Pedagogic Basis and Guidelines

Teaching at the University of Copenhagen is research-based. This means that the study programmes are developed by researchers and have close links to active research circles. The students encounter researchers in their classes and acquire knowledge, skills and competences based on research.

The University places great emphasis on lecturers’ pedagogic competences. It has adopted University Guidelines for the Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Programme and Guidelines for the Competency Development of PhD Supervisors.

To ensure the quality of the teaching and a more equal weighting of teaching and research, the University also introduced a requirement for a teaching portfolio in connection with applications for academic posts (associate professorships and professorships). The teaching portfolio outlines the applicant’s teaching qualifications, experience and evaluations.The teaching portfolio are also used as a tool for continuous reflection on and development of their own teaching (beginning in 2017) and in connection with PDR from 2018. Teaching portfolios are used in connection with the University of Copenhagen's pedagogical competency profile which provides a common language for describing teaching qualifications. 

The pedagogic and didactic centres at the University of Copenhagen – Department of Science Education, the Teaching and Learning Unit of Social Sciences and TEACH! – Teaching Centre Humanities (in Danish)– enhance the skills of lecturers at the University. The Centre for Internationalisation and Parallel Language Use in the Faculty of Humanities is responsible for the language skills of lecturers working in English.

The specific forms of teaching and work vary from programme to programme. The descriptions of the individual study programmes at UCPH show the nature and methods of the teaching, and the University’s expectations with regard to student input.