SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE TRINITY COLLEGE NATIONAL COLLOQUIUM
SPEECH BY PRESIDENT MARY McALEESE AT THE OPENING OF THE TRINITY COLLEGE NATIONAL COLLOQUIUM AT THE ROYAL HOSPITAL KILMAINHAM
I am delighted to be with you this morning here at the historic Royal Hospital in Kilmainham. It is a particular pleasure to be in the company of people whose company I was in not long ago in another life, when I was a member of QUB’s Teaching and Learning Committee, which was dealing with the very issues that you are dealing with at this colloquium.
It is marvellous to see the whole area of teaching and learning - and the relevant policies and practices – being dealt with in partnership between the universities. It gives everybody an opportunity to share wisdom, insights and skills – and to develop a more unified approach to the kind of challenges that we face as we approach a new millennium.
Nobody would doubt that we have come through a period of unprecedented change, especially over the last two decades, which have dramatically impacted on many facets of life and society – and none more so than on education and they way we deliver that service. Universities have opened up to a wider catchment area of students – with greater access for the deaf and the disabled, for mature students and for people whose circumstances dictate a different approach in terms of availability and access.
The new curricula and the new demands mean that we have to look closely at the training of staff – the re-tooling and re-skilling of the deliverers of education to work with the new teaching methodologies. People are able to deliver lectures from Belfast to Armagh - from Armagh to America – using very different techniques. The old ‘chalk and talk’ doesn’t work anymore, and there’s a considerable degree of professionalism in mode of delivery.
On a number of occasions this year I have spoken about the contribution which education has made to bringing us to where we are today – of the way we have been able to meet changing demands in providing specific education geared towards meeting the needs of the many new industries that have located in Ireland – and at the same time keeping a balance with the more traditional academic education and basic research which has been the foundation of our education system.
Today, we have a prosperous country that boasts of a ‘tiger economy’ that is being driven by a new breed of self-confident people, well educated and well equipped to take on the best. We have an education system that has proven very capable of addressing the needs of this new society. The secret to success in achieving that has been in its preparedness to change – to alter course rapidly to meet shifting requirements – and to provide continuous education to cope with the demand for re-education and ‘re-skilling’ that is now an essential pre-requisite for staying ahead.
Some months ago I visited a new training facility at the Dublin Dental Hospital and saw the latest virtual laboratory which has enabled student dentists to move to a more practical-based training regime and away from the purely theoretical. The ‘lesson’ for me in that exciting and adventurous shift was that the new and emerging technologies, for whom we are educating so many, will themselves impel us to look and look again at how we deliver the service of education – and to continually critique what we do as educationalists – at our clients and our methodologies – to see if there is a better way.
We already hear of how the new digital communications facilities will open up access to unmanageable numbers of TV channels coming into our homes – of how it will soon be possible to have internet access, interactive TV, video conferencing and telephone communications on one service line. It seems just a short leap in imagination to reach the stage where we will be talking seriously about the virtual classroom – and looking at new concepts of delivery of information and education.
The lesson in these developments is that, on the one hand we should be looking to apply the emerging facilities to what we are doing already - but perhaps more importantly, we should be prepared to re-examine what we do to see if there are now better and more effective ways of achieving the same results – or of getting even better results than are currently ‘dreamt of in our philosophy’.
Over the next two days, in the various interactive sessions you will be looking at innovations in teaching and learning – and looking at the management of change in the field of education. As I said earlier, it was the preparedness and ability of the education establishment – the politicians, the public servants, the schools, the colleges and the universities – to review and critique how they were meeting the needs of a rapidly changing society that was the secret of its success. As internal advocates or seers for the future, you are the people who are expected to have the foresight to see what’s coming next – to prepare the university in terms of skilling and tooling its lecturers and its teaching staff.
You are preparing the groundwork within the university so that it makes the right kind of investments in the future – even if it is in such basic things as plugs for ‘laptops’. You have to be able to read the future so that the university is ready for it – and to engage in lobbying and advocacy inside the university, which as we know can at times be notoriously hard to shift. Just as research is being measured in the UK – so too is teaching becoming more amenable to quality assessment. These new departures are also putting their strains on.
So not only do you have to look at pedagogical techniques, you also have to be concerned with issues to do with depth and profundity of quality of teaching. These too are difficult issues to sell to fellow members of staff, because they also mean more pressures.
In declaring the Colloquium open, I want to wish you well for an enjoyable and stimulating two days – with the hope that you will find much food for thought and action in the months and years ahead.
ENDS