UTQ Teach

You can follow the UTQ Teach course to equip yourself for designing effective and engaging teaching and learning and to evaluate and improve your teaching performance.  

This course focuses on the knowledge, skills and attitudes that are needed to plan and prepare for teaching and learning within the context of one or more of your lessons (educational meetings). This is described in UTQ competence #2: Teaching. We start by examining your own teaching practice, exploring the foundations of activating student learning, closing learning cycles, and expanding your professional practice to best fit the needs of your students. Then, you will use what you have learned to re-design an educational meeting and experiment with new approaches to build professional practices that can be incorporated into your teaching immediately.   

We explore theories and models that equip you to decide the best planning and approaches to meet the needs of your students, your course, and your program when it comes to learning experiences. You will leave the course having experienced and practiced practical teaching strategies to professionalize yourself and support your students.  

Please note that part of the assessment for this course and the partial certification in teaching is an observation of your lesson. We suggest that this course is taken 1-2 periods ahead of a teaching period so that your observation is easy to schedule.  

After successful completion of the course (attendance and assessment) you will receive a partial UTQ certificate (endorsed by the 4TU) for the competence: Teaching.  

Target group

Teachers in the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) trajectory and/or teachers who have started and have some experiences with educational concepts.

Pre-requisites for this course

Participants taking this course should have:

1.  taught at least 15 educational meeting hours. These meetings may include (but are not limited to) lectures, or instructions during tutorials and practicals;

2. a recording of a lecture or comparable educational meeting; and

3. followed Start to Teach OR a comparable introductory course OR have experience with educational concepts (inter alia constructive alignment, writing learning outcomes, effective learning strategies, assessment, and feedback) also available in self-study modules

Learning outcomes

After the successful completion of this course you will be able to:

1. design active, effective, and efficient learning methods and learning materials
2. design teaching with respect to the specific characteristics and needs of the students.
3. prepare an educational meeting.
4. conduct an educational meeting
5. with others, reflect on your performance after an educational meeting.

Course activities

This course starts with a lunch meeting. In this meeting you will meet your fellow participants and the TLC trainer. Moreover, you will receive information about the set-up of the course and the independent assignments in Brightspace.

This course is designed as a blended course with three different activities:

1. Self-study module in Brightspace: The course is supported through self-study modules in Brightspace to refresh or develop your educational prior knowledge, and where necessary, retrieve your prior knowledge. The module includes a quiz to test your prior knowledge.
2. Independent assignments in Brightspace: the goal of these assignments is to share products and ideas, discuss and give feedback to help your fellow participants. You carry out assignments, download/upload material, and give feedback to other participants.
3. Live meetings (lunch meeting and three themed meetings). In these meetings we will build on your independent assignments you’ve executed in Brightspace. We will add theory and you will deepen your knowledge and skills by applying, sharing, giving feedback, and working together. 

Due to the blended set-up of the course, we ask you to complete the self-study assignments in preparation for the meetings.  You will need some independent preparation time for every meeting!　

Lunch meeting: Preparation 2 assignments, time investment in total +/- 50 min Meeting Day 1: Preparation 4 assignments, time investment in total +/- 3.5 hours Meeting Day 2: Preparation 1 assignment, time investment in total +/- 30 Meeting Day 3:  Preparation 2 assignments, time investment in total +/- 2 hours 

Possible Meeting Day 4: For large groups, half of the group will participate in Meeting Day 3 and half will participate in Meeting Day 4. Please block both in your calendar until you are notified by the course coordinator which day you will participate in. 

Depending on the progress during program there will be more or less time left at the end of meeting 1,2 and 3 to work in class on the preparation assignments for the next meeting or the final assessment. 

To support you in completing the self-study assignments, time is reserved during each meeting day to work on them under the guidance of your trainer.

The last two days of the course will be shorter than the time shown, but due to flexible groupings of participants, a more detailed scheduling will be shared with you during the course to indicate the timing of the meetings. Until you are notified of the timing, please reserve the full day in your calendar. For questions, please reach out the course coordinator. 

Assessment 

You need to have attended all course days and have submitted the assignments that you constructed during the course days. An observation of your teaching will also be part of the certification and therefore it is suggested that you take this course 1-2 periods before a period in which you teach so that this is easily scheduled. After successful completion of these activities you will be rewarded your partial UTQ Teach certificate.

Costs

Participation is free for Wageningen University & Research staff involved in teaching in a Wageningen University Degree programme.

Cancellation

We consider registration as final. When cancelled within three weeks before the activity starts, your chair group will be charged all costs of your subscription (€350,-).

If there are less than 8 participants in the course, Teaching and Learning Centre may cancel the course and notify you at the latest 2 weeks before the start of the course.