Academic Advising — INF style
Last week we held our double feature of Academic Advising (AA) for cohorts IV’21 and IV’22 with a few senior students as well. Here is a summary of what we did and learn. Next AA session is on Jan 16th and it is open to all INF and Tepsy students.
What is AcaAdv?
Academic Advising is Aalto’s way of helping students with their studies. Each programme does it the way they see best, and this November here at INF we launched our new model. The model was planned by our Executive-in-residence Hanno Nevanlinna together with our student Nic Colb. They prototyped this last Spring with a handful of INF students.
Kokonaisuudessaan superhyvä konsepti, ihana päästä jakamaan ajatuksia ja oppimaan ja inspiroitumaan muista.
- Anonymous feedback
What is INF’s model?
The focus point of our AA model is you, the student. It is all about creating time and space to reflect about your own goals, studies, student life, and your own ways of navigating forward. The key tool to facilitate and guide this is a simple template (below).
To help you all to find time and space to fill the template (and to have a look what you filled the last time) our programme organises AA events. We’re going to have them in May, August, December, and January. The idea is that every student has an opportunity to participate every six months, either at the beginning of a semester or the end of it.
The next event is Jan 16th and open to everyone at INF & Tepsy. More details to follow, but you can already mark your calendars (we start about 16:30 and it takes 2h).
“Ihan super ihana konsepti jo siinä, että tulee pysähdyttyä oikeasti juttelemaan asioista joita usein tulee mietittyä lähinnä yksin. Tietenkin sama onnistuisi myös itse järkättynä, mutta tää ulkopuolinen aloite ja kannuste on kyllä vaan älyttömän hyvä (&toivottavasti tapahtuu säännöllisesti jatkossakin ❤) koska ei sitä realistisesti muuten oikein tule tehtyä. Isoiso kiitos siis ❤”
- Anonymous feedback
Does it work?
Yes, it looks like it :) The feedback we got from the two sessions last week was overwhelmingly positive — only some minor tweaking is required about the time for discussions. However, to see whether this works as a method to facilitate your study life, thinking, and routines for self-reflection… let’s see after 2–3 years.
Would you recommend this to your fellow students?
25/25 respondents said “Yes”.
What was discussed?
Elina Ståhlberg did a fantastic job and clustered all the Presemo comments into this Miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPANAkTA=/?share_link_id=238157284202 They are in Finnish because the event was for our B.Sc. students.
Have a look, because it has a lot of rich information, comments, thoughts, and suggestions!
What happens now?
We continue this for the next 2–3 years to see the impacts of doing this. This depends very much on you students committing to do this every 6 months, and we try to help you there by making it always worth your time and energy. Keep in mind that this is a personal exercise that is the responsibility of the individual, therefore we need your own commitment. However, we believe that anyone who does this during the years of their studies will be very glad they did it.
INF programme will also take all this Presemo data (and the later data) and start working on identifying & clarifying the big problems worth solving for you students. To make those challenges clear and public, and then start designing ways to solve them. We of course know a lot about the challenges already, but this rich data emphasises your perspective and a more holistic view that is not solely focused on courses and Aalto’s bureaucracy.
Tapahtuma oli upea! Todella arvokasta päästä suurella porukalla keskustelemaan näin tärkeästä asiasta fasilitoidusti. Lisää tätä!!
- Anonymous feedback
