Author: skohonen

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Tip of the Week 2/2024

Toolkit for Online Teachers

Now available in English, too! The Toolkit includes both pedagogical reflection points and edtech tips with links to resources. The Toolkit for Online Teachers now published equals to the first level of the Toolkits in Finnish, “Digiopettajan starttipaketti.” It is compiled as a Microsoft Sway presentation.

Here is a link to the Toolkit on this website: https://sites.uef.fi/verkko-ja-monimuotopedagogiikka/toolkit-for-online-teachers/

Accessing the Sway presentation does not require a sign-in, however, some of the UEF-internal links within the file are accessible to UEF staff only.

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Tip of the Week 12/2023

UEF Campus Development Webinar

Welcome to a UEF Campus Development webinar on Tuesday, 28 November 2023, 9:00–11:00.

The webinar summarises the results of the work carried out during the autumn, presents scenarios for the development of both campuses, and provides an overview of the progress of the project.

The webinar will be attended by the Rectors, directors of University Services and representatives of the campus development organisation, as well as Piia Viitanen and Aapo Huotarinen from ARCO, the architect agency.

Follow THIS LINK to join the webinar. A recording of the webinar will be published in Viva Engage (Yammer) after the event.

The main language of the webinar is Finnish; however, the presentation material and summaries of the discussion themes will be in English.

The UEF Campus Development Viva Engage community will serve as a commenting platform during and after the webinar.

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Tip of the week 11/2023

Participate in the survey: Online exams and remote monitoring

Dear Teacher or Student, please answer the survey, and influence the procurement of proctoring software for online exams!

Do you think it should be possible to monitor remotely conducted online exams more closely? Would there be users for this kind of software in the University of Eastern Finland?

What kind of features should the software have?

The mapping of the procurement of remote monitoring software, aka proctoring software, for online exams continues. Now we are investigating UEF teachers’ and students’ opinions and views on the matter: whether there is a need for procurement, how much use the software would have and what kind of features should be found in it.

The survey was created based on the responses to an online exam-related survey conducted earlier in the autumn. This survey is only aimed at the staff and students of the University of Eastern Finland, so that we can get a better idea of what kind of needs and ideas exist in our organization in particular.

Answer the survey no later than 30 November 2023 and have your say on future exam practices!

Open the survey from this link. All responses are anonymous.

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Tip of the Week 7/2023

The influence of AI in learning, teaching, and assessment?

Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) of Deakin University, Australia, has been organising a webinar series this semester, among many institutions of higher education, on the influence of AI in learning, teaching, assessment, and in the development of teaching and assessment.

As we haven’t yet organised an English-language discussion on the topic at the University of Eastern Finland, I warmly recommend taking some time to listen to or also listen to and watch this webinar series by CRADLE.

Why not also join their third webinar in the series, coming up on June 5, titled “The impact of ChatGPT on higher education: what have we learnt?” As they are webcasting from Australia, it will be an early morning session for us in Finland, starting at 7 AM in our time zone. Nevertheless, their focus on assessment makes this all the more pertinent for us teachers.

As per their own description, “The Centre for Research in Assessment and Digital Learning (CRADLE) researches assessment practices in the changing settings of education, which are increasingly embracing digital learning. Our aim is to improve and optimise learning in higher and professional education”.  

Best wishes, Susanna K.

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Tip of the Week 6/2023

Why do we assess the way we do?

This Tip was also published in English in the Finnish version of the Tips of the Week.

Assessment, assessment, assessment. All of us teachers do it, but do we give enough thought to what it is we are actually doing?

As UEF Professor of Education Science Päivi Atjonen has put it, when discussing what students will focus on in our courses: “Sitä saat mitä tilaat”. That is, literally translated, ”You get what you order”, with the meaning of “You reap what you sow”. To put it simply, students will focus their effort on what will be assessed (and graded).

So, to use Atjonen’s metaphor, what kind of orders are we placing to students in our courses? Have you recently reflected on your own assessment and grading practices?

Why not listen to Juuso Nieminen’s interview titled Toward Assessment Utopias for the podcast Teachers Going Gradeless as your end-of-semester personal and professional development. In the interview, Nieminen (an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Education, University of Hong Kong, a Banting Fellow at Ontario Tech University, Canada, as well as an Honorary Research Fellow at Deakin University, Australia) discusses for example his own personal experiences as a teacher when trying to put into practice co-created assessment rubrics with his students.

While listening to the podcast, why not also take a look at Nieminen’s article Assessment for inclusion: rethinking inclusive assessment in higher education, published in Teaching in Higher Education in 2022.

PS: Finnish-language speakers: Have you noticed how many useful resources on assessment Professor Atjonen has online, for example her channel on YouTube? Not to mention our UEF Digiopettajan starttipaketti, the audiovisual guide available online (in Finnish at the moment, will be published in English, too), and the links within its section on assessment to Atjonen’s resources.

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Tip of the Week 5/2023

How to Measure Student Workload in Your Course

Have you ever received student feedback with comments that your course included “too much work”? How much is too much? What kind of assignments and tasks would equal the amount of work required for example in a course of 4 credit points (a total of 108 hours of work)?

You can calculate an estimate of how much work each type of learning task will take by using some of the available workload calculators, such as the UEF’s or Fitech’s. Naturally there are elements not covered in these calculators to take into consideration, too. Nevertheless, these calculators will give you a rough idea of the average workload for students with each assignment type you use in your course:

Below, a screenshot of the UEF “Mitta-peruslaskuri” in English, and a screenshot of the page 6 of Fitech’s Learning Design Toolkit: Workload Estimation.

A screenshot of the UEF Mitta-peruslaskuri.
A screenshot of Fitech’s Learning Design Toolkit, page 6: Workload Estimation.

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Tip of the Week 3/2023

“Pedagogy of Kindness” instead of “Pedagogy of Punishment”

This tip was also published in English in the Finnish language version of the site.

In the midst of the current, even heated discussions regarding Open AI’s ChatGPT and all other artificial intelligence writing and translation tools and how they may influence our work as teachers, why not focus on the human side of learning and teaching.

Learning is about interaction, as most pedagogy experts would put it. And what is interaction? Interaction is about encounters, about meeting one another, about being present to one another when exchanging thoughts, ideas, reflections, uncertainties, queries, questions. Interaction is also about very sensitive moments in which hopes and fears may be touched upon.

Having said that, why is it then that we very often make our first meetings with the participants of our courses sound like all we do is go for punishments, in the style of “…if you do this or that, you will suffer”? Have you ever checked the kind of language you use in your course introductions? Are you dedicating a lot of time and space discussing “punishments”, so to say? Have you ever wondered what your word choices and language choices, such as excessive use of imperative (“Do this/Do that/Don’t do this/Don’t do that”), may do to the learning process and the learning outcomes?

Enter Pedagogy of Kindness. Catherine Denial, a Professor of History who has written about Pedagogy of Kindness and is currently working on a book on the same topic, describes it this way:

“[K]indness as pedagogical practice is not about sacrificing myself, or about taking on more emotional labor. It has simplified my teaching, not complicated it, and it’s not about niceness. Direct, honest conversations, for instance, are often tough, not nice. But the kindness offered by honesty challenges both myself and my students to grow. ”

OneHE, a website that offers resources, courses, and community discussions for higher education teachers, is organising a webinar with Catherine Denial on March 15, 2023, late evening in the Finnish time zone.  Join the Pedagogy of Kindness: Compassion toward the Self webinar to hear about what colleagues in other locations around the world think about the topic.

OneHE is a payable website but it offers a free trial period to new users. I warmly recommend making the most of their free trial. Check out Catherine Denial’s short course on Pedagogy of Kindness, too. You may discover that there is a whole array of other interesting resources and short courses on the website! (And no, they have not paid me to advertise them…)

Kind regards,

Susanna

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Tip of the Week 2/2022

A moment for reflection: Patterns

This tip was also published in English in the Finnish language version of the site.

180 Studio + Eckenhoff Saunders. (2020). Seed + Spark. Using Nature as a Model to Reimagine How we Learn and Live. A Collaborative Design Project. 180 Press.

”The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past, we call genetics. The information revealed thousands of years ago, we call religion. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago, we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago, we call family, and the information offered years, months, days, or hours ago, we call education and advice.” (David Brooks, quoted on p. 224, Seed + Spark.)

We work in the field of education and advice, guidance. Education is about people, about interaction. In that sense, education is a living system that we all participate in and contribute to, all the time. Any living system is a network of patterns; patterns of relationships, patterns of human behaviour, patterns of structuring information. If indeed any living system is a network of patterns, to understand it, we need to learn to see the patterns. So what exactly are the patterns we are looking for?

”Our brains are naturally pattern seeking and sense making. The ability to recognize and formulate patterns is essential to deep understanding because patterns are essential to meaning construction.” (Stephanie Pace Marshall, quoted on p. 220, Seed + Spark)

My questions to myself today: What patterns should I learn to see in my habits, in my ways of thinking about my profession and my professional identity, in my teaching praxis, the ways in which I work and think about my work? Are these patterns something to hold on to and nurture, or something to let go? What new patterns are emerging – what new networks of patterns are emergent (that is, becoming, being formed)? How could I participate in and contribute to these emergent patterns within my community of work?

”There is always enough time for the right work.” (adrienne maree brown, 2017, Emergent Strategy, p. 41.)

Susanna K.