Guidelines career-promoting work

Background

These guidelines are relevant for PhD Logistics students holding a 4-year PhD-scholarship with 25% career-promoting work (CPW) at Molde University College, Faculty of Logistics.

These guidelines are meant to fulfil the requirements stated in regulations under the Universities and University Colleges Act, in particular sections 3-16 and 3-19 where CPW is defined as “work beyond research and education that provides relevant knowledge and experience for future career paths within higher education or research institutions, or in other sectors.”

The aim of these guidelines is to offer more information about the contents, norms and procedures around the allocation and planning of the CPW for 4-year scholarship holders.

Relevant elements of the career-promoting work 

As far as possible elements of CPW should be relevant to the PhD education and careers within academia and other parts of working life and society. This means that the typical tasks would be similar to those given to other members of the faculty, including (but not limited to):

1. Teaching at Bachelor’s or Master’s level courses. Normally, this would mean talking responsibility for sections of courses in co-operation with a module leader, but responsibility for full courses or seminars may also be given.
2. Tutoring of Bachelor’s or Master’s students. This could be tutoring and feedback related to theses, course papers or group work.
3. Responsibility for marking exams.
4. Administrative support related to academic activities. This could be related to organizing seminar series, academic conferences or committee work.
5. Representing PhD students in the PhD committee, or in other settings.
6. Taking part in the development of research proposals, e.g. by conducting a literature review or writing up the proposal text in co-operation with members of the Faculty.
7. Assisting research group leaders organizing activities of the research group.
8. Taking part in courses developing necessary skills for carrying out the working duties, e.g. pedagogical training, learning software applications, HES courses etc.
9. Participating in courses/seminars enhancing academic writing skills.
10. Participating in Norwegian language courses.
11. Research-based innovation- or dissemination-work.
12. Developing a career-plan under guidance.

Procedures for determining the content of the CPW

1. The content and working duties included in the CPW over the scholarship period is decided by the dean in dialogue with the candidate and the main tutor. The content will have to be agreed within what is possible given budget constraints.
2. As far as possible, elements of the CPW for the coming academic year should be determined within the 1st of June each year.
3. As far as possible, the candidate should not be assigned significant working-duties (>10% of the time) in the last year of the scholarship period, to allow for the candidate to focus fully on preparing the thesis for submission.
4. The allocation of CPW activities should not prevent students from having research stays at other institutions. This, however, does not necessarily mean that the period spent at another institution should be entirely without working duties.
5. The Faculty is responsible for making sure that the content of the CPW does not constitute more than one man-year within the scholarship period.

Factors affecting normative workloads

1. For most doctoral students, teaching is a new experience, which normally means that the process of preparing for lectures takes significantly more time that it would do for a more experienced teacher.

2. The actual workload would depend on a number of factors, e.g.

• How many – and how long the lectures are
• The size of the class – especially if the course design involves hand-ins which require formative or summative feedback.
• How much course-material that is provided by earlier teachers of the module/seminar/section.

3. All students should be allowed 10% for self-administration (e.g. participating in internal meetings, courses, learning how to master general IT tools, doing minor assigned tasks etc.)

4. A full workload could have many constellations (see some examples below), but a normative guidance could be (percentages of a full man-year in brackets):

• Taking on full responsibility for a 7.5 ECTS module for the first time (40%)
• Doing the same module again (25%)
• Taking full responsibility of a one-week LOG904-seminar for the first time (20%)
• Doing the same seminar again (12,5%)
• Being the main tutor of a master’s thesis (10%), a bachelor’s thesis (7,5%)
• Administrating the LOG904 seminar series for one year (30%)
• Acting as student representative in the PhD committee, or member of the Faculty board (10% per year)
• Participating in a pedagogical training program (similar to OsloMET UHPED – 25%)

Individual judgement of actual workloads may deviate from these guiding norms (e.g. with respect to factors mentioned under item 4.2 above).

Other arrangements

1. Students with no/little prior teaching experience should be offered a more experienced teacher as a mentor.

2. Members of faculty with module leader responsibility are encouraged to include PhD-students with partial responsibility of the teaching and tutoring related within their modules, and at the same time, act as mentors for this activity. The module leaders will not be given extra teaching duties in other courses because of this, as the time saved would be spent acting as a mentor.

3. The university offers a template for a career plan and guidance/seminars related to career planning.

Examples of CPW constellations

A. Example 1

• Teaching 4 lectures of 3 hours in a module 3 times (40%)
• Main tutor of 2 groups of Bachelor’s students for 3 times (45%)
• Self-administration (10%)

B. Example 2

• Being administrator of the LOG904 seminar series 3 times (90%)
• Self-administration (10%)

C. Example 3

• Acting as the student representative in the PhD committee for 2 years (20%)
• Teaching 4 lectures of 3 hours in a module 2 times (30%)
• Tutoring 2 groups of Master’s students 2 times (40%)
• Self-administration (10%)

D. Example 4

• Teaching 6 lectures of 3 hours in a module 2 times (45%)
• Participating in a pedagogical training course (25%)
• Tutoring 1 group of Master’s students 2 times (20%)
• Self-administration (10%)