With the 2021/2022 academic year, we are trying a new type of collegial teaching course. This new offering, Leading Educational Change…Through SoTL is innovative along multiple dimensions. The course involves academic-change leaders from several institutions, representing a collaboration between bioCEED and iEarth, and is led by bioCEED and iEarth faculty from UiB and Lund University in Sweden. Faculty leaders are Roy Andersson and Sehoya Cotner from bioCEED, and Torgny Roxå and Anders Ahlberg from iEarth. These individuals represent a range of perspectives–including the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), theories of change in higher education, and scientific teaching.
In an effort to be as collaborative as possible, course meetings will be distributed across the participating institutions, beginning in Bergen and concluding at UNIS in April 2022. At our kickoff meeting at UiB October 25th and 26th, we covered a lot of introductory topics: Torgny Roxå talked about theories of change, Anders Ahlberg convinced us of the importance of gathering artefacts during the change process, Roy Andersson inspired us with stories of past successes, and Sehoya Cotner encouraged us to approach our education initiatives like we approach our scientific research. And we had some lovely pizza at Bien Centro. 😃
There are 19 course participants who have proposed seven novel projects investigating a variety of challenges in educational transformation. For a few examples, one group is interested in students as change agents, another is investigating barriers to change, and another is focusing on in-network communication strategies. We are excited about all of these projects and anticipate having a lot to share in the coming year. All will be encouraged to share their findings at conferences (e.g., MNT, ISSOTL) and in journals (e.g., the Nordic Journal of STEM Education, Teaching and Learning Inquiry) and of course we will keep you posted!
-Roy and Sehoya