The key activity of Teaching Lab is its namesake course, offered every semester. Although its graduates include academic staff, high school teachers, and other external participants, the course is primarily intended for beginning seminar tutors. These tutors are also students themselves; a unique feature of the Faculty of Informatics is that seminars are often led by bachelor’s or master’s students who have previously completed the courses. As Tomáš Foltýnek, a member of the teaching team, said in an interview for the Quality Office, this approach brings “many advantages, supported by scientific research: student tutors are much closer to the students, they understand them better, can explain the content in a more accessible way, and students are not afraid to ask them questions they might hesitate to ask a senior academic.”
However, these novice teachers also need support, which is where the Teaching Lab course comes in. Its syllabus is designed to guide them through the entire semester of teaching, from the first classes to assessment. It also covers topics such as motivation, effective learning, and ethical dilemmas in teaching. Each student sets an individual development goal, consults it with their mentor from the teaching team, and works toward achieving it through a portfolio.
Community and sharing
Completing the Teaching Lab course is not the end of developing teaching skills – it’s just the beginning. The aim of the course is to offer teachers a wide range of methods and tools for teaching and for their own professional growth, such as a Reflective Teacher Diary and forms for collegial visits. The course has also produced numerous teaching materials that are freely available on the Teaching Lab website. It is designed to provide students with skills that are useful not only for teaching seminars but also transferable to other professional and personal contexts.
The Teaching Lab team strives to build a community not only of alumni but of everyone at the Faculty of Informatics who cares about quality teaching. It organizes workshops open to all faculty instructors and hosts expert lectures on pedagogical topics at the semesterly Colloquium of the Faculty of Informatics. Another significant achievement of the team is the creation and implementation of the Code of Ethics for Tutors.
An initiative started by doctoral students
Topics related to teaching quality and the development of teachers’ pedagogical competencies have gained more attention in higher education in recent years, but Teaching Lab has existed since 2016. It began as an initiative by several doctoral students, supported by the faculty leadership. Over time, the team has grown and evolved organically, and course instructors are often recruited from those who have completed the course and want to share their experience. In addition to mutual learning, this natural turnover brings an expansion of the portfolio of activities Teaching Lab engages in. Continued support from the faculty leadership is important, but the overall direction is shaped by its members.
The team defines its mission through three main goals:
We work to ensure that teachers enjoy their seminars and find teaching fulfilling.
We work to make teaching as beneficial as possible for students, so they remember it as excellent.
We work to make teaching through the community of student tutors a “killer feature” of the Faculty of Informatics at MU.
Teaching as a science
One of the reasons why Teaching Lab organizes expert pedagogical lectures is to communicate that teaching is a serious scientific topic. “Education is a fully-fledged scientific discipline – we believe it is important to teach based on current scientific knowledge (so-called evidence-based) and to share our experiences further,” says Martin Ukrop, a member of the teaching team. This principle underlies all community activities. The teaching methods and tools used in the course are grounded in current scientific findings (so-called evidence-based learning and teaching). The instructors continuously educate themselves on pedagogical topics and encourage students to do the same.
Some members of the team also publish educational research. For example, we can mention the chapter by Tomáš Foltýnek and Martin Ukrop in the book Ethics and Integrity in Education (Research), which describes the creation of a lesson on ethical dilemmas in teaching and the development of the Code of Ethics for Tutors. Another outcome was a publication on the challenges faced by student tutors at informatics faculties (in collaboration with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Norway and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden), as well as the previously mentioned Reflective Teacher Diary. Team members have presented their results at three leading conferences focused on computer science education and through two conference posters. According to Ukrop, these activities not only share and bring in new knowledge but also provide an opportunity to raise the international research profile of the Faculty of Informatics at MU.
Teaching Lab members emphasize the importance of supporting these kinds of activities: “We are grateful to the Faculty of Informatics leadership for its long-term support of improving the teaching quality, including through support for Teaching Lab activities,” adds Ukrop. As part of the KompassMUNI project, team members are now sharing their experience with other faculties while gaining inspiration for the future development of Teaching Lab.