About Cork Institute of Technology

Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) is a leading higher education institution based in Cork City on the south coast of Ireland. CIT and its antecedents have been associated with education in Cork and the broader region since the 1830s. The Institute offers a wide range of flexible full-time and part-time higher education courses (at all levels up to and including PhD) in art & design, business, engineering, humanities, music, maritime studies, and science & information technology.

The main CIT campus is located in Bishopstown, Cork. The CIT Crawford College of Art and Design and the CIT Cork School of Music are both located at campuses in Cork city centre. The National Maritime College of Ireland (NMCI) is located on the shores of Cork Harbour in Ringaskiddy.  CIT has a number of vibrant and successful research, innovation, knowledge exchange and enterprise support centres which have had many notable achievements, and have been successful in attracting Irish, EU and international funding. Among these are the Rubicon business incubation centre, the Genesis enterprise support programme, the NIMBUS research centre and the CIT Extended Campus.

The role of the CIT Extended Campus is to stimulate and support all forms of engagement interactions between CIT and external organisations / entities recognising that it takes time to build and develop the underlying relationships.   The unit acts as the interface to all of CIT regardless of what the request is.   So whether the company is interested in Graduate Formation (course development, work-placement, guest lecturing etc.), Workforce Development (recruitment, customised courses, work-based learning, recognition of prior learning etc) or Research and Innovation (consultancy, use of equipment, short research projects etc) the CIT Extended Campus is the starting point.  Closely linked to the CIT Extended Campus is the Enterprise Engagement and Experiential Learning (E3L) Research Group.

Role in the project

CIT operates as the research and evaluation partner for the VISKA-project. It will take the lead in mapping, needs analysis and the experimentation protocol and in data collection, analysis and reporting.

The team working on the project consists out of Professor Irene Sheridan, Ms. Deirdre Goggin, Dr. Rose Leahy and Professor Margaret Linehan. During the project, CIT hopes to accurately report on the work of the partners so that the outcomes could be generalised to other national systems in the area of the Validation of Prior Learning (VPL). This will build upon the research CIT has conducted at a national level on the validation of prior learning in higher education and the VET sector.

So far, CIT has learned that there is a huge diversity between the partners in terms of their role within the respective national systems. In addition, the interactions they have and with whom within those systems vary considerably across the consortium. The variety in definitions and understandings enriches the discourse around the project, according to CIT.

For more information on CIT, visit their website at http://extendedcampus.cit.ie or send them an e-mail at extendedcampus@cit.ie!