Think Global Fund Report 2024 – University of Jyväskylä
In March 2024, Dr Alison Callwood visited the University of Jyväskylä, Finland as part of a project titled ‘Scoping, Customising and Evaluating SAMMI (Scalable Automated Multiple Mini Interview) in a new context: Teacher Recruitment and Finland’. Here, she shares her account of the visit.
SAMMI is an online interview and assessment platform grounded in the Multiple Mini-Interview (MMI) methodology used in health professions selection across UK universities.
As principal investigator (PI), I publish and present my SAMMI research internationally. Through a connection made at a European Conference in August 2023, I was introduced to a new use case for MMIs in teacher recruitment that was happening in Finland. I reached out to the PI of this research, Dr Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto, to see if she was interested in further discussion, including addressing some of the barriers they’d encountered with their face-to-face MMIs. Riitta was extremely positive and so the early discussions started in November. To consolidate this, I requested to visit Riitta to develop this collaboration.
Collaboration objectives were to:
- Consolidate the connection with Dr Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto to build momentum and ultimately onboard
- Co-design the existing SAMMI platform in a Finnish context including translation to Finnish if required
- Explore reliability usability and acceptability of SAMMI in teacher recruitment in Finland
- Publish multisite, cross-discipline evaluation of SAMMI (reliability, acceptability, usability) to include Finland.
Visit to University of Jyväskylä
Dr Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto had shared details of my visit with colleagues across Finland. This resulted in an unexpected, enhanced opportunity with two meetings:
- Guest lecture
- Presentation of SAMMI to admissions leads at all nine universities in Finland that offer teacher training.
Guest lecture
I was invited to present my research portfolio to colleagues at the University of Jyväskylä in a face-to-face and live-streamed event. This provided the opportunity to share the research and prior development journey of the SAMMI software. There were many questions in an interactive 1.5 hours.
Presentation of SAMMI
This was an online event, with admissions leads dialling in from the nine universities across Finland that offer teacher training. It was chaired by Annu Laine, Helsinki University and Katariina Walzer, University of Eastern Finland, who are responsible for running MMIs in teacher education in Finland.
Following a 60-minute presentation of SAMMI and the new neurodivergent functionality, there were many questions, which took a further 30 minutes. These ranged from scenario details, translation, and addressing practice issues, including hosting on Amazon Web Services in Europe. Overall, it was an extremely well-received presentation with notable expression of further interest.
Summary
The aim of the visit was to secure ongoing collaborations with those leading in Finish teacher recruitment. It became clear that SAMMI could potentially address the issues being encountered with face-to-face interviews principally due to the geography of the country and fair accessibility. Through this visit, further details emerged including the fact that all teachers are recruited in three days using face-to-face MMIs, usually in June. Planning for 2024 recruitment was already in place at the time of the visit with the next recruitment round in summer 2025. I plan to touch base with Katariina and Anu in September 2024 to follow up.
