Vesa Paajanen | Facilitator of Online and Blended Pedagogy
University of Eastern Finland

Doctor of Philosophy (Animal Physiology) and University lecturer at University of Eastern Finland. Flipped all his teaching in blended learning mode 2016 and started to build simple learning analytics tools to detect students at risk of drop-out. Inventing podcast and video teaching for which he got Excellent Teacher Practitioner Award 2018 and Innovator of open science Award 2020. Facilitator of online and blended pedagogy at Faculty of Science 2021-2024 to help peers to step forward in student-centered computer aided teaching.

Appearances:

EDUtech Europe 2023 Conference Day 2 @ 11:10

Show & Tell - Scaffolding peer-support and targeted interventions to boost digital higher education

University of Eastern Finland started a four-year project in 2021 to encourage teachers to use the teaching and learning tools of online and blended pedagogy with the help of pedagogical peer-support. Five experienced teachers from different faculties and the language centre were hired in the project at 50% work time allocations as facilitators of online and blended learning pedagogy.

Facilitators have for example been involved in the building of a self-regulated online learning platform to enhance teachers’ practical skills in online teaching and to raise awareness of the resources and possibilities of online education. This open platform has become a simple starting point to locate not only the technical tools of online teaching and their pedagogical use, but also new pedagogical approaches to increase interactivity, feedback, and continuous evaluation, among others.

Facilitators have helped their peers also with more focused interventions: how to identify and help students at-risk with learning analytics, how to benefits from AI in teaching and how to respond if you find students using it in their assignments, how to use evaluation to support learning, and how to give constructive feedback.

Vesa Paajanen, Facilitator of Online and Blended Pedagogy, University of Eastern Finland

last published: 22/Sep/23 02:45 GMT

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