1.4 The HEI’s examples of successful enhancement activities

Faculty of Education

  • International students have been integrated in to the same courses with Finnish undergraduate students. Especially, integrated seminar groups have been highly appreciated since group work benefits from different viewpoints.
  • The Faculty has developed a feedback system in which all the teachers are asked to collect feedback from their students on each course. The feedback is used to develop the course but it is also handled in the annual development discussion between the teacher and their supervisor.

Faculty of Humanities

  • At the School of Languages and Translation Studies, the structure of undergraduate studies has been reformed in order to clarify the structure of the studies and enhance teaching collaboration. For instance, the Multilingual Translation Studies Degree Programme has strong ties with the translation companies working in the Turku area. In the recent year, the School has also invested in international co-operation.
  • The School of History, Culture and Arts Studies operates at two campuses and has actively developed and implemented multi-site teaching independent of time and place. To support this, the School has created a Moodle platform with videos and other types of teaching materials on methods and methodology.

Faculty of Law

  • The Faculty’s student feedback system is highly developed. The Faculty decides each year from which courses feedback is collected centrally. Every year, a seminar is organised where academic personnel and students discuss feedback.
  • Working life is closely connected to the education and to the evaluation of curriculum and practices.
  • The ways of involving students in research, for example, through research projects and an established pool of research assistants collected from our students, have been successful.
  • The Faculty’s pedagogical workshops have proved to work as functional means for changing and sharing practices of teaching and for understanding teaching and learning.

Faculty of Medicine

  • There is systematic pedagogic education for teachers (2 ECTS, and 10 ECTS, both in Finnish and English).
  • Weekly Zoom Cafés are organised for teachers where they mainly discuss teaching methods.
  • The Faculty organises a simulation laboratory for teaching clinical skills and decision-making.
  • Dean and Vice Deans meet the student representatives monthly.

Faculty of Science

  • At the Physics Department, the 2nd year has been identified to be hard for the students, and therefore the Department has established obligatory tutoring every two weeks for all students by doctoral researchers. All physics students have also been divided into PSP-groups which means all students have a dedicated teacher tutor throughout the whole study path.
  • Scientia Aboensis is a collaboration between the Faculties of Science of UTU and Åbo Akademi University.

Faculty of Social Sciences

  • Multi-professional teaching clinic (psychology, speech-language therapy, social work) and alumni relations have been two major successes for the Faculty. The staff has access to high-quality pedagogical training and is strongly encouraged to make use of this unique form of teaching organisation.

Faculty of Technology

  • All the degree programmes in the Faculty of Technology are involved in the Graduate Survey of the trade union for academic engineers and architects in Finland (TEK). All the universities get consistent feedback from the education they provide in the field of technology. The survey is conducted and the results are analysed annually together with the universities involved in the survey. The results and feedback of the survey are considered in the Faculty’s development actions.
  • The Faculty participated in FINEEC’s Engineering Programme Accreditation which aims to support the enhancement of quality in engineering degree programmes. The Faculty got many ideas on how to implement the received feedback in action.

Turku School of Economics

  • TSE arranges several activities where students collaborate in projects with external organisations to solve their challenges. One significant concept for student projects with external organisations is the Business Innovation Camp where students solve real-life business problems introduced by company partners.
  • The International AACSB Accreditation awarded in 2019 gives TSE a general framework for the quality work and commits the Faculty to the continuous development of the quality of education. Monitoring and management of education as well as the curriculum planning process and evaluation of degree programmes are all in-line and work well.

UTUGS

  • At UTU, the supervisors’ professional development has been institutionally supported by annual training for supervisors organised by UTUGS.
  • Digitalisation together with the centralisation of the administrative staff and the strong leadership and commitment of UTUGS to development has led to the outcome that the faculty and the DP-level processes are more coherent and streamlined across UTU. In UGIS (University of Turku Graduate School Information System), all doctoral researchers, their supervisor(s) and members of the follow-up groups are linked and can communicate easily. The system also offers the users up-to-date information.