TeachEx: Teaching Excellence in Israel at Beit Berl

​Effective teaching demands more than expertise in a particular academic area - an effective teacher must be able to get students engaged and actively involved in their learning, and to address the diversity of students in the classroom. These teaching skills become increasingly important in today’s interconnected and globalized world. Beit Berl’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching launched a series of teacher training workshops this semester as part of TEACHEX: Teaching Excellence in Israel, a three-year international partnership to promote teaching excellence in higher education institutions in Israel and, as a result, improve student learning in these institutions.

The Center designed and developed five TeachEx modules incorporating five key principles: Innovation in Active Teaching & Learning - new pedagogic approaches, learning environments and classroom techniques; Internationalization of Education - applying learning outcomes, ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, a tool of the European Higher Education Area to enhance the quality of higher education), Diversity, Development and Devolution in curriculum development; Bridging the Generational Gap - designing curriculum to meet the characteristics and learning strategies of the new student generation; Managing Diversity in the Classroom - designing teaching methodologies that give staff tools to develop diverse learning materials to meet different students’ learning styles, abilities, disabilities and multi-cultural backgrounds; and Educational Technology - blending learning, e-learning, mobile learning and more.

Upwards of 150 lecturers - a quarter of Beit Berl College’s faculty - participated in these workshops. The program will carry out a formative evaluation not only of the participating lecturers, but also of their students, to measure the experience of the students by teachers who have undergone these courses. TeachEx is a three-year international partnership project conceived to contribute to the continuous professional development of academic staff by establishing or reinforcing Centers for Teaching Excellence for continuous academic staff development connecting personal, professional and civic fulfilment responsibilities with the ‘transferable skills required for a rapidly changing world, as well as innovative, high-quality, flexible programs designed to promote better teaching and therefore enhanced learning by students. Beit Berl College is working with European academic institutions from the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland, Poland and Cyprus, as well as the IDC Herzliya, Ben-Gurion University, Bezalel Academy, Oranim College and Gordon College in Israel as partners in this international consortium. TeachEx is an Erasmus+ project funded by the EU.
Watch this video to learn more about TeachEx.

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