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UEF announces the recipients of the 2022 Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award

The University of Eastern Finland presented awards to accomplished teachers in the university’s Learning Environment Seminar on Tuesday, 30 August. Among the recipients of the 2022 Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award are individual teachers, teacher pairs, and teacher teams.

The recipients of the Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award are Professor Erkko Sointu of the School of Educational Sciences and Psychology, Clinical Lecturer  Olli-Pekka Kämäräinen of the School of Medicine, a teacher pair consisting of University Teacher Marianne Rytkönen and Clinical Lecturer Jarmo Heikkinen of the School of Medicine, and a teacher team consisting of Ville Tahvanainen of the School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education, Satu Reinikainen and Maarit Turunen of the Language Centre, and Tarja Toropainen and Krista Laine of the School of Pharmacy.

The criteria of the Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award include collaborative development of teaching, diverse use of teaching methods, and student-centredness. All of the award recipients collaborate with various parties and make use of student feedback in order to develop their own teaching.

The awardees form, together with previous award recipients, a network of Excellent Teaching Practitioners, which now includes 21 teachers. The purpose of the network is to promote appreciation for, and the development of teaching, at the University of Eastern Finland.

Erkko Sointu has distinguished himself in student-centred pedagogy, implementing it through practical and diverse teaching and learning that involve the aspects of working life, continuous learning and the development of generic skills. Sointu is a strong research-based developer of teaching who has experimented with novel methods both in his own teaching and in national networks. He is also a versatile communicator, sharing information about new and best practices in teaching, as well as an important developer of flipped learning both within the University of Eastern Finland and at the national level.

Olli-Pekka Kämäräinen has developed his teaching through a combination of online and blended teaching. The focus of his pedagogical development has been on a national exam, multi-media learning materials, and small-group teaching in connection with a clinic. He has also systematically developed the feedback system in order for it to support the development of teaching. Kämäräinen’s teaching is delivered in a hospital clinic where the learning environment provides excellent support for the development of working life skills. The development of teaching has been carried out as part of the national MEDigi project via which Kämäräinen has actively shared his expertise.

Marianne Rytkönen and Jarmo Heikkinen have persistently developed their teaching as a teacher pair and as part of the national Virtual University in Occupational Health Care. Their collaboration has resulted in an extensive and diverse selection of courses that employ modern learning environments, digital methods and workplace-based education and training. Their development of teaching is guided by systematic feedback, quality assurance criteria, and research. The learning materials produced are openly accessible, and expertise is shared nationally, for example in the online pedagogy development group.

Ville Tahvanainen, Satu Reinikainen, Maarit Turunen, Tarja Toropainen and Krista Laine form a team of teachers who have successfully applied escape room pedagogy to the development of skills in problem solving, teamwork, interaction and learning assessment. The team’s strength lies in interdisciplinary collaboration. The team has produced several learning environments and sets of educational games that are based on escape room pedagogy and also make use of digitalisation. Research and systematic collection of student feedback guide the team’s development of teaching, and students have been involved in the work. The team shares its expertise extensively within the university and at the national level.

For further information, please contact:

Kari Korhonen, Director of Learning Environment, University of Eastern Finland, kari.korhonen@uef.fi, tel. +358 50 432 3826