This project aims to improve internationalization at universities in Europe through professional development of academics. We will design two courses to help participants to teach international students more effectively and to improve academic writing skills. As a result, participant teachers will devise new curricula of undergraduate and graduate courses for international students, prepare effective academic writing assignments for students and enhance own publication record through publishing in impacted journals and/or with reputed academic publishers. We will undertake pilot testing of both courses with at least 75 academics from two universities. Another project outcome will be a dedicated web portal with freely accessible materials for teachers in social sciences and humanities that will allow them to use innovative teaching methods and approaches and network with colleagues from other institutions. We will evaluate the course impact in at least two studies focusing particularly on the potential of reflective teaching and on the role of trust while facilitating changes in teaching and wider academic practice. Finally, under this project we will compile a plan for professionalizing higher education teaching in the region. The outcomes of our project will be disseminated to a number of institutions beyond the project consortium to increase internationalization and quality of education in Europe in general. To conclude, please allow us to summarize the main strengths of our project as we can see them. This project builds upon a survey of needs undertaken at two project partners for which the new curricula will be designed and where they will be tested before offering them to other beneficiaries teams up institutions that are leaders in internationalization with those committed to increase internationalization and quality of learning in order to allow tangible synergic effects from cooperation produces high-quality outcomes: curricula of two courses, a dedicated portal with teaching and learning materials and a cooperation plan that can be accessed easily and for free by a variety of users including university teachers, students, university managers, educational developers, learning technologists, etc.encourages symbiosis between research (including that from cognitive sciences) and teaching, which are two key responsibilities of academics, yet too often considered separately includes two reputed associated partners outside the project consortium. Each of them has a number of institutional members that can directly benefit from this project focuses on areas that can be directly linked to enhanced student and staff mobility evaluates its outcomes using scientific methods of data collection, data analysis and presentation, similarly as it has been done in impacted peer reviewed publications innovates for a wide circle of European institutions of higher education based on the latest findings from pedagogical research. References Adamová, Ľ, Muráriková, P, eds. (2013) Innovating Teaching and Learning. Reports from University Lecturers. Budrich Unipress Erasmus+ in numbers 2016. European Comm, 2017 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/about/statistics_en, Handal, G (1999) Consultation Using Critical Friends. New Directions for Teaching and Learning 79, 59-70 Knight, P T, Trowler, P R (2000) Department-level cultures and the improvement of learning and teaching. Studies in HE, 25(1) 69-83 Kreber, C (2004) An analysis of two models of reflection and their implications for educational development. International Journal for Academic Development 9(1) 29-51 Lave, J, Wenger, E (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Mezirow, J (1999) Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Josey-Bass Pleschová, G, McAlpine, L (2016) Helping teachers to focus on learning and reflect on their teaching: What role does teaching context play? Studies in Educational Evaluation 48,1-9 Pleschová, G. Simon, A, eds. (2018) Early Career Academics Reflections on Learning to Teach in Central Europe. Staff and Educational Development Association Roxå, T,Mårtensson, K (2009) Significant conversations and significant networks -exploring the backstage of the teaching arena. Studies in HE 34(5) 547-559, (2014) Higher education commons – a framework for comparison of midlevel units in higher education organizations, European Journal of HE 4(4) 303-316 Schön, D A (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think In Action. Basic Books. Šeďová, K, Švaříček, R, Sedláčková, J, Čejková, I, Šmardová, A, Novotný, P, Zounek, J (2016) Beginning University Teachers and Their Approaches to Teaching and Professional Self-Perception. Studia Paedagogica, 21(1) 9-34 Van Waes, S, Van Bossche, P, Moolenaar, N, Stes, A, Petegem, P (2015) Uncovering changes in university teachers’ professional networks during an instructional development program. Studies in EduE 46,11-28
We intended to enhance internationalisation through three main means. First, through designing and piloting a course that would prepare teachers for teaching international students. For us, this implied not only the capability to teach in a foreign language but also to recognise and address the needs of foreign students. We wanted to raise participants’ awareness of those different needs and provide a set of instruments that would help them to teach courses attended by both local and foreign students. Second, we planned to prepare and test another course to enhance teachers’ writing skills so that they could effectively assist students to improve their academic writing skills. The course was to help teachers to design writing assignments and provide feedback on student writing while reflecting on their own academic writing traditions as well as enhance their own publication record. This increased reputation, in turn, was expected also to increase the attractiveness of their institutions for incoming foreign students. Third, we intended to create a web portal with freely accessible teaching and learning resources that could be used when teaching classes with diverse students but also for many other educational purposes. Beyond these three outputs, we set as our task to compile a document that would delineate the areas of main attention in order to improve overall quality of teaching and learning and the key instruments we will use. In this strategic cooperation plan, our particular focus was to be on identifying the nexus where our partnership could attain shared aims more effectively.
Before starting the project, we considered the limited number of foreign language programmes and courses that Central European universities provide as a significant obstacle of their participation in EU mobility schemes. Although we could have observed a trend of an increased provision of foreign language programmes, the speed of this increase was rather slow and likely remains to be so without targeted interventions. In order to become more international, universities have to make not only structural changes but above all, they need teachers competent and comfortable to teach in another language and cater to the needs of international students. Teachers can not be forced to do that but at the same time we saw many teachers willing to deal with a more diverse student body but who felt not enough competent or supported to do so. Most teachers get their first teaching experience at their home university, which makes it difficult to understand the needs, expectations and different background of students from other environments. To address these challenges, this project aimed to improve internationalisation of higher education through enhancing the competences of university teachers.