Course The Reflective Teacher

The course A294/06 The Reflective teacher is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2023.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students).

Recommended knowledge for participation: This course is relevant for all PhD students who wish to improve their quality of teaching. It is not crucial that the student is affiliated to a course or has regular teaching hours. However, participants will probably benefit the most if they already teach or have teaching experience.     

Aim: The course blends online with face-to-face teaching and is about the role of the teacher in student-centred teaching. Upon completion of the blended learning course, participants will have acquired knowledge, skills and competences on pedagogical principles pertaining to being a university teacher who can reflect on his/her own and colleagues’ teaching practice. Participants will during the course develop and complete first draft of a personal teaching portfolio on teaching qualifications that can be used in appointments for future academic positions. Furthermore, they will acquire knowledge about strategies to evaluate teaching with the aim of applying a student-centred approach in teaching and creating alignment between the different elements and phases of teaching. A learning diploma is given upon satisfactory completion of the course as well as an e-booklet with the course content. 

Learning outcomes: Upon completion of the course, the participant will be able to:

• Describe the characteristics of student-centred teaching and learning.
• Describe the characteristics of reflective practice of teaching.
• Identify, evaluate, and reflect on teaching elements in their own teaching in order to enhance student learning.
• Provide peer-feedback in teaching.
• Plan, conduct and evaluate a specified lesson including give reasons for learning outcomes, student activities and teacher role in the lesson.
• Develop a first draft towards a teaching portfolio

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 60 hours.

Content: This is a blended learning course in university teaching and learning which lays the foundation for reflective teachers at PhD-level and towards assistant professor from all health science disciplines. The course content features the following topics:

• Constructive alignment
• Active learning
• Student-centred teaching
• Learning outcomes
• Educational IT
• Feedback
• Evaluation
• Teaching portfolio.

The course is designed as a blended learning approach with a combination of out-of-class online learning and in-class face-to-face teaching. It is estimated to last over six weeks (4x4 hours in-class seminars, approx. and approx. 8 hours structured asynchronous online learning activities). The activities will consist of a mix of reading materials, watching videos, producing texts and models, participating in individual as well as group activities in-class and out-of-class, developing lesson plan and teaching portfolio as well as giving peer-feedback. To complete the course and receive ECTS credit and diploma it is mandatory to be active online and complete all activities (including peer-feedback and portfolio) and respect the activity deadlines.

Your learning outcome depends on active participation through peer feedback and discussions with each other. The course is student-centred, why participants will carry out tasks and exercises at in-class and out-of-class activities.

Instructors: Mette Krogh, Peter Museaus, Jens Laurs Kærsgaard

Venue: The Victor Albeck building, 1268, Vennelyst Blvd. 4, 8000 Aarhus C

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students and Health Research Honours Programme students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 01 May 2023
• 23 May 2023 08:30 - 12:30
• 24 May 2023 08:30 - 12:30
• 31 May 2023 08:30 - 12:30
• 01 June 2023 08:30 - 12:30