The CTL Certificate Program for Excellence in Teaching in Higher Education was the first institutionally certified teaching excellence program for doctoral students in the Eastern European region. As one of the program designers and conveners, I aimed to integrate international research in teaching and learning in higher education with globally relevant curricular specificities and created a culturally relevant discipline-sensitive approach to conveying student-centredness (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999), reflective practice (Kreber & Cranton, 2000), and an integrated perspective on the academic role (Clegg, 2003; Leibowitz, 2014).
As part of this Program, I designed and taught the following courses:
- Design for Student Learning: Planning, Assessment and Curriculum Design
- Course redesign: blending online and in-person teaching strategies
- Foundations in Teaching in Higher Education: Scholarship, Reflection and Innovation
- Starting your teaching portfolio
The theoretical underpinnings and the approach were validated through peer-reviewed research paper presentations at the conferences of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) and the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE, UK), as well as by peer-reviewed international journals. An example of this is the paper co-authored with Joanna Renc-Roe on doctoral students’ conceptions of online teaching portfolios.
The program attracted a steadily growing number of doctoral students whose feedback had been integrated in further development.
