The report is launched in conjunction with a live seminar, which is available to watch afterwards. Read the report here:
Conclusion
The Swedish National Union of Students, SFS, has conducted a survey to investigate what student unions consider important regarding higher education pedagogy. The survey was answered by 37 student unions from 24 higher education institutions. This report presents a summary of the results from the survey, together with a number of recommendations based on the results.
Survey results
The student unions were asked what they believe can be done to ensure that teaching is of good quality and contributes to student learning. In their responses, the student unions address a number of different things that universities, faculties and departments can do, and five areas emerge consistently in this regard:
- student influence,
- course evaluations,
- higher education pedagogical training for teachers,
- incentives for merit,
- as well as quality work and quality assurance.
The student unions also indicate several different things that individual teachers can do, with several of the answers relating to the following five areas:
- higher education teaching training,
- design and development of courses and teaching,
- responsiveness,
- communication,
- and course evaluations.
Regarding the design and implementation of teaching, there is a wider spread of answers, and not as many student unions have answered the same things. However, two areas are mentioned more often than others:
- more teacher-led time,
- and campus-based teaching.
Regarding how important different areas are for the quality of education and the prerequisite for conducting good higher education teaching, qualification of higher education teaching competence and quality work are seen as the two most important areas, while examination is the area that most people see as not that important.
When asked how much or little different types of assessment contribute to student learning, work-based education and internships are the assessment form that the vast majority of student unions believe contribute to learning, followed by degree projects. Group work has the most even distribution among the responses, while formative examinations are the assessment form that the fewest number of student unions have an opinion about.
All student unions believe that it is important that teachers have formal higher education pedagogy training, and they therefore agree that teachers need to be trained in higher education pedagogy.
Student unions were asked what additional aspects or tools they consider valuable for improving higher education teaching and learning at their institution. The two most common answers concern the following:
- higher education pedagogical competence and training for teachers,
- as well as qualifications and incentives for qualifications of pedagogical competence.
Recommendations
At the end of the report, SFS presents a number of recommendations.
Universities:
- Train teachers in higher education pedagogy.
- Reward and create incentives for higher education teaching competence.
- Improve the work with course evaluations.
Government:
- Funding for excellence in higher education teaching.
- Add a government mission.