During the summer school, you have become familiar with various concepts, theories, and approaches to teaching and had your first opportunity to design a few teaching and learning documents. The online program builds on this experience. Your first major task is to design, implement and evaluate a teaching innovation in the Fall 2017. Teaching innovation means the introduction of an active learning method, approach, or activity into your teaching practice that you have not used before and/or that are not commonly used in your institution. Because this innovation will serve as the basis of the reflection paper that you are going to prepare by the Spring 2018 semester, your teaching innovation plan will be accompanied by a research design in order to measure the impact of your innovation on student learning.

Therefore, the core of your innovation will be teaching and learning as related to the course—and specifically to the topic of the classes—you are going to teach using your innovation plan. That is, it is not about your dissertation topic unless you happen to teach a course whose topic is identical with your dissertation. The teaching innovation plan is theory driven: it makes use of a concept, theory, or approach of teaching and learning and, thus, it is linked to the relevant literature. Although it may seem premature, there are three reflection papers attached to this entry that have been written by participants of a similar teaching and learning program. By reading these, you can get a better understanding of what is required of you in this project. However, the content, focus and measurement your innovation may be very different from those used in these papers.

The design and implementation of your teaching innovation plan is broken down into smaller steps not only to make it less overwhelming but also to allow for its incremental development and improvement with the assistance of your coach. These involves three major assignments. Two of these will have be focusing on writing and design and will require both a first and a final draft. The third one is putting your design into practice during your teaching, and collecting the necessary data for the subsequent evaluation. The general schedule for the Fall 2017 is shown in the table below.
 

	Steps to Realize the Teaching Innovation Plan		Due Date
1.	Teaching innovation proposal	1st Draft	17 September 2017
		Final Version	1 October 2017
2.	Teaching innovation session plan(s) and research design	1st Draft	15 October 2017
		Final Version	29 October 2017
3.	Implementation of teaching innovation including data collection		End of fall semester

We are aware that you may have limitations on when and how many classes you teach during the semester. We also know that some of you have some constraints on how much you can change the subject and delivery of the material. In both cases, please notify your coach and the program coordinator (Gabriela Pleschová) as soon as possible. They will work with you and draw up a revised submission schedule that are compatible with your teaching duties. They will try to assist you in finding a solution so that you can implement your teaching innovation plan. 

The sub-syllabi below contain detailed information on the individual steps and they will be made accessible one at a time.