Thank you for high-quality teaching, with kind regards, the Academic Affairs sector
In our influencing work, we have wanted to highlight the students’ possibilities to impact things and the students’ perspectives on e.g. AI, feedback practices and student wellbeing. We are happy to see that these themes have become topics for discussions throughout the university. For instance, the working groups of the university are even more eagerly looking for more students and their thoughts to join them. This is the kind of development we want to see continuing! There’s still room for new ideas, and we believe that the discussions on development will go on for a long time.
The role of the student organizations cannot be belittled in the realization of high-quality advocacy work. This year in our operations we have aimed at lowering the threshold for bringing up relevant topics and challenges in the societies working under OYY into our knowledge, so that we can help and collaborate on the issues dealing with our student community. At this point, we’d like to thank all of you students and societies that have contacted us! The information we receive from the organizations is changing our Academic Affairs sector from reactive to proactive since we are better able to anticipate the future while bettering the Student Union’s changes to influence things. Some of such things include for instance drawbacks in teaching and course practices.
The regular students also have significant influence on the development of teaching and improving it. In fact, especially the following two actors drive most of the changes—the student that decides to give feedback, and the teacher that is open for the feedback and is excited over improving things. You must have noticed that the courses of some teachers feel better than someone else’s. The reasons behind someone’s course feeling better than someone else’s might be difficult to put into words. In these courses, following the teaching might feel easier, the teacher might take the students’ different needs into consideration well, or maybe their own presence motivates students to become interested in the subject. These are the kinds of things we want to acknowledge annually.
These recognized features of high-quality teaching are also the criteria for the winner of the Coolest Teacher Ever award. More specific descriptions of the criteria and the voting form for the Coolest Teacher Ever award 2023 can be found via this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfV0sDInWxXcAu6frEqYZrUifOq64BUuGspGRE5DBvZPdITVA/viewform?usp=sf_link.
You can vote until 30th of November. Acknowledge the teachers for their high-quality teaching!