From Local to Global: Designing a professional development program connecting Australian and Colombian educators with learning and teaching best practices

Thursday 4 July: Conference day two, 10:30am – 11:00am parallel session

Venue

Room 6 – 303-B05 Sem

Presenter

Dr Ashleigh Prosser
The University of Western Australia, Australia
Ashleigh.prosser@uwa.edu.au

Ezrina Fewings
The University of Western Australia, Australia

Dr Elaine Lopes
The University of Western Australia, Australia

Background

Between October and November 2018, the Educational Enhancement Unit (EEU) at the University of Western Australia hosted 22 educators from two Colombian universities for a unique international cross-institutional professional development program focused on next-generation global best practices in learning and teaching. Sponsored by the Colombian Institute of Educational Credit and Technical Studies Abroad (ICETEX), the educators came from a variety of teaching backgrounds and disciplines, and all spoke English as an additional language with varying levels of proficiency. The goal of the program was for the educators to radically transform aspects of their teaching to enable its delivery in English at their home institutions.

Guided by four learning outcomes, and split into two modules each with their own summative assessment items, the EEU-ICETEX program consisted of 80 hours of study over six weeks delivered through daily workshops, as well as attendance at the inaugural UWA Teaching Excellence Conference. Utilising international evidence-based best practices in learning and teaching, and the EEU’s flagship ‘Enhancing Unit Design’ workshop series, the educators were tasked with creating their own constructively-aligned interactive unit of teaching for delivery in English to their Colombian students, which they presented at a mini-conference hosted by the EEU on the program’s final day.

This showcase presentation will address the program’s careful design according to the principles of intensive mode teaching, and how this enabled us to scaffold the educators’ learning experiences. We will explore why a flexible and adaptive approach to our program delivery was essential to fit the educators’ own personal learning journeys, and the challenges they faced to effectively satisfy the needs of their Colombian students. Finally, this presentation will discuss the impact the program has had on some of our Colombian educators through the responsive changes they have made to their teaching as a result of this experience.

Presentation topic

Tertiary – Collaboration