Mirjam Sophia Glessmer

Why does highlighting positive behaviors sometimes inspire others to similar actions, and other times provoke them to do the exact opposite?

“Sustainability educators face a conundrum in the midst of climate collapse: what if to teach truthfully is to break hearts? What if teaching with the most current and rigorous research is tantamount to inducing hopelessness, anger, and anxiety?” This is the introduction to Williams and Grain (2025)’s article “Teaching in a Time of Climate Collapse: […]

I’m getting a bit sick of reading GenAI papers, but I guess not reading is also not an alternative… And this one is actually very interesting!

I quite regularly share my favourite podcasts on learning and teaching, but now it seems it’s time to share some of my favorite blogs! Despite me blogging myself, I don’t read blogs as regularly as I used to (mostly because I don’t want to spend even more time in front of a screen, and podcasts […]

I just saw that Kjersti, Cathy’s and my article has been replaced as the latest publication on IJAD’s website, and that “What is good academic development practice? Introducing Australasian standards” by Harvey et al. (2026) has been published on the first of January this year! Which I of course have to read right away, because […]

I have a bunch of articles that were recommended during our LTHEChat on teaching sustainability last year that have been sitting in a special folder, waiting for a day like today where the best thing to do (right after a dip and a looong, comfy breakfast) is to curl up on the couch and read. […]

How do the experiences that students make when seeking feedback influence their motivation for doing it again?

I was recently sent Clara Hallgarth’s Master’s thesis on “Educational Methods for Fostering Sustainability Competencies: A Toolkit for Integration of Sustainable Education in Engineering” (thanks, Clara!) and really enjoyed reading it; it’s a  treasure trove of great references and even better ideas! I am summarizing my main takeaways below, but keep in mind that this […]

One reason why sustainability education is so difficult is that in contrast to many other things we routinely teach, we cannot just take some teachable product, but need to transform teaching itself. Teachers need pedagogical knowledge of sustainability, and Sandri (2022) explores what “pedagogy” even means in the context of sustainability education, because while often […]

LTH has been running Pedagogical Inspiration Conferences since 2003, with the 13th conference happening in December 2025. I was really impressed by the number (and quality!) of presentations on teaching sustainability there (see my summaries of the contributions below).

A couple of years ago, I decided that I would only initiate new projects that, in one way or another, contribute to making the world a better place. That has lead to my focus on Teaching for Sustainability. My understanding of Teaching for Sustainability is very wide — it includes both my research interest around […]

I love it when Christmas text messages from colleagues are recommendations for great papers, thanks, Rachel! :-D

Published on the 23rd of December! Check it out here! K. Daae, C. Bovill & M. S. Glessmer (23 Dec 2025): How academic developers can use modelling to promote active learning and co-creation, International Journal for Academic Development, DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2025.2602863

Ok, “How to SoTL” is only the working title of the paper and the name of the Teams group in which we all collaborated, the actual title ended up being “Developing a scholarly approach and contributing to conversations about teaching and learning“. But: that paper was just published last night in Oceanography!

I did not return to my practice of reading one chapter of the “Stories of Hope” book every day right after I returned from my vacation and just too much stuff happened everywhere, but luckily we are reading it in our book club, so now I needed to read until the end of part III […]

In a nutshell: “hand movement can boost impact“! And especially if one uses “illustrator” gestures to make content easier to understand, one is perceived as more competent and thus more persuasive.

In the Affective Learning Model, the premise is that learning is shaped by emotions. Teachers that show care and concern positively influence students’ emotions, so they are more willing to engage in learning. In our own work, we have shown that affect is the category of trust moves most frequently mentioned by students. Generally, relationship […]

Encouraging active participation in class is often a goal since it is correlated with better learning outcomes, but that became a lot more difficult when teaching had to suddenly move online in 2020. But maybe not all about online teaching was bad, or at least not for everybody?

Most teachers I talk with recognize that asking GenAI to grade student exams is a terrible idea, but when it comes to formative feedback, there are a lot of teachers that think that that is maybe not such a terrible idea. Students can get feedback much more promptly than if a teacher has to read […]

While I have worked on student sense of belonging myself, I have also long been wondering if it is not much more complicated than that. Hamshire et al. (2025) write that “[w]hilst seemingly well-intentioned, these assumptions [about how if student only feel belonging, they will come to class and learn] don’t always engage with wider […]