Teaching assistant course at UNIS runs for the second time!

Photo: Simen Hjelle

The 25 hours hands-on Teaching Assistant course was successfully run for the second time in March 2022. The course was run in collaboration with iEarth and led by Ivar Nordmo and teachers from UNIS. It consisted of four parts focusing on central theories and concept of learning and teaching, presenter vs. facilitator role in classroom, written feedback, and field learning. The course was primarily offered to PhD students across all scientific departments but was also open to Master students and Postdocs. This year eight participants completed the course receiving a course certificate in the end. The TA course at UNIS can either be approved as part of the training component of the PhD degree by the home university or count as PhD duty work.

The course was very much needed to prepare me for my teaching duties as part of my PhD. It was tailored to teaching in general, but also with respect to teaching in the field on Svalbard. The tips and tricks given from Mark and Marius about their experiences teaching here at UNIS were super helpful and something you wouldn’t get from a ‘normal’ teaching assistant course. I feel the course was a good base but could also be even longer over a week or two.

– Christine Lockwood-Ireland, PhD student at UNIS

Photo: Simen Hjelle

For future development of the course, the field part component will be strengthen with focus on the in-field teaching but also incorporating the variety of virtual field tools that is now being developed at UNIS through both iEarth, bioCEED and FieldPass. It will also be looked into how the course can be developed into a national field TA course relevant for the mainland universities in the near future.