Feedback on researchED 2022

Following the researchED conference on Saturday 24th September, ticket-holders were sent an online survey, and here are some of the comments (all thrown together in no order). 34% of attendees had been to the event in 2019, so 66% were new to the experience.

General comments:

Thank you so much for a wonderful day of professional development … Excellent day all round. So practical and useful. Well done! … Such a brilliant day. Thank you so much for organizing it … It was a fantastic collaborative, energising experience that blew away some of the ennui generated after the impact of Covid restrictions in our schools. It was lovely to meet so many teachers from all over the country & meet up with old friends again. It was very interesting that this was an initiative led by educators not any of the agencies that impose conditions on how we carry out our practice … Superb event. Thank you …. Thanks so much for everything, including the communication in the lead up to the event … Brilliant. So welcoming. So worthwhile  … thank you for a wonderful and inspiring day … A great event for classroom practitioners … A fantastic experience from start to finish. Well done to all involved! …. An extremely beneficial and necessary experience if you wish to enhance your individual contribution to education in schools. … Superb day on all scores. I’m returning to school tomorrow uplifted and grateful for all … A fantastic day. So well organised and so informative … Well done, super organised, good range of speakers. Food amazing and the venue is special … Beautiful venue, lots of very friendly guides and great speakers. Well done … a perfect conference – well done to all those front of house and behind the scenes! … Buzzing from it. Please host it again. You are really good at it … Thank you for hosting such an exceptional event and I’m delighted to have been a part of it … The atmosphere and organisation of the event was outstanding and very welcoming. The volunteers showed enthusiasm all day – all fantastic. The Research Ed booklet was clear and very informative about each session.

A great day! … Excellent Day – very well organised; super staff. Thanks so much … Wonderful campus for such an event, great organisation and staff willing to give up their time on Saturday is very impressive and a sign of a good working relationship between management and staff … A totally amazing day – Thank you so much … Well run.  Great topics.  Hard to make a choice at some sessions … Thank you for all of your hard work in organising this incredible event. It was like going outside for a breath of fresh air!   … Overall, a really fantastic day which went by so quickly. Left with so many ideas and reflections. This is what professional development should be about. Well done to everyone involved … thank you SO much for organising. It was an amazing community to be part of and to speak to so many other teachers and listen to their experiences … Thank you for such a great day. Far more inspirational than ‘regular’ in-services… Brilliantly organised. Thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thank you for setting it up … Brilliantly organised and venue was very well laid out for all the various talks . Unfortunately couldn’t bilocate so missed some events as so many good speakers on at the same time … Well run.  Great topics.  Hard to make a choice at some sessions … PLEASE run this again! It was the most amazing day. My only complaint is it wasn’t long enough! I absolutely loved it and couldn’t believe we were getting all of these speakers for the price we paid- unbelievable value. Thank you, thank you, thank you! … The food was excellent!!! I couldn’t believe the standard, so impressive … Everything about the day was first class and the best CPD ever Thank you to the whole team … I felt invigorated after it … I am in education for over 20 years and I honestly think this is the best event I have been to by far. The energy and positivity was amazing. I would definitely go to it were it to happen again. Thanks so much to all the organisers.

What were your main takeaways from the day?

Loved Paul Kirshner and Kate Jones … Felt really empowered after listening to others. Aine Hyland’s voice needs to be amplified … My idol Miss Olivia Derwin, legend to all of us biology teachers! … Kate Jones was great – nice mix of theory and practical tips … I thoroughly enjoyed all speakers who delivered their ideas in an entertaining and clear manner. Dáire Lambert was excellent, giving us an honest and realistic insight into his classroom practice … Barbara Oakley was outstanding. So clear and concise and her way of getting her point across was soft but with clarity.  It was amazing from beginning to end … It was amazing to be able to hear such big names such as Barbara Oakley and Paul Kirschner… The whole day was superb … The two main Keynote speakers were excellent and I enjoyed Kate Jones’s presentation on retrieval practice. Generally, the more practical the talk, the more I enjoyed it! It is great to get some ideas for classroom practice … Barbara Oakley was superb: her visuals in her presentation really made a great impact on me … As a Science teacher, my eyes were on stalks: I had lab. envy & I love my own lab. but perhaps not as much as I did before my head was turned by yours!) … The entire event was superb. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Dr Barbara Oakley and Kate Jones. I loved the smaller seminars on spelling and giving boys feedback. Thank you  … There was a strong thread on “how students learn” that ran throughout the whole day.  I found this good as multiple perspectives helped to reinforce the basic science and practical applications … Retrieval Practice by Kate Jones and Junior Cycle Planning by Clare Madden were exceptional … Barb was outstanding. I’m teaching twenty years and she is the best I’ve seen! … Barbara Oakley & Kate Jones were very impressive and informative. One day at researchED would save teachers countless days of CPDs!  …

Barbara Oakley, Kate Jones and Aine Hyland were brilliant to listen to. … Delighted to spend time with other teachers in earnest and substantial discussion of pedagogy (as opposed to much “CPD” in recent years)… Prof Barbara Oakley was an excellent start to the day.  Could have listened to her all day … Really impressed with the high quality programme and mix of topics and speakers.  I particularly enjoyed Barbara Oakley, Mark Roberts and Kate Barry … Barbara Oakley was amazing, John Tomsett really impressed with curriculum discussion also. Oliver Caviglioli, Paul Kirschner and Neil Almond were real highlights … The aspects of the programme that were about research and engaging in research at schools were great – Jenny McMahon from UL and Liam Guilfoyle from Oxford gave real practical ideas for getting involved which were great … Barbara was outstanding- so warm, encouraging, knowledgeable and interesting. That said, all speakers were superb! … Kate Jones was fantastic. I thought Sonia Thompson was inspirational … Really loved Emma Regan’s ‘Why set up a Professional Learning Community’ and the SWOT analysis ..They all impressed me from Barbara to Paul to the discussion with Annie, Simon and Clinton … Really impressed with David and Jennifer Keenahan’s work and energy put into discussing physics textbooks and Paul Nugent delivered an excellent session of effective questioning for students. As for takeaways, elements of Brendan O’Sullivan’s and Barbara Oakley’s speeches stuck with me the most … Barbara Oakley was the most enthralling on importance of retrieval practice. Áine Hyland was excellent on state of curriculum development in Ireland at the moment … Barbara Oakley was very impressive as was Áine Hyland. Good to hear somebody of the stature of Áine Hyland express concerns about the direction of the Irish education system particularly around Senior Cycle Reform and presented in a humorous fashion as well … James Maxwell – inspiration leadership of an Evidence Informed School .. The architecture of the brain and how this relates to learning. The importance of understanding working memory and long-term memory. The necessity of retrieval practice in education … Kate Jones, Claire Stoneman were both great …Still digesting it now – so much information.  Need to think how it can be put into practice in school … All brilliant, but I particularly enjoyed Barbara Oakley and Kate Jones’s practical takeaways … Sonia Thompson and Paul Nugent were excellent …. All good – Barbara Oakley super … Barbara Oakley was a particular stand out. Absolutely fantastic presentation. .. Really enjoyed the keynote speakers, main take-away, not to become complacent – our research informed journey has started but this is for the long term! … Really enjoyed all speakers. I loved Barbara Oakley- learning about her own background and her achievements today. I loved her presentation and feel like her presentation really simplified the learning process for me.   Paul Kirschner was excellent as well. I had so many takeaways from all talks that I will use in my own teaching. I loved Kate Jones as there were so many real life applications and examples from the classroom. I am only new to researchED and some of the buzz words at the minute. I would be honest and say I do not keep up the latest educational research and feel like this day really kick started me back into keeping my teaching methods current. I feel like I lost my ‘mojo’ in certain ways throughout covid and online learning … Paul Kirschner was amazing and brought his book and so excited with all the knowledge that I possess …

Both keynote speakers were excellent – Barbara Oakley and Paul Kirschner … Quality of speakers and how ideas that were relevant to the classroom … Really liked how Kate Jones presented retrieval practice and Olivia Derwin on video learning. To be honest, I really enjoyed everyone I went to see, just wish I could have gone to all of them … Barbara Oakley was excellent. Really good explanations of how learning happens … Oliver Caviglioli was really interesting … Paul Kirschner’s keynote was excellent …Daire Lambert was really interesting, funny and directly applicable to the classroom … Barbara was incredible. A great keynote. Plenty to take away from it. Kate Jones is a marvel. Her session was excellent … Jerome Devitt was superb in his talk on the new politics and society LC course … Kate Jones, Clare Madden and Barbara Oakley were very insightful … I was very interested in the discussion on retrieval practice. Barbara Oakley, Kate Barry, Paul Kirschner were great. However, I enjoyed all the sessions I attended … this is what we need to be preaching in universities! Clare Madden brought everything we learned back down to the issues we constantly face… the curriculum. Amazing, realistic approach to learning … Kate Jones- have read lots of her books and she was just as brilliant as I hoped …. Dáire Lambert- really stuck with me and thought he spoke really well! … Good practice comes from evidence and a lot comes from having professional conversations … I was especially impressed by Annie Asgard’s talk about providing for refugee children effectively within our education system … Professor Áine Hyland was brilliant and summarised all the key points about Senior Cycle reform so clearly. Jerome Devitt was also fantastic and I learned a lot about trying to implement vague syllabi in the classroom … I’m from the US, and the fascinating take away for me was the matrix of similarities and differences among our school systems … Ms Oakley was brilliant – but everyone was very good … Professor Barbara Oakley and Aine Hyland were both outstanding … Barbara Oakley, fabulous example of weaving stories into content. Kate Jones – brilliant! … It was a fantastic day, very enjoyable. The workshops were brilliant. Paul Kirschner, Oliver Caviglioli and Barbara Oakley were outstanding.