UCL helping to drive educational transformation in Poland

The professional development programme, Masters of Didactics, aims to transform teaching and learning across the 21 Universities in Poland.  It is devised and delivered by the UCL Institute of Education (IOE) and supported by UCL Consultants – part of UCL Innovation & Enterprise.

Over four years the aim of the programme is to explore approaches to teaching and learning, tutoring in particular, which will extend and expand the range of methods used by higher education teachers in Poland. The non-accredited programme will be rolled out across the 21 Universities in Poland and cover all disciplines. We are working alongside top tier universities in Europe and together we will have worked with over 1200 academics from those universities.

Sixty academics, from a very diverse range of disciplines (e.g. Molecular Biology, Music, Law, Education, Economics), are currently going through the UCL programme with another sixty or so joining each academic year. UCL’s Dr Clare Bentall (IOE) leads the project and collaborates closely with academic colleagues from across UCL’s Faculties and UCL Arena – UCL’s professional development pathway for teaching. Following a two-week intensive programme here in London, the academic participants are provided with access to online resources once they return to their institutions in Poland and receive a follow-up observation and feedback visit by Clare and her team, before starting the process of implementation at their institutions.  After completion of the programme, the participants will be issued with a Certificate of Completion (being a professional development programme no formal qualification or credits are conferred). 

Clare comments: “This is a strategically important project to the development of higher education in one of the largest countries in Europe. It gives us an opportunity to make a substantial contribution to that and develop UCL’s reputation and build networks with academic colleagues and their institutions in Poland.”

The programme is being supported by UCL Consultants who have provided programme management, contracting and finance expertise. Other participating universities alongside UCL are University of Groningen, Aarhus University, University of Oslo and the University of Ghent.  These universities are delivering their own variant of the programme and UCL will be working very closely with them in the development and implementation of a sustainable framework for HE institutions.  

The programme is being delivered under the Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development co-financed by the European Social Funds. 

Links
UCL Innovation & Enterprise
UCL Institute of Education
UCL Arena