Innovations in Higher Education 2000,
Helsinki August 2000

From teaching performance to learning environments

In the University of Helsinki people used to tell a story of a docent who was regularly seen to disappear into a lecture hall and stay there for a couple of hours although nobody ever saw any students enter the hall. When the docent was asked about this he said that he had been delivering his lectures and was therefore entitled to a fee. In his own opinion he had been carrying out his teaching duty, and the absence of students was irrelevant.

The type of teaching described above seems no more to be satisfactory to most university teachers any more than to students. This was proven by the enthusiasm shown by the 700 participants from 35 countries in Innovations in Higher Education 2000, a conference on developing university and other tertiary level teaching organized in University of Helsinki in August. The conference provided an interesting overview of current issues in re-search and practices relating to teaching and learning contexts as well as teaching and re-search methods in university teaching.

The present article is based on the experiences of the two writers over the four days of the conference and is therefore a restricted and selective sampling of a whole range of lectures, presentations and posters of the conference.

Fostering learning

The main themes of the conference were the following: What is the role of the university in a learning society,. How to foster expert learning, How to create innovative learning environments and Innovative approaches to evaluation and assessment.

It has not been customary to consider the significance of learning environment and in-teractional processes in connection with university teaching. This area was therefore a nice surprise in the conference. For instance Peter Bouhuys in his keynote address Developing the learner's potential to learn discussed how much better we learn in a positive and supportive environment. Many of the conference themes in fact approached this question from different points of view: tutoring, knowledge of learning processes, various ways of raising learners' awareness of their learning processes and empowering them in this process. Tutor-ing and portfolios were of particular interest to us since they are areas many people in our department have been working on.

 

The conference was organized in University of Helsinki in August.

The many presentations of tutoring showed that students' concerns are being taken seriously in many different ways. Presentations on training peer tutors, different kinds of staff tutoring and comments on how to app-roach students even before they arrive in their department showed directions for developing tutoring in ways suitable to differents contexts.

Many presentations on the use of portfolios and learning diaries were well-designed train-ing sessions for us participants. Well though-out and clearly presented methods were like gifts that we could bring home with us and share with colleagues. The themes succeeded in making visible something not usually discussed or evaluated, as discussions ranged from portfolios in engineering studies, to the portfolio as a prosessional development and a learning tool to using students as consultants in an evaluation process of public libraries.

Lectures, posters, workshops, flea market

In addition to keynote addresses and paper sessions, many poster sessions and workshops were organized throughout the conference. The last day gave a chance to the participants to present their posters, teaching materials and ideas in a flea market, which was an exellent
meeting place for exhange of ideas and experiences. If in the future the flea market can be arranged before too many participants have left, it may be even more lively and exciting.

 

There was 700 participants from 35 countries in "Innovations in Higher Education 2000".

Some of the most interested and inspiring workshops were those arranged by the students and teachers of Educational Psychology in the Department of Teacher Education. The students, who have studied under the guidance of Professor Maijaliisa Rauste-von Wright, had built their workshops on the principles of phenomenon-based learning, creating a realistic discussion and exchange of ideas and demonstrating their learning processes. It was possible for the participants in the workshop to observe how the students had created their own learning environment, had become aware of the problems they faced and how they overcame those problems. Posters and other texts were also available for those interested.

It was interesting how the participants in these workshops reacted in different ways. One person told us that she had expected the students to present a more coherent analysis of their learning process instead of the group discussions we witnessed and could participate in. Her expectation was to hear a traditional conference presentation. For us, the method chosen was very appropriate as we felt that we shared the same experiental atmosphere with the students.

Also other workshops we participated in were well planned and fulfilled our expectations: in them it was possible to try in practice the working methods presented. For instance, in Teachers' Clinic - How to work with groups in higher education, the group planned, tried out and observed working methods that could be applied in anybody's teaching, going through a group process in three hours.

When trying to fit in the last minute preparation for the conference with the rush at the beginning of the term, we were wondering whether it would be worth it to spend nearly a week in Helsinki. The conference, however, proved us wrong: the presentations and workshops gave us many ideas and much enthusiasm to start the year's work and continue developing teaching.

Tuula Hirvonen and Liisa Lautamatti
University of Jyväskylä