The short-term goal of the training is to improve the knowledge and skills of university teachers that want to teach in the English language. This includes not only improving their language skills, but more importantly their knowledge and skills in foreign language didactics, using the English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) approach.
In the medium term, these types of trainings have been shown to influence teachers’ attitudes, i.e. to inspire them to provide teaching their subjects in the English language, to introduce their students to the relevant vocabulary to their study field, and to give teachers the opportunity to use professional language to communicate with experts in their study field.
The data indicates that there was a positive change in participants’ perceptions of their knowledge and skills after completing the training, as shown by the results of the training satisfaction survey.
Finally, the training also had a very important added value in terms of its social aspect. Both lecturers and participants developed new professional and personal connections, had the opportunity for peer-to-peer learning, to network and establish contacts with colleagues from other academic fields, which is very likely to create an additional impact on cooperation at the individual level, and therefore also at the institutional level.
So far 744 teachers have successfully completed the training after five conducted cycles:
- The first cycle (2019−2020) was successfully completed by 176 teachers in total (36 from the University of Belgrade, 40 from the University of Novi Sad, 62 from the University of Niš, 35 from the University of Kragujevac);
- The second cycle (2021−2022) was successfully completed by 149 teachers in total (37 from the University of Belgrade, 33 from the University of Novi Sad, 42 from the University of Niš, 37 from the University of Kragujevac);
- The third cycle (2022−2023) was successfully completed by 153 teachers in total (40 from the University of Belgrade, 52 from the University of Novi Sad, 37 from the University of Niš, 24 from the University of Kragujevac);
- The fourth cycle (2023−2024) was successfully completed by 133 teachers in total (46 from the University of Belgrade, 42 from the University of Novi Sad, 23 from the University of Niš, 22 from the University of Kragujevac).
- The fifth cycle (2024−2025) was successfully completed by 133 teachers in total (32 from the University of Belgrade, 38 from the University of Novi Sad, 41 from the University of Niš, 22 from the University of Kragujevac).
