Higher Education Teaching

Profile description and usage

Description

This profile describes the essential elements of university teaching and academic course.

You will likely use it to record informations on the career and activities of university staff members.

Find here the profile description on OntoME.

Hint: This profile is often used in combination with the profiles :

• Education,

• Interactions, Social Relationships and Memberships of Persons,

• Groups and organizations.

Main classes of this profile

Main classes & properties	Use cases
Academic chair	--> Add professorships or other forms of institutionalized teaching positions at a university or academy, such as "Chair of Chemistry".
Social actor embodiment	--> Use this class to express that a person at a given time in moment was the holder of an academic chair (professorship).
Academic discipline	--> Add a subdivision of a subject taught at university level and higher academic institutions but also simply taught at school or college such as, "Chemistry" or "Mathematics".
Academic position	--> Indicate the rank of a scientist or teacher in a college, high school, university or research establishment, such as "Lecturer", "Professor" or "Rector".
Teaching	--> Add a phase in which a person teaches a subject usually at an institution of higher education, such as a lecture given by a professor at a university.

Most common use cases

Record a professorship

If you want to add a professorship to an individual, you can proceed as follows:

Step 1) Add an academic chair

Examples:

• Academic chair in Chemistry at the University of Kiel.

• Academic chair in Biology at the University of Lausanne.

1. Create a new entity

• Create a new entity by clicking on "Entities" > "add" > "Academic chair".

• Type in the name and the definition of the chair.

2. Link it to a discipline

• Now that you have an academic chair, you can link it to an academic discipline by using the "has a disciplinary area" property.

• Don't forget to use the "edit mode".

3. Link it to an institution

• You can link the chair to an institution (a university for example) which probably regroups several different chairs by using the "is linked to an institution" property.

• Choose an existing institution or add a new one by creating a new "Group".

A university chair is a legal object and is not to be confused with the holder, who is a person.

Step 2) Link a person to his or her position as a university professor

Use the class 'social actor embodiment' to express that a person, for a certain moment in time, has embodied a certain function/role (like a professorship in this case).

Learn more about the class 'social actor embodiment' here.

1. Add a new Social actor embodiment

• Open the entity card of the person that is a professor,

• enable the edit mode,

• click on the "+" button of the property "embodies".

2. Link the social actor embodiment to an academic chair

• Add a time span during which the professor was in activity;

• you can also name this embodiment and define it;

• click on the "+" button on the right of the "is embodiment of" field;

• select "Academic chair";

• choose among the academic chairs you previously created (or create a new one).

Detail a teaching activity

If you want to indicate that a person not only had a position in an academic chair, but also taught a certain discipline (e.g. a person has been teaching chemistry as a Professor at a university), you can follow these steps:

Step 1) Enter informations about the nature of the teaching activity, such as the discipline that was taught or the rank occupied by the teacher

Create an academic discipline

• An academic discipline can also be called field of study, research field or branch of knowledge.

• If the discipline that was taught by the professor is not already an entity in your project, create a new one by clicking on "Entities" > "add" > "Academic discipline".

• Enter the name and the definition of the discipline.

Create an academic position

• This step is optional, you can use it if you want to precise the rank occupied by the teacher by the time of his or her teaching activity.

• If the position of the teacher is not already an entity in your project, create a new one by clicking on "Entities" > "add" > "Academic position".

• Enter the name and the definition of the position.

Step 2) Add a teaching activity to a person's card

1. Add a teaching activity

• In the "specific field" of a person's card, use the property "carries out" to add a new teaching activity.

2. Link it to a discipline

• In the form that appears, click on the "+" button on the right of the "concerns discipline" field to link the teaching activity to a particular discipline.

• On the right part of the "academic discipline" form that appears, select the discipline you previously created.

3. Add more information

• You can also add information about the period of time during which the teacher carried out his or her teaching (time span), or in which institutions he or she taught ("carried out at"). If you created an academic position, you can use the "has rank" position to indicate the academic position of the teacher at that time.

Profile Overview

The details of each classes and properties can be found on the OntoMe webpage of the profile.

Overview of the "Higher Education Teaching" profile structure