Celebrating Ten Years of the SFU Scheme

Ten years of promoting excellence in education is worthy of celebration. Thus, HKDir invited the SFUs to a Network meeting and 10 year anniversary celebration in Oslo 10 and 11 November. 

Seven bioCEED representatives joined members of each of the other SFUs and HKdir to mark the occasion and look back at what SFUs have meant for quality in higher education in Norway and beyond. The program included a speech from the Minister of Research and Higher Education Ola Borten Moe, a talk from professor Oddrun Samdal and a panel debate with student leader Tuva Todnem Lund (NSO), rector Anne Borg (NTNU), centre director Anders Malthe-Sørensne (CCSE) and director Sveinung Skule (HKdir). The session was recorded and can be seen and heard as a special issue of the podcast Kvalitetstid.

After the celebrations it was time to get to work on the next ten years of SFU achievements! Associate professor Rachelle Esterhazy gave a great keynote on Student Feedback and Students as Partners. It was nice to see Rachelle again, as she did some research on our biology students a few years back. (Check out the paper Evolution of a portfolio-based design in ecology: a three-year design cycle).

bioCEED was active during the meeting. Oddfrid Førland was on the organizing committee, and co-led a workshop with Birgit Rognebakke Krogstie from Excited on Theories of Change in higher education. And Sehoya Cotner led a workshop entitled From Practice to Publication–getting started in discipline-based educational research. We also enjoyed participating in discussions about work relevance in education, students as partners, SFU organization, and post-SFU sustainability planning. An added value was simply meeting and chatting with our colleagues from other SFUs, during sessions, at dinner, and in the spaces in between the formal program.