On Thursday 7th of October, Ståle Ellingsen and I were invited to talk about our work with cooperative learning in the weekly seminar at the Department of Chemistry, UiB. The Department of Chemistry has recently formulated some common general guidelines for laboratory reports at the bachelor level. The different laboratory courses have been assigned different…
Marlena Wegner and Samira Terzenbach are the new bioCEED student representatives at UNIS during the fall semester. Marlena Abril Wegner is currently a bachelor’s degree student in Biology. Her home university is the Freie Universität in Berlin. Since July, she is studying at UNIS where she follows two courses, AB 201 – Terrestrial Arctic Biology…
What started off as a vague idea during a coffee chat between two Master students of Arctic Biology, is now becoming a great event for all students at UNIS. SCOPE – the first-ever student-led conference on Polar Environment finally takes place on the 15th of October at the University Centre in Svalbard. It was quite…
Every semester since 2019, the Student Poster Symposium at BIO has invited students enrolled in one of seven courses (see Box) to present and discuss their scientific work in an interactive poster session. These poster sessions are open to all. For its latest edition, 140 students in BIO241, BIO299, MOL231, SDG214 and SDG215 were listed…
We are delighted to welcome our new Deputy Steve Coulson to bioCEED! Even though many employees at UNIS know Steve from before as he used to work at the Arctic Biology (AB) Department at UNIS for 10 years (2005-2015) with research focus on the invertebrate communities of the Arctic, he is new within the bioCEED…
Another semester has come to an end at UNIS, and although we hoped that things would be back to normal this semester, it was not so. However, this would not stop us from having unisBREAKFAST and bioCEED seminar! Although it was a it tricky and a lot of restrictions to take into consideration, we managed…
Lo and behold, this spring it finally happened: The students in the Arctic Environmental Management Course (AB-203) confirmed that the UNIS course had a “clear red line”. AB-203 used to have a lot of topics and many guest lecturers visiting UNIS, and as a result struggled to follow a red line. This year I was…
That is what we working in biORACLE would say if someone asked us if we were ready for this hot mess. But we couldn’t. We couldn’t keep Waffle-Wednesdays. The last year has been strange times for waffle-loving students. The pandemic has made us lose touch with who we are as a society. Norwegian culture doesn’t…
Next semester, we are launching the first edition of Bikuben – a scientific journal for students at BIO. We want to publish a wide range of products representing all directions at BIO – from scientific articles and reviews, to video essays and artwork. These products can be modified versions of course-related assignments and projects, or something…
Together with fellow SFU iEarth, we work with many individuals engaged in educational change initiatives. To better support these colleagues, specifically those in leadership roles, bioCEED and iEarth, and our partners in STEM education at Lund University, we are offering a new course. Leading Education Change—through SoTL will support the growth of skills and competences…
Læringsfestivalen is an important arena for teachers and others who are involved and interested in teaching and educational development and where people can exchange knowledge, experiences and educational research results. The festival is organized by NTNU and Diku and this year it went fully digitally with well above 200 participants across different educational institutions and…
Hurra, UNISprout is back, and it is better than ever! Are you wondering what UNISprout is all about? Here’s a quick overview of the project: UNISprout is a bioCEED funded project, designed to support the planned fieldwork of Guest Master and PhD students by offering Bachelor students the opportunity to act as a field assistant.…
The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning invites you to join its 17th annual conference, which will be hosted virtually from Perth, Western Australia from October 26 to 29, 2021. The theme of ISSOTL21 is Sustainable Education through SoTL: Practices and Cultures, selected to call our attention to SoTL’s contribution to developing…
As I have previously discussed, I was part of a three-person team of Associate Editors tasked with managing the submissions to this Special Issue: Taking Learning Online in Ecology and Evolution. The first installment was released late last week, and the second volume of contributions came out in April. For examples, Eva Humphries and Jason…
The new Act relating to universities and university colleges (NOU 2020:3) is to be passed by the Norwegian Parliament this month. As a Centre for Excellence in Education, we have both experience and expertise in what hinders and what supports development of good teaching and learning. We have previously voiced concerns over several elements in the…
My name is Simone Lang and I am an Assoc. Prof. at Arctic Biology, UNIS, doing research on bryophytes and lichens: how they are affected by climate change and how they, in turn, feedback to climate via their ecosystem functions. Starting in bioCEED has triggered many new ideas. Already some time ago, I discovered my…
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…
