UNIS is this year celebrating its 30-year anniversary of Arctic education and research with a series of autumn events for the whole community of Longyearbyen. The previous week was designated as the jubilee week, which proved to be exceptionally busy due to three major events: a school visit, Researchers night as well as an open…
The 3rd Student-Led Conference On Polar Environments (SCOPE) held at UNIS on October 13th and 14th, 2023, marked another year of the successful student-led conference. In total 102 students participated, with 9 local attendees joining the event on the open day, which took place on Saturday. The conference included 18 student presentations, representing all educational…
The student event “Veien til Arbeidslivet” (the Path to Working life), held at the MatNat student bar Integrerbar, was a remarkable success with an audience of 70 enthusiastic students. The event was organised by bioBEE and Gina Koulibaly Barry and hosted by Gina and Silje Maria Midthjell Høydal. The highlight of the event was the…
Many natural science courses in higher education emphasize practical skills, yet these skills are often not directly assessed. In a recently published study from the Department of BioSciences, UiO, Department of Arctic Biology, UNIS and Department of Biological Sciences, UiB, the potential of using certification as an assessment tool for practical lab skills is explored.…
A proposal for Norway’s National Budget for 2024 was presented to the Storting on 6 October 2023 (see the webpage of the government here). It is with great concern that we learn about the proposed shutdown of the initiative that supports the Centre for Excellence in Education (Sentre for Fremragende Utdanning – SFU) 10 years…
I am back! My name is Ragnhild Gya, and I used to be a student representative for bioCEED at UiB back in 2015-2017. Since then, I have been semi-involved in different bioCEED projects while I did my PhD in plant ecology at UiB. In June 2023 I started my postdoc in biology didactics at UiB,…
We are repeating the bioCEED survey that was conducted in 2015 and 2018. All major universities and university colleges in Norway with biology and biology-related programs have been invited to participate. This time the recipients are students, and we have updated the survey with some new topics. The survey was sent out to the selected…
A new study has been published by bioCEED members Marius Ole Johansen, Lucas M. Jeno, and Sigrunn Eliassen. In this experiment, students were either given a generic data set and instructions to work on, or a real-world data set and instructions. The students were asked to use the programming software R to calculate different statistical…
On August 22, 2023, bioCEED, in collaboration with SLATE (UiB’s Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology), hosted a full-day workshop, bringing together 19 instructors from across all departments in the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Our primary goals were to share experiences with large language models (LLMs) like chatGPT, explore the opportunities…
A new bioCEED-initiated research project, “Gjennomføring 2023” (G23), has as its main purpose to understand psycho-social (e.g., sense of belonging) and experiential (e.g., welcome week, specific courses) levers to retention in the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences (MatNat). In short, when student leave, why do they leave? When they stay, why do they…
Abstract University teachers grow professionally from conversations about learning and teaching with colleagues. Significant informal conversations can be facilitated through formal activities initiated from the institutional side. This case-study shows how a formal institutional initiative to enhance educational quality has facilitated more significant informal conversations. Such conversations power constructive feedback to the organisation, improve the…
Hi, my name is Sarah Alicia Frericks and I am currently an exchange student, taking Arctic biology courses at UNIS this summer and fall. I grew up in Berlin, Germany and decided to come to Norway in 2021 to start my biology bachelor’s degree at Nord University in Bodø. Now, I am excited to be…
MNPED660 Collegial Teaching and Learning in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Education is an elective teaching and learning course in higher education offered by bioCEED and MN-UiB to all MN-UiB and UNIS staff. The course is given in English and requires no previous pedagogical training and welcomes both experienced and more novice teachers and…
Since 2019, I «Sine», have been a part of The University Centre in Svalbard, first as a biology student and then as support staff for the Department of Arctic Biology. I love Svalbard and biology, and I am very happy to be a part of bioCEED this semester at UNIS. I hope to complement Tina and provide a…
