An Cosán - Why we joined the STARS project

An Cosán (Irish for ‘The Pathway’) is a unique community education organisation, working in the heart of the communities of Tallaght in West Dublin, Ireland. Its mission is ‘to empower women and children left furthest behind through learning, leadership and enterprise’. An Cosán offers people diverse programmes in early childhood education and care, parenting, community, further and higher education. Over 6 years ago, An Cosán moved online to foster digital inclusion, sharing its adult community education ethos beyond its home in Tallaght with communities across Ireland. Currently, An Cosán offers further and higher education programmes in a blended learning format.

In 2008, An Cosán entered a collaborative agreement with South East Technological University (SETU) that enabled us to provide higher education within community settings. Today, An Cosán’s third-level student body comprises approximately 100 adult learners annually, drawn from those social groups most under-represented in traditional university settings. These groups include lone parents, people seeking asylum, and people from economically disadvantaged communities.
An Cosán took the opportunity to collaborate on the Erasmus+ STARS project with SETU and other European partners. We know that our learners bring huge strengths and have immense potential but they also face certain challenges. They lead very busy lives because they are often parenting alone, have significant care responsibilities or have a demanding job. English may not be their first language, they may be in recovery from addiction and they may have had very negative experiences of education in the past. We were attracted to the idea of a project that could support our learners to manage their time, stay motivated and work with difficult emotions.

The STARS project aims to develop and implement a set of strategies and instructions that will serve as a scaffold for developing SLR and academic writing skills. This will change our students’ learning experience by developing strategies that will help them to navigate their unpredictable learning and living environment while progressing on the learning journey. As a result of our participation in this project, we hope to reduce our dropout rate, improve academic performance and help our tutors to develop AI-enhanced teaching pedagogies.