The structuring of Higher Education in Europe is undergoing significant change. The emphasis of this change in Ireland is on the consolidation of Institutes of Technologies (IoTs) into regional Technical Universities (TUs). An aim of the Bologna Process is to create a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) with the objective of enhancing teaching and learning across European Higher Education, along with the promotion of learning mobility and mutual recognition of awards and study periods. These current changes within the Higher Education sector have put further focus on cross-disciplinary teaching and learning.

The context for this study is Limerick Institute of Technology (LIT), a university level college, spread across 6 campuses in Munster, Ireland. Programmes delivered range from first year undergraduate to doctoral level; other programmes include government funded labour activation courses, vocational education and training, and trade apprenticeships.

The specific focus of this study is LIT’s Faculty of Engineering and in particular the Department of the Built Environment. Within the Engineering Faculty and the Department of the Built Environment there is a strong tradition of collaborating on the development and delivery of cross-institutional programmes with other educational institutions, engineering professional institutes and bodies, and industrial stakeholders. The, Civil Engineering programmes have a multi-disciplinary teaching-learning environment (TLE) drawing from five major disciplines, namely, Management, Law, Economics, Design and Technology and as such form the basis for this action research study.

Aims, objectives and research question(s)

The aim of this study is to explore how cross-disciplinary teams can work together to enhance the teaching and learning environment (TLE) in civil engineering professional programmes (Entwistle, 2003). The objectives of the study are to

1. Explore how a cross-disciplinary academic team delivers the professional engineering programmes.
2. Identify how improvements can be made in the TLE for students and staff in higher education professional engineering programmes.
3. Develop a model for a cross-disciplinary connected curriculum that enhances the experiences of learning for students in higher education on professional engineering programmes.

The following overarching research question has been developed to guide the study:

How can a connected curriculum enhance the teaching-learning environment (ETL) for Civil Engineering students in Institutes of Technology in Ireland?

Theoretical Framework

Literature was drawn from three areas and points to an emerging conceptual framework of personal, professional and situational learning contexts in higher education.

Crossdisciplinarity, Teaching and Learning.

Professional Civil Engineering programmes are multi-disciplinary in structure. (Chynoweth, 2009; Tomek 2011). A cross-disciplinary academic team deliver these programmes to learners. Research has demonstrated that effective teaching and proactive learning (Perkins, 2008; Meyer &Land, 2006) can occur when the academic teaching team collaborate internally, with learners and external stakeholders (Entwistle, 2005; Entwistle & McCune, 2009). Connecting an effective cross-disciplinary teaching process to an effective multi-disciplinary learning environment develops life-long learning skills in the learner (Ross, Perkins & Bodey, 2016).

‘inner’ Teaching-Learning Environment (TLE)

Constructivist research by the UK Government into enhancing teaching-learning environment (ETL) in Higher Education suggest that students’ perceptions of the TLE are strongly influenced by a set of overlapping components that comprise of i) Staff-Student Relationships; ii) Course Contexts; iii)Teaching and Assessing; and iv) Students and Student Cultures (Entwistle, 2003; Entwistle &McCune, 2009). The ‘inner’ TLE acts as an organising framework when considering how to encourage students to engage more deeply with the subject and achieve a high quality of learning during their professional programme.

Connected Curriculum (Fung, 2017)

Fung’s work determines that a connected engagement across disciplines, between internal and external groups, maybe significant in developing and enhancing the learning experience of students.  There are six dimensions to the Connected Curriculum framework.

This research study adopts a relativist ontology with a qualitative multi-methods approach to the study design. It will focus on how individuals think and teach in a multidisciplinary academic team; therefore, it explores the meaning of people’s lived experiences of the phenomenon of thinking and talking across disciplines resulting in work practices that enhance the teaching-learning environments for undergraduate students studying on undergraduate civil engineering professional programmes. The ontology of the research design lends itself to an Action Learning Research approach; in this case informed by Zuber-Skerritt’s approach to doctoral research as a combination of an action research thesis and a separate action research project (2001; 2002). The ontological and epistemological foundations of this approach are based on phenomenological principles of exploring the lived meaning and interpretations of individuals in an education and profession social context. The design is further informed by extant literature on action research methodologies used to explore curriculum development in production management, (Coughlan and Coghlin, 2002; Coughlan and Graham Cagney, 2009), conducting action research in your own organisation (Coghlan, 2019) and small SME companies (Davey et. al, 2002, 2004). Procedures: In keeping with action research methodology the study will span a 4 year period incorporating three cycles of action and reflection in an iterative cycle, focused on the experiences of an inter-professional teaching team tasked with the delivery of a professional Civil Engineering programme. The anticipated procedures for this study will be an eight-step action cycle (Zuber-Skerritt, 2001) that may be repeated. Method for data collections and interventions will include workshops with faculty participants, focus groups with student participants, together with semi-structured interviews and feedback sessions between each action research cycle. Sources and types of data to be collected will be drawn from notes (field notes, diaries, interviews and workshop notes); narratives (own notes on research study, personal reflection journal, study protocols); programme and college information (programme design, policies, classwork, notes and materials, class lists etc), and documents (email and other communication, project and meeting reports, student docs/submissions). A map of the various types of data gathered will be captured in a spider graph as an effective approach when ‘exploring an idea without the constraints of an underlying structure or format’ (Graham Cagney, 2014). Other documentary data including EU policy documents, Higher Education Authority (HEA) policy documents and LIT institutional documentation will also inform this study and add to the data sets being created.

Results from the study will shed light on what is known about enhancing the experience of working in a multi-disciplinary academic team focused on the delivery of a professional engineering degree programme; contribute to knowledge on multidisciplinary professional curriculum design and development; and share insights on how creating a professional engineering programme based on a connected curriculum can enhance collaboration between industrial stakeholders, societal stakeholders and HEI’s in addressing some of the grand challenges facing society.

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