Ollscoil na Gaillimhe | University of Galway

The University of Galway, Ireland is the largest and oldest university based in the west of Ireland, employing in excess of 2,000 staff with a 17,000 strong student population. The University of Galway has been named as the world’s 258th best university, accordingly to the 2021 QS World University Rankings. Its rankings are third in Ireland, 195 in Faculty/Student Ratio, 165 in International Faculty Ratio, 238 in International Student Ratio, and overall Ireland is the 38th-most represented location in the world.

Meanwhile, the University is counted among the Top 350 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for 2020/21. In 2020, the new Times Higher Education University Impact Rankings placed the University of Galway 10th in the world for addressing the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal for research on life below water and support for aquatic ecosystems and ranked 68th in the world for addressing the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals overall. Ranked in the top 1% of Universities globally, the University of Galway has an academic community of world-leading researchers working at the forefront of their fields and has a commitment to support and encouraging postgraduates in their taught and research programmes.

The School of Education is the national leader in Ireland in the deployment of mobile learning in teacher education. The Máistir Gairmiúil san Oideachas (MGO) is the national flagship programme in Ireland for teacher education through the medium of the Irish language. The MGO was also the first 1:1 mobile device deployment within a teacher education programme in Europe. Mobile technology is systematically designed and integrated to support all key professional educational aspects of the MGO, with a specific focus on pre-service teachers’ learning by design (Mac Mahon, Ó Grádaigh & Ní Ghuidhir, 2016). The MGO was also the first European programme to be awarded the Apple Distinguished Programme (ADP).

The School of Education founded the MiTE (Mobile Learning in Teacher Education) International Conference in 2015. This first international conference in the field, hosted this in January 2017 by CalState University, California, (the largest teacher education provider in the world) and by UTS in Sydney Australia (2020) has helped significantly to mobilise international teacher educators’ practice and research in the emerging area of mobile learning design. The School of Education has led the development of a special issue series on mobile learning in teacher education with the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning. Led by Professor Kevin Burden, University of Hull, the School of Education, the University of Galway is a partner in MTTEP (Mobilising and Transforming Teacher Education Pedagogies), contributing to the research and development work of this flagship European initiative to advance and augment teacher education through mobile learning design and deployment. The School of Education, the University of Galway are also partners in the MTech World University Partnership for mobile teacher education. Key University faculty involved with this proposal, Seán Ó Grádaigh and Sinéad Ní Ghuidhir are Apple Distinguished Educators and Dr Tony Hall is a Fellow of the International Society for Design and Development in Education.