Call for Applications
Digital Badge(s) in Community Engaged Research and Learning within the curriculum.
DO YOU WANT TO INTEGRATE COLLABORATION WITH LOCAL COMMUNITY PARTNERS TO YOUR COURSES, TO INCREASE IMPACT AND MEANINGFULNESS OF STUDENTS CURRICULUM?
Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL) involves students working with community partners on collaboratively-designed, real-life projects, within the curriculum, for mutual benefit. Projects are supervised by lecturers and are co-designed with community partners to enhance student learning and to support community goals.
We are inviting you to apply to participate in new continuing professional development opportunities in Community Engaged Research and Learning by following up to 2 digital badges. These offer the opportunity to join an international learning community of lecturers committed to engaging students into collaborative, ethical, and socially impactful research.
Designed for and by lecturers these digital badges will help you to rethink and enhance your teaching by working meaningfully with collaborative community partners.
Through these digital badges, you will develop your understanding of CERL as an opportunity for making the curriculum more meaningful, raise your ability to collaboratively plan and develop CERL projects with local community partners and strengthen students’ abilities and reflexivity.
All badges will be facilitated to create opportunities for participants to develop new working relationships, which might potentially lead to collaboration for CER funding opportunities.
These badges are for lecturer based in TU Dublin, ULB, UNISS, who are committed to teaching that is collaborative, inclusive, and impactful.
Whether you are new to CERL or already working collaboratively with local community partners, these badges offer a structured space to deepen your knowledge, and enhance your abilities to implement CERL within your courses.
The course costs are fully covered by Erasmus+ project funding in 2026/7.
Digital Badge 1. Understanding Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL)
This badge will help lecturers to understand what CERL is, why it matters, and the benefits it brings to society, and to students who become involved through their curriculum (including building skills and helping to develop their careers). It is a first step for participants towards developing CERL projects in the curriculum, that requires enhanced teaching and learning practices. This badge is specifically for lecturers.
This badge aims to explore the benefits and challenges of embedding the CERL approach into the curriculum, to address societal challenges through participatory research practices. Participants will be supported to explore the ‘what, why and who’ of CERL:
- What: how CERL as an approach can be built into the curriculum
- Why: the challenges and benefits for both Civil Society Organisations or CSOs (creating new knowledge with and for the region) and academia (enhancing student employability, strengthening the relevance of the curriculum) will be explored
- Who: the respective strengths that these actors can bring together through CERL.
At the end of this digital badge, participants will be able to:
- Assess the relevance of community engaged research and learning, its characteristics and principles, to their curriculum objectives
- Evaluate the strengths of both students and community partners and the potential synergies of their collaborations
Digital Badge 2. Planning Community Engaged Research and Learning
This badge explores the practical implementation of CERL in university accredited courses. Participants will be supported to explore ways to engage students in transdisciplinary work within learning modules as a teaching strategy, and to make concrete plans for this, including how to assess students’ work. They will develop ideas for providing students with guidance to reflect on their values, attitudes and behaviours, as well as on the quality and impact of their work. In this way, lecturers will be able to help students to make sense of their CERL experience in the context of their future career, both in terms of their professional development and in terms of the co-production of new knowledge and its societal impact.
Through this badge, participants will develop their ability to collaboratively plan and develop CERL projects as a curriculum-based opportunity for collaboration with local community partners, exploring synergies and enriching the meaningfulness of the curriculum as well as strengthening students’ abilities, with a particular focus on reflection on learning.
At the end of this digital badge, participants will be able to:
- Plan a process to work with a community partner to develop a series of activities on a specific course or module whereby students will engage in collaboration with a community partner to address a local challenge that the community partners have identified
- Develop structured supports for students so that they can reflect on their learning, actions and impacts through their CERL project, including a reflective assignment.
General
In each of the digital badges, participants will participate in 2 interactive online workshops involving group activities. They will also collaborate in two self-directed small-group meetings/triads to develop and present useful resources to implement CERL within their courses.
The group activities may range from developing action plans based on exploring case studies of real life CERL projects, to applying relevant theories to their own courses/modules, to developing CERL-related activities to try out with students and community partners, to developing relfevxvie resources for engaged students. Participants will be required to individually reflect on their practice and learning, to develop their skills as reflective practitioners.
Expected Learner Effort for each Digital Badge
20-25 hours, combining online workshops, group activities and independent learning.
Learning Activities
3 hours of online workshops, which will be scheduled as 2 x 1.5-hour workshops.
2 hours of synchronous online group work, which will be scheduled as 2 x 1-hour meetings. This will result in submission of a group assignment.
15-20 hours of independent learning, including submission of an individual reflection-based assignment.
Supports provided to learners
3 hours of facilitated online workshops.
3 hours of on-line drop-in support sessions.
Prompts and instructions for group work meetings
Reading/viewing lists and key questions for independent learning
Clear briefs for individual and group assignments, including marking rubrics.
Course schedule
- Webinars: Fridays 2-3.30pm CET, 1-2.30pm UTC (Irish time).
- Small group meetings will be scheduled by group members at a time that suits everyone.
Participants will be supported by their local TOGETHERNESS partner to identify and make connections with suitable CER partners.
Digital badge 1 – Understanding Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL)
Participants will be required to participate in online workshops and in small-group meetings.
You will be required to submit 2 assignments:
- 1 individual reflective assignment where they assess the relevance of CERL to their teaching objectives, and identify a course/module they teach where CERL would fit well with the learning outcomes.
- 1 group work assignment where the group evaluates the potential co-benefits to doing CERL, for their students, for the curriculum they’re following, and for local CSOs they have identified. They will also identify the strengths in their own contexts that could give birth to synergies, and that could be potential supports for them in implementing CERL
Digital Badge 2. Planning Community Engaged Research and Learning
Participants will be required to participate in online workshops and in small-group meetings.
You will be required to submit 2 assignments:
- 1 individual reflective assignment where the participants plan the practical steps required for collaboration with a CSO through their teaching module, to enhance student learning (as per the learning outcomes of the module or course) and to address community research goals.
- 1 group work assignment where the group develop a template to support students to reflect on the impacts of their work and their learning at 3 levels: personal (learning about themselves as learners), disciplinary (learning about their subject/profession) and societal (learning about society, for example about inequalities). The template should include tailored variations to suit each individual group member’s context and discipline.
Digital badge participants will receive digital badges on successful completion of all badge assignments, issued by TU Dublin.
- Drop-in information webinar: Monday 7 September 2026 (see For Further Information below for the details, and the link to join)
- Closing date for applications: Monday 14 September 2026.
- Notification of outcome of applications: no later than 5 October 2026.
- Deadline to confirm acceptance of place: Friday 9 October 2026. We will operate a waiting list, and places that are not accepted will be offered to the next person on the list.
- Start of digital badge 1: webinar 1 on Friday 6 November 2026, webinar 2 on Friday 20 November 2026.
- I am interested in community engaged research and learning (CERL) as a collaborative approach that engages students with partners as co-creators of research to address real world challenges, to co-produce knowledge and to work towards solutions.
- I am a lecturer who would like to learn more about CERL, to develop courses engaging students with communities, NGOs or public bodies to co-develop research that addresses issues experienced by communities, that improves people’s lives and that contributes towards achieving the UN SDGs.
- I have a high level of English (written and spoken) to enable me to participate in the digital badges.
- I am prepared to make a time commitment and actively participate in collaborative working in a Digital Badge (20-25 hours).
If I’m not currently in a lecturing role, but I have been a lecturer previously, and would like to return to teaching in the future, can I apply for the digital badges on CERL in the curriculum?
If there are more applications than places, we will prioritise participants who are currently in a lecturing role. But please do apply even if you are not currently lecturing.
Please fill in the application form here – https://forms.office.com/e/ndKAyS3znK
The ULB TOGETHERNESS coordination team will first shortlist applications and then the TOGETHERNESS international coordination team will review and agree final decisions on applications. To support this process, data you provide in the application form will be made available to the TOGETHERNESS local and international coordination teams.
Evaluation Criteria (see the table below for more detail):
- Interest and/or experience in CERL; in revising courses/modules
- Potential to develop and sustain a CERL project in a course/module
- Clear personal goals for the digital badge
- Awareness of strengths and potential challenges (reflexivity)
- Ability to commit to the work required for the digital badge(s)
- English language ability
| Not yet at level required | At level required | Above level required | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Relevant experience/interest in CERL | No interest | Quite interested | Very interested |
| Relevant experience/interest in revising courses/modules | No interest | Quite interested | Very interested |
| Clear personal goals for the digital badge | No clear goals, and/or clear goals not related to the digital badge | Clear goals, related to the digital badge | Very clear goals, very closely related to the digital badge |
| Awareness of strengths and potential challenges. | Little or no articulation of strengths and potential challenges, and/or strengths and challenges given but unrelated to the digital badge | Clear articulation of strengths and potential challenges, related to the digital badge | Very clear articulation of strengths and potential challenges, very closely related to the digital badge |
| Ability to commit to doing the work required | No clear plan for how to create the time, or manage other commitments | General plan for how to create time and manage other commitments | Specific, achievable plan for how to create time and manage other commitments. |
| English language ability | Not adequate for the digital badge | Suitable for the digital badge requirements | Fluent |
We are looking for a diversity of participants, to enhance your learning and support you to practice collaborating with a wide variety of people across sectors. We welcome a range of lecturers, in different organisations and teaching various disciplines, with different levels of experience of Community Engaged Research and Learning, from beginner to experienced practitioner. By ‘diversity’ we also mean gender, mix of disciplines, mix of levels of research experience, and mix of organisation types.
Each digital badge has a cap of 20 participants, which will be spread across the 4 partner countries and 3 participant groups.
To ensure the sustainability of the project outcomes, we may prioritise applicants who demonstrate the most potential to collaborate with local community partners by integrating CERL approach within their courses.
How can I find out more?
Come to our information event
- Join our online drop-in information webinar to ask questions about the Digital Badges or Micro-credential: Monday 7 September 2026 2026, 2-3pm CET, 1-2pm Irish time, using the following link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/356800842533358?p=FKqtaB5DIfzJ710hoI
Contact us
- You can email the course facilitators: Dr Etienne Toffin in ULB – https://togetherness-project.eu/about/ulb/
What is TOGETHERNESS?
TOGETHERNESS (‘Training and Opportunities for Growing Engagement in Teaching and Higher Education Research – a New Engine for Societal Solidarity’) is an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership. You can find more information here: https://togetherness-project.eu/
Who are the people in the TOGETHERNESS co-ordinating team?
See contact details listed under each partner’s description here: https://togetherness-project.eu/
What is Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL)?
Community Engaged Research and Learning (CERL) is an innovative approach which gives students the opportunity, through the curriculum, to participate in research and learning projects based on community needs. CERL has been identified as a high-impact learning and teaching activity that educational research suggests increases student engagement and student retention.
The term CERL captures a wide range of different terms for community engaged research and learning. In different regions, CERL can be taken to include community-based learning, service-learning, community service learning, community-based research, participatory action research, community-based participatory research, and science shop projects.
Do I need to be experienced in CERL?
No, we are looking for a range of participants, from those completely new to CERL to those with extensive experience of it.
Do I need to be experienced in reflection?
Not formally. We will provide templates, supports etc.
Can I withdraw?
We would ask that once you have confirmed the offer of a place, you honour that commitment. As this is a competitive process, if you withdraw it means you have taken a place that someone else might have used to the full.
Where will I find partner(s) for my research?
Your local TOGETHERNESS partner will facilitate events where you can meet potential research partners.
What happens if something goes wrong during the course?
Please contact the course facilitators: Dr Etienne Toffin in ULB – https://togetherness-project.eu/about/ulb/
Acknowledgements:
This information for applicants, and the application form, build on work done as part of the Erasmus+ CIRCLET project (2019-22) by Queen’s University Belfast, TU Dublin, Corvinus University Budapest, Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. We would like to thank the other partners for permission to adapt their work.
Our thanks to the TOGETHERNESS project funder, the European Union through the AEF (Agence Francophone pour l’Education et la Formation Tout au Long de la Vie).