Earlier this year we asked you for suggestions for the Teacher of the Year Award. Three candidates were selected from all proposals. We forwarded these proposals to the panel of the National Union of Students in Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences – SAMOK. The panel processed the received proposals anonymously.
Heta-Maija Leino from Häme University of Applied Sciences has received the Teacher of the Year award in 2023! The Student Union of Häme University of Applied Sciences warmly congratulates and thanks for the excellent work for the students.
National Union of Students in Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences – SAMOK’s bulletin:
University of Applied Sciences students selected Heta-Maija Leino as Teacher of the Year
Heta-Maija Leino from Häme University of Applied Sciences has selected as the University of Applied Sciences Teacher of the Year. Leino works as a lecturer at Forssa in nurse degree programme and as a mentor in digital pedagogy in the School of Wellbeing. The students who suggested Heino praise the versatile and flexible way of teaching, way to give constructive and encouraging feedback, work life-oriented teaching style and familiarity with helping students solve their problems.
The justifications also state that Leino has considered the students’ different life situations and provided the opportunity to complete studies in a way that benefits the student. While also guaranteeing that all students have the minimum knowledge of the course at the end of the course. One justification states the following: The teaching is versatile, interesting, and memorable. One of the best teachers ever. It is noticeable that training professional nurses is a matter of the heart.
“I accept the Teacher of the Year award with grateful and joy. I thank the students for the heartfelt feedback I have now received. The feedback given by the students has always been a key factor that has helped me to develop my teaching. In addition, I thank Häme University of Applied Sciences and its superiors, teaching colleagues, digital support staff and everyone else who have helped me with everyday challenges, acted as peer support and been enthusiastic about the development of teaching”, rejoices teacher of the year 2023 Heta-Maija Leino.
Leino has also worked as a mentor in digital pedagogy, whose task is to develop unit’s competence related to online teaching and to act as a support for personnel and a developer of digital pedagogy.
“Mentoring in digital pedagogy is also about supporting student-oriented studying, even though it happens behind the scenes and is not directly visible to the student. Offering studies online as self-study entities makes it possible to take the students’ life situation into account in the studies even more flexibly. For a long time, Heta-Maija has participated in strengthening the digital pedagogic skills of our entire unit and has thus done valuable work for the learning experience of all our students,” says Anna Olkinuora, Dean of School of Welbeing.
SAMOK annually awards the Teacher of the Year award to highlight the high-quality and long-term teaching work of universities of applied sciences. With the same award, we want to thank the teachers for their contribution to the development of teaching and increasing students’ skills. The theme of the award this year was considering the diversity of students and supporting students.
“Based on the justifications, it can be concluded that the teacher of the year award went to the right person. Leino is very professional and as a really good thing I would point out that students’ different life situations are taken into account in teaching,” says Joonas Soukkio, president of SAMOK.
The Teacher of the Year award was given at the AMK days organized by the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences Arene and Laurea University of Applied Sciences on May 4, 2023. SAMOK and the student unions of universities of applied sciences collected proposals for teachers from the university of applied sciences students for the Teacher of the Year award.
The selection made a jury consisting of SAMOK’s board member Oona Pappila, Trade Union of Education, OAJ’s representative, Association for OAJ’s Vocational Educators and Trainers OAO ry chairman, electrical power engineering engineer and lecturer Lauri Hietalahti, and Arene’s representative, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences’ director of lifelong learning and Vice President, docent Heidi Rontu. A total of 30 proposals for teacher of the year were given. SAMOK awards the Teacher of the Year award for the sixth time now.
More information:
Teacher of the Year 2023
Heta-Maija Leino
heta-maija.leino@hamk.fi
050 574 5088
SAMOK, Board member
Oona Pappila
oona.pappila@samok.fi
050 536 0539