Poster: Improving Skills for Teaching at an Engineering University

This paper was inspired with discussions of the status, definition, and typology of engineering education. The ambiguous status of a professor at the engineering university as a teacher, researcher, and methodologist generates the following questions: How can all the above functions be balanced? How to secure the efficiency of educating activities without breaking their integrity? Considering these questions, we inevitably come to the issue of a professor’s pedagogical skills and the necessity of finding the ways to develop and improve them. This paper deals with the essence and structure of pedagogical skills, which is really relevant for those teaching at an engineering university and, as a rule, having no basic educational background in pedagogy and psychology; as well as with the paths in developing and improving such skills. An advanced training program consisting of several modules has been proposed as one of potential options. We have also considered the contents of such modules and the features of their implementation at an engineering university.