While I haven’t had many internship days since the last blog, I was lucky enough to join Ørjan the UNIS student representative down to Bergen where DIKU had arranged a convention. There, bioCEED and the other centers around Norway that works towards improving education met up to drink coffee and eat good food. And to learn something too, probably.
Short summery of the convention
It kicked-off with Harald Nybølet who is the director of DIKU, he was followed by a presentation about Erasmus+. Then, after a couple of coffee breaks, we went over to presentations by the different centers. This was the more interesting part, as I’m now a small part of bioCEED, getting a bit an insight into how they all approach the never-ending task of improving education, was welcomed. Three centers had a presentation prepared: CCSE – Center of Computing in Science Education, bioCEED – Center of Exellence in Biolgy Education and CEMPE Centre of Excellence in Music Performance Education. While writing this, their presentation is a bit of a distant memory, but they all seemed to be in a developing phase and testing out methods/different approaches to improve learning. But also working towards improving student environment. Especially CEMPE seem to have a large focus on bettering the communication with students. Probably all students are stressed and have concerns, but not always someone to talk to/ask about these concerns. So CEMPE’s approach of having a designated person, that students can talk to about their issues, and class discussions, seemed to work well for them. It was also the part that I remembered best from that day.
After that, more coffee, and this time some food too. The downside, I started the day feeling a bit sick, but ended up feeling completely awful. I tried to stay longer but had to give up and go to my mom, who luckily lived close. That really sucked, but I had a good time for as long as I lasted.
Back on Svalbard
I haven’t had much internship time. However, with the time I did have, I finally completed my tutorial style video about doing a vegetation analysis in the Arctic. Big part was to record the voice over, something you strangely get fairly comfortable with after the first attempts. Anyways, it’s done, and you should be able to give it a watch at the end of this blog.