The aim of this chapter is to answer the question: How do representatives of the administration see the instructional process? Three representatives of Helsinki University of Technology (TKK) organisation were interviewed in Finnish during the academic year 2007-2008 (the interview plan is in Appendix 7). All interviews were held in Finnish and they were recorded and transcribed by the researcher. In addition, notes were taken during the interview. The quotes below are authors’ translations from Finnish transcription.
Interviewees were a planning officer, a professor and a training manager. The planning officer’s responsibilities included the quality check of the teaching and the
31 Opintojen sujuvuuden edistäminen. Toimenpide hallituksen päätökseen 9.2.2009. Retrieved on April 23, 2009 from http://www.tkk.fi/fi/opinnot/opintohallinto/paatokset/20090330opintojensujuvuus.pdf
32 Tutkinto-ohjelman kehittämisen ja päätöksenteon vastuutoimijat tiedekunnissa. Retrieved on April 23, 2009, from http://www.tkk.fi/fi/opinnot/opintohallinto/paatokset/20090220tdkvastuutoimijat.pdf
administration of postgraduate studies in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. The quality check consists of the assessment and developing measures of the teaching of the computer science degree program. The planning officer had a Master of Education degree and had been working at TKK for over seven years, in different positions. The planning officer represents the purely administrative aspect of the instructional process.
The professor from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering had over 20 years working experience at TKK; he had been appointed to a professor’s post for eight years. His responsibilities consisted mainly of three tasks: teaching, research and administration. For example, the professor attended several working groups and committees at different organisation levels within TKK in addition to teaching at courses/seminars and being an active member in the international community of computing education researchers. The professor’s interview represents the view that combines the administrative aspect with the teacher’s point of view.
The training manager had a wide educational background. In addition to natural science, her background included information specialist studies. At the time of the interview, she was doing her postgraduate studies at TKK. She had over 20 years working life experience and had been working at TKK over 10 years. Her responsibilities consist of several national and international projects that concerned the developing of education, especially technology enhanced learning. She also teaches within further education. The training manager's interview represents a more general point of view to the organisation.
All three interviewees discussed the instructional process from a different point of view.
The training manager was concerned about the coherence of the studies and how the degree program level goals were in relation to the modules and further to the individual courses. The planning officer related the faculty level goals to her concrete assignments, such as evaluation of the quality of education. The interview with the professor highlighted the gap between the formal goals and the actual planning process that took place in committees. In the following section, the instructional processes and especially the challenging or insufficiently working aspects of the process are highlighted.
The instructional process
Several problematic issues came forward when the representatives of the administration discussed the setting goals and planning phases. The interviewees emphasised that the goal statements in the formal documents are at a high abstraction level and that there is no strong connection between the formal goals and the actual concrete actions. The high level of abstraction resulted in some challenging duties for the planning officer. She needed to reify and operationalise the goals to observe the quality of the education.
Planning officer: “To educate experts in the field of information technology, who are able to take on challenging tasks, are ethically responsible and cooperative”’. These I should then reify and cut into smaller entities. Then there is a strategic goal “… to recruit the best teachers and students, high quality education”. I try to observe the high quality education. Or it [high quality education] should be expressed with it [course feedback]. These are tricky issues since the goals are written like this.
The other problematic issues concerning the setting goals and planning phases relate to the prevailing culture at the department. The culture promoted the substance-first approach to the planning of studies. The larger goals concerning the skills and knowledge entities were not regarded as a starting point for the setting goals and
planning. In addition, the goals of the courses were not always stated clearly or the quality of the statements varied. It seemed that the prevailing culture of the planning affected also the content and the quality of the course level goal statements.
Planning officer: … This is exactly the same problem I talked about earlier. Here the planning starts at course level. We have these 100 courses. Now, how can we include them into a degree?
Not so that we would instead start at the goals concerning what the students should know and what skills they should posses. This whole culture is based on courses… The word curriculum is not understood here. Degree requirements define the courses that are needed for a degree. Degree requirements mean that there are these modules and they have this content. But the curriculum covers a broader range of issues, it defines the goals of the degree. Here we have never made the curriculum. All we make are degree requirements… That is why, for example, degree programs do not have official goals.
The same notion concerning the substance-first approach to planning came up during the professor’s interview. However, the professor was more concerned about the balance of the substance and the soft skills. In addition, the professor emphasised that there was no organised system, which would make sure that adequate soft skills would be taught during the studies. He also proposed that the lack of an organised planning system was partly due to the inadequate goal setting.
Professor: Our planning focuses too much on the substance, on the content. Then there are skills, that students should possess. This includes, on the one hand, technical skills and, on the other hand, soft skills. How soft skills are part of the planning – that is not co-ordinated. You cannot teach soft skills in one course… we should think about these soft skills when we decide on our teaching methods. However, we do not have a proper method to match our teaching methods so that, e.g., during the basic studies there would be some number of group works, essays, or oral presentations. What we have done has been ad hoc type of actions… there is no systematic procedure for this in our planning process.
The third problematic issue was that the teachers of the department did not know about the goals that were stated in the formal documents. For example, the performance agreement concerns all employees and gives them the rough guidelines what to do and what they should be striving for. However, this was not the case at the Department.
Planning officer: … Everybody plans his or her own little things. This is said now very ugly but that is what I think…. This is not only our department’s problem. This is quite a common problem.
Maybe they see this thing differently at enterprises. Enterprises have a very strong goal.
Everybody knows what the goal is, what they are striving for and they act accordingly. But do we know here what our goal is? If we think that we have a goal, a plan, an implementation and then we evaluate the outcomes. But how can this cycle work if we do not know what our goal is? They [teachers] do not know what the department has promised to the rector and what department’s goals are. I am very negative now, I know, but I think this is how it is for the most part. Certainly there are some teachers who know, but if we select randomly a teacher, does (s)he know? On what do they base their courses’ goals and content?
The interview with the professor highlighted another aspect to how the role of the formal goals was seen during the planning processes. According to the professor, the actual planning was often steered by conventions, and hence practical problems arose from the course level issues and timetable issues. For example, there was a concrete problem at the department level: many students did not advance in their studies the way they should have. Therefore, a team was established to find out the reasons for that and to plan proper interventions. However, it was perceived difficult to follow how the studies proceeded because, for instance, there were no statistics available concerning the progression of studies.
Further notions on the planning included the unclear goals. The goals of the planning process were often not clearly stated nor discussed during the planning phase. The exception was the year 2005 when the structure of the degree was changed. During that
year, the coherence of the courses was discussed profoundly. However, since that the old mode of setting goals had taken back its place. The plans were made according to the previous year’s plans and changes were made only if there was a clear need for them.
Professor: The setting goals process is incremental by nature. We have a starting point, which is the instruction we provide now. Let us assume that this present instruction is working, its content and implementation is working. Changes are made only when well-defined problems or deficiencies unfold or when some new technology comes that needs to be included into teaching.
Then we react and make plans how these changes could be matched. If we already have plans and they have worked well in the past, then we update only 10% of the plans and not the entity …. The goals are in a way implicit and tacit knowledge. Therefore, planning is focused on needs for change.
The last problematic issue concerning the planning of the instruction was that it did not focus on larger entities. For example, the degree as an entity was not discussed. Rather, the discussions concerned smaller entities and practical problems.
Feedback concerning the instructional process
The interviews brought forward several sources from which the representatives of the administration received feedback. The departments and faculties got feedback from the higher organisation level during the performance agreement discussions. The meaningful purpose of the goals and the content of the studies, as well as the teaching methods, were tested against the feedback received from the graduates. Other feedback sources were their own contacts to the enterprises/industry, the research done in the department, the trade unions and the discussions with the other departments’
representatives. However, the procedures to collect the feedback from different sources were not always systematic and organised. Even though the different feedback sources did not have a formal role in the planning phase, important aspects of the feedback were discussed during the planning.
Professor: … Occasionally we make inquires to the industry but there is no organised system for that so that we would do it, for instance, every three years. Rather they are inspired by a temporary need. And of course, the department’s professors and researchers have plenty of contacts with the industry and enterprises. That is a way to receive feedback concerning whether they think our students are able to do the right things. This feedback comes indirectly. Even though we do not ask for it explicitly it might come forward during discussions.
The interviews highlighted several problematic issues concerning the feedback. First, the feedback is not always collected. Both the professor and the training manager brought forward that the larger study entity level feedback is not collected. At the course level, the feedback is collected after each course. The department also collects feedback from the graduates. However, no feedback is collected from the study module level. Second, the collected feedback is not utilised well. The feedback might be available but it is not utilised during the setting goals or the planning phases.
Professor: … Changes are made to the module. The content of the course is changed… teachers teach their courses and then there emerges outcomes… The outcomes are not used as feedback at the planning phase. This feedback is usually not used. It is not actively sought for. I have an image that when changes are made for the module… the presumption is that students learn these things.
There is no attempt to verify that otherwise. The starting point is that what has been planned, that is what students learn. If some deficiencies come forward then some corrections are made.
Planning officer: I have made the summary of the course feedback with the comments for all departments… then I have sent it to the departments and asked them to comment on them. Only one Department has responded, others may have discussed the feedback or then not.
The training manager highlighted more general types of problems at the organisation level. These issues concerned the whole university rather than some specific faculty or department. She perceived the feedback as a multi-layer loop. There are smaller feedback loops and then there are larger loops that contain the feedback that is received from the society. She highlighted the university’s problem to collect and utilise the feedback. For instance, the university did not provide enough feedback channels for the employees. The training manager perceived this as problematic, especially, since the university is about to merge with two other universities. At times of big changes it would be important for everybody who is affected by the change to be able to give feedback, and thus have an opportunity to influence the outcome.
Training manager: TKK does not have any feedback channels for employees. Sure, there are all sorts of email addresses but they do not tempt much. For example, this innovation university. They ask all employees. That is not enough. There has to be other channels too. I think we are handicapped when it comes to our own organisation. We are innovative when it comes to many other things but not when it comes to our own organisation.
According to the training manager, the consequence of not having the feedback channels for employees was that there was a danger that TKK was not able to locate and use experts within its own organisation.
Training manager: Here some individual researcher might be a lot better expert than the Dean of the faculty. If you only look at the hierarchical organisation, you may loose expertise. There is expertise available but you do not use it. This is a matter of running the university.
9.4 Summary of the instructional process from the teaching organisation’s