Audio Episode 16 - Kathy O'Reilly on experiential learning and being an undercover sherpa

Hi, I'm Joe Houghton, and this is the +1 Podcast. My guest today is Cathy O'Reilly, and Cathy is an academic fellow of CMC Global, the professional organization for certified management consultants. She's assistant professor and director of the master's programs in management consulting at UCD Smurfit. And before Smurfit, Cathy had a successful consulting career with both GE and PA Consulting. And if that isn't enough, she's close to finishing a doctorate in education, which I think we'll probably hear about a little bit more in a bit. I was looking back, and Cathy and I have been colleagues and friends for over 15 years now because we just had our 11th wedding anniversary, and you came to our wedding, Cathy.

I did.

So, we knew each other well before then. So, it's been a while, hasn't it? We're both doers. I think, and I think that's one of the reasons that Kathy and I have always got on. We kind of approach our educational pursuits around preparing students for the careers they're wanting to access. Kathy's obviously management consulting, mine project management. Kathy's programmes are horrendously popular. I think Kathy's programme is one of the fastest-growing Masters in the whole school at the moment, and it's grounded in real-world contact. It's informed by research and academic rigour, but also the significant consulting experience that Cathy brings to the teaching. And, you know, it's been reflected. Last year Cathy was awarded the Teaching Excellence Award at Smurfit. She's a previous Dean's List Outstanding Teacher. You know, there's not many educators who've had both of those awards at Smurfit. In your 2-word description of you that I ask everybody to give me before the podcast, Cathy, you describe yourself as passionate and engaging. So let's start there. Is passion an important attribute to bring to teaching? And does— do you have to be passionate to be engaging?

I think absolutely. But before that, can I just say, can I have you follow me around everywhere and introduce me like that to like every room I go into? That would be amazing. So thank you very much for that lovely introduction. But yeah, I think passion is really important because I think, you know, if you think about walking into a classroom as you and I do so often, or I know lately it's been on Zoom, but When you put yourself in front of a group of people like that, you have to be— you have to have that passion. You have to really want to be where you are, and you have to have that excitement about what the next hour or 2 hours or 3 hours is going to entail. Because, you know, we've all been on the other side of the classroom. We've all been students in classrooms, and we know that the educators we think about who stick with us for a really long time, maybe even from grade school, from secondary school, are the ones that you feel that passion from. They ignite that little something in you because they bring it. They bring it with them. And that's always with me. It's like, you know, you know, you psych yourself up a little bit before you go into the classroom.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't know if you— if the comparison is like an athlete before a big game or if it's, you know, an actor. I remember when I was first hired at UCD, the professor who hired me, the late Jim Crowley, who was such a wonderful man, one of the things he said at the time was, we think you're a good performer, so we think you'll be really good as a lecturer because really lecturers, we're all just kind of, you know, frustrated actors. We're all performers and you need that performance element. And he was like, we really think you can bring that with you. And that's something that's always stuck with me, obviously, even though that was way back in 1994. It really stuck with me because I think we are— we bring that. You need to bring that energy because we really— There were a lot of parallels, I think, with performing when you're teaching, because you want to bring that energy and that feeling. You want to connect with the people who you're talking to. And I think if you don't have that passion, it's not going to happen. You can't make— you can't build that connection and really be an engaging educator.

That's really interesting. And it puts me in mind of something that Lolly Mancey, who I interviewed back in, I think, the 3rd or the 4th episode a little while back. And she's one of the entrepreneurial specialists with the Innovation Academy. And she was saying that her teaching style has changed over the years. And she stopped performing consciously to try and be more authentic because she found it exhausting to have to perform all the time. And I know that kind of, you know, teaching is tough, isn't it? Because you are out there and you are putting yourself out there. But, and yet I still find that, you know, I ring Penny before a class maybe and, you know, are you ready? And I said, yeah, yeah, I'm on in 10 minutes. And it's like that, isn't it? You're in the wings and you're ready to go on stage, you're ready to perform. It doesn't necessarily, I think, mean you're not being authentic to yourself. You're not bringing it.

I think there's a difference to be made there, you know, differentiation between performing and acting. Like, we're not Pretending, you know. So yeah, performing, I guess. And I hadn't thought of it that way before until just now. But it's like, it's not that you're pretending or put, you know, it's that you're bringing that energy. It's bringing that energy to what you're doing. So I think it's performing in that sense. And I know there's a lot of criticism at the moment, or kind of talk about this idea of edutainment.

Yes.

You know, what, are we there to entertain our students? Are we there not It's not that we're entertaining them, but we are— we do want them to be interested. You know, we want to spark their interest. We want to keep them engaged. We want to keep them listening and learning while we have them in the classroom. So I see your colleague's point about, you know, if you overperform, but that's— that to me would be more like if you're pretending, if you feel like you're pretending or you're acting, like that's not the— like I'm not pretending.

That was the word. That was the connection I'd missed. Thank you for that. 'Cause that's now linked it. Yeah.

Yeah. 'Cause see, 'cause, You know, I think it's that idea that, you know, we're bringing our authentic, our authentic selves into the classroom. But that's also because for you and I, Joe, it comes naturally. You know, at this stage, it's a natural— it comes naturally. But at the same time, we have to get ready for it. As you said, you know, we have to prep ourselves or to get the game face on. We have to really be ready. And you're like that. You're like, oh, I'm on in 7 and a half minutes. I have to— Um, so I think that's the difference there, that It's not performing for the sake of performing or to again bring that pretending element. The authenticity, I think, is there. But in terms of really connecting and engaging with the people who you're talking to and getting them to really come on board with what you're saying, it's making that connection. And that connection is a lot easier to make when they want to listen to you, I think.

Yeah, that's, that's great. Well, that, well, that segues beautifully into, into kind of the first Question, and this is kind of, how do you see your role as an educator? So you're bringing you and you're bringing your experience, both academic and commercial and stuff. How do you bring that to the students and talk about that?

My focus as an educator, if you want to be all official and academic about it, you could say I come from the social constructionist view. That every learner in that classroom brings their own experience and their own lens into the classroom. So you have all these different people from different backgrounds. And yes, they're coming to learn a topic from you, or, you know, they're all there for the same module or the same program or whatever. But every single person brings their own individual kind of flavor to it, their own way of learning, their own way of thinking that could be influenced by their culture, by their background, where they studied before. And for me, getting it— walking into any classroom, whether it's undergrads or postgrads or exec ed or corporate training, whatever it is, we have to be very aware of, you know, who we're talking to and that we have this real mix of people and learning styles. And for me as an educator, it's about how can I present this group of people with a topic in a way that they can relate to and in a way that they can learn from.

Yes.

But it's very much— it's not like, you know, I'm there as the know-it-all expert just talking at them and saying, here's all the things you need to know about consulting. I see it much more as I'm there to facilitate their own learning. And the way I talk about it, especially when I bring in some of the experiential learning techniques and methods that I use, the way I explain it to my students is that, you know, I'm there to guide them. I'm not going to tell them what to do or how to do it, but I'm going to help them and guide them through the process. So I think the metaphor I use a lot is that I'm like a Sherpa.

Yeah, I love this. I love this. I hadn't heard this one before.

Yeah, I found that. I was doing some research for my doctorate. I found that analogy. I'm like, whoa, that is so me. That is exactly my style of teaching.

You don't look like a Sherpa.

I try not to. I try not to. I'm like an undercover Sherpa. But no, I'm a Sherpa. And what I say to them is, you know, I'm not going to climb the mountain for you. I'm going to show you where the path is, and I'm going to do my best to make sure you don't fall off the cliff, you know. So it's—

Yeah.

Getting them there, supporting them along the way, but it's not doing it for them, you know. It's their learning experience, and they're responsible for their own learning in that way, you know. But I'm definitely going to create an environment that's going to help them to learn, if that makes sense. So it's about that creating the environment and facilitating the learning rather than You know, just me talk to them and saying, here's what you need to know, write it all down in your notebook kind of thing. Although that happens a little bit at undergrad teaching, doesn't it? So sometimes when you're teaching undergrads, like, they write down everything you say.

Yeah, as if it's like tablets from the mountain. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

Yeah, so you gotta really entertain them. That's more about entertainment probably when it's undergrads. But definitely it's that, you know, I'm facilitating that learning because they're all bringing their own experience. They're all gonna learn in a different way. But they're all going to be engaged in that learning process, and they're definitely going to learn from it. At the end of that process, they're going to be different from when they started the process. And that's my view of my role as an educator.

Before we started this today— and I'm going to come back to something you just said about 2 minutes ago in that little segment— but before we started today, we were talking about imposter syndrome. You know, you were saying, why do I want you on the podcast? Because I don't do anything innovative. And, you know, one of the things that I've discovered over the last couple of years as I've started to look into T&L, teaching and learning, is that experiential learning and the application of experiential learning isn't common. It should be.

Mm-hmm.

in the literature as best practice. And, you know, it's a really good way to get people involved and learn and scaffold and frameworks and all that kind of stuff. But it doesn't seem to be common.

But you've always—

and I've always done it.

I know. And that's the thing. Like, we've always just— it comes, you know, of course we teach that way. Doesn't everybody?

And then you soon realize—

No, they don't. And but I think that's part of who you and I are, Joe, as you said earlier, like the way that we both have We have backgrounds in industry. The programs we teach are very much focused on particular careers.

Yes.

Like, there's a lot of talk at the moment about higher vocational education. So higher education having that more vocational element to it, because a lot of times people come to us at the Smurfit School because they want to get that specialist experience that will help to lead them into a career, to make a transition into a career as a project manager. a project manager or a management consultant, right? So for us, I know that comes very naturally, but you can see that it's not the same for all educators. And that's actually one of the reasons I started on my doctorate in higher education. Like, I knew that the way I taught was a good way to teach, you know? Like, I mean, I'm like—

You knew it inside, but you wanted some validation.

It's working really well here, but you kind of, you do take it for granted when it's something you've done for so long. You're like, oh, that's, Isn't that how everybody does it? And then you realize, you know, this teaching with real-world projects and having those links with industry and bringing industry into the classroom, like my whole thing at the moment, the whole, you know, the area I'm studying is about, you know, bringing that workplace learning into the classroom instead of like farming our students out on internships to get those practical skills. Why can't we help them get those practical skills along with the academic knowledge that they're acquiring, right?

Okay.

So you and I, we naturally think like that, I think because of the experience that we have had. So coming back from bringing that experiential lens to what you do, But, you know, it's not an easy thing. And I think where the imposter syndrome comes in is that when you've been doing something for a really long time and you develop a real affinity in doing it, you know, you're good at it and you know that you're good at it, you kind of— because it's easy to you, you assume it's kind of easy for everybody else. And that's where the imposter syndrome comes from. It's like, why would Joe want to talk to me? I just go in and I teach, you know. But you forget, like, okay, no, but actually what I'm I am teaching is a little different, and the style is different, and it's a really effective way to help our young students develop their kind of pre-professional identity and get a feel for what is it like to be a project manager? What is it like to be a management consultant? How will I do that if I— when I leave university and I work as a project manager, what are the kind of things I'll have to do? And it gives them that confidence so that when they transition into those roles, they perform a lot better, they transition a lot more easily, and they kind of hit the ground running, as cliché as that sounds, and they perform better.

Yeah. So I'm hoping that the people who listen to this podcast and watch this podcast are mostly educators who are looking for nuggets. How can I improve my own practice? How can I do something? So will you just walk us through one of your company projects? You know, because that's your experiential learning in action, isn't it? And, you know, whether it's the master's one or the MBA ones or whatever, but just walk us through how you set it up, what the parameters are, and how maybe, you know, somebody who's never done one of these things before and is terrified by even the thought of this would even start to look at doing this.

Yeah, it can be very daunting, absolutely. And I think what you need to have going in is you need to have a strong network. And again, yourself and myself, I think because of the industry backgrounds we have, we bring a strong network with us, a quite wide network of company contacts and people in industry and things like that. It is important to have a network, but we'll talk about more, more on, more on that in a second. But you have to think about where am I going to get these projects from?

Okay.

So you think about, okay, how am I going to get these companies on board? Now, I've been obviously, you know, I've been running these types of projects for a long time, so I have a great pool of companies that I use and come back to me each year. And then we get the word of mouth out there that I get emails from companies looking to get involved. Okay. So for example, if we take the MBA capstone projects, you know, there are a number of companies who we've worked with year on year, and then we get word of mouth. And then I put the word out there a bit to my network of contacts to say, if you'd like a team of students, we can do so. So that's the first step is making sure you have some pool of companies that you can access. Back when I first started doing this with my community engagement course at undergrad level. I just worked my personal network. I reached out to friends and family. Does anyone know a charity who'd like a team of students to work with them? And that's how that started up, you know. So just think about that. So first step is where can you find the companies? You can also go to local organizations, your local entrepreneurship office, or your— some local small business support network that might— you might have locally, right? Or the Chambers of Commerce.

Yeah, I reached out to Small Firms Association a couple of years ago, and they gave me like 10 companies, bang, you know.

That was great. Thing people don't— I think some academics don't realize how keen, or some educators don't realize how keen companies are to work with students. Like, they really are. Like, if you give them that opportunity, they jump at it. I've very rarely, if ever, had a company say no. And if they ever had said no, they have this idea of, oh, we're just too busy, we can't take on a team of students. And they don't realize that actually the students will really help them if they take them on. But anyway, so there you are, you get your network, you reach out to company, you find your companies. The next piece is to know what you need from your project. What's your timeframe? Okay, so for example, for my Master's in Consulting students, the big projects they do are a full semester. So as you know, that's 12 weeks plus the reading break, it's more like 14 weeks. So that's a fairly substantial project. The MBA capstone projects, they're 6 weeks.

Okay.

So that's a smaller project. So make sure you manage the scope. So think about when you talk to the companies that they're clear on the timeframe.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. So that's really important. And then have them fill in some kind of document that can help you understand what they're looking for. So you need to have that filter. So first is your network. Second, you're clear on the timeframe that you have available and how many projects you need, of course, right?

Yeah.

And then the third piece, you need to have some kind of filter in there so that you can have a look at what are the projects they need? Are they appropriate? Do you need to tweak them a little bit?

Mm-hmm.

And then that creates your nice pool of projects.

Yeah, that scoping piece early on is really important, isn't it? That's my first hand-in when I do these types of projects. 2 weeks in, the teams have to have an agreed scope, which I then review and say, this is too big, or this is too small, or whatever.

Yeah. And what I do, I do a little bit of that with the companies first.

Yes.

There's a little bit of scoping done initially, and then the teams finalize the scope. And again, with the 14-week projects, the scoping document is due no later than week 5, because like I say to them, I'd rather you put loads of time into the scoping document, like even 4 weeks of the project, you know, to have a really, really clear scoping document. Because that's your blueprint then, as you know, Joe, that's the blueprint then for the rest of the project. You're not going to go off track. You're going to be really clear what you need to do. The clearer you are about the scope, then you can do your work breakdown structure. Then you can figure out your, you know, you have your Gantt chart going, whatever you need. So that's going to help you along the way. I said, and because again, What I find, and you probably see it too, Joe, is that a lot of times the teams just want to jump right into the project.

Oh, yes.

You have to rein them back a little and say, hang on a minute.

Planning is useful. Absolutely. So, I mean, the fear factor. So, okay, so we've got a timeline, we've got scoping and stuff like that, but I'm letting 9 or 10 companies come in and interact with my student teams. What if everything goes wrong?

That's what I used to, but it really, it doesn't go wrong though, as long as you have the controls and the communication in place. Occasionally I have had to switch out a project at the last minute, but that's nearly always on the client side because maybe the person who I originally negotiated the project with all of a sudden leaves the company.

Yes.

And no one else wants to take it up. We had that happen with one of our charity projects for my undergrads a few years ago. And then the reverse of that, there was another client that even though they were a charitable organization, or if they're one of the fairly big, well-known charity, and they were like killing my students, they were— their expectations were just ridiculously out of whack, despite what I had spoken to them about before. And they were just putting way too much pressure on the students and expecting them to do way too much.

Yeah.

We kind of had to take a step back and say, look, you know, this isn't the right kind of project for you. Maybe we can help you do that with another group of people. But for this, we need to do something different. So You know, it's— if there is a problem, it's usually on the client side, and the only way you can manage that is through communication. But you can't always even manage it, even with the best communication. Things happen, people change, the strategic priorities of the organization might change. But to be fair, it's very rarely on the student side that those problems happen.

And if that kind of thing happens, presumably you mine that as a learning— as a learning point, do you?

Yeah, you see, well, what, you know, what happened? You know, will we use that company again? Like, is it that there was just a little blip? You know, why was that? Was there a miscommunication somewhere? So you do, you try to do your learnings about it to say, okay, how can we stop that happening again? But it really, it's genuinely, Joe, it's so rare that we have to pull a project back or that there is an unsuccessful— well, unsuccessful, how do we define success in a project, right?

Well, yeah.

But unsuccessful for whom? But there's very rarely a big project shakeup like that, like a big, like, insurmountable hurdle or roadblock or whatever.

So you did GE and PA consulting before you kind of came in and started teaching as a professor. But you mentioned charities there and social enterprise and stuff. So that's one of your undergrad modules, isn't it? What's charity got to do with business?

Yeah, that's a good question. It's a great way for students to learn. So there's a whole movement all about community-engaged learning. And we actually have a great group at UCD called, you know, all about community-engaged learning and teaching.

Yeah.

And it's a wonderful way to help universities to give back to the community while their students learn at the same time. So the course I run is called Service Learning. And it's about doing a business project for a local nonprofit or charity. And the great thing about that is that, as we know, the charitable sector is under so much pressure at the moment. There have been a lot of, you know, there's been a lot of impropriety within the charitable sector that has really affected the whole charitable sector. We know that donations are down because of COVID We can't have people shaking their buckets on Grafton Street anymore and getting donations. So they've had to kind of switch to digital in terms of donations.

Yeah.

There's been a lot going on in the charitable sector. So to get a team of students working with a local charity to maybe help them make that switch to digital, to help them connect with their end users or their stakeholders more effectively, it's amazing. And it's amazing what students can do. And what I often get is because it's undergrad, like my undergrads will say to me, you know, what can we do to help this charity? This charity, you know, how can we help them? But especially over the past few years, what a lot of charities need help with is social media. What do undergrads know about?

Social media.

So it's the perfect matchup, really. It's the perfect matchup. And they just help them to understand different social media platforms, which ones should they use, how do they connect, how do they say, you know, how do they navigate that whole social media environment. And it's been really, really effective and really helpful.

And what's the student's response when they're presented with this as a challenge, as an opportunity? What do you normally get from them? Fear?

Initially, it's, what can we possibly do to help this charity? Because it's also, they're like working with people they haven't met. It's an elective, so we get students from all over the place. And it's also on the— it's open to a lot of students outside the business school as well. So, you know, you get a real mix of young students and it's always, How are we gonna help this charity? But then once they get to know the charity— so on the first day I explain here all the charities and the types of projects they need help with, and then they think, oh, I could maybe help them with that. Oh yeah, I could do an audit of their website. I could help them figure out, you know, a cool hashtag campaign to raise awareness for their fundraiser next month. So they grow in confidence, and then I'm there each week in class to help them through the process, you know, to say, okay, so here we are in week 2. Here's who your client is. Let's talk about, you know, how you're gonna communicate with them. Let's talk about scoping out the project. So again, in Sherpa mode, I'm there to guide them through the process. And by the end, Great. The feedback overwhelmingly from the charities is that it's incredibly valuable even just to have 5 young people with fresh pairs of eyes looking at the charity that they've been buried in for the past 10 years. That is the number one benefit of the whole process. And that's really with any experiential project like that, just having outside people come in and look at your charity or your organization just from that different perspective, maybe ask you questions that you've never thought about before, you know. So that's the, the number one benefit is just the fresh energy that those students bring and a fresh perspective. And then from the student point of view, they grow in confidence, they learn more about the charitable sector, and the really nice thing is that a lot of times the students who work with those charities keep those links with them. So like years later, I'll see that someone ran a 5K for the Open Door Day Center in Bray because they worked at the Open Door Day Center back when they did a service learning project. So it's really nice.

That's amazing.

And the idea, and the idea hopefully is that they'll keep that connection so that when they're working in businesses and when they're becoming senior managers in businesses, that they'll remember that if they're looking for a CSR candidate that they say, oh, what about the Open Door Day Center who we worked with back in whatever year in UCD. So that's quite— that's a nice kind of ancillary benefit that I didn't think about initially, but it has been really nice to see that continued connection.

That's brilliant. Everything you've talked about so far in your teaching involves connection with people outside, inside, whatever. One thing that both of us got involved in over the last 18 months was a new connection, this CBIF, College of Business Intercultural Forum. And, you know, this also gives you a new career as an anchorwoman as well. Katie Couric, look out, you know. So tell us about this and tell us about communities of practice in terms of the academic side as well as, you know, the wider ones that you've been involved in.

So Yeah, well, I think definitely what the College of Business Intercultural Forum, what those webcasts taught us, were that, you know, people want to share ideas with each other. And I think in academia, as we know, there's a tradition in academia that we all kind of work in our silos, we're all quite autonomous. And it's kind of like, I teach my stuff, and you teach your stuff. And that's all I need to know, kind of thing, isn't it? And we're very, we're very Individually focused.

And like, it can be lonely, can't it, as well? It can be an isolating—

It is, it is quite isolating, definitely. And then with COVID of course, we all had to find— just very quickly adapt to a completely new way of teaching. You know, we— very few of us, except probably Matt Glawitz, had done any, any kind of online teaching or was familiar with any of this technology, you know. And we just had to learn really quickly. And what better way to learn than to just share with our colleagues what we were doing, and that's what it was designed to do. And of course, the amazing Dr. Linda Yang being the engine behind that to really bring us all together and say, hey, let's do this and let's get people talking. And as you know, it went from something fairly small within the College of Business to something not so small within the whole university. And as we saw in a few of them, we had people from all of the colleges within UCD on those calls, and that I think was unprecedented because—

Yes.

I certainly hadn't seen anything before where you had that level of engagement from right across the university and just colleagues sharing, well, this is what I do to teach online and this is how I engage my students, and getting those great conversations going.

It's forced us into becoming TV stars, this, this COVID thing, hasn't it? I mean, you know, we're recording this on Zoom. I'm sitting in my study, you're sitting in yours, And we're creating this artifact, if you like. How have you adjusted? What were the most difficult parts of this for you?

Yeah, I think probably like you, Joe, like, I love being physically in a classroom, you know, and that energy we were talking about before, like the kind of pregame nerves, you know, it's like, that's part of what we do because then you have that wonderful feeling afterwards. Like, who can— like, that's such a great feeling when you've completed your your class and you go, that was great, and you just get that nice little buzz, you know. So I was missing that. I was like, how can I not be in a classroom? How can I do teaching from my front room? And at the time, do you remember, I didn't have any of the gear. I had my like laptop piled up on my ironing board with the piles.

As we all did, didn't we? We all had piles of books and, and yeah, it was— it took us a while, didn't it?

Yeah, it was pretty basic, I must say. But you know what though, We figured it out. We shared with each other and got tips from each other and figured it out. And in a funny way, okay, I feel like in a way Zoom created a level of intimacy, surprisingly, that you mightn't even get in a classroom. So as you know, we had big class numbers this year, Joe. So my master's in consulting, we had 75 or 76 students. So that in a classroom—

Which—

So there's me talking about engaging and passion and energy. Would I hit all 75 of those students if we were in a huge classroom that we could fit 75 students in with our social distancing and stuff? Maybe, right? But I think on Zoom there's this thing that, you know, you feel like you're talking directly to each other because you're looking right— like in a classroom.

Yes.

And again, if you and I were having coffee, we wouldn't be like in each other's faces. Like you wouldn't be looking directly at me the whole time. And it's just, it creates this connection, I think, in a way, like in a funny way. I think it connect— creates a connection that you don't necessarily get in the classroom, that each of those students, each of those 75 students on that Zoom call, they feel like you're talking directly to them.

Yeah.

They're the only person there, they're in their room or whatever. So I think in a way, it kind of created a nice little connection. So I think what I'll do going forward is that I'll still use Zoom, maybe for one-on-one meetings, you know, rather than having students come all the way into SmartBridge or me go all the way into the office. Maybe say, let's just catch up on Zoom, because I think in a way it's nice when someone's in their own kind of safe space, they're at home and they're talking to you, rather than if they're in your office and they're talking to you. I think there's a different dynamic there.

There is.

That's one thing I'll do differently, is that I'll think about how can I use this online environment in a positive way going forward? Like, how can it supplement and complement what I'm doing in the classroom?

One of the— I mean, We're still facing into September, aren't we? And I mean, you know, we're hearing about all these new variants. We don't know whether we'll be in the classroom or still on Zoom or whatever. But one thing I'm thinking of doing, and again, I haven't really discussed it with any of the senior colleagues or whatever, is actually building in, you know, maybe 8 classroom sessions and 4 Zoom sessions of the 12.

Yeah.

Because I don't think Zoom's going away.

I think, I think it should go away.

I think we need to teach, we need to teach interaction through this medium as well as being in the classroom. So I think, I think there's a very— there's a big danger of kind of saying, oh, we're going back to the classroom, and, you know, everything reverts to how it was 2 years ago.

Or maybe what we do is we have some elements in the classroom, but again, team catch-ups. So when I'm checking, when I need a progress report from each of my teams, Does that need to be everybody in a room for hours at a time? No, we set up Zoom calls over the week, say, okay, find a day where we can do a Zoom call and you can all take me through your status report presentation or whatever, you know. So I think it's that blend.

Yes.

You know, of realizing that, yes, it will be great in many ways to get back into the classroom, but not to lose the connections and the convenience and the ease of being able to have meetings and do some of what we do Over Zoom, where people are, like I said, in their comfortable places, you know, able to connect without having to be in a specific place at a specific time and like all the pressure of that, you know.

Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I haven't worn a proper pair of trousers for a year.

Wearing trousers though, wearing trousers, that's okay. But yeah, like I have shorts on right now.

Well, it's too hot, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's crazy. There are some freedoms, aren't there?

Yeah.

Oh dear. Okay, so one of the big things in your life for the last, what, 3, 4 years has been the doctorate.

I was gonna say, if it's where you're going, it's 4 or 5 years.

It's 4 or 5 years.

I think I started September 2016. It's all very fuzzy.

Oh my goodness. So what's— what are you doing and why are you putting yourself through the pain?

That is a very good question. Um, what I'm doing is I'm doing a doctorate in higher education through the School of Education at Maynooth University. And the reason I wanted to do it is, like I said to you, I know that the way that I teach is a really effective way of teaching. The way that you teach also, like, I know there's something to that. I'm like, I know that I teach really well. I know from my students they learn so much through the teaching methods that I use. So I wanted to understand them better. So it's a real— but, you know, the scholar practitioner, I want to say, what is it about what I do that is so effective, and how can I find out more about it and understand it better so that I can help other educators?

Okay.

So it's about, like I said, my main thing is it's all about collaborative learning. Okay. So one of the things that you always have this conflict between practice and theory. Okay, so the academics and the practitioners.

Yes.

And there's that—

there's that—

it's like, it's always like dichotomy because there's shown as these complete, like, you know, polar opposites. There's the practitioners and there's the academics or whatever. And there's that phrase, those who can do, those who can't teach. And I've hated that phrase forever because I'm like, yes. And I know it is, you know, I'm probably taking it a little too personally, a little too seriously, but it's like No, who teach can do also. So it's this whole idea of stop presenting the practitioners and the academics as these complete opposite camps. Like, if we collaborate, that's where the real learning, the real learning happens, especially for, say, students at the Smart Fit School who are looking to understand what do I want to do career-wise? How do I become a project manager or a management consultant or supply chain expert or an aviation finance expert, right? So it's all about, it's called In Between the Classroom and the Workplace: An Inquiry into Collaborative Learning. And I'm using my master's in consulting as a case study.

Oh, right.

It's taken me 5 years to be able to say that in one sentence, by the way.

Yeah.

So it's about, like I said earlier, when we talk about our students acquiring professional and practical skills, automatically heads go to internships. Internships are great opportunities for students to learn about you know, working in a particular industry, a particular company. But I feel like we're so quick to kind of farm them out and say, oh, we don't do the practical skills. So don't, you know, we don't do those here. You better go to PwC for a few weeks, and they'll teach you about all that stuff. Why can't we do that, though? So there's this really interesting area of research I found called work-integrated learning. So it's about when you take the professional skills learning, and you incorporate it into the curriculum. So you bring it into the classroom. So when our students work on those consulting projects with real companies, as your students do, as my students do, they get the benefits of workplace learning or an internship because they are working directly with companies. They're having weekly meetings with them. They're writing reports for them. They're doing presentations and they're treated like a team from those companies. And that's something that's always impressed me about the consulting firms we work with. They treat those student teams as EY, you know, a team from EY or a team from—

I saw, I saw one of your students posted something on LinkedIn the other day. And, and they were working with a company and they got the welcome pack. Yeah, it was amazing. I thought that's fantastic.

That was from my MBAs, actually. They're working with a great company called Shopify.

And that's right.

Yes, welcome packs. They got the hoodies and the water bottles and everything was amazing. They really welcomed them on board. So like, they're getting that from, from what I see and what I'm examining and under— trying to understand better is they get the benefits of an internship experience. But I'm there in the classroom with them each week to talk about what they're learning and to talk about the experience. And as we know, and especially go back to our social constructivism, learning is a social process. So students and people, we learn by talking about what we're learning with other people.

Reflecting on it and dissecting it in this sense. Exactly.

So that's such an important part. So if we send someone off on an internship, they're still going to learn, learn a lot about working in an office. But they're going to kind of forget that they're a student, they're going to think that they're working now, they focus more on the working side, you know, whereas we can give them a reflective journal to do. But when they're actually during the internship, are they actively learning and thinking about what they're learning? Whereas if you can incorporate it into the curriculum, like we do with these projects, these consulting projects, each week we're talking about what they're learning, they're doing status report presentations, they're talking about their experiences, they're talking to other groups. And even when we were all on Zoom, like, they talked to other groups. So how's, how's your client? And what are you finding? And what have the challenges been? So it brings a much richer learning experience because you have that collaboration. You have the educator, the student, and the company. And that's exactly what I'm looking at. So it's when you bring those 3 groups together, these 3 stakeholder groups together in a collaborative learning environment, What does it look like?

Right.

What do they all bring to the process? But what do they all learn? We often think about, well, what are the students learning from it? And the focus is all about what do students learn from these practical learning experiences. But the companies learn too, right?

Yeah.

Companies learn.

Yeah, hugely.

Absolutely. And educators learn. We learn. We learn about teaching and learning through this process. The students obviously learn that blend of the academic and the practical. They learn what it's like to be a consultant, but they also learn from, again, the other group's experiences, etc. And then the companies learn, like they've said to me what a great experience it is, say, for some of their middle managers to work with a team of students that really adds to their managerial skills and their managerial development, because they're now working with a team of students and collaborating with them. So it's learning for them also. And then of course, the companies get a great deal of value from what the students bring to them in terms of the actual work that they do, the ideas that they bring. I think So really everybody learns. We focus very much on what the student learns, but I'm looking at what do we all learn from that process. And hopefully what my research will do is to show other educators that it creates a very, very rich learning environment, and it does create an opportunity where you get the practical and the academic all working together to create a really, like I said, very rich learning experience.

So in a few months' time, when they give you the floppy hat.

Yeah, yes, when I get my floppy hat and my lovely colourful robes, yes.

Yeah, that's right. You mentioned there that, so you want to help other educators, so you've got a slightly different focus post-PhD. I mean, obviously you're gonna, well, obviously, maybe you're gonna carry on teaching as you do now, but have you got another endpoint in mind as well?

Absolutely. I think what this has all shown me, and actually a lot of what the CBIF workshops showed me also, is that I like helping other educators to look at their practice and improve their practice. I really like doing it. So like, if you think about it, it's just another aspect of teaching, right?

Teaching the teachers rather than the kids.

Now I want to teach the teachers. Exactly. I want to teach the educators. I want to teach all those thousands of PhD students. No one ever really sits down with them to say, Oh, by the way, you know, you're gonna have to teach as well, right? So let's talk about teaching.

Oh yes.

I don't think, to my knowledge, they don't really do that. I'm like, okay, there's a gap right there. But then also the whole, the whole area of kind of curriculum development and teaching methods. So definitely I see myself pivoting a little bit. I'll always want my teaching and love my teaching and want to keep that also. But I'd also like to look at maybe that idea of curriculum design, advising other educators, And maybe at some stage, maybe working with other bodies like the Higher Education Authority or the Universities Association or somebody like that.

Yeah, I interviewed earlier on this week Thomas O'Rourke, who's the CEO of the Teaching Council. I must put the two of you in contact because that would be a good— it would be a good contact. Fantastic. Well, that's really interesting. So I mean, that's going to be a slight career pivot then for you, really developing that into a new area for yourself.

But I mean, it's an avenue as you have— I'm just so interested now in teaching and learning. And again, I think you and I realizing that, you know, what we do is rare enough, you know, like there are, there are other people who want to teach the way that we do. And I think the other thing is students want this too. Students come to us wanting these practical experiences and this experiential learning and the ability to do this kind of hands-on stuff engaging with industry. So fortunately, there are ways to make that a lot easier. So for example, I recently discovered a platform called Ripen, and that is— was designed to connect university professors and students with companies to complete these experiential projects. And it's a whole platform where you can track the projects, you can manage them. I'll introduce you to it, definitely. I'm piloting it a little bit with— at the moment with my capstone projects, but It's a great platform where the employer, the student, and the educator can all have visibility of what's happening on the project. But also, it's like a marketplace where if you're a company looking for a group of students, you go on to Riipen, you put in some keywords, and you find some students who are available to do that kind of project. And of course, because it's online, you have that global reach, which is exciting too. So—

Wow, that's really interesting.

It is, and it keeps track of all the experiential learning hours. So say if UCD, if you had your if you were using Riipen and I was using Riipen, what it would do is clock up, okay, between our 2 courses, students have completed, you know, 523 hours of experiential learning in the past term or whatever it was.

Right.

So it's a great way to really facilitate that. So the challenge, as we said earlier, going back to what we said earlier, the challenge of doing these kind of experiential projects and real-life projects is bringing them on board. filtering them, managing them going forward. And that's what a platform— there are other platforms too. I think Ripen is a really good one. And no, I haven't bought shares in them, although I probably should because they're amazing. But anyway, that's another thing. That's not, that's not official advice or anything. But it's a great, great platform because it's going to make it— it will make it easier for more educators to bring that type of experience into it. And then the other feature that I think is great is that any student who has completed a project on Riipen gets their own page on Riipen that they'll always have access to that will show the projects that they worked on and will show feedback from their clients.

What a brilliant idea.

So that will make it easier for everybody, I think. So I think the more, you know, we're all realizing the value in this type of learning, and now it will become easier, I think, as very clever people like the people behind Riipen facilitate that and make it easier.

That's fantastic. And I mean, I love the global element as well. I interviewed a lady called Stephanie Doscher a few weeks ago, and she was one of the keynote speakers at one of the UCD seminars earlier on in the year. And she runs, at Florida International University, she runs this program that connects educators with students looking to do projects with other educators and student cohorts around the world. So I'm looking for probably January next year to run a project with my set of students with some other set of students in maybe Colombia.

Amazing, isn't it? Really? The fact that we can do that now, you know, let's make sure we harness those kind of opportunities because it is so global now. Like you How incredible would that be for your students to be able to work with this team of students from another country on a project?

That's what I think, yeah. And I mean, but what I love about your doctorate is probably, you know, I think that and you thought that before the doctorate, now you know it. And because you can connect the proper dots and you've got the backing and the backup and stuff. So yeah, it's— that's going to be really interesting. You're going to have to let me read your thesis, Cathy.

If you want, you can read the abstract. I think that'll be enough for you. The abstract and jump to the conclusions. That's what we all do, isn't it?

So yeah, the smart reading. Yeah. So you've alluded to your plus one already a little bit, but let's just round out the hour with the plus one. And your key plus one is get to know who you're teaching. And why is that?

I don't know if everybody does that. I think you and I, like, I don't think I've Everybody does that. Like, before you walk into that classroom on the first day, know who your students are. And it sounds like the most obvious thing. When we talk about giving presentations, like in a corporate environment, right? We talk about, or any environment, I guess we talk about, oh, get to know who's your audience, because who your audience is gonna dictate the language you use, the pace you go at. You know, so much about your presentation is affected by who your audience is, right? Or influenced by who your audience is. I don't know if we think about that though in an academic environment. All of a sudden when the presentation is in a classroom, do we ask ourselves that question? Because we're kind of like, oh, my audience is my students.

Yeah.

It's like, but who are they?

As if the students are just this homogeneous bunch that are the same.

Exactly. I had students last year. I have students this year. I have this group of students. We kind of group them in. Exactly. We group them in together. Oh, these are my students, you know, but think about, well, who are they though? You know, so try to get the stats around where they're from. What's their background? You know, what did they do in their undergrad? And like I said, on day 1, so day 1 with my master's in consulting and day 1 with my undergrad electives that I teach, a global business one and my community engagement one, my service learning, I have a slide to say, this is who you are.

Yeah.

And I say, you know, for the global business one, that's an elective that I get students from right across UCD. I usually have about 85 or 90 of them. It's like global business for non-business students. And so on the first day, I'm like, here's who you guys are. And I show them, here's all the different degree programs you're from, here's roughly your age range, here are all the different countries you're from, just to give them a little flavor. And I think it gives them a kind of sense of belonging because—

Yeah.

Oh, wow. Okay, so I'm part of this group. And then we do our usual icebreaker where they get to know each other. So I do some kind of icebreaker with them. So they get— even if it's a really big class, I try and do something with them. If it's online, sometimes it can be a bit easier. But even in class, Again, I think the one I mentioned to you, I think, Joe, was my 5-5-5. Put them in groups of 5, give them 5 minutes to find 5 things they have in common. And they can't be obvious things like we all have dark hair or we're all taking this class. Like, it has to be—

Yeah.

They have to really talk to each other. So the things you usually find where, you know, we've all been to Singapore and, you know, we all speak 3 languages and we all like beer or whatever it is, you know. So that gets them to know each other. Okay, so we've done the here's who you are as a group, let's find out a bit more about you individually. And then the final piece is I have a slide about me. And again, as educators, I don't know how often we do that. I saw somebody—

I do that as well. And I've heard from students, oh, nobody's ever shown me a slide of their family before. And I always put Penny and the kids up and say, this is home, you know. Yeah.

And it's like, because you want to— because I say to them, I said, well, you probably want to know who I am. I said, 'Cause we're gonna be spending the next few weeks together, if not the whole year. I said, so here's me and here's a bit about my background and here's my family and here's my cat and my dog. And—

Yep.

You know, this is where I'm from. I'm originally from Boston. Here's a picture of Boston. So, and it just, I think, and what the feedback I've got even from MBA students is, that's a nice thing to do. That's a nice connection to make on the first day. 'Cause then they know who you are. We talk all the time about building a connection. So again, going back to when we're telling people about how to prepare for presentations and how to deliver a great presentation, It's about that connection that you make with your audience. And I think if you do that work at the beginning to get to know who they are, your students in this case, know who they are, let them know who you are, that creates that connection, you know.

Yeah.

And that then goes back to what we said before about the passion and the engagement. If you can create that connection with them, they're going to want to listen to what you have to say. You know, they might not every single minute of a 3-hour class, maybe But you're creating that connection. And I just feel like perhaps as educators, we don't do that enough. Maybe there are some of us who do that. But I think we just think, oh yeah, it's my classroom of students. I walk into the classroom, I give my class, and then I leave again kind of thing. But it's about really understanding who they are and building that connection. Like I said, sometimes, again, if it's a group of undergrads or again, our students at Smurfit are, you know, early 20s, know a little bit about what's going on in their world, know a little bit about pop culture, know a little bit, you know, what TV shows are they watching, what influences are they there. You know, maybe it means you talk about Love Island every now and then. Or like I said, I try to stay away from the Kardashians, but you throw in your little pop culture references every now and then. And like, again, because you'd make that connection if you were given a big formal presentation somewhere, you'd want to find some kind of connection to your audience that you could refer to. And that to me is a really great way of building that connection early on with your students. And that's going to help you To keep them engaged.

And I mean, your students love it because I, you know, I mean, I've taught kind of modules on your course for years as well. And I mean, they just rave about the course. So it's clearly working. And it's great that, you know, you're formalizing, if you like, the understanding behind it all as well with the PhD.

I still have to get better, by the way, at learning names. So Zoom has been great.

Zoom is fantastic, isn't it? That's right.

Yeah. I'll say I'm not as good at getting names, but that's because, again, my classes tend to be— I know there are colleagues of ours who have far bigger classes, but like my classes tend to be between, you know, 50 and 90 students, you know, so it's hard to learn the names. That's the only— that's the thing that kind of niggles at me every year. I'm like, why don't I know their names at this stage? I'm like—

And even if you give them the tent cards, yeah, they only— they only keep them the first week, don't they?

Yeah, that's what I'll miss about Zoom. I'll miss the names. I'll miss Yeah, that's— yeah, I'll definitely miss that about Zoom.

Fantastic. Well, look, I don't want to take too much of your day out, and we're pretty much on the hour, so I think we'll draw it to a close there, Cathy. But I mean, that was a super hour, and it just flew. So—

No, it did. I can't believe it's an hour. That's crazy.

Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you so much. Like I said, don't really know why you wanted to talk to me, but there you go.

Okay. Well, Cathy O'Reilly, thank you for coming on the podcast.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Joe.