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Workshop with Student Teachers

Short description

The workshop serves to make BA-students use the academic tools at hand to investigate relevant and interesting topics related to the internet and technology in a linguistic framework. The students acquire general knowledge on the subject of computer-mediated communication, but more importantly, the students learn to investigate a topic on their own, find litterature, delineate the topic focus and choose which methods to apply.   

Teacher's motivation

The MA-students at the linguistics department have a great interest in Computer-mediated Communication. They established and taught this as a workshop for BA-students in the course "Topic of own choice". 

Description of the activity

  • Establishing the course: If you as a lecturer encounter MA-students with special academic fields of interest, you can invite them to give a presentation in connection with your own courses. If the MA-students have an interest in teaching you can help them find a place in the study program for their courses and get the administrative side of things started. As a lecturer you can serve as the academic contact person and ensure the quality of the course or workshop. 
  • Teaching: The workshop is organized as a project-oriented course where the BA-students work on individual projects while getting their fellow students' input through datasessions, feedback groups and speeddating. The teaching is a collaboration between the MA-students who run the course and the BA-students who are following the course.   
  • Exam: The students have served as sparring partners on each others' projects from the beginning of the course and it makes sense to make the exam a common project as well. The workshop ends with a collective exam. The students present their individual projects as a 30-min. oral presentation followed by questions.All students are present at the examination and act as audience for each others' presentations. The students ask questions on an equal basis with the lecturers. All students are assigned two-three projects for which they have to prepare questions. This is to ensure that questions are asked to all presentations alike. The students have made smaller presentations and datasessions throughout the course so all are familiar with the topics of others.

Outcome of the activity 

The BA-students carry out a project and find their own topic, data, method and theory. They learn to work independently and to use each other for sparring. This prepares them for writing their bachelor's thesis in the following semester. The feedback they get from the MA-students who are further along in the study program help raise the academic level.

The participating MA-students take ownership of their education. They work independently with the planning and establishment of the course and get teaching experience. They also have the possibility of bringing their own data and projects to the workshop and get feedback.

The BA-students have been very positive toward the overall experience of the exam and have made wishes for more collective exams in the study programme. According to the students the connection between teaching and exam is strenghtened through the collective exam.     


Basic information

  • Faculty: Arts

  • Degree Programme: Linguistics

  • Course: Topic of own choice, Computer-mediated Communication

  • Study level: BA 4th semester

  • Course size: 2-30

  • Teaching method: Small class teaching

  • Extent: Short series

  • How the case was conducted: Campus teaching

Learning objectives

The workshop sets up a framework for the course "Topic of own choice" so that the BA-students instead of pure selfstudy experience to work with individual projects and at the same time use their fellow students for dicussions and feedback. They furthermore learn to contribute actively to the teaching since this is a workshop and not traditional lecturing. 

The MA-students who teach the course get teaching experience from planning and conducting the workshop as well as giving feedback on the BA-students' projects. The MA-students take advantage of the potential in their academic fields of interest by applying it to a teaching situation. 

Jakob Steensig

Associate professor, PhD.

Co-contributors

Nicholas Hedegaard Mikkelsen, MA-student at Linguistics
Mathias Kragelund, MA-student at Linguistics