Breaking the isolation of Ukrainian university teachers

During the spring, around 80 Ukrainian university teachers have had the chance to take a course on online teaching and learning from Uppsala University. The hope is to give them new perspectives on distance education and to offer a forum in which they can focus on their role as academics and forget the war for a few hours.

Aiming to help Ukrainians feel seen where they are

The course is just one part of the larger project Resilience of Education: Sustainability and Cooperation for Ukrainian Universities (RESCUU), which is run by The Baltic University Programme here in Uppsala with support from the Swedish Institute. The project aims to give Ukrainian teachers and students tools that will enable them to play an active role in reconstruction after the war ends. Apart from the course, a boot camp has been organised for students in Kyiv.

A course in sustainable development is also planned for Ukrainian teachers. In all these initiatives, the hope is not only to provide knowledge, but also to help teachers and students feel less alone.

- We want them to feel it is meaningful to carry on teaching, to carry on studying – we want them to feel seen. This is also knowledge they will need, both now during the war and afterwards when it is over, says Lyudmyla Babak, project coordinator from The Baltic University Programme.

- The hope is that they will find it inspiring, learn new tools, gain insight into how to reach students and how to plan and conduct their teaching remotely or in hybrid formats, says Geir Gunnlaugsson, educational developer at the Unit for Academic Teaching and Learning, who has been partly responsible for developing the course and is also one of the instructors.

Read the article here: Breaking the isolation of Ukrainian university teachers.