Conference Agenda

Higher Education (HE) career professionals play a significant role in supporting students to explore their career options and to find meaningful work. This poster presentation describes a D.Ed.study at Trinity College Dublin that explores if and how AI-augmented learning can enhance the employability outcomes of non-traditional pathway students.

The study seeks to identify how and if career educators can leverage the potential of AI in their professional practice to enhance the employability outcomes of both bachelor and post-graduate students.. It seeks to understand how careers educators perceive the benefits and challenges of integrating AI into their professional practice and to understand the perceptions and challenges faced by non-traditional student cohorts in accessing and developing AI-related career skills. Most importantly, it seeks to find if non-traditional pathway students cohorts find AI-augmented careers learning to be beneficial and generate positive outcomes.

The study employs a case study approach in the D. Ed. student’s work place, a HE College of Business. The research questions, design and early research findings are presented, in the context of implications for practice and policy. Early findings include World Cafe outcomes with EMEA business school career educators and AI-based behavioural assessment simulations.

The podcast format in education offers a flexible and effective alternative format for presenting content (Conroy & Kidd, 2022) and evidence suggests podcasts can effectively support the development of a community of practice (Begum, 2023). The Unlocking Universal Design for Learning (UDL) podcast series was developed to nurture the existing UDL community of practice by extending practice sharing beyond face-to-face and online presentations. In addition, the podcast complements existing digital resources by offering an alternative format to engage in professional learning thereby modelling a key aspect of the UDL approach, specifically presenting content in multiple formats.

This poster presents the process of developing and launching the podcast and initial feedback from users. The poster offers insights for colleagues working in academic development, the specific area of inclusive practice and universal design and the design and development of podcasts for professional learning.

References:

Begum, S. (2023) “Using podcasts to create an online community”, Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education [Preprint], (29). Available at: https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi29.1118.

Conroy, D., & Kidd, W. (2022). Using podcasts to cultivate learner–teacher rapport in higher education settings. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 60(6), 861–871. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2022.2102528