ISET faculty attended Teaching Development Program on September 21-25, 2015 conducted by Deborah Nováková – head of the Academic Skills Center at CERGE-EI.

The course consisted of a series of collaborative workshops, grounded in Economics Education literature. The topics covered during the program included: Preparing Courses and Classes and Tools for Teaching, Handling Difficult Groups, Cheating, and Plagiarism, Assessing Students, Evaluating Teachers, and several others. The workshops provided a platform for discussion on how the main findings in the literature relate to the specific teaching realities of each participant. Each session was followed by a group discussion and a presentation of case studies.

The course introduced a range of effective approaches and methods to teaching Economics at the graduate level and provided opportunities to apply these through teaching practice. Each faculty member was asked to deliver a mock class in the subject of their expertise, utilizing newly acquired skills in effective teaching. Participants received feedback from peers and an experienced and qualified pedagogical mentor.

Other participants of the program also included TSU faculty, CERGE-EI Career Integration fellows, Western-educated economists returning to Central and Eastern Europe, and the countries of the former Soviet Union to take full-time academic posts. The diverse background of participants greatly benefited discussions on multi-cultural environments and provided opportunities for collaboration in teaching and regional economic research.