Teachers’ views on collaborating in multi-campus course cluster for engineering students

At a European multi-campus university, parallel study programmes offered at every campus (e.g. engineering studies) and appurtenant courses are coordinated, to ensure similar quality and systematic development. In this paper, we present a case from such a multi-campus course, consisting of a cluster of basic courses in physics and chemistry for first-year engineering students. These courses are coordinated through identical syllabus and assessment practice but are taught locally at each campus. The authors had noted some frustration among the teachers involved in these courses, and were interested to investigate the reasons for this frustration, and ultimately to inform the development of these multi-campus courses. This project emerged from a realisation that literature on multi-campus courses is often associated with distance learning, while in this case, the actual teaching is provided locally. Concepts associated with teacher collaboration, such as collaborative culture versus contrived collegiality, collective versus fragmented collaboration, and depth of collaboration seem like a viable way forward in understanding the dynamics between teachers in a context like this. In this paper, we present early results from this ongoing project, which include interviews of teachers involved in these physics/chemistry courses. Preliminary results from these interviews suggest that the expressed frustrations stem from contrived collegiality. Although the teachers experience sufficient freedom in terms of choosing their own teaching methods, several teachers raise concerns about the lack of common aims for this course cluster, which reduces collaboration to coordination of mere practical tasks

Realising A Centre For Educational Development: Experiences, Challenges, Lessons Learnt, And Future Ambitions

In order to develop high-quality engineering education with a focus on students’ learning, academic staff must themselves develop new skills, with a lifelong learning perspective to their own teaching. This requires coordination and support. For this purpose, three faculties at our university decided to jointly fund a Centre for Science and Engineering Education Development. Among the aims were to boost educational quality, strengthen educational competence among academic staff, and build educational quality culture on the institutional level. The faculties also recognized a need to establish a stronger and more focused didactic perspective for the university’s programme STEM portfolio, beyond and in addition to the general pedagogical training already offered by the university. The centre\u27s main responsibility has been to provide various forms of training of and teaching for academic staff and educational leaders, thus indirectly affecting also students’ learning experiences. Strategic advice on educational change, dissemination of results, and strengthening of international and national collaborations, networks, and arenas, have been important additional tasks. This paper reflects upon the centre\u27s activities, strategies, impact, experiences, and challenges from the start-up until today. We identify lessons learnt and propose advice for others planning similar centra. Among the topics covered are capacity and recruitment challenges, coping with diverse faculty cultures, and the need for a shared vision in which to anchor activities and resource usage. We will also describe a recent upscaling of the Centre’s mandate, responsibilities, and capacity, designed to support a major ongoing educational reform in the STEM programmes at our university

Teaching In Student-Centred Active Learning Spaces: How Relational, Pedagogical, Spatial, And Technological Aspects Intertwine And Affect The Learning Environment

Higher educational institutions internationally have shown a growing interest in developing learning spaces that support student-centred learning approaches. For engineering education, this development aligns well with an increased emphasis on cross-disciplinarity and a system-thinking approach. However, research and our own experiences as teachers and evaluators of such learning spaces suggest that teachers who enter these learning spaces need support, as the complexity of the teaching situation becomes more apparent, compared to the traditional lecture hall. In this workshop, we will investigate this complexity together with the participants. Participants can expect to leave the workshop with a better understanding of: a conceptual framework that will assist the participants in navigating through the complexity of teaching in student-centred learning spaces. how to plan, implement and evaluate one’s own teaching in such learning spaces (Do’s and Dont’s). The take-home message from this workshop is an appreciation for how the relational, pedagogical, spatial, and technological aspects intertwine and affect the learning environment in spaces designed for student activity

Recommendations for a multicampus course developed through a “Students as Partners” project

This paper presents recommendations for a Multicampus course, developed through a Student as Partners project. In this project students, a teacher and an educational developer collaborated following the principles of the Students as Partners framework. Through interpretation of previous course evaluations and discussions, we created a shared understanding of how the course had worked and what to improve. Our main recommendations are to have lectures and learning activities that are diverse and adapted to the students’ different needs. These recommendations are not groundbreaking in themselves, however, the grounding in a common understanding through the use of the Student as Partners framework is novel and gives new perspectives to course development and educational development in general

Studentaktiv læring i interaktive læringsarealer gjennom lærersamarbeid

Motivasjonen for å legge til rette for studentaktive læringsformer øker med Stortingsmeldingen 16 «Kultur for kvalitet i høyere utdanning» (Meld. St. 16, 2017). Blant annet står det at: «Regjeringen venter at fagmiljøene i mye større grad enn i dag bruker undervisningsformer hvor studentene har en aktiv roll, og at de bruker digitale hjelpemidler og ny teknologi der det er hensiktsmessig og mulig» (Meld. St. 16, 2017, s. 53). Det blir også vektlagt at det må være et tydelig samsvar mellom læringsutbyttebeskrivelsene og undervisningsformene som benyttes (Meld. St. 16, 2017, s. 50). Stortingsmeldingen tydeliggjør at det er vår rolle som undervisere å legge til rette for gode læringsaktiviteter hvor studentene får mulighet til å diskutere og reflektere over fagstoffet for å stimulere til dybdelæring. For å få til dette er det behov for areal som innbyr til samhandling, samtidig sies det at det også er viktig med skjermede arbeidsplasser som legger mer til rette for konsentrasjon (Meld. St. 16, 2017, s. 39)