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Taught Program

Innovative Teaching Program

Overview Current Modules (Courses) Taught Program Experiential Program CEI-TPF

Taught Program

Fundamental Principles

The following are the fundamental principles that guide the design and delivery of the Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway:

  • Teaching in higher education is challenging, rigorous, developmental, and rewarding.
  • Excellence in teaching requires disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge.
  • A successful educator encourages critical thinking skills, motivates students to learn, and engages students in the learning process.
  • Quality education links classroom activities to the wider social and global contexts.
  • Program and course design, teaching and learning strategies, and forms of assessment must be aligned.
  • Teaching and research enrich and complement one another.
  • Our focus is on what faculty achieve, not what faculty do.
  • Good teaching practice can be enhanced through collaboration and reflective sharing.

Program Aims

Members of the faculty who enroll in the Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway will have ample opportunities to:

  • Understand the foundations of student-centered approaches to teaching and learning
  • Engage with teaching and learning theories and practices
  • Design content and language-rich instructional material
  • Choose and utilize educational technology to support learning
  • Critically reflect on their teaching practices through the development of an evidence-based teaching portfolio
  • Use evidence and scholarship to enhance professional practice
  • Gain a comprehensive understanding of how to design formative and summative assessments
  • Acquire new techniques to create inter-culturally attuned, supportive, motivating and engaging learning environments  
  • Cultivate creative approaches to teaching, learning and assessment through collaboration with peers
  • Enrich research profile by engaging with the scholarship of teaching and learning
  • Interact with colleagues to learn and share good teaching practices     

Program Structure: Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway

The Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway is customizable based on the individual needs of the participant. The following is a typical path through the Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway:


taught pathway

Program Orientation Session

This required session will orient participants to the CEI-TPF and UKPFS, and help them select an appropriate recognition pathway and modules to complete to support their claim through a self-assessment. Participants will create a schedule to develop an evidence-based and reflective teaching portfolio.

Selection of Constellation Modules

Based on a participant’s previous experience and needs identified in the Orientation Session, participants will plan a personalized path through the constellation modules, choosing to take as many or as few constellation modules as they wish to build up their portfolio.
The modules have been developed to integrate the relevant CEI-TPF/UKPSF standards.
See the Module Descriptions below, and Module Handbooks [LINK TO WEBSITE] for further information.

Build the Claim Module

The “Build the Claim” module is a required component of the program. It is designed to specifically support participants to draft fellowship submissions, select evidence and select referees. Participants in these workshops will be part of small writing communities to provide peer and facilitated support for their submissions.
Participants will also be paired with a Mentor that is an HEA recognized fellow and a ZU colleague. The Mentor’s role is to individually support and provide guidance to the participants through individual meetings to review their portfolio and give formative feedback as to components, alignment with the CEI-TPF/UKPSF and critically reflective narrative writing structure.
See the Module Handbook Build the Claim for more information [LINK TO WEBSITE].

Fellowship Claim Submission and Examination

An independent, arms-length review and examination process is used to judge fellowship submissions. Examiners are themselves HEA fellows typically at the same Fellow category or Senior Fellowship category to the submission being applied for. Where appropriate feedback from the examiner is provided to the person making the submission; feedback is designed to be formative and facilitative of a subsequent re-submission should it be required.

Pedagogical approach

The Innovative Teaching Program – Taught pathway modules will be delivered through face-to-face seminars, with supporting on-line activities. The modules are developed to provide participants with content and practice in the topic area, opportunities to build their portfolio through in-class and between-class activities, and to leave most sessions with something they can use in their next class.


Interactive face-to-face seminars:

  • Seminar leaders are HEA recognized, familiar with ZU’s unique work environment, policies, expectations and challenges as well as best practices in education.
  • Participants attend interactive seminars where they share, discuss, apply and reflect on the topic.
  • Additionally, participants explore and reflect on teaching and learning issues that relate to their discipline, course content and teaching context.
  • Seminars will model a wide variety of teaching approaches for participants that they may want to incorporate into their own practice.

Relevant and Pragmatic

  • Seminars and activities lead to opportunities to practice what participants have learned
  • Artifacts (activities, materials, reflections, etc.) are structured to provide evidence via teaching portfolio entries
  • There is a focus on immediacy e.g., ‘what can I do by next Tuesday?’ 

On-line module support:

  • Modules will use a corresponding Blackboard site, containing course materials for pre-reading and reference, submission areas for module activities, as well as discussion areas to interact with module colleagues.