BIOCEED

BY TINA DAHL, BIOCEED ADVISER

bioCEED has continued to develop biology education to fill future needs in science and society, and to facilitate SoTL across higher education in Norway and beyond. Our activities are guided by our four focus areas: Learning culture, innovative teaching, practical training, and outreach.

The years of developing a learning culture, along with numerous digital tools, better positioned us to survive —and in many cases, thrive—when the pandemic hit, and education went largely digital from March 2020 onwards. Among our major accomplishments we note the following:

We published nine papers in peer-reviewed, international journals; we were involved in course and program redesign that will impact students across biology programs; we assessed and improved several digital tools and developed usage of these tools to support courses; we supported novel educational initiatives; sponsored seminar series; and communicated our work to relevant stakeholders.

Enhanced collaboration with iEarth, our new SFU at UNIS where we have coordinated activities and cooperate when possible (e.g. seminars/courses, student activities and projects like FieldPass). BioCEED was bolstered by new initiatives. For example, a teaching assistant (TA) course was developed within bioCEED and iEarth to support PhD students, postdocs and master students across departments that teach in courses. Also, an academic writing workshop for PhD students was offered in 2020 to provide scientific training for PhD students when travelling to the mainland and attending workshops/courses were no longer feasible. At UNIS one postdoc and one technician have been hired withing the FieldPass project. Due to Covid-19, different collegial meeting places for teachers were established to support teachers with their digital teaching through a dedicated MS Team channel as well as through online meetings. A UNIS web resource page on digital educational resources was developed to help teachers to set up a functional, temporary online learning environment for their courses.

“unisBREAKFAST” (former “bioBREAKFAST”) is a student-led initiative, facilitating the exchange of knowledge and experience among students across all departments at UNIS. Challenged by the restrictions

March 2020: Hiking up Lindholmhøgda. Photo: Stina Skånhoff.

following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the student representatives worked closely with bioCEED staff and the health advisor at UNIS to develop a safe alternative to the former format. Three meetings have been arranged with 25-30 participants in each meeting and have been an important contributor to students networking opportunities during pandemic times with few possibilities for student-student interactions.

The 15 ECTS bachelor course AB-208 “Internship in Arctic Biology” at UNIS is now a well-established course, and five new students were doing internships at different workplaces in Longyearbyen during spring semester 2020. In monthly seminars, the students met and shared experiences and discussed what they had learned. Seminars were also used to train work-related skills, like applying for jobs and doing job-interviews through e.g. role plays. Students shared their experiences to the public through videoblogs or written blogs. AB-208 is usually combined with a 15 ECTS course focused on research practice (AB-207 “Research Project in Arctic Biology”), so students have the possibility to have a fulltime practical semester.

ABOUT BIOCEED

bioCEED is a Centre for Excellence in Biology Education, led by the University of Bergen in collaboration with UNIS, the Institute of Marine Research and other partners. More on https://bioceed.w.uib.no/