It’s been a full year since most of the world went into lockdown. Since then we have all been more or less living in the virtual world. For many students there lives have been filled with online learning from their living rooms. For many teachers this lead to a total shift in the plans for…
This focus for the MNT2021 (STEM) Conference was on sustainability and how this perspective can contribute to increase quality in education and teaching. The MNT conference is held every second year and the 2-days event was hosted by the University of Agder this year. However, due to the ongoing corona situation the conference was held…
My name is Timon and I work at the University Centre in Svalbard at the AB department as a technician. Here I am working with both the FieldPass project and in bioCEED. Currently I work with developing an e-learning platform for Arctic Biology students and staff (www.learningarcticbiology.info) and with developing mini e-courses with certification in the end. The aim of both these projects is to improve teaching outcomes…
A new Teaching & Learning course for PhD students, postdocs and master students with teaching responsibilities has recently been launched by bioCEED and iEarth at UNIS. It was an intense 3-days session for eight participants, full of active learning, discussions and sharing the experience of tackling challenging situations during fieldwork. So, how was it? During the first day of the course the participants explored some central theories and concepts of learning. They also discussed the difference between roles of presenter and facilitator in the classroom. The seminar was organized as…
The ISSOTL conference 2021 from February 24-26 was held digitally, a result of covid-19. This gave several teachers at UNIS the chance to participate online. After some initial confusion concerning mean Greenwich time, and how again this is related to Norwegian timekeeping, I found my way through the program. According to the organizers, the biggest…
The 2020 Annual Report was finalized and shared with the bioCEED board and our funders at Diku. Feel free to read the report in its entirety here, or just the brief summary that follows. bioCEED was bolstered by new investigators and new initiatives. For example, a teaching assistant (TA) training course was developed to support…
For the second time, bioCEED has held a pedagogical two-day course for teaching assistants (TA) at BIO. This is a continuation of the previous TA course. However, based on feedback from the participants, as well as teachers at BIO, we have tried to improve the course by providing better examples and more relevant content for…
The workshops “Engaging students during remote instruction” took place at BIO and UNIS in January- February and involved more than 60+ teachers across BIO and UNIS. When teachers at BIO, due to current regulations, had to postpone their annual Teachers Retreat (once again!), they went digital and made a Teacher’s workshop led by Sehoya Cotner,…
A new semester has started here at UNIS, and on that occasion bioCEED have gotten two new student representatives on their team! We are both third year biology students from the University of Bergen, who have come to Svalbard to finish the last semester of our bachelor’s degree. We are doing the Arctic Environmental Management…
