On December 12, at Dean’s Glögg event, several recognitions were shared at Aalto University School of Chemical Engineering (Aalto CHEM). I (Riikka Puurunen) was among the happy ones to receive a recognition this year – together with Lauri Partanen – for the use of online lecture recordings in education.
The grounds for the recognition were as follows:
Teaching act of the year 2019
Grounds and reasoning for award from students:
Digitalisation is continuously discussed as bring of ever-increasing importance, and this also applies to the field of education. With complex topics, it is vital that students are able to study lecture material at their own pace as many times as needed. Additionally, the ability to miss lectures when sick or otherwise occupied helps to reduce stress related to studies and ultimately to achieve a successful course. Therefore, on behalf of students, we would like to nominate “online lecture recordings” as Teaching Action of the Year. This includes a special mention to both Riikka Puurunen and Lauri Partanen, who have respectively championed in their Master’s and Bachelor’s courses with high quality online record lecture material.
- Prof. Puurunen uses and actively tries out new methods in her teaching. Examples about this are lecture recordings made with Panopto, which enable (re)doing the lectures afterwards. In addition to this, on her MSc Catalysis course she did a video of the derivation of Langmuir isotherm with the “digital chalkboard” lightboard. The teaching material is also openly shared via a blog and a YouTube channel.
- Lauri Partanen has used many digital teaching methods on his course “Kemiallinen termodynamiikka”. He has added video recordings of his teaching sessions made with Panopto. He has used online quiz questions during his teaching sessions to support learning. He has also created a Telegram group, where students can ask him questions related to the course and give feedback. Getting feedback in this quick and easy way has allowed him to make changes already during the course.
Related Aalto CHEM news item: https://www.aalto.fi/en/news/teaching-achievement-of-the-year-awarded-to-lecture-recordings.
In the description, students referred to the MSc Catalysis course, a blog, and to a Youtube channel. Here, I want to tell a bit more of each item.
- The Catalysis course is organized under code CHEM-E1130, and it will start again in January 2020. The (Moodle-based) MyCourses page is currently being built here. While some of the contents will be accessible only at Aalto University / for the student, there will be openly available contents, too. The course will again – of course! – use Panopto for lecture capture.
- The blog that was mentioned by the students is: Catalysis Professor’s Open, https://blogs.aalto.fi/catprofopen/. I started the blog rather soon after starting as a professor at Aalto University. (I have also another blog: ALD History Blog, http://aldhistory.blogspot.com.) In Catalysis Professor’s Open I blog whenever I have something to say related to teaching, events or otherwise life at Aalto. (Like this post.)
- The Youtube channel mentioned by the students is: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWSfJod92YgLpPKjOoNKVdQ. It is fun to hear that the Langmuir adsorption isotherm derivation has been noticed; direct link here. I made this Lightboard video in the Catalysis course as a teaching trial (so far as a one-time trial), knowing that the topic would be relevant both to the catalysis course and also to the international community of atomic layer deposition (see. e.g., Applied Physics Reviews 6, 021302 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5060967).
I was delighted to get this recognition of Educational action of the year 2019. Especially more so, when it was proposed by the students. Related to the recognition, I want to extend the credit of the recognition and express my gratitude to the pedagogical training at Aalto University, my pedagogical mentors, the teaching personnel in my near neighbourhood at Aalto CHEM, and my group members (http://aalto.fi/cmet/catalysis). We do the teaching together and I have learned useful things from everyone.
Last – but not least! – I want to thank the students at Aalto CHEM, for the feedback they give. I ask plenty of student feedback in various ways during and after courses (some might even think, too much!). This feedback has significantly helped to develop the courses, since my very first lectures as responsible teacher in the Catalysis course in 2017-2018, and also now when planning the teaching of courses of spring 2020. Thank you students! Please continue to give the constructive, detailed feedback (“I like”, “I wish” work well as guiding questions) in my courses and other courses at Aalto University!
Scientific literature on lecture recordings
- Morris, Swinnerton, Coop, Lecture recordings to support learning: A contested space between students and teachers, Computers & Education, 140 (2019) 103604; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2019.103604
Updated (text expanded) 14.12.2019
Updated (Aalto CHEM news link added) 3.1.2020
Updated (section on scientific literature and the Morris et al. article added) 6.1.2020
