–philosophy, history, and social science research–involve high levels of interpretation of documents, ideas, and stories contributed by others.

Whereas my historian friend, Cecilia Hartsell, is investigating phenomena that include both the 1916 Uprising as well as the return of soldiers from WWI, my colleagues in philosophy spent a recent weekend discussing the phenomena of intentionality and normativity. These historians and philosophers seek to understand the context of events and ideas arising in the past, and what the authors of various documents meant at the time they spoke, or wrote.

 

february-workshopI joined a group of philosophers for a February 19-20, 2016 seminar that explored various aspects of phenomenology. The event was hosted by the School of Philosophy at the University College of Dublin but held at Newman House, on Saint Stephen’s Green in Dublin.

Attending the seminar, I learned much more about phenomenology. I also learned more about the way philosophers think, study, generate new knowledge and new understandings, communicate with each other, test ideas, and seek to uncover the complex meanings embedded in writings by philosophers throughout the ages.

I am indebted to Prof. Dermot Moran and Dr. Elisa Magrì for inviting the public to their event so that I could attend, and to DIT’s new PhD student, Diana Adela Martin, for notifying me about the event.

Much of the discussion focused on phenomenology, which is both a philosophy and a social science research methodology. I’m currently using the methodology to study women’s experiences of STEM education, and will submit later this week a manuscript on another phenomenological research study of teachers’ experiences working together to implement Problem-Based Learning at Dublin Institute of Technology.

Related to experience, I must admit that visiting Newman House was an exquisite one. In this house, John Henry Newman founded University College Dublin (originally called the Catholic University of Ireland). I believe that he later became a cardinal and was beatified by the Catholic Church, despite the fact that his views did not always match the official sanctioned interpretations of the Church. Today, one can visit Newman Houses on campuses world wide, like the one I attended while a student at Virginia Tech. I’ve attached photos of the formal entry hall at UCD’s Newman House, for your enjoyment. I got so caught up in discussions at each coffee break that I never made it all the way to the lovely formal garden behind the house. Maybe next time!

by shannonchance

Research Methods of Historians

Cecilia Hartsell, an inspiring historian and PhD candidate conducting research here in Dublin, chaired a workshop on Saturday (February 27, 2016) to help people learn about the use of primary documents in research conducted by historians. This was one of six separate events Cecilia is organizing to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1916 Uprising that eventually garnered Ireland’s independence from British rule.

The event was held at the Pearce Street Library (a street named for one a hero of the 1916 Uprising) included a keynote lecture by a historian from Trinity College Dublin named Brian Hanley, tea and coffee, a short talk on the evaluation and usefulness of primary documents by Cecilia Hartsell, and time for participants to work in small groups to study primary documents related to the uprising. In the end, each group presented its findings and we discussed what we’d learned.

I’m looking forward to Cecilia’s upcoming events!

by shannonchance

Using Architecture Design Studio Pedagogies to Enhance Engineering Education

Shannon Chance IJEEI’m celebrating the publication of a new journal article today, with the help of Sally O’Neill. She’s one of the librarians here at DIT, and she secured permission and posted the article on DIT’s website, making it free for you and anyone else to download.

The publishing process is glacially slow. I submitted the paper in March 2014, based on a conference paper delivered in 2013. And here I am, in February 2016, with the final publication finally in hand.

Many time, in research, it takes time to see the results of your work. Seeing this in print helps make all these days, sitting at a computer analyzing text, feel more worthwhile. Once I can see that people are downloading it, and once I start getting feedback and citations in other people’s research papers, I’ll celebrate some more.

I know what I’ve learned through this research is useful, because I get to apply it in the classroom and in the design studio. The rewards of printed research are more slow to crystallize but also extremely important, especially for people who want to gain credibility in research and build a career around research.

This new article, written with the help of John Marshall in Michigan and Gavin Duffy here in Dublin, is about Using Architecture Design Studio Pedagogies to Enhance Engineering Education. Simply put, we believe that design education and hands-on forms of learning can help improve the quality and experience of learning in engineering and other STEM disciplines. The results reported in this paper provide support for that claim.

To give you a feel for what I’m describing, this is how we learn in architecture:

PhD student Mafalda Panheco.
Lots of group work!
First year architecture presentation at ISP.
Fourth year projects at IPS.
Fourth year projects at IPS.
Fourth year projects at IPS.
Second year work.

Above are pictures from design studios in Lisbon at IST and one for a study abroad program  offered by Hampton University. Very, very hands-on!

These days I’m helping promote similar ways of teaching engineering, which looks similar in many respects:

Michael inserting the thermal sensor into one team’s cube.
Second place team, also from DIT.
One of the cubes heating up (powered by an incandescent lightbulb).
Finishing up the lighting test.
Fionnuala advising an Energy Cube team.
This team built a geodesic dome for their Energy Cube.
…some things…
DIT student Shane Ormonde invented a robot just for the event.

These are photos from electrical and mechanical engineering projects I’ve helped conduct at Dublin Institute of Technology.

This brand new article is about a specific design studio, conducted at the University of Michigan, that blurred the boundaries distinguishing art and science. It involved students and teachers from architecture, materials science engineering, and art+design working together to design and build “SmartSurfaces.” The paper reports learning outcomes — things the students learned in the  class — as illustrated by the blogs they posted during the semester. Here’s a glimpse of what that experience was like for those students:

For this new paper, I created a matrix to describe design behaviors in relationship to epistemological development (which has to do with how we view knowledge). I compared what the students wrote in their blogs to the definitions in my chart. Doing this, I was able to identify development of design skills as a result of students working in groups, and I even pinpointed some instances of epistemological development. John and Gavin helped check the work so that it would be more credible and reliable. They offered perspectives of insiders in the studio (John) and outsiders interested in group-based learning, Problem Based Leaning (PBL), engineering education, and epistemological development (Gavin).

This article should be of interest to any teacher who wants to help students develop new design, design thinking, or epistemological skills. Please feel free to read it and email me any questions you have, at irelandbychance [at] gmail [dot] com.

Chance, S., Marshall, J. and Duffy, G. (2016) Using Architecture Design Studio Pedagogies to Enhance Engineering Education. International Journal of Engineering Education Vol. 32, No. 1(B), pp. 364–383, 2016.

by shannonchance

Maria Carreira’s PhD viva on Learning Spaces in the University Context

Maria's viva 5What an honor to be part of the day a young scholar gets her wings, so to speak, by earning her PhD! Last week I travelled to Lisbon to attend the viva (i.e., PhD defense) of Maria Alexandre Bacharel Oliveira Carreira. I had met with Maria on both of my two prior visits to the Instituto Superior Técnico at the Universidade de Lisboa. I really enjoyed watching her work unfold.

This time, I was a member of her evaluation panel. I curled up with her thesis each night while I was in Brussels. Preparing for this panel event took many hours for me–but it took five years for Maria! During that time Maria gave birth to two children, but that didn’t slow her down much. She kept plugging away at her research.

She conducted extensive analysis of spaces that support teaching and learning. The title of her dissertation (which in Europe is called a thesis) is In-between Formality and Informality: Learning Spaces in University Context. The European term “viva voice” (meaning “live voice”) is so much nicer than the term “dissertation defense” used in the States.

Maria's viva 00After 2.5 hours of presenting her work and answering questions–posed by the panel of 6 experts (I myself had 40 minutes to talk about her work and ask questions of her)–Maria and her many family members and friends who had come to the event left the room. The panel discussed the merits of the work, deliberated, then invited Maria and the crowd back into the presentation room to pronounce her a PhD with distinction. We all went for a celebratory luncheon in the afternoon.

Once Maria has submitted the final version of her thesis, I’ll try to post a link. In the meantime, you may be interested to read two of the articles I have written that have to do with topics in her thesis.

The first is about how the design of school buildings can enhance learning and help us achieve environmental sustainability:

 

Chance, S. and Cole, J. T. (2014) “Enhancing Building Performance and Environmental Learning: A Case Study of Virginia Beach Public Schools ” City Public Schools. Book chapter from the book entitled “Marketing the green school: form, function and the future.”

The second is about university buildings. It also discusses how buildings can promote learning, by serving as examples, modeling values, and getting people engaged. It’s about environmental sustainability and how LEED has become an example of organizational learning (i.e., a big organization that effectively learns from past experience, using it to improve future performance):

Chance, S. (2012) Planning for Environmental Sustainability : Learning from LEED and the USGBC , Planning for Higher Education, Vol. 41, No. 1, Oct-Dec, 2012.

by shannonchance

From Lockdown to Lisbon

Lisbon 1Over Thanksgiving week, I was part of a panel to evlauate EU grant applications. These events are normally held in Brussels, and since the flight and accommodations were both cheaper starting on Saturday, I flew in early. Suffice it to say, I arrived just in time for the lockdown. Our evaluation activities were not held in person as a result, but nevertheless, our  panels conducted all the necessary meetings using online tools. We successfully completed all our evaluations on schedule, using software that I believe was to be implemented in January in any case.

The highlights of my time in Brussels are captured in the attached photo gallery, which includes a gratuitous cat photo to mark Brussel’s cat postings on Twitter. The authorities asked citizens not to post info on their activities, so the folks in Brussels posted fun pictures of their cats’ activities during the lockdown, including quite a few PhotoShopped images just for fun. I didn’t have any time free to PhotoShop, but I Tweeted this cat photo in solidarity.

The view from my AirBnB.
One nice little lunch out…
…at a Moroccan tea house.
I thought the lockdown was for the birds!

After spending a full week indoors–evaluating work, attending online meetings, submitting reports, reviewing and approving reports, finalizing and submitting my own grant proposal to Science Foundation Ireland, and finishing my read of a PhD thesis (what we in the USA call a dissertation)–I was more than ready to hail a cab to the airport and fly off to Lisbon.

The sunshine, good cheer, and fabulous food of Lisbon were so very welcome after a cold and lonely week alone in Brussels. I’ve attached a gallery of snapshots from Lisbon and, in a post to follow, I’ll tell you about the thesis evaluation panel I attended there.

by shannonchance

Ful-ly Oriented as a Fulbright to Ireland

Fulbright Ireland recently welcomed a new cohort of incoming scholars. The orientation program included lessons in Irish language, culture, politics, and economics, in addition to general tips for organizing life and getting around.

The staff of Fulbright Ireland invited me to come share my experiences as a Fulbright Alum, and so I attended my third orientation for incoming scholars. I much enjoyed my own incoming session in 2012, and was happy to give a short talk for the incoming scholars in 2014 and 2015. In the past, I’ve also attended orientation sessions for the Irish Fulbright scholars headed to the USA and served on an evaluation panel to help select Irish awardees in engineering.

I always enjoy hearing about the fascinating research projects our Fulbrighters are doing, and the experiences they’ve had getting here and settling in. A list of the current Fulbright scholars who have come from the US to Ireland, along with a brief description of each project, is available on the Irish Fulbright website.

I also enjoy hosting Fulbright scholars at my own home now and then. Currently, I’m hosting Amanda Wagstaff, who earned a BA in Art and Art History from the College of William and Mary (on the very same day I earned my PhD there). She went on to earn an MFA in Studio Art from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. As the recipient of a Fulbright award for current and recent students, Amanda is researching Celtic Christian monasticism and text/art objects at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. Amanda maintains a beautiful website of her artwork that I encourage you to visit.

I’ve shown photos of the day–including taking the DART from Connolly Station (pictured) and the orientation sessions conducted at the Institute of Public Administration.