Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology (LUT) offers its teaching staff various pedagogical training courses. This paper describes the first module, “University Pedagogy, Basic Module (10 ECTS), and its feedback and results. The module itself was compiled in collaboration between two universities: the ordering university LUT and the delivering university Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK). In pedagogical training it is important to teach as you preach. The participants should be able to experience themselves all the methods, principles, and skills they are supposed to acquire during the training. It is difficult to learn to activate students or to become student-centred only by listening to lectures. Therefore, the teaching methods should be in line with the learning goals and the participants should be active doers and learn hands-on rather than be passive listeners. The Basic Module contents focused on two main aspects: general activating pedagogical skills and teacher’s digital tools and their use from pedagogical point of view. First, the basic elements of the pedagogical module are presented together with its structure. Second, the results of participants’ experienced learning gains in different categories of the contents are presented together with their perception of the importance of different parts of the content.
Higher education institutions assess applicants with entrance examinations as a way to identify and rank those applicants with adequate ability to proceed in their studies. Engineering students form a significant group of higher education students, both in Europe and Finland. Finnish universities of applied sciences (UASs) developed and harmonised their student selection in the Development Project in 2017–2020. In the Development Project, a new national digital universities of applied sciences entrance examination (UAS Exam) was developed. In the current study, a cross-sectional design was used to assess advanced mathematical skills and related factors of the bachelor-level engineering applicants performing the newly developed UAS Exam. The advanced mathematical skills exam section contains mathematics and physics problems. The data were collected via the digital exam system. Altogether, 1205 engineering applicants consented to the study and performed the exam section. The data were statistically analysed. The applicants’ mean scores were 4.8 (SD 5.2, median 3.9, range -4.9–20 pts) out of 20 maximum points. Over 20% of the applicants failed. Some of the background variables explain the applicants’ exam results, indicating that older applicants scored better than younger ones, males better than females, and high school graduates and applicants with previous higher education degrees better than those with vocational diplomas. The results indicate that engineering applicants’ advanced mathematical skills were rather poor, indicating that it may be possible that engineering applicants lack the basic skills in mathematics and physics, but this may vary between applicants.
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