Tag: collaboration

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Education Development Award for 2019

Joanna

…for collaborative and diverse development of teaching and learning at the department.

obrazek JPEGI received this award in collaboration with my departmental colleague, Dr. Judit Hahn, with whom we have collaborate in recent year quite intensively on various initiatives related to teaching development. The award is granted by the Vice Rector of the University of Jyväskylä, Prof. Marja-Leena Laakso, upon recommendations from the Educational Council of the university (more on the award: here).

Everything started one day in the coffee/break room in our department… We haven’t yet known each other with Judit as I joint (back) my department after two years since I completed my PhD. During this time, the unit has grown as a result of merge of two departments, these of communication and languages. So, yes… the coffee-room… we got to know each other by simply complaining on a lack of equal treatment in university policy (and thus also on department’s and faculty’s levels) the two main activities, that is, ‘research’ and ‘teaching’. Those who succeeded in research received recognition, but small and big achievements in teaching practice remain silent. As a consequence, raising an issue to develop quality of teaching in the department (or university) seems not be a popular activity or topic for discussion.

award_2019
Me and Judit, with the Teachers’ Chat Room’s mascots, after receiving the award.

I am not experienced teacher, but Judit is. I do not have much opportunities to teach, so I research topics related to university pedagogy and teaching practices, especially in a context of visual education. As a team, we introduced the Teachers’ Chat Room (TCR), a space and a time for all members of the Language Campus/Department who are involved, or interested in teaching to share their ideas, good practices, excitement, frustrations, accomplishments, and questions related to teaching and education. The TCR is a place for both junior and senior members of the university community interested, or involved in teaching. During the TCR meetings we have opened up the following topics:

  • the first lesson: lesson planning, icebreakers, tips and tools for a good start;
  • digital tools in teaching;
  • object-based learning and visual literacy (guest: Dr. Olivia Meehan, Melbourne University, Australia);
  • trial lecture: preparation, performance and evaluation (forthcoming TCR);

The main idea behind the TCR is to create an informal meeting-place for sharing, peer-support and learning from each other. Thus, to develop university teaching and pedagogy in a community spirit.

We are also involved in few more initiatives related to teaching development (e.g. The First Year Experience development group; making teaching visible on department’s website; extensive publishing on topics related to pedagogy), hoping that in the future, teaching, and thus, excellence in teaching will receive more recognition. I also hope that in the future, faculty members receiving this and similar awards will hear ‘congratulations-words’ from the heads of their units as they would have heard if this would be an award for the research merits…

TCR
The Teachers’ Chat Room’s mascots.

 

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WhatsInApp Project & Postdoc Post

Joanna

From January 2019, I have started a new two-year post as Postdoctoral Researcher in the project “What’s in the App? Digitally-mediated communication within contemporary multilingual families across time and space”. The PI of this project – WhatsInApp – is Prof. Åsa Palviainen. Project is financed by Academy of Finland (Sept 1, 2018 – Aug 31, 2022) and is conducted in the Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, with an extensive international collaboration. More information about the project can be found here.

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Great collaborative publication!

Joanna

It was one of the nicest collaborations ever. It started by deleting an email with the call for papers by each of us since it did not sound relevant to our work. However, once we started discussing the topic, we came with a common ready framework for the book chapter that you can now read here.

The chapter A Competent Participant in the New Media Landscape: Promoting an Interdisciplinary Perspective was written in collaboration with Melodine Sommier, Anne Laajalahti and Panu Uotila. All of us has been working at that time in the Department of Communication, University of Jyväskylä (Melodine is now in the University of Rotterdam) and we are also alumni of the ECREA Doctoral Summer School. The book Politics, Civil Society and Participation: Media and Communications in a Transforming Environment (ed. by Kramp et al.), where our chapter is published, is the annual publication of this Summer School, but first time it included chapters by SuSo alumni.

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New Project

Joanna

Together with three other researchers in visual studies:

Jenni Mäenpää, Researcher and PhD student, Tampere Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication – COMET, University of Tampere;
Mari Pienimäki, Licentiate, PhD student, Research Center for Contemporary Culture, University of Jyväskylä;
Nanna Särkkä, Project researcher and PhD student at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture;

I designed a project “Visuality in Journalism: Collaborative Perspective”. Project has a form of a network or a support group for PhD students in visual communication. It received a start-up grant from the Faculty of Humanities, University of Jyväskylä.

Here is a basic description of the main idea of the project:

Contemporary press is getting more and more visual; a large part of meanings is conveyed in other ways than with text. However, far too little attention has been paid to the visual. There is also far too little understanding of how the visuality works. Journalism research as well as a curriculum in journalism is still focusing mainly on text, marginalizing an understanding of images, photographs, graphics and layout. Therefore, there is a need for a cross-disciplinary approach to visuality in journalism.

The aim of this project is to stimulate discussion on different elements of visual communication in print media, i.e. layout, photojournalism, press photography, genre, context, and to confront divers research interests and approaches to visuality in journalism. As an outcome, project members plan to write one or two scientific articles for the peer-reviewed journals.