Fifth Shadowing Session

Today was a very nice shiny day. Our group started in the early morning. Our today's session started at 8:00 am, so we had to be in the train station before 7:30 in order to be there on time. It was the earliest class we attend since we got here. It reminded me of my back home classes that start at the same time. The difference here is that I am the teacher over there while I am just an observer here. The class we attended called an ENG. Electronics lab. First we had a little meeting with Professor Timo Leinonen, the lecturer of the class. He was very nice and funny especially when we commented on his signature. He started introducing to us the course structure and passed out to us some handouts. The course consists of 6 lab experiments and a final exam. After each lab experiment there is a tutorial class to explain the experiment as the session we attended. 

 My personal reflection:

I think the class is a mixed of different learning theories. One of the methods followed in this course is the famous and known behavioral method where the professor is the main key of this class. He prepares the subjects and experiments to be taken during the course period. He explains and simplifies issues and matters. Then he examines the students, and in the end students may or may not pass the class. I think this type of method will not be totally replaced by other method. It is a dominant one and it is of course the basic and start of knowledge everywhere around the world.

The students interact with each other where the professor has only a role of an assistant when they do their experiments in the lab section of the course. I think it should be this way there since the students must work on their own to implement what they have learned. This part of the course may be considered to be a social gathering where students learn by working as groups a partially absence of the professor.

I would like to mention some of my noticed things about this session and relate them to previous sessions. In all sessions our group has attended so far there were some students coming late, the professors didn't say a word about that. In this session the professor asked the late students of the reason of being late in a funny way. It seemed to me in the beginning of the early shadowing sessions that it is normal to come late since attendance is not a must in the Metropolia University, but what happened in today's session made think again it is a matter of a professor's behavior and way of running the class.    

Finally, there is something special about today's shadowing session. All previous sessions were shadowed during the lecture time, but today somehow our group has the chance to live the actual professors' culture during their break time. When we finished shadowing the lecture, we went with the professor to the teaching faculty lounge to have some coffee and discuss more issues regarding learning methodology. There we many professors sitting there having a short break. We talked about who and how curriculum may be chosen and designed. One of the interesting things the professor told us was that once a while the department professors and director meet in the sauna and have an informal discussion. Then when they meet in the department they discuss those issues again in a formal meeting. It sounded funny when he told us that, but I think it is kind of an ice breaking in the way of managing the department and working as close as it could be in the sauna. I really liked today's shadowing since I have added something new to my experience.