Dr. Eamon Costello
Dr Costello is an Associate professor of Digital Learning at Dublin City University, president of the Irish Learning Technology Association and an accomplished teacher, researcher and public speaker. He is deeply curious about how we learn in different environments and is known as a creative and innovative communicator. He is concerned with how we actively shape our world so that we can have better and more humane places in which to think, work, live and learn. He is an advocate of using the right tool for the job or sometimes none at all, for not everything can be fixed or should be built. Requests for PhD supervision, speaking engagements or consulting work should be directed to [email protected]
Research Interests
I have a wide range of interests in digital and online learning. I am interested in the experiences of teachers and learners in spaces that are online, offline and somewhere in between.
I have been fortunate to supervise undergraduate, Masters and PhD research students and published on a range of topics with students and colleagues. Some of these areas include Open and Distance Learning, Educational Technologies and platforms, Virtual Learning Environments, AI in Education, Computing Education and Computational Thinking, Open Source Software in Education, MOOCs, eAssessment, Online learning for refugees and migrants, trust in online learning, visual data literacy in learning dashboards, systematic literature reviews in digital learning, speculative fiction and combining socio-material and speculative design approaches to learning, ethics of care in learning design, multimodal methods in education research, open access publishing and open scholarship, metaphors of EdTech, STEM policy directions and frameworks for integrated STEM learning, design thinking in education, affective pedagogies intersections between open science and open education.
I studied English and History at undergraduate level before gaining postgraduate qualifications in computer science. My Doctoral study analysed the implications of massively distributed collaborative development processes for education and educational technology and focused on the community of the Open Source VLE Moodle.
If you are thinking of taking on a PhD study in any of the areas mentioned here please get in touch and I would be happy to discuss the ins and outs of research study at DCU including developing a proposal, options for scholarships and funding and why pursing a PhD in education and digital learning might be right (or wrong) for you.
I have been fortunate to work on several funded research projects with some great teams of people as a project lead or as contributing member. I have learned as much from a 1.5 k project as a 2.34 million one as each one has a life of its own. Ultimately great impact can only be realised from the spirit and imagination of an engaged team and the personal connections I have made in this work have proved deeply rewarding.
I helped to coordinate a Digital Learning Research Network which included over 50 staff with diverse research interests. I have served as a member of the management committee of CASTeL which is Ireland's largest STEM education research group. I have acted as external examiner for taught masters and PhD students in the areas of eLearning, crowdsourcing and intersections of technology and learning. I have served as external expert for Erasmus and JISC and contribute as a consultant to external reviews and reports in my fields of expertise. I have served in editorial roles in journals such as the Irish Journal of Learning Technology and the Australasian Journal of Educational Technology.
Open EducationIf I had to pick on one facet or theme of my work to make coherence of my practice perhaps it would be the idea of openness. I began my career in Open and Distance Education and continue to look for open approaches to research, pedagogy and engagement. I try to publish any writing I am involved in an open access form and you can find several of these on DCU's wonderful open access repository Doras.