Innovation drives education sector response as Covid-19 challenges met head-on

Having survived and excelled during a most challenging period, Ireland’s leading education establishments showcased how they stayed ahead of the curve and made key improvements to core offerings that are sure to outlive the pandemic.

As one of the most important sectors to maintain throughout Covid-19, the Irish education community truly led by example by implementing a wide range of measures spanning facilities management right through to technology.

With more than 45 education institutes and organisations entering the Awards, the winners were announced during a live event at Clontarf Castle. It combined with a television broadcast enabling remote engagement by some 300 online particpants.

The Awards, now in their sixth year, were supported by Amárach Research and produced by BusinessRiver.

One of the trophies handed out on the day went to University College Cork. UCC’s president, Prof John O’Halloran, said: “At UCC, we are a diverse, dynamic and connected community. Our recent triple award success at the 2022 Education Awards recognises, validates and celebrates the impact of the individual and collective contributions our campus community of students and staff make every single day.”

Another winning institution was TUS.  “It was an honour for our project to represent TUS at the Education Awards,” said lecturer Marie O’Brien. “This was significant recognition of the innovative approach we have adopted in using team-based learning [TBL] pedagogy in TUS. We hope to further cement TUS as the leaders in TBL in Ireland when we host the Inaugural European TBL symposium in Athlone.”

Winners and finalists were sent clips of the live broadcast for use in their own social media and internal stakeholder communications. Observed Darragh Feiritéar, Head of Judging: “The awards were a remarkable achievement from a sector that had more change than almost any other to contend with over the last two years. Gathering as community to celebrate excellence in this manner was clear sign that educationalist everywhere met challenges head on and, quite possibly, have emerged stronger than ever.”

The 2022 judging panel

• Claire Cox, deputy head of the International Office, Griffith College
• Prof Willie Donnelly, president, Waterford IT
• Prof Graham Heaslip, head of the School of Engineering, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology
• Prof Colette Henry, head of the Department of Business Studies, Dundalk Institute of Technology
• Donal McAllister, international affairs manager, Institute of Technology Carlow
• Aine McManus, head of faculty, Graduate Business School, Griffith College Dublin
• Denise McMorrow, student experience manager, IADT Dún Laoghaire & co-chair, Unesco Dublin Learning City
• Paul Mullally, director, Education Lighthouse
• Gerard O’Donovan, head of the Faculty of Business and Humanities, Munster Technological University
• Dr Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin, project manager, LYIT (Atlantic TU)