At the beginning of this year I became an Associate Faculty with the School of Computing at the National College of Ireland. The College augments it’s full time staff roster with experts from industry in a part time lecturing capacity. It provides an opportunity to share my 21 years of expertise delivering database solutions to clients with up and coming data scholars. It also provides a refreshing alternative to data consultancy during the working week.
Until recently the lectures had been face to face. As is the case with many organizations, given the events that have unfolded over the last number of weeks, “face to face” has been replaced by social distancing and virtual meetings.
Last Saturday was my first remote lecture with the students, and I found this to be a very positive experience, as did the students. However, this could not have been a success without support from the National College of Ireland team, whether demonstrating how to get the most out of Microsoft Teams and Moodle in order to promote student engagement, keeping tabs on how the remote lectures are going, or confirming how to manage year end assessments. So a big thank you to Pramod Pathak, Paul Stynes, Sam Cogan, Muhammad Iqbal, Isabel O’Connor and the rest of the team at the college. It’s great to be able to continue with business as usual – or as close as possible to that – despite these trying times.