UL@Work | Skills and Engagement | Higher Education Authority

Project Name

UL@Work

For more information please visit our website.

Video: Launch of Ireland’s first interdisciplinary stackable masters – Masters of Professional Practice

Project Team

Professor Ann Ledwith
Dr Sinéad Burke
Professor Martin Hayes
Sharon Barrett
Claire Barry
Sinéad Wall

Provide a short description of the project

UL@Work offers a range of online programmes co-designed and co-delivered with industry to enable upskilling and reskilling for your professional development in the age of digital transformation. Our programmes provide a toolkit of learning to apply within the workplace. These flexible, part-time, online programmes have been created with working professionals in mind, allowing you to fit professional education into your busy schedule.

With our future-focused learning approach, we’ll provide you with the tools you need to handle not only today’s challenges, but also those that will arise in the future. This suite of programmes supports economic progress in the digital age and encourages professional growth.

This initiative offers programmes for undergraduate, graduate, and work-based learners. These are designed to meet the needs of working professionals, employers and industry. The Human Capital Initiative (HCI) funds the project and offers a reduced fee to the learner. Over 19 programmes break into 4 pillars;

Video: UL@Work Transforming Higher Education Conference

Professional Diplomas

Part-time, 100% online Level 9 qualifications designed for working professionals in areas that support the Irish skills base digital transformation. These diplomas can stack to our new Master of Professional Practice.

NEW Masters Degree

Build your own Master of Professional Practice. This is the first of its kind transdisciplinary stackable Masters.Our range of Professional Diplomas allows you to select 3 PDs suitable to your future world of work while also stacking to our new Master of Professional Practice.

Challenge-Based Engineering Degree

With manufacturing sector being a major employer in Ireland our BEng Digital Mechatronic Engineering will prepare students for widened and exciting career opportunities in industry as the sector embraces industry 4.0. This accelerated and immersive undergraduate degree with extended work-based placement makes students work-ready immediately after graduation.

Top-up Degrees

These degrees are geared toward working professionals who may not yet have a degree but are already working in the area.

Short Professional Development Modules

These credentials, also known as micro-credentials, can be earned by working professionals in a part-time, flexible, and buildable capacity without committing to a lengthy course of study.

Pillar 3 funding has also enabled a digital transformation within UL supporting the rollout of a state-of-the-art Virtual Learning Environment and the development of a Digital Skills programme available to every student at UL to take.

Pictured From Left: Professor Martin Hayes, Professor of Digital Technologies and Academic Lead, UL@Work Project, and Professor Ian Solomonides, Victoria University, Melbourne, at the UL@Work Human Capital Initiative ‘Transforming Higher Education’ conference in University of Limerick City Center Campus.

Provide a brief summary of the project’s key enterprise engagements

We have over 70 industry partners involved in either the strategic direction and governance of UL@Work (5 partners) or the co-design of UL@Work programmes via the Enterprise Advisory Panels (EAPs) (69 partners).

These panels are gender balanced and aim to have 20% Small-Medium Enterprise representation.

Some enterprises working with UL@Work include Soapbox Labs, Analog Devices, Stryker, Provisio, Valeo, VHI, Eli Lilly, Irish Blood Transfusion Board, Webio etc.