Development and teamwork will strengthen the degree programmes at Health
The Faculty’s new teaching strategy rests on three columns: it is intended to strengthen both the quality of the pedagogical work, collegial collaboration, and the career paths of the teachers. Ultimately, this will enhance the teaching quality and create greater coherence for both teaching staff and students.
Based on the pedagogical value principles
In 2022, Health approved a values basis and laid down the educational principles for teaching at Health. These pedagogical principles form a value-based educational foundation for the strategic initiatives. The new strategy is based on these principles, which, amongst other things, emphasise that:
- The teachers at Health are grounded in strong research and knowledge environments, where they can draw inspiration and feedback from their colleagues and peers for the further development of teaching programmes, the academic content, didactic approaches and pedagogical theories.
- Health’s academic environments are characterised by a fundamental academic and educational freedom for the individual lecturer on the basis of overall insight into and understanding of the study programme as a whole. Teachers at Health take an open and inquisitive approach to the educational practices of their peers and have a genuine interest in mutual sparring. This is supported by many opportunities for skills enhancement and a wealth of resources.
You can read more about the pedagogical principles here
World-class teaching is one of Health’s core competencies. When our lecturers stand in front of the students, they are therefore subject to considerable demands not only towards the academic content they present, but also towards their pedagogical and didactic approach. Now the Faculty is boosting both skills enhancement and sparring with colleagues in order to strengthen the teaching still further. Knowledge exchange and collaboration makes a big difference, says Lise Wogensen, Vice-dean for Research.
“Our students need to learn a lot and relate to knowledge that is not just new, but also constantly evolving. The same applies to the lecturers, who must ensure that they are presenting the latest research and themes in the lecture hall. That means an inspiring academic environment with a high degree of academic and collegial sparring is important for both the lecturers and the students.”
Even better and closer co-operation with colleagues will also create greater coherence in the courses and the overall degree programme, says Lise Wogensen Bach.
“It is sometimes hard for students to find the common thread, because the lecturers focus on their own teaching in a course, or on their own course in the overall programme. By not only collaborating on the development of the course but also participating in collegial collaboration when teaching, we believe that both students and lecturers will find that the teaching and the courses are more coherent, and overall even better,” she says.
Demands towards skills enhancement
The new strategy will be accompanied by a description of the expected competencies at the individual job levels. Consequently, lecturers will also find that the possibilities for, and not least the demands towards, skills enhancement are emphasised. Amongst other things, the lecturers must complete and update a teaching portfolio, says Lise Wogensen Bach.
“This portfolio will be used actively both in the staff development dialogues and in connection with appointments. The lecturers will find that it is important that, together with their colleagues and the head of department, they focus on strengthening and expanding their teaching skills,” she says.
At the same time, it will be possible to take more courses through the Centre for Educational Development (CED), either in the form of the existing courses, or as more specific workshops ordered by the teaching teams.
“It may be that a team would like to attend a workshop on the development of forms of examination using AI, or something else that they would like to learn more about. They can then can contact CED and get a workshop planned,” says Lise Wogensen Bach, who continues: “Skills enhancement is not limited to participation in courses or workshops, but is also very much about informal competency development, for example through the collegial peer feedback that takes place in the academic environments.”
Everyone benefits from better skills
In the opinion of Lise Wogensen Bach, it will benefit both teaching staff and students for the lecturers to develop their skills and collaborate on the courses, and this is fully in line with the values and pedagogical principles for teaching at Health.
“We want to offer our students the best possible teaching, and we would like to offer relevant skills enhancement within a core activity such as education. Our students are the most important impression that we make on society, so we need to make sure that we are constantly developing and getting better. We can do this by supporting, strengthening and developing our teaching staff and our whole approach to teaching.”
The new teaching portfolio will be ready by the autumn semester.
You can read more about the pedagogical teaching principles here