Sharing is learning

How can a University share its knowledge with community? 
Can the University learn from community?

These are the kinds of issues which the Community Knowledge Initiative opens up for debate, and every so often there is a concrete example to consider.

Last Friday, Dr. Padraic Kenna (see pic right) of the Faculty of Law, NUI Galway, was in Ballymun, Dublin to finally meet face-to-face the group of community volunteers, welfare staff, and local authority tenants whom he had been teaching via videolink.  Over the course of twelve weeks, the Ballymun Group had been patched into classes being taken by some 60 Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Civil Law students at NUI Galway.

Using the interactive video link, students on both sides of the country were able to interact with each other and with Padraic to discuss issues around the course content which was Housing Law & Policy.  Input and questions were insightful and informed from Dublin – the University students could hear the real life experiences of public housing tenants.  Rather than being isolated in a lecture hall surrounded by their peers, surrounded only by theory and text book examples, the law students based in Galway had a live link to the real impact of housing law and policy. 

On Friday, Pat Carey T.D., representatives of Ballymun Community Law Centre, CKI and the Law Faculty gathered in Dublin for the award of certificates of attendance to the students there.  For the full press release see http://www.nuigalway.ie/news/main_press.php?p_id=525