Curriculum development and educational leadership

Creating, renewing or upgrading of course material

I came to teach already developed lectures at the Estonian University of Life Sciences, therefore in the beginning I was rather learning and observing. Nowadays my main focus is graphic design courses, in which I prepare and contribute to tasks (every year new area to design) and exercises. I prepare also different lectures. During the past time, I could learn how long should one lecture lasts, how many breaks should be done and how to engage my audience. Definitely, my graphic design background is much help here.

Design Project is the biggest subject I teach together with my colleague (Friedrich Kuhlmann). I feel, that especially last two years we found a way how to co-work. Those lectures are more discussion-based without a pre-prepared exact timetable. We agree, that a design project requires a lot of individual approaches and also common discussions. In Appendix 5 I gave an example of worked out by us and students common method of design work.

Unfortunately, COVID-19 times were a rather difficult experience to teach design courses for me. I feel it went well, however, not the same workflow was achieved.

Curriculum development

Since I came to work in Tartu in Estonia I have been involved in the development and improvement of our curriculum. I feel that within time my voice matter more and more and my experience is more and more valuable. In the future, I would like to have a chance to work more on my own courses and ideas, as well as see how the implementation of the new curriculum at the university looks like. I really much enjoy taking part in the yearly discussions, however, due to the language barrier (Estonian language), I feel in Estonia it is rather difficult to fully understand coming changes and requirements. My goal is to participate more in that.

Contributing to school/university/national/international level educational development

As described on page 5 I have been taking an active role in online courses under the CoLand project. I have been part of two intensive programs where we have met and work with students and local communities (Italy and Estonia). I was also taking a very active role in the online teaching itself as well as offline consultations with Estonian groups.