School on Michael’s Domain

University Pedagogy (UP2.2, 2019): Assessment of Learning and Giving Feedback

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Becoming a qualified teacher in FinlandThe degree requirements for the 60-credit module in University Pedagogy (UP) consist of 25 credits of basic studies and 35 credits of intermediate studies. Although UP focuses on teaching at the university, the completed module qualifies you also for teaching at schools. The Pedagogy Center of the University of Helsinki organizes the courses of the basic study modules (25 ECTS credits) in English. However, if you want to complete the whole module, you will need to take courses which are only offered in Finnish or Swedish. That means you cannot become a qualified (“pätevä”) teacher without knowing Finnish or Swedish. I do not know whether my Finnish is meanwhile good enough to be able to do that. For the time being I stick to the courses taught in English.**University Pedagogy 2.2 (2019)**In the 2019 autumn term, I took the UP2.2 course (without taking UP2.1 first). We had a very nice teacher (Jokke Häsä), but I still don’t understand why he switched from doing Mathematics to teaching Pedagogy. Certainly a gain for pedagogy since he understands the statistics and we had some interesting forth-and-back about the statistics of the Johnston & Miles paper that we were reading. They paper is also attached to this post and the reporting about their statistical methods leaves much room for interpretation. I actually sent an email to the first author, but she had just retired a few months ago. Although I did not get an failure-of-delivery error, she perhaps did not anymore feel the need to respond.Blind flyingFor me, one of the biggest issues was, that I had nothing to compare too when I was preparing my assignments. When I am writing manuscripts for journals, I have thousands of examples which I can study and to which I can compare. So I decided during the course that I would make all my assignments public. Embarrassment included. But maybe some future participants of UP2.2 will have something to compare to. Sort of an exemplar. Not perfect, but passable. I only post my own assignments.**All my assignments available under CC0 (= no strings attached)**All this stuff is shared under the CC0 : Use it as you wish, no need to acknowledge me. The group assignment is the only thing missing here since I would need to get everybody’s green light, which is not going to happen. I should have done this 9 months ago, but I simply forgot. There was just too much other stuff happening.I did ok in the course, but I still don’t know anythingWhat grade did I get? Our group assignment got a 5 (on the scale of 1 to 5, where 5 is the best grade) and my own stuff a 4. Thanks to all the great members of team Carbonara! That averaged out as a 5 for the whole course. For some strange reason, the Moodle course page still shows that I only completed 66% of the course assignments, but WebOodi shows that I received the credits. So much for the wonders of our IT systems…

Thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture-room

Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Non vitae sed scholae discimus (“Thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture-room”). 2000 years ago Seneca wrote this to one of his students. My son is of the same opinion: Much of his curriculum content is irrelevant for real life. Unfortunately, I have to agree (and many experts do agree as well). Within a few years, the initial pride and joy of starting school are followed by boredom and disinterest. Just a few weeks into the autumn semester, the kids are merely waiting for the Christmas vacation. Learning should be fun and I wonder what is going wrong? How does the school manage to kill off the natural curiosity and motivation that quickly?In the beginning, I argued with my son, that it is not very important WHAT you learn, but that you learn how to learn, which should be possible with almost any topic. However, while perhaps true, this notion is at the same time a confession of failure by the ppeople, who make and implement the curricula at our schools. Why does it seem so difficult to choose topics that are interesting and relevant?100 years ago, reading, writing and basic arithmetics might have been enough. Knowledge is exploding these days, but the only answer of curriculum planners is the cram more into the plans without getting rid of teaching obsolete factual knowledge. That leaves little freedom for the teaching of methodological competencies which are deeply needed in today’s society.I get it, that schools have limited financial and personnel possibilities. However, there are teachers, who - against all material limits (in one of the richest countries in the world!) - manage to deliver a modern and enjoyable customer (sic!) experience.As an answer to the future needs of our society, some people try to push the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). However, especially in these subjects, the knowledge and information growth is so fast that curricula (which are by definition rather inert) and also most teachers are not able to keep pace with. Even though the knowledge might be relevant, the more important lessons that should be taught are not of factual knowledge, but of methodological knowledge. And methodological knowledge can be taught with highly interesting and relevant topics:

The Heart Beats on the Left

Fri, 15 Sep 2017 00:00:00 +0000

The heart points to the left and most people’s heart is about one-third right, two-thirds left. I just joined the Finnish Social Democrats ( SDP ). I had seriously contemplated joining the German Socialdemocratic party (SPD) in 1994, but I happened to leave Germany because of a DAAD scholarship I received. Shortly after I had moved to Finland, Germany managed to get rid of its conservative government. Gerhard Schröder replaced Helmut Kohl as federal chancellor and started moving things which Kohl had been afraid to touch for 16 years. I think a country, in which the son of a cleaning lady and a single mother can work up his way to become head of the government, is principally ok.A major reason for joining the SDP was also my dissatisfaction with the present Finnish coalition government, that stubbornly keeps refusing to invest into Finland’s future: into the education of our kids. The cutbacks in the budgets from kindergartens to universities show an unprecedented ideologic egoism for a short-term balanced budget, which is unprecedented among all Scandinavian countries.The good thing about the SDP (and the German SPD) is that there is more room for different opinions than in most other parties.