The aim of the Curriculum Innovation through Research with Communities: Learning circles of Educators and Technology (CIRCLET) project is to strengthen the capacity of higher education, especially educators, to improve learning outcomes for students by redesigning curricula to incorporate Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL), including using blended and online approaches. The project will support educators to redesign their courses so that students can do curriculum based engaged research projects in response to the expressed needs of community organisations. The project will simultaneously enable students and educators to make a positive impact on society via engaged research projects which respond to community need whilst better linking higher education with research, innovation and real world learning. Project objectives are: - Building educator skills and confidence and reflective capacity for CERL, through both accredited and informal learning and mentoring. This will take place through inter- and intra-institutional learning circles, Learning Teaching Training Activities (LTTAs), and an online Continuing Professional Development (CPD) module; -Redesigning academic curricula to enable more students to do more and higher quality CERL, including increasing the use of online and digital resources; -Disseminate intellectual outputs and activities through project website, multiplier events, conferences, publications and extensive national and international networks of partners and beyond, to increase impact, particularly with educators and those in CERL support roles. The project is based on learning circles. Partner universities will call for proposals from educators who want to redesign their academic courses to include CERL. Educators will be given support to redesign their course and will work with and learn from each other by participating in a cross-university reflective learning circle. Learning circles will connect transnationally via online meetings, and in-person meetings at two LTTAs where educators will be encouraged to collaborate on transnational publications as a professional development activity. The CPD module cohort will form another transnational learning circle, using e-learning platforms and digital resources to support high quality interactions. Reflection will be embedded into all these learning circles to maximise impact. The project will build on the skills and experiences of five university partners, including three research intensive universities from Belgium, Hungary and the UK; a newly established Technical University from Ireland; and an established internet centred open university from Spain. All partners work with local community organisations to develop research topics and then provide a brokerage service to academics and students across disciplines to support them to do this research in the curriculum, mainly via Science Shops (See: www.livingknowledge.org). The project includes both established CERL partners and relative newcomers, from both academic and non academic backgrounds. Partners also bring expertise in a range of areas relevant to the project objectives, e.g. learning circles (HU), policy (UK), CERL resources (IE), science communication (BE), and e-learning and digital expertise (ES); and deep connections to local and global networks. Building on the core activity of redesigning courses via national and transnational learning circles, the project will produce a series of resources for educators in the digital era. These include Guidelines to support educators to redesign their modules to incorporate CERL (IO1), Examples of local CERL practices (IO2), Learning circles to redesign curricula for CERL (IO3); an online CPD module on embedding CERL in curricula (IO4); Interactive CERL resources (IO5). In order to spread practice more widely, partners will support educators to develop transnational peer reviewed papers, and will submit proposals to relevant conferences. Partners will also use their extensive national and international networks to both ensure the usefulness of intellectual outputs and to share them widely. This project approach benefits local communities and universities whilst increasing capacity for CERL amongst educators and students. Outcomes will include at least 30 revised academic modules and 50 upskilled educators. During the project, over 1000 students across Europe will actively engage with society and improve their competences and employability. Society will benefit via the production of relevant research for at least 30 community partner organisations, thereby furthering the goals of these local communities and disadvantaged groups. Innovative practices will be developed within the partner universities which will create a culture more supportive of CERL.The long term impact will be enabling many more educators and students to do more and higher quality curriculum-based projects with communities in the future across Europe.
We established three objectives at the start of the CIRCLET project. The first was to build educator skills and confidence and reflective capacity for CERL, through both accredited and informal learning and mentoring. The second objective was to support educators to redesign academic curricula to enable more students to do more and higher quality CERL, including increasing the use of online and digital resources. The third objective was to disseminate and share our intellectual outputs and activities through project website, multiplier events, conferences, publications and extensive national and international networks of partners and beyond. We wanted to increase the impact of our work through targeting both lecturers and educators who were interested in CERL, and those in CERL support roles who may want to build professional development for lecturers into their own work. Through these three objectives we also wanted to further develop our own skills and resources for our work in supporting educators to do CERL, learning from each other and our participants.
The CIRCLET project focused on building educator skills and creating resources to underpin the educator role in curriculum-based Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL) projects. The CERL approach builds collaboration between community partners, educators and students to co-design and tackle small scale applied research projects to address community goals and enhance student learning. The CIRCLET consortium includes 4 partners who already have extensive experience of CERL and one who was at early stages of development and wanted to explore CERL in their own institution. The CIRCLET project built on previous EC projects EnRRICH and PERARES. These projects focused on redeveloping curricula so that high-impact and high-quality CERL projects could be undertaken. However educators who participated in them were often not confident in their own skills and there was a lack of resources to underpin and support the educator role. CIRCLET addressed this gap by working directly with educators in the 5 partner universities to build their skills and confidence. Out of this, we developed resources for both educators themselves and for educational developers and CERL staff, and shared those resources with a wider network of actors.