Dundalk Institute of Technology
This semester, I have been studying in Dundalk Institute of Technology, in a 90 acre campus situated at 15 minutes by walking from my accomodation. It welcomes each year more than 5,000 students in many different domains. Irish learners come here to study Business (like I did), Computing, Multimedia, Applied Sciences, Vet Nursing, Early Childhood Studies, Nursing & Midwifery, Health & Physical Activities, Electronics, Mechanical Engineering, Renewable Energies, Building & Surveying, Aprenticeships, Video & Film, Applied Music, Performing Arts, Culinary Arts and Hospitality. This is a long list of possibilities and and all these fields of study benefit from modern equipment.
We have been introduced to this huge area by Adele, she is in charge of all the ERASMUS. Then, we quickly saw the president and the vice-president of the Student Union (they are very powerfull in dkit as they decide for many things and have a huge amount of money). We were amazed by the buildings and by the fact that they were continuously growing (indeed, a huge new building was just finished for the Multimedia students).
We also had to choose lectures. I preferred to focus on lessons where there will be conversations between the students and the teachers, so that I would talk as much English as posible. In this way, I took part in the Human Ressources studies. I was then engaged in 6 different lectures of 3 hours per week for each of them. They were: Human Ressources Management, Training and Development, Management Accounting, Management Behaviour, Quantitative Techniques and English for Socrates. In general, the lectures were pleasant to attend with a good quality in both content and way of learning. However, we weren’t asked to work a lot at home. We did only a few presentations and exercices which ended with a grade. There was also a Continuous Assessment in each of the lectures but there again, the level wasn’t really high. The lectures seemed much easier than in ESDES.
To come back to the campus, I can’t really talk about the campus restaurant because I have only been there once as it is quite expensive. However, they have 3 cafeterias where I could get sandwiches or junk-food (which was perfect sometimes when I couldn’t get back home to eat between two lectures).
An other really impressive point about Dkit is all the activities. We were given a list at the beggining of the semester and there were around 50 different activities such as:
- many classic sports such as football, rugby, table tennis...
- cultural activities like irish dancing and many other dances
- but also paintball, karting, surf...
All the student life seems to turn around these activities. I felt like I was in an american campus.
As a conclusion, I can say that the university was great and I would have loved to study in one of these in France.
Here is a weblink to a nice promotional video of the campus:
http://ww2.dkit.ie/about_dkit/dkit_campus/dkit_promotional_movie
