Teaching portfolio

Dr. Tommi Himberg, PhD

30.10. 2018
1. Teaching philosophy & pedagogical training
As a teacher, my aim is to create a learning environment that is inspirational, fuels students’ natural
curiosity, encourages dialogue and fosters critical thinking and a sense of responsibility for the com-
munity.
According to the constructivist view, we learn by building new knowledge on top of existing schemas.
While this is useful to consider when planning teaching, at the same time studying in the university
should also be “cognitively disruptive” and make long-lasting and wide-ranging changes to students’
identities and ways of thinking. So that this would not feel overwhelming for the student, it is important
that students engage with this challenge together, supporting each other, while being supported by
their teachers.
In the multi-disciplinary research projects I have been involved in, I’ve taken the approach of fostering
the research group into a Community of Practice (CoP, Wenger, 2009), a group where people do things
together, learn from each other and respect each other’s different expertise. Students on a course or all
students at a department, should also form CoP’s. Many times the focus in university teaching is too
much on individual evaluation, which can come on the way of building such sense of community and
mutual support structure, but it can be done. In my courses I ran as university teacher, I utilised different
group work formats a lot, and got positive feedback from students about these components. While in
humanities it is not often sensible to think that the content of the studies would be “relevant for the
workplace”, the ways of working should be, and thus learning to do teamwork should be a priority.
I am currently enrolled in the Aalto university pedagogical studies, and have completed the first 5 cr.
module.

2. Teaching and supervision experience

2.1 Teaching
During my PhD studies in Cambridge in 2003–7 I supervised small groups of undergraduates on prof
Ian Cross’s (my PhD supervisor) courses Introduction to Music and Science (2nd year course) and Per-
ception & Performance (3rd year). In the Cambridge and Oxford system, a professor lectures undergrad-
uate courses, and PhD students etc. give students weekly supervisions in small groups (2–6 students).
The supervisors assign reading and written assignments, give feedback, discuss and debate the content
of the lectures and reading materials, and ensure that students learn what they are supposed to learn in
the course, and will be ready for the exams. In addition, I supervised a few undergraduate theses and
research projects in Cambridge. The Oxbridge small group tutoring system influenced my teaching
philosophy a lot, as I found it to be a very effective (though expensive and labour intensive) way of
teaching. In particular, I like how it prepares students to explain and debate the course content, and
aims for understanding rather than just learning sets of facts.
The bulk of my teaching experience comes from the years as an assistant and later university teacher
at the Music department in University of Jyväskylä (2007–12). I was teaching many courses each se-
mester, in Finnish and in English, from first year undergraduate to master’s level (see attached table),
and I was also involved in the curriculum overhauls and pedagogical development at the department.
In addition, I ran the bachelor’s thesis seminars and supervised the musicology BA theses, and was
responsible for supervising the Personalised Study Plans of the first-year undergraduates between 2009–
2012. In Jyväskylä, I got to contribute to all stages of undergraduate and master’s level teaching, from
entrance exams to curricula, to courses, and supervising theses.
During my 5 years in Aalto, I have been a post-doctoral researcher, and have not had any courses to
run myself. I have done individual guest lectures as part of courses run by other teachers (e.g. Advanced
course in human brain functioning), and at the Music, Mind and Technology master’s programme in
Jyväskylä). I have also lectured the Music psychology I and II courses in the basic and subject studies

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in music therapy, accredited by the University of Jyväskylä, in various open and summer universities
around Finland, on average 3–4 times per year. While in Aalto, I’ve also supervised some special as-
signments (erikoistyö), bachelor’s theses, as well as three master’s theses.
As part of my visiting professorship I delivered a seminar “Interacting Minds” at the Université Paris
8/CNRS SfL. The seminar was tailored for PhD students and post-docs at the LABEX Arts H2H

2.2 Supervising students

In Jyväskylä, I supervised 12–18 BA theses in musicology per year, technically everyone in the cohort.
The BA thesis is an independent research project, sometimes empirical, sometimes literature-based,
and results in a typically 25–30-page reports that are published online. During that time, I contributed
to supervising/advising MA theses, especially in the colloquium that I convened, couldn’t serve as the
official supervisor as I got my PhD degree only later. I tried to encourage students to take on empirical
projects rather than just literature reviews. This was a considerable investment of my time, involving
extra supervisions, helping in setting up experiments, and extra tutoring in data analysis. The topics
ranged from music analysis to music perception, music business to cultural politics, and music perfor-
mance to sociology, and spanned music genres from classical to film and game music to gangsta rap
and capoeira.
After completing my PhD, I’ve supervised 3 master’s students. Two have completed their theses, re-
ceiving the highest possible mark: Megan Buchkowski (2018, MA, Music, Mind & Technology, Uni-
versity of Jyväskylä and Maija Niinisalo (2016, MPsych, University of Helsinki). Noora Jekunen’s pro-
ject (for MTech, Aalto University) is currently ongoing.

3. Innovations and teaching material

In 2009-2010, I participated in a group who developed online resources for research methodology
teaching and learning in the Faculty of Humanities. The resource was named “Mapping Research
Methods” (http://bit.ly/mapresmet). The tool consists of a “navigator” and descriptions of the research
process, philosophies, data collection methods, analysis methods and approaches, so that students find
methods that best suit their master’s projects. I was responsible for the quantitative methods in the tool.
In 2009, I initiated and organised a student poster exhibition, to be included as part of the BA seminar.
The objective was to encourage students, strengthen their identities as experts in their own fields and
show that their research is an important part of the research activities of the department. Posters were
presented in a poster session to the whole department. Student feedback, as well as feedback from staff
was overwhelmingly positive.
I have been integrating various digital tools to my courses. For example, in first-year musicology course
in 2009–10, we covered the topic of basic terminology so that students updated or wrote entries for
those terms in Wikipedia.
In 2017 we founded a new conference, Brain Twitter Conference, that takes place in Twitter. The
conference takes away the need to fly around the world, makes balancing work and family easier, and
being free it also helps bridge the global divide. Our conferences reached global audiences in the
hundreds of thousands. It was also amazing to see that an undergraduate student team from India
passed the peer review and was able to present their project on music and stress to this global audience,
along with scholars from Harvard, MIT, Oxford, Stanford, and Aalto.
I have introduced digital tools such as wikis, Facebook pages, blogs and recently chat services (Slack,
Microsoft Teams) to teams and groups I’ve worked in or directed. As part of my ongoing activities in
popularising science (see e.g. blog http://mindsync.wordpress.com) I have been developing a national
tool for connecting researchers and students in primary and high schools and vocational institutes.
“Tutkija tavattavissa” -service where researchers can make skype visits to schools is now run by the

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Young Academy Finland, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture, and will be launched in
January.

4. Curriculum development and evaluation

In Jyväskylä, I was a member of the Teaching Development Group, consisting of staff and student
members, and tasked with curricular development and overall improvement of the quality of teaching.
During the term 2008-2009, we did a major overhaul to the curricula in all disciplines of the Music
Department at the University of Jyväskylä. All courses and modules were described through learning
objectives, instead of the old vague descriptions of content areas. In addition, great care was taken to
design a curriculum that would be clear, allow cross-disciplinary degrees and where accumulation of
knowledge would work logically from the basic studies through subject studies to advanced (master’s
level) studies. The curriculum was further overhauled in 2011, with the LO-based approach extending
to degree level.
A department-level course evaluation and feedback system was developed in 2011. Before this system
became available, I collected student evaluations myself after my courses, and in the name of transpar-
ency posted many of the results in my blog. The average ”grades” for my courses were 4/5 or even
better. I typically got top marks for my teaching materials and visuals, while the amount of things to
learn in the courses was often critiqued. The feedback helped develop the next years’ courses.
I was a member of the evaluation group that conducted a national evaluation of the master’s pro-
grammes in Finnish universities (a project by Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council, in 2002-
2003). This included evaluation visits to a number of Finnish universities, interviewing students, staff
and administration. This national evaluation, the curriculum development project and the individual
course evaluations, have helped me to see the continuum from individual courses to degrees, to a
national HE system.

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Appendix 1. Courses taught (at JyU if not mentioned otherwise)
COURSES
STU-
YEARS TITLE MODULE CONTENT ECTS
DENTS*
Introductory module where students produce their
Personalised Study Plans, get acquainted with
2011 Study plans Basic studies 2 15
studying in the university and learn about learn-
ing.
2007, First year course, introduction to different ap-
2008, Introduction to music research Basic studies proaches to musicology, basic premises, main 2 40
2009 questions and findings.
Introduction to cognitive approach to studying
2007, Points of view to musicology
Basic studies music: basics of acoustics, psychoacoustics, mu- 2 15
2008 (cognitive)
sic perception, cognition and performance.
Introduction to cognitive musicology: basics of
2009, Foundations of cognitive mu- acoustics, psychoacoustics, music perception,
Basic studies 4 15
2011 sicology cognition, emotions and music performance re-
search.
What is scientific research? How to write a report?
2008-9, Foundations of scientific re-
Students research a paper (autumn semester), pre-
2009-10, search (first year seminar) + Basic studies 3+3 10-15
sent and process them in a seminar and write a
2010-11 scientific writing
report (spring semester).
Seminar supporting the preparation of BA theses,
2007-8,
instruction about scientific research and science
2008-9, BA Seminar Subject studies 10 15
communication. Convenor of the seminar also su-
2009-10
pervises the research projects.
Music perception, music performance, music &
2007-8 Music Psychology Subject studies emotions, social cognition, musical taste, devel- 3/5 40
opment etc.
Psychology of Music Perfor- Psychology and scientific studies of music perfor-
2011-2012 Subject studies 5 25
mance mance. Research-based learning.
Advanced Methods course for students who do empirical re-
Empirical musicology – meth-
2007-8 studies search, experiments, surveys, computational anal- 5 10
ods course
(master’s level) ysis and use quantitative methods.
Music psychology, interdisciplinary music re-
2008-9, Advanced search, empirical musicology – colloquium for
2009-10, Colloquium studies students and staff to discuss ongoing projects and 5 5-10
2010-11 (master’s level) recent papers. Focus on master’s students’ own
thesis projects. In English.
Advanced In-depth look at psychological and neural pro-
2010-11 Social cognition of music studies cesses and mechanisms be- hind interaction and 5 25
(master’s level) communication; how it all relates to music.
Advanced Methods course for BA and master’s students
Advanced methodology – ex-
2010-11 studies working on experiments, surveys and using quan- 5 5
periments and surveys
(master’s level) titative methods.
Lectures at MMT courses (Mu-
sic Psychology, Music, Cul- Advanced
Social cognition, cross-cultural experimentation,
2007-18 ture & Cognition) at JyU, Ad- studies 15
experiment methodology. Teaching in English.
vanced Course in Human (master’s level)
Brain Functioning at Aalto
Music psychology (Music Courses delivered in Open Universities, Summer
Basic and sub-
2008-2018 Therapy basic and subject Universities and other institutions, accredited by 5 30
ject studies
studies) University of Jyväskylä.
3-part lecture / workshop series on social cogni-
PhD & post-
2017 Interacting minds tion / group dynamics as part of visiting professor- 20
doctoral
ship.

*average number of students enrolled per year