Guide for organisers of work of lecturers with authorisation agreement or contract for services

Vice rectors, area directors, deans, heads of institutes, directors of colleges, directors of non-university institutions, and heads of support units have the right to make authorisation agreements and contracts for services to order services. To help university employees who prepare the contracts for services and to harmonise the practices of different structural units, the guides for making contracts (in Estonian) and registration of authorisation agreements and contracts for services (in Estonian) have been drawn up.

As the organiser of work, make work-related agreements with the lecturer, based on which the authorisation agreement or contract for services will be drawn up.

Agree on the following:

• the period of employment;
• the duties and workload (incl. the hourly rate), which may be based on the recommended hourly rates (in Estonian) and recommended volume of supervision of theses (in Estonian);
• intellectual property rights to the content (e-course, teaching materials, incl. video lectures) created during the preparation or delivery of the teaching and the university’s rights to use these materials in the future (if necessary, consult the legal advisor in matters of intellectual property):
  • if economic rights are assigned to the university, the mandatary or the contractor cannot use the content in the future;
  • if a non-exclusive licence of economic rights is granted, the mandatary will have the right to use the works and make them available to third parties. In the case of a non-exclusive licence, the mandatary or contractor who is the author does not generally grant the right to modify the lecture material but is not prohibited from doing so;
  • if a personal copyright licence is granted, the university will have the right to modify and supplement the content;
• the cooperation partners (programme director, academic affairs specialist, lecturer in charge).

The authorisation agreement or contract for services must be signed for the period when the lecturer needs to start preparing for teaching – creating the e-course, recording video lectures, updating the course schedule, etc. If the lecturer needs to enter information on the course version, incl. the choice of assessment methods, as a lecturer in charge of the course, the agreement or contract must be made even earlier, or cooperate with the lecturer before signing the contract. The authorisation agreement or contract for services must remain in force for a month after the end of the semester so the lecturer can analyse the course feedback and, if necessary, make proposals for the next version of the course.

Send the lecturer who is going to work under an authorisation agreement or a contract for services a link to the guide. Also, provide information about cooperation partners in the structural unit: who the programme director, academic affairs specialist, lecturer in charge (if another person), and other lecturers of the course (if applicable) are and send their contact details.

When the lecturer’s authorisation agreement or the contract for services has been signed, contact IT helpdesk and order a user account for the university’s computer network and a ut.ee email address for the lecturer. If the lecturer has studied at the university or previously worked under an employment contract, contract for services or authorisation agreement, they may already have a user account for the UT computer network, and the IT helpdesk can reactivate it.

IT helpdesk will communicate the details of the account for the UT computer network to the new lecturer employed under an authorisation agreement or contract for services. Before using UT information systems, the lecturer must change the password generated by the computer system. To do so, they must go to https://passwd.ut.ee and follow the instructions there. The lecturer must also set up two-factor authentication to use the UT email and log in to Moodle.

Inform the lecturer that the user account for the UT computer network allows access to the university’s information systems (including SIS and Moodle) from the beginning of the term of the authorisation agreement or contract for services and that the lecturer must communicate with students using the ut.ee email.

Useful information can be found in the IT helpdesk guides for new employees, on user accounts and email. With any questions related to the user account for the UT network and using the information systems, contact the IT helpdesk.

Please note that when the lecturer’s authorisation agreement or contract for services ends, they can still access Moodle, as their account for the UT computer network will be automatically changed into a Moodle account. Moodle account allows the lecturer to log in to platforms that can be accessed via Moodle authentication (Panopto, Mahara and BigBlueButton).

If a new authorisation agreement or contract for services is made with the same person in the future, or if they start work for the university under an employment contract, the Moodle account will be converted back into a user account for the UT computer network (OpenID).
 

As the employment relationship of an adjunct instructor or lecturer is not automatically generated in the SIS, a person with the right to use the SIS1 maintenance module must enter the adjunct relationship for the lecturer employed under authorisation agreement or contract for services for the term of their agreement or contract. If you, as an organiser, have no rights to use the SIS1 maintenance module, please contact your faculty’s SIS coordinator.

The academic year consists of the autumn and the spring semester, and studies take place according to the academic calendar. Please ensure that the course version information is entered in the SIS by the deadline specified in the academic calendar in the SIS.

According to the study regulations and the academic calendar, the versions of all courses of the next academic year must be approved by 15 April. The course versions must include the following:

• a brief description of the content and a list of topics;
• forms of study and volume;
• learning outcomes and the grading scale (differentiated or non-differentiated assessment);
• assessment methods and criteria;
• principles of grading;
• the time of communicating assessment results;
• the procedure of taking resits;
• the minimum number of participants;
• a list of compulsory and recommended study materials, or web addresses.

The teaching and learning must take place according to the information in the course version. 

Students can register for courses in the autumn semester from 15 May and for courses in the spring semester from 15 December. After registration has started, the course version information may only be changed with the permission of students who have registered for the course in a format reproducible in writing. It is not possible to modify the volume of the course.

Information on the course version is entered in the SIS by the programme director and the lecturer in charge of the course. If the lecturer employed under an authorisation agreement or a contract for services is in charge, but the agreement or contract has not yet been concluded, it is necessary to cooperate with the lecturer already before making the agreement or contract. Alternatively, the programme director or another employee of the structural unit will be responsible for entering the course version information in the SIS.

Arrange the entering of the details of the lecturer with an authorisation agreement or a contract for services in the course version as a lecturer or lecturer in charge. More information is available in the SIS guide on entering the lecturer’s data in the course version information (in Estonian).

To help plan the teaching, you may advise the lecturer working under an authorisation agreement or a contract for services to consult, if necessary, the academic developer of their faculty and, when using blended or online learning, also the instructional designer (https://ut.ee/en/academic-developers-instructional-designers). Lecturers working under an authorisation agreement or contract for services can participate in training courses for academic staff.

Be available to the lecturer working under an authorisation agreement or contract for services throughout the teaching process. If they have questions or problems, see that these are resolved.

If changes are made to the timetable, please ensure that the necessary information will reach the students.

The faculty’s instructional designer can help with questions concerning blended or online learning.

After the end of the course, make sure that the work agreed in the authorisation agreement or contract for services has been delivered. Prepare an activity report for the authorisation agreement or an instrument of acceptance of work for the contract for services, and organise the signing of the document. The necessary forms are available on the intranet (in Estonian).

The course feedback results will be visible in the SIS immediately after the end of the semester, and the lecturer will get the relevant notification by email. The responses to multiple-choice questions are visible to all SIS users the day after the end of the semester. Responses to open-ended questions are accessible for seven days only to lecturers in charge of the course. During that time, they can also hide inappropriate comments. On the eighth day, the responses to open-ended questions will become visible to other SIS users, depending on their role. See the guide for viewing course feedback.

The authorisation agreement or the contract for services of a lecturer in charge must remain in force for one month after the end of the semester so that the lecturer can analyse the course feedback and make changes, if necessary. However, if their authorisation agreement or contract for services has ended by the time the feedback becomes available and they no longer have access to the SIS, please forward the students’ feedback to the lecturer. 

Ask the lecturer to analyse the feedback and, if necessary, make adjustments to the new version of the course in the SIS and the e-course.
 

Guide to making contracts: https://siseveeb.ut.ee/et/tugitegevused/lepingute-s%C3%B5lmimise-juhend (in Estonian)
Authorisation agreement and contract for services: https://siseveeb.ut.ee/et/tugitegevused/k%C3%A4sundus-ja-t%C3%B6%C3%B6v%C3%B5tuleping (in Estonian)
Document forms: https://siseveeb.ut.ee/et/tugitegevused/dokumendid-5 (in Estonian)