Course "Academic Mastermind: Exploring Professional Challenges Together"
Academic professionals regularly face complex questions related to teaching, research, career development, communication, and work-life balance. However, opportunities for open discussion of professional challenges are often limited, whereas expectations that good educators should have all the answers are high.
This course addresses these challenges through the mastermind format - a safe structured process of sharing experience, peer learning, and mutual support. Widely used in business communities, it has a huge potential for researchers and educators. We all share similar difficulties, but often have to reinvent the wheel instead of attending to someone else’s experience.
The course consists of 4 weekly sessions, where you will be bringing questions and difficulties you are currently dealing with. Each session lasts 2 hours 15 min and follows clear stages that are timed: retrospective, collecting requests, choosing requests through discussion, sharing experience, take-aways, and future steps. We will exchange ideas and learn from each other through experience sharing rather than advice giving. Mastermind is a safe space for communication, support, reflection and acceptance - things we especially need in the academic competitive-based community.
Diverse experience of group members will help you have a bigger picture of your situation and apply their experience to your own context in your own way. The course is going to be in English (recommended level - B1 min), so besides expanding networking and gaining fresh perspectives on your own professional practice, you will have a chance to develop your speaking skills.
Speaker: Ekaterina Redkina is a psychologist and a qualified EFL teacher with more than 10 years of experience. She is a CELTA, TKT CLIL, IHCAM and DELTA (M1-2) holder, and a Fulbright scholar. Currently, she is teaching at the Institute of International Education of Moscow Pedagogical State University. Her primary interests are CLIL, ESP, EAP, lesson frameworks, syllabus and materials design, and the use of information technology in the ELT practice.
Dates: November 19 – December 10 (24 a/h), 17:00 - 20:00
Format: online
English level requirement: B1+
How do I get accepted? The course is offered on a competitive basis. To ensure the course effectiveness, applicants are selected on the basis of their motivation letters (answers to the questions in the registration form). For the center, these answers are a diagnostic tool allowing to gauge the applicant’s level of English and writing skills.
NB: Answers generated with AI tools will not be accepted.
