”Good teaching practice” at DTU Systems Biology - sustaining quality in teaching and learning

Success in developing teaching and learning in engineering education in general, as well as in a CDIO context, depends on continuous development of teaching competences among faculty members. Thus, it is essential to develop systems that promote understanding of how teaching and assessment can support student learning within disciplinary knowledge as well as development of professional skills.

Development and maintenance of high quality teaching and learning furthermore requires that teachers have the ability to reflect critically on their teaching activities and understand its impact on the students’ learning process. To succeed in reaching these goals, development of teaching competences and knowledge in the fields of teaching and learning must be combined with continuous possibilities to reflect on teaching practice in a structured way.

Development of successful teaching also requires that faculty members are inspired and encouraged to try new ways and methods in teaching, and gaining an extended understanding in how students learning can be efficiently supported. In this paper we describe a novel initiative, a concept of Good Teaching Practice, that has been developed through a process involving faculty at the department of Systems Biology at the Technical University of Denmark.

The GTP initiative addresses important factors for effective teaching and enhancement of student learning. On the surface GTP is structured as an online tool, which makes six statements about important factors that support student learning that the teachers at the department are supposed to consider.

This is coupled to a wiki-based web resource for sharing good examples from teaching practice among faculty. By formulating a teaching and learning profile at the department level the importance of teaching for the department are emphasized and at the same time, the wiki-based resource for sharing teaching experience shows that teaching is a shared responsibility among the entire faculty.

On the website, the theoretical framework underlying GTP provides a shorthand introduction to the important prerequisites for students learning and provides definitions that provide the faculty members with a common language to use in discussions of teaching and learning. The GTP concept addresses standard 10 in the CDIO context which focuses on the enhancement of the development of teaching and learning at department level and provides the teachers with tools to conduct teaching proficiently.