Abstract:

Students at universities are being equipped with the skills for lifelong learning and adapting new knowledge fast, but how is the situation of teaching staff in this respect? In engineering education some of the fundamentals stay untouched, but most of the aspects of teaching profession need development in substance, pedagogy, tools, and systems. Some areas in engineering are evolving so fast that it requires good planning and execution of professional development to perform well in the job. This should be of great importance for teachers and their organizations.

Universities are offering different tools and mechanism to help the teachers maintain their professional excellence, possibilities being both structured and unstructured. This paper describes the professional development activities from the perspective of the full-time teaching staff of a university of applied sciences, faculty of engineering, in Finland.

The services offered for the teaching staff include a vast amount of live and recorded trainings on teaching related digital services and systems as well as special trainings on pedagogical aspects, series of expert lectures, intercultural trainings, expert pools, international teacher and staff exchanges and a possibility to have an exchange in industry. In addition, there is a possibility to participate in RDI work, participate in external substance related trainings and be part of networks. In yearly development discussions with the supervisor a personal development plan creation is offered. Team, faculty, and university level activities are allocated in teachers’ yearly time plans, as well as personal development hours with a lot of flexibility on how to use them, either on the offered trainings or otherwise. Additionally, there is some budget funds reserved for trainings.

There was an anonymous online survey made to find out how many of the offered mechanisms are used by the faculty members, what kind of university external development tools and trainings are used and what should be developed further in the offering.

Based on the survey, one of the most beneficial personal development tools is personally keeping up with the local and global development of the engineering domain one teaches. The hours used on keeping up with the technology are usually not recorded or measured. According to the respondents they use a lot of own time to keep their knowledge up to date. The other dominant tool in developing professional knowhow was collaboration with other teaching and RDI personnel in the own organization and with the collaborating companies or participate in RDI projects in addition to teaching. Pedagogical trainings work better in live events than recordings, and short trainings without diplomas serve the teachers better than longer, graded courses. None of the respondents went on industry exchange.

The results of the case study show that the teaching staff perceive important that allocating professional development possibilities for teaching staff in fast-paced technology field can be decided by themselves based on the area of expertise, experience level, schedule, and the personal development goals. Only some of these are measures are pre-planned with the supervisors. Additional training possibilities on mandatory tools and processes required by the university should be planned and scheduled with adequate resources more systematically.

Keywords:

Professional development, teaching, university.