THE TEACHEX PROJECT – GUIDING ISRAEL HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS TOWARDS TEACHING EXCELLENCE

This paper presents the TeachEx project http://www.teachex.eu/, an Israel Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education project. The project started in November 2015 and will end in October 2018. The aim of the project is to promote teaching excellence amongst Israeli Higher Education institutions. The project consortium is led by the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya and includes the following Israeli Higher Education Institutions: Ben-Gurion University, Beit Berl College, Belazel Academy of Arts and Design Jerusalem, Gordon Academic College of Education, and the Oranim Academic College of Education. The consortium also includes the following European Universities and Higher Education Institutions and Organizations that act as consultants: University of Brighton, University of Jagiellonian, University College Cork, Glasgow Caledonian University, University of Groningen, University of Nicosia and European Association of Institutions in Higher Education (EURASHE). Finally as student involvement is extremely important in improving teaching, the European Student Union (ESU) and the National Union of Israeli Students (NUIS) participate in the consortium, providing significant input to teaching excellence, especially as perceived by students.

In order to aim at teaching excellence the project has identified five thematic areas pertaining to teaching excellence. These thematic areas have been matched to five training/learning modules, namely:
(i) Diversity and Accessible Instruction,
(ii) Active/Reflective Teaching and Learning: Learning from Art and Design,
(iii) Mobile Learning,
(iv) Lecturer as a Producer, and
(v) Problem/Project-based Learning (PBL)

The five modules will be used as training material for faculty members in order to help them improve their teaching effectiveness so that they can aim at teaching excellence. The modules will be delivered to the faculty members by other faculty members (hereafter referred to as the trainers) who will be trained by the module developers. The trainers are members of the Centres of Teaching Excellence (CTE), which have been established in the Israeli institutions as part of this project. The training of the trainers sessions took place in Israel in February 2017. It is worth mentioning that the modules will also be available as open educational resources through the on-line web-based repository, available through the projects web-site.

The paper is organized as follows. Introduction explains the rational of the project and addresses the need for teaching excellence in Higher Education in Israel. Section 2 explains the project methodology and the main deliverables. Section 3 presents the five modules that have been developed and underpin the training for teaching excellence. It also discusses their interconnection and how they provide support for teaching excellence. Finally, Conclusions summarize our work and findings and report on our future actions.