2010 Excellence in Teaching Prize

Teaching in the broad field of planning is one of the main activities of our member schools. To highlight this AESOP 2002 introduced a new prize in or-der to recognise and encourage Excellence in Teaching. Through this award, AESOP would like to celebrate and disseminate the good practice in teaching to be found in our member schools. The aim of the award is to stimulate the development of planning courses or groups of courses in order to better pre-pare students for their forthcoming practice and also to further educate practi-tioners. The award‟s purpose is to promote and encourage planning schools to apply new pedagogy, theories and/ or technologies/ techniques in ways that en-hance the theories, knowledge and skills necessary for planning. The award will provide an important opportunity to disseminate effective practice and teaching quality, for it also aims to promote the development of courses for those who have already been in practice for some years. Hopefully it will en-courage such persons to return to school to exchange ideas about new theo-ries and methods. ASSESSMENT CRITERIA Planning is seen in a wide perspective. We expect that nominations will be a critical and constructive contribution of teaching. They will inspire and foster curiosity, rigor, creativity, critical thinking, and the building of lifelong learning habits. Planning courses, or modules, or an integrated series of course or modules, of maximum length of two semesters can be nominated - BUT NOT A WHOLE PROGRAMME IN ANY ONE YEAR OF THE COURSE OF STUDY. The nominated course should: - Define the course perspective of the concept of planning - Be taught in a creative and high quality pedagogical way, which en-gages the students in dealing innovatively with planning problems; - Prepare students to be excellent theorists and practitioners. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA Only AESOP member schools can be nominated for this prize. The course must have been successfully implemented for at least one year. Applicants can either be: - A planning school; - A planning department within a university; or - A group of teaching staff or an individual belonging to an AESOP Member school. Young academics are warmly encouraged to apply. HOW TO APPLY Use the electronic application form available from the AESOP web site. All material must be submitted electronically to the chair of the jury, Francesco Lo Piccolo. [b]Applications must be received by 1st of June 2009[/b]. Please send the nomination electronically to [url=mailto:fpiccolo@unipa.it]fpiccolo@unipa.it[/url] Applications must include a full description of the course or module, specify-ing: - The content of the course; - The context/ instructional setting (country, educational system, institution, etc); - The learners (type, members on course, stage in education); - Justification of why this course/pedagogy/technique is important for plan-ning; - Learning objectives for the students; - The perspective of the concept of „planning‟ in the actual course; - Explanation of why the approach is creative and of high quality; - How any difficulties were overcome; - How the successful elements of the course can be reproduced and applied at other institutions; AWARDING THE PRIZE A prize of 1000 EUROs will be presented to a representative of the winning programme during the annual AESOP congress. The winner will be expected to make an audio-visual presentation of the programme at the subsequent year‟s congress. He/she/they will also be expected to allow the programme to be presented on AESOP‟s website. CEBE Transactions (http://www.cebe.heacademy.ac.uk/transactions/) will publish an article on the issue/contents/pedagogical approach of the winning module(s) from the AESOP Excellence in Teaching Prize on an annual basis.