Seminar: Scientific Teaching with iEarth

KURT and iEarth hosted a digital seminar about teaching

Collage of faces on Zoom.

The digital Scientific Teaching-seminar was organized by KURT and iEarth, and attracted participants from Oslo, Bergen, Tromsø, Svalbard, Australia and USA. Photo: iEarth

From May 25 to May 28, KURT and iEarth organized an intensive and engaging seminar about teaching and learning for the geoscience community.

The seminar focused on using backwards design to plan teaching, which ensures that the intended learning outcomes, the assessment forms and the student-centered learning activities are all aligned. The seminar was organized as an interactive workshop on Zoom, with a combination of short introductions, group discussions, individual work and plenary discussions.

Topics covered:

  • the role of learning outcomes
  • the value of formative assessment 
  • the critical role of the learning environment 
  • activities to support student activity
  • SoTL-principles for researchers who teach  

The participants were PhD-candidates, postdocs, researchers and professors from different instituions, with varying degree of teaching experience. The seminar was a huge success, and the participants gave the course an overall score of 5.6 (scale 1-6). 

A representative response from the evaluation form: 

It has inspired me to be a better teacher; I have realized that I can (and should) take the time to really think about course objectives, and how to structure a course in a meaningful way, and that really it is about the student's experience (too often am I focused on my own side of things). More broadly, it has helped me reflect on my own career, which has been typically been research dominated, as well as think more about the importance of word choices. And expanded my network by meeting other geoscience teachers.

Åsmund H. Eikenes and Victoria Haynes from KURT led the seminar, and the planning committee also included Cathrine Tellefsen and Tone F. Gregers from KURT, as well as Karianne Lilleøren, Mattias Lundmark, Anniken Birkelund and Åse Hestnes from GEO/iEarth. 

Dowload a short report from the seminar (pdf).


Do you want to learn more about teaching? Use the website Course planning to get started.

Get in touch to plan your next scientific teaching seminar.

Av Åsmund H. Eikenes
Publisert 8. juni 2020 11:40 - Sist endret 17. jan. 2024 16:44