Hei,

The working group on renewal of teaching in Biology has aligned the principles for teaching hours in the Ecology and Genetics research unit and for the academic personnel in the Biodiversity unit:

• The maximum number of contact teaching hours conforms to the recommendation made by the collective bargaining agreement: 394 hours for University Teachers and University Lecturers, 254 hours for University Researchers / Senior Research Fellows and 141 hours for Professors, also for those who have tenure track position. The University of Oulu has aligned that in maximum 10 hours of contact teaching is given per one credit (1 credit = 27 hours) and one contact teaching hour is 45 minutes.

• All postdocs participate in teaching in master’s level courses (also bachelor’s level if they want). We follow the Academy of Finland recommendation of teaching 5 % of the total working time, which is 80 hours/year. Supervising PhD, bachelor’s and master’s theses counts to the teaching hours.

• All PhD students participate in teaching either in the bachelor’s or master’s level courses. Those who have personal grants teach 25 hours/year and those who are on salary teach 50 hours/year. Supervising bachelor’s and master’s theses counts to the teaching hours.

To ease up the “matchmaking” between the responsible teachers of courses and the postdocs & PhD students in our unit, I have compiled a table (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GtuvuMjv88-oXPSsnEFqL41ZMONGMEP4kOcL1HQmWAw/edit?usp=sharing) that lists all the courses taught in the academic year 2020-2021 in our unit with their responsible teachers. I ask all the postdocs and PhD students to take a look on our curriculum (BSc: https://opas.peppi.oulu.fi/en/programme/12341, MSc: https://opas.peppi.oulu.fi/en/programme/14739) and then indicate in which courses you have already agreed or would be willing to teach and in which format (lectures/exercises). I encourage postdocs and PhD students to indicate if you would like to give lectures (experience in lecturing would be a great asset in your CV).

Many thanks,

Lumi Viljakainen

Director of the Degree Program and Master’s Program in Biology and International Master’s Program ECOGEN