P-OE - UniversitätsVerlagWebler

Personal- und Organisationsentwicklung/-politik
P-OE
Asko Karjalainen & Säde-Pirkko Nissilä
Designing and piloting 60 ects-credit
Teacher Education Program for
University Teachers
Asko Karjalainen
Säde-Pirkko
Nissilä
1. Introduction
In the University of Oulu systematic pedagogical training
has been delivered since 1971. Up until 1992 a pedagogical
course was carried out every year or every second year. The
teaching method was based on lectures.
A remarkable change was made in spring 1992, when a
new type of training was designed. This new module was
called “Workshop for Expertise in University Teaching
(EUT)” (240 hours/ 9 ects credits). EUT contained three
cumulative interactive workshop sessions during one academic
year. Between the workshops teachers put their
educational expertise and skills into practice. Theory was
integrated with the practical assignments in a special A-B-
C- format.
Figure 1: Three rules for the university teacher
The assignments were based on the participants’ actual
work, e.g. lectures, group-sessions, and seminars which
were being given during the time of training. The idea was
that during the EUT a teacher completely reforms one of
his/her actual courses, delivers it to the students and evaluates
the learning outcomes together with the students
and the trainers. After passing the EUT-module teachers
should be able to design courses, support activities and
academic learning environments which enhance students’
motivation and encourage them to work intensively and
move towards the deep (researcher-like) learning strategy.
The teacher should also be able to use modern and interactive
evaluation methods of learning. The number of participants
in EUT at a time was about 20. The feedback from the
EUT module was excellent and this format was carried out
not only in the University of Oulu but also nationwide for
more than 12 years.
In 2004 Peda-forum started a cooperation project to consider
new ideas and methods for promoting pedagogical training
in all Finnish universities. Volunteer-based delivery
was found to be one of the key problems. Another critical
anomaly was the disparity in the volumes of pedagogical
training between higher education and other educational
organisations. University teachers´ training was mainly
composed of separate short term courses, and more integrated
long term programs were needed. The third problem
was higher education teacher training being not nationally
accredited to meet the standards of comprehensive teacher
education. This also decreased university lecturers´ motivation
to participate in specialised training, particularly if they
wished to get the maximum gain for the career development.
2. Shared Hihger Teacher Education Program
(HEAT), 60 ECTS
The Teaching Development Unit (TDU) in the University of
Oulu started together with the School of Vocational and
Higher Teacher Education (SVTE) in Oulu University of Applied
Sciences a new compatible program for HE teacher
education, which was planned in 2006 and put into practise
as a pilot project in 2007 with 50 participants. The Program
was allocated 60 ects credits associated with 1600
hours of study. The program is planned to span a three-year
period, but it may be completed in one year as a full time
study program.
The program is fully compatible with the Finnish comprehensive
teacher education programs. This means that it
meets the national standards set up by the law on Finnish
teacher education. The completion of the program certifies
the teacher to teach in all Finnish educational organisations
as long as mastery of the discipline is also properly demonstrated.
The program was planned by a joint expert team.
The phases of the planning process were:
1. carrying out the competence analysis,
2. setting general aims for the program,
3. defining core courses, core contents, learning objectives
and teaching and assessment methods,
4. designing quality assurance policy and follow up study
procedures, and
5. confirming the admission criteria.
24 P-OE 1+2/2008