Currently reading Magnani & Clindaniel (2025) on “Artificial Intelligence and the Interpretation of the Past”

February 10, 2026

GenAI

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…

Currently reading Sandri (2022) on “What do we mean by ‘pedagogy’ in sustainability education?”

January 2, 2026

teaching for sustainability

The wide availability of GenAI has introduced challenges to relationships between teachers and students and within the respective groups (see for example Rachel’s and my work on that!). GenAI being…

Currently reading Hockings et al. (2018) on “Independent learning–what we do when you’re not there”

November 26, 2025

peer instruction

I am reading the course literature for a sustainability course that a colleague shared with me, to see if I want to use some of it in a similar course…

Currently reading Meyerson & Scully (1995) on “Tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change”

November 1, 2025

belonging

I really had a hard time getting started with this article by Meyerson & Scully (1995) on “tempered radicalism and the politics of ambivalence and change“. They introduce that ““Tempered Radicals”…

Stress, overwhelm, burnout and how to cope (maybe?)

November 1, 2025

This blog post contains the second part of the summary of the Hamann et al. (2025) book on “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” (summary of Part…

A collection of methods for facilitating coaching of sustainability initiatives by Wandercoaching

November 1, 2025

In the book “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” by Hamann et al. (2025), I came across Wandercoaching, a peer-coaching initiative for sustainability initiatives at universities. They…

Currently reading “The Psychology of Collective Climate Action: Building Climate Courage” by Hamann et al. (2025), Part 1

October 31, 2025

I read this book on my vacation and loved it! It is written for activists (that aren’t actually called activists, so that everybody can feel included whether they identify as…

Currently reading Van Poeck et al. (2025) on “Open schooling: working on problems with community stakeholders, based on experiential learning, specifically place-based and problem-based”

October 31, 2025

teaching for sustainability

This article investigates five schools in Belgium and Sweden doing “open schooling”, a very specific approach to developing and conducting teaching and learning, but I think the results are still…

Currently reading Ahlberg et al. (2025) on “The Magic of Inclusion: Transformative Action for Sustainability Education”

October 29, 2025

Preparing for a presentation that Terese and I will be giving soon at the “Inclusive Lund University” conference on how the inclusion and sustainability communities very much want the same…

Currently reading “The psychology of climate change communication: A guide for scientists, journalists, educators, political aides, and the interested public” by Shome & Marx (2009)

I am challenging myself to read one chapter of “Stories of hope: reimagining education” per day. Here is how it has been going for the first 4 days! In this…

Reading more about constructive alignment (Wickström, 2015, on “Dekonstruerad länkning: En kritisk läsning av Constructive Alignment inom svensk högskolepedagogik och pedagogisk utveckling”)

September 7, 2025

constructive alignment

Wickström (2015) states that the (Swedish) academic development has become dominated by very few concepts and theoretical models, mostly constructive alignment, Bloom‘s and SOLO taxonomy, and deep- and surface learning…

Currently reading Loughlin et al. (2025) on “Reclaiming constructive alignment”

September 4, 2025

constructive alignment

Constructive alignment is basically the simplest idea in teaching: Figure out what you want students to learn and how you would know that they learned it, then figure out what…

Currently browsing “Academic Teaching” by Elmgren and Olding (2025)

September 4, 2025

academic development

We are using the book “Academic Teaching” by Elmgren and Olding in our “Introduction to Teaching and Learning” course. They came out with a new edition this year (2025; and…

Currently reading Eggert et al. (2025) on “Teaching to say ‘no’: pedagogies of refusal in the social sciences classroom (and beyond)”

September 3, 2025

teaching for sustainability

Feels like a very long time ago, but Kjersti, Hans-Christian and myself contributed two vignettes to the book “Teaching fieldwork in geography, earth and environmental sciences“, which has now become…

Who benefits from practice testing? (Schwerter et al., 2025)

August 23, 2025

active learning

Having just written about desirable difficulties yesterday, this Schwerter et al. (2025) article on “Differential use and effectiveness of practice testing: Who benefits and who engages?” fits the theme perfectly.

Raising the (perceived) value of attendance vs accessibility…

August 22, 2025

This morning, on my walk to my dip and back, I listened to Tom Lowe on Talking Learning & Teaching speaking about student attendance.

Notes on a presentation by Deslauriers on “The Illusion of Learning, What to Do About It, and How AI Can Help”

August 22, 2025

The STEM Education Research Centre at the University of Bergen had a really interesting presentation today (and the sketchy internet connection was more than made up for by all the…

Reading Thoroughgood et al. (2024) on why bystanders should act

August 20, 2025

microaggressions

“When advantaged group employees courageously stand up for the rights of their colleagues with marginalized identities, research suggests that they communicate a powerful, public “message of value” to such individuals“,…

Currently reading Shiffman & Wester (2025): “Scientists no longer find Twitter professionally useful, and have switched to Bluesky.”

August 20, 2025

I have complained a lot about how I miss the old Twitter that was such an important tool for me a decade ago, and most importantly during the pandemic, and…

Currently reading Shanahan et al. (2023) on “Role play with large language models”

August 19, 2025

I really enjoyed reading about GenAI as role playing, an analogy Shanahan et al. (2023) suggest to explain what GenAI does while avoiding thinking of GenAI agents as human-like.

Currently reading Gravett (2025) on “Authentic assessment as relational pedagogy”

August 18, 2025

Authentic assessment is often understood as students doing practical, real-life, mostly outside-of-university tasks (and universities are often perceived as not part of the “real world” even though they should be,…

Currently reading Lopes & Galleli (2025) on the “Pendulum effect: how formal structures and hidden curriculum act in higher education institutions’ contribution to sustainable development?”

August 9, 2025

teaching for sustainability

Hard to believe I never summarized this paper by my own colleagues, on SoTL, in our own context at Lund University before, but here we go!

Reading up on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

July 22, 2025

SoTL

In anticipation of a big thunderstorm this afternoon I started the day with a long morning dip, postponed a meeting so I don’t have to be on public transport if…

Currently reading Noah (2025) “Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education”

July 17, 2025

As you saw in my recent post on the first draft of my “teaching consultations menu”, I found a really awesome book on “Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A…

Weltbilder, world images, and perspectives (thinking about Biesta’s work…)

July 15, 2025

Yesterday I listened to a podcast interview with Gerd Biesta called “After the age of world-view”. It is an episode in a series of podcasts as research for a book,…

Currently reading Kahane (2025): “Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems: The Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement”

July 14, 2025

I found a new book that I would love to do a slow-reading book club on! I really enjoyed what we did with the Everyday Changemaker book, and I would…

Playing with a “Teaching Consultations Menu”

July 10, 2025

academic development

I discovered the book “Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality: A Guide to Crafting Engaging Professional Learning Experiences in Higher Education” by Tolu Noah (2025) through an interview on my…

Currently reading Sinclair et al. (2025) on “Behavioral interventions motivate action to address climate change”

July 8, 2025

Why do people fail to act against climate change, and what interventions could make them act? That’s what Sinclair et al. (2025) investigate in an “intervention tournament”!

Currently reading Gorichanaz (2023): “Accused: How students respond to allegations of using ChatGPT on assessments”

July 7, 2025

This is an article that I find interesting both because of the method (searching reddit for accounts of student experiences as data sources!) and because of the findings, which I’ll…

Currently reading Curzon-Hobson (2002) on “A Pedagogy of Trust in Higher Learning”

July 7, 2025

trust

Since reading Macfarlane’s chapter the other day, I am thinking a lot about the influence of institutional policies (rather than teacher actions in direct contact with students) on trust. Now…

Currently reading Timperley & Schick (2025): “Assessment as pedagogy: inviting authenticity through relationality, vulnerability and wonder”

June 26, 2025

When I read about “eliciting wonder and joy via invitations to see the world anew” in the abstract, I knew this article would be squeezed in before I continue with…

Catching up on reading about GenAI, academic integrity, and trust

June 26, 2025

Very pleasant working day in Kristianstad yesterday, so today I am doing a sprint, reading stuff about academic misconduct, trust, and GenAI! Here we go with lots of short summaries.

Key teacher skills and knowledge for GenAI implementation? Currently reading Belkina et al. (2025)

June 25, 2025

GenAI

Belkina et al. (2025) did a systematic review of case studies of implementations of GenAI in higher education and, based on that, found key teacher skills and knowledge necessary for…

Currently reading “Examining Student and Teacher Perspectives on Undisclosed Use of Generative AI in Academic Work” by Adnin et al. (2025)

June 24, 2025

GenAI

Yesterday I wrote about how disclosing the use of GenAI erodes trust, but that it is even worse to get caught using GenAI without having disclosed it, So how do…

Currently reading Bochniarz et al. (2022) on “Attitudes to AI among high school students: Understanding distrust towards humans will not help us understand distrust towards AI”

June 24, 2025

This is a very interesting (pre-ChatGPT!) study: Bochniarz et al. (2022) investigate highschool students’ concerns regarding perceived negative intentions of AI, i.e. “cynical hostility” towards AI.

“Education for Sustainable Development Curriculum Design Toolkit” by Higgins & Calvert (2025)

June 23, 2025

I found another “head, hands, heart” model! This time, Calvert et al. (2022) use it as a frame to organise the key competencies for sustainability:

Currently reading Cech (2014) “Culture of disengagement in engineering education?”

June 23, 2025

I’m thinking quite a lot about responsibility — of students for their learning, for example in the context of active learning and co-creation, of teachers for what they are teaching…

Currently readin Schilke & Reimann (2025) on “The transparency dilemma: How AI disclosure erodes trust”.

June 23, 2025

When we teach, we have all these policies of how students need to let us know how they used GenAI, and of course the same holds for research publications. Research…

Currently reading Macfarlane (2022) on “The distrust of students as learners: Myths and realities”

June 22, 2025

trust

What is it with all the distrust in students? Macfarlane (2022) answers this question before the raise of ChatGPT when things probably got even worse… But that doesn’t really matter,…

Gandolfi (2024) on the becoming, being and (re)imagining teaching in the age of environmental emergencies

June 21, 2025

teaching for sustainability

As many other places in the world, my university works with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a framework, and for many researchers and teachers pointing to one or…

Currently reading Cortinhas (2025) on “Does nudging higher education students improve attendance and does it matter?”

April 27, 2025

attendance

podcast

A good relationship between teachers and students helps students learn better, but it is very unclear what exactly makes a good relationship. Is it trust as we recently investigated, or…

Quick summary on reading about how to write a role play for learning

March 12, 2025

role play

“Teaching Analysis Polls” are a very useful method to get formative, constructive feedback from a whole class. An external facilitator comes in and structures an approximately 30 minute long discussion…

Why don’t students attend classes? A study by Samuelsson et al. (2025)

March 4, 2025

attendance

“Generous scholarship is an intentional, collegial approach to scholarship that helps to mitigate the sense of isolation and depletion of energy often associated with managerial, production-oriented academic contexts” (Martinovic et…

Currently reading “A neutral toolkit? For a fundamental critique of constructive alignment” by Newby & Cornelisen (2025)

February 22, 2025

constructive alignment

GenAI

Who uses GenAI, what for, and why does it matter? That’s what Anja Møgelvang (who also does lots of other fascinating work, for example on cooperative learning) and colleagues explore…

Currently reading Narong (2024): “A system-based framework for engineering education as sustainable development”

January 8, 2025

November 30, 2024

teaching for sustainability

Before I started browsing this book, my gut feeling was that while it would surely be educational to read, I really did not feel like a history lesson of the…

Academic developers are burning out (and finding coping strategies?)

November 29, 2024

“Paradoxically, it seems that although academic development centres to an increasing degree support academics in avoiding burnout, support structures to hinder burnout of academic developers are almost non-existent.” (Bolander Laksov…

The “returner problem” in academic development (currently reading: Bolander Laksov, 2024)

November 29, 2024

academic development

One problem of academic development is the “returner problem” — enthusiasm that participants might show during the workshops or other professional development opportunities we provide does often not result in…

Academic development as “collaborative knotworking” (currently reading Elmberger et al., 2020)

November 29, 2024

academic development

Today I came across the metaphor of “collaborative knotworking” for academic development. I think it is really helpful to think about this in the context of the “returning home problem”…

Employees on social media — whose voice do we hear? Reading two cool studies

November 27, 2024

Social media

Social media has become a bit of a dumpster fire on most channels that I have been using, but even so I have a hard time letting go. I like…

How do teachers describe what they mean by trust in a teaching context? Currently reading Sutherland et al. (2024)

November 12, 2024

trust

My own work on what makes students trust teachers was inspired by an interview that I did with Rachel Forsyth (in the botanical garden shown in the featured image, and…

Approaching wicked problem management in higher education (Currently reading: Hamshire, Barrett and Forsyth; 2024)

November 12, 2024

trust

Quality assurance at universities is often oversimplified: Single events, captured in indicators that rely on one facet, are met with quick interventions, without any understanding of the complexities of the…

Structuring local, inquiry-based field work (Praskievicz, 2022)

October 23, 2024

I am catching up on my reading for the iEarth Journal Club! This month is very much in line with what my recent thinking on place-based learning, active lunch breaks to…

Reading up on how climate protests work

October 23, 2024

Inspired by Robert’s Climate Activism 101 course, I have become more and more interested in reading about non-violent protests and understanding how they work.

Exploring PBL, reflection, student identity, and sustainability in Ginie Servant-Miklos’ work

October 20, 2024

I am currently in the early stages of co-developing a course, most likely project-based, on sustainability for engineering students. I have written a lot about how I am trying to…

“Why students trust teachers, and what we can do to increase their trust”. Keynote at the Lund University conference on inclusive teaching, with Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson

October 16, 2024

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of giving a keynote at the “Inclusive Lund University” conference, together with my colleagues Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson. We talked about our recent study…

Thinking about Storytelling in Teaching for Sustainability

October 3, 2024

teaching for sustainability

I am on the fringes of a course on “Integrating Sustainability Competences in the Curriculum” that my awesome colleague Steven Curtis is currently teaching. And the way he introduces the…

Currently reading & thinking about “The best of both worlds: A critical pedagogy of place” (Gruenewald, 2003)

October 1, 2024

I am on the fringes of a course on “Integrating Sustainability Competences in the Curriculum” that my awesome colleague Steven Curtis is currently teaching, and he asked me to read…

Currently reading: “The Ideal Outcome of Education for Sustainability: Transformative Sustainability Learning” (Michel et al., 2020)

September 30, 2024

I have written about transformative experiences (wave watching! When you suddenly see the world with new eyes) and transformative learning (with my favourite head-hands-heart model) before, but here comes the…

Currently reading “F2F, zoom, or asynchronous learning? Higher education students’ preferences and perceived benefits and pitfalls” (Shlomo & Rosenberg-Kima, 2024)

September 30, 2024

We often discuss teaching and learning formats, and now there is a nice study that compares face-to-face, synchronous online, and asynchronous online in the same introductory physics course: Both stated…

Unsurprising but important research: there is a sequential bias based on order in which work is presented and then graded in learning management systems (after Wang et al., 2024)

September 26, 2024

My awesome colleague Rachel Forsyth (of our amazing “trust” paper) sent me a message saying “unsurprising but important research” and then a link to Wang et al. (2024), and that…

Second meeting of the “Climate Activism 101” course, and more reading

September 18, 2024

Climate Activism 101

The more I am reading about activism, the more I become aware of how my thinking is constrained by the images that I have accepted as ways to simplify a…

Attempting to Assess Key Competencies in Sustainability

September 12, 2024

In this post, I am bringing together a bunch of thoughts and literature, and try to provide an idea of how to assess key competencies in sustainability. Wish me luck!…

Guest post by Mattias Lundmark on Self-Determination Theory (Vansteenkiste, Lens & Deci; 2006)!

September 11, 2024

“Motivation is left, right and centre in learning. Self Determination Theory’s (SDT) is one of the main theories of motivation, and its two founders, Ryan and Deci, are number 6…

Currently reading: “Sustainable assessment revisited” (Boud & Soler, 2016)

September 9, 2024

“Sustainable assessment” is about making assessment useful to learning beyond the frame of the course it is related to, not just in terms of retaining the learnt information and skills…

Thinking about “Agency, context and change in academic development” (Land, 2001)

September 5, 2024

academic development

I recently rediscovered the article by Land (2001) on how different orientations to academic development can be put into relation to each other. And I find it so helpful to…

Thinking about Maria Weurlander’s seminar on “When learning becomes difficult: Emotional challenges in education”

September 5, 2024

emotions

Yesterday I was one of those annoying people on their laptop during a seminar, taking notes during Maria Weurlander’s presentation on “When learning becomes difficult: Emotional challenges in education”, and…

Reading in preparation of the next meeting of “Climate Activism 101”

September 3, 2024

We’ve been given quite a substantial reading/watching list for the “Climate Activism 101” course, so let’s start with two things that aren’t actually on it, but maybe should be, before…

Podcast recommendations: Squiggly careers (and, as always, Academic Imperfectionist)

August 29, 2024

podcast

Maybe this blog (which, btw, celebrated its 11th anniversary this Wednesday!) is the most visible symptom of the enmeshment of my life and work, how I sometimes feel like I…

UNECE “Competences for educators in education for sustainable development”

August 28, 2024

teaching for sustainability

After having thought a lot about what we need to teach our students in terms of sustainability competencies, what is it that teachers actually need to know, be able do,…

Thoughts on belonging, not-belonging, and teacher identity

August 26, 2024

The book Belonging and Identity in STEM Higher Education, edited by Howson & Kingsbury (2024) has been opened on my desktop literally since the day it was published. And in…

Thoughts on a webinar on “Climate Action Pedagogy (CAP): Working with Sustainable and Inner Development Goals” by Karen Costa

August 22, 2024

teaching for sustainability

Since on one of her first slides (and here is a link to the slides that contains links to all resources mentioned below, too) last night, Karen Costa invited participants…

Thinking about assessing sustainability competencies

Bolander Laksov et al. (2022) designed a program “to support teams of clinical teachers to build capacity to lead educational change based on educational research in their clinical environments” to…

Helping students connect disciplinary concepts with the real world is helping them learn

August 13, 2024

I’ve claimed that for years (for example with wave watching, with active lunch breaks, with tweeting about course content), but now I read the current iEarth Journal Club article that…

Listening to podcasts on DEI, conspiracy theories, and micro motivation

August 5, 2024

podcast

I’m back to listening to podcasts! I don’t know why it goes in such waves, but here we go with some recommendations from what I listened to in the last…

Summary part 2&3 of “Competences in Education for Sustainable Development. Critical Perspectives” (Vare, Lausselet, Rieckmann, 2022)

August 1, 2024

teaching for sustainability

teaching for sustainability

Last night I watched a lecture by Dougald Hine. It is part of an online course on Higher Education Didactics for Sustainability that I did not take myself, but that…

It is not necessary to convince teachers of active learning any more, it is now about improving the quality! (Dancy et al., 2024)

May 31, 2024

active learning

I haven’t read a lot of physics education research recently, but this article on how “Physics instructors’ knowledge and use of active learning has increased over the last decade but…

On all the levels of decision making when sharing responsibility for learning (after Heron, 1992)

May 30, 2024

co-creation

I have been thinking a lot about how we want to share responsibility when co-creating, responsibility for what, and sharing with whom, and then Cathy recommended the Heron (1992) chapter…

Database of Methods of Nonviolent Protest and Persuasion

May 25, 2024

This blogpost is mostly a note to myself so that I don’t have to search for the database of methods for non-violent protest and persuasion next time I need it!…

Reading about building and rebuilding trust in higher education (Lewicka, 2022)

May 24, 2024

trust

Lewicka (2022) investigates how trust in higher education institutions is build (and rebuilt). This is a much broader question than the one that we have investigated, but I recognize many…

Reading more about academics and social media

May 23, 2024

Clearly I am not completely done with Social Media yet, so much to read, so much to think about…

Currently reading about authenticity in assessment (Ajjawi et al., 2023)

May 16, 2024

Time for another iEarth Journal Club article summary, this time about authenticity in assessment!

Social Media is dead, long live Social Media! Currently reading about a Social Media Entry Model for teachers (Machado et al., 2024)

May 14, 2024

Ok, so I just published two blog post, last weekend and today, on how I have lost interest in social media. And then I came across an article on a…

Currently reading “Social media for academics” by Carrigan (2020)

May 14, 2024

I’ve been teaching about social media for academics in one way or another for a long time. I have recommended at least two books to read (links to my blogposts…

Thinking about how ““first” is just another word for colonialism”

May 2, 2024

decolonialisation

trust

The assumption that teacher-student relationships are important has been around for a long time and is probably uncontested. But when it comes to describing what exactly makes a good relationship,…

“The construction of meaning through vital engagement” (Nakamura & Csikzentmihalyi, 2003)

March 27, 2024

My awesome colleague and critical friend Peter sent me an article on “vital engagement”, which he has been talking about for a while and which I can very much relate…

Mindfulness in teaching (Brendel & Cornett-Murtada, 2019)

March 25, 2024

Recently I was very provoked by a colleague’s comment about how mindfulness practices lead to people’s focus being so inward that they will only strive to optimize their own lives…

Connections are everything! (Currently reading: Felten et al., 2023)

March 22, 2024

Just a quick post to recommend a book: “Connections Are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education” by Felten et al. (2023), which is available as a free e-book, so…

Planning a seminar on relationships in the classroom

March 21, 2024

In April, I will be teaching one afternoon in a course on “developing and leading courses at LTH”, on what we traditionally called “belonging”. Here are my thoughts so far.…

Students trust teachers who ask, listen, and respond (says my work with Peter Persson and Rachel Forsyth)

March 21, 2024

trust

In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here one slide about a recent study I did with my colleagues Rachel Forsyth and Peter Persson when we got the chance to ask a…

STEM students’ sense of belonging and test anxiety in in Bergen (quick summary of work with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani)

March 20, 2024

In my series of things-I-want-to-say-in-an-upcoming-workshop-but-suspect-I-might-skip-to-make-time-for-participants’-topics, here is a quick summary of work I did with Emily M. Christiansen, Sehoya Cotner, Robin Costello, Sarah Hammarlund, & Madeline Kate Kiani on STEM…

Intervening when witnessing microaggressions (my backup plan in case I don’t have time for this slide in an upcoming seminar)

March 19, 2024

I am planning a seminar on relationships in the classroom, and I have way too many things to say on that in general, AND want it to be driven by…

Recap of the first meeting of my new course “Teaching for Sustainability”

March 14, 2024

Yesterday was the first meeting of this spring’s installment of my “teaching for sustainability” course and it is so inspiring and energizing to meet so many motivated and engaged teachers!…

Operationalising and assessing sustainability competencies (some ideas from Wiek et al. (2016) and Redman et al. (2020))

March 8, 2024

We put a lot of effort into teaching for sustainability, but whether or not we are actually successful in doing so remains unclear until we figure out a way to…

Reflecting on my Scope of Practice (Inspired by Karen Costa’s interview on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast)

March 4, 2024

podcast

In one of my favorite podcasts, Teaching in Higher Ed, I came across and interview with Karen Costa (and I wrote about another interview with her on another one of…

How politely should we talk to GAI in order to get the best results? Currently reading Yin et al. (2024)

March 2, 2024

Thanks to my awesome colleague Rachel and her Teams team I see so many interesting articles on GAI these days! For example the one by Yin et al. (2024) on…

Academic development as horizontal learning

February 29, 2024

There are different ways to approach academic development: courses are very common with different lengths and amounts of collaboration built in, as loose collection of seminars or with progression over…

“Liberating structures: Engaging everyone to build a good life together” (Lipmanowicz et al., 2015) — go read it and try them!

February 29, 2024

My friend Sigrid does short interviews with trainers and facilitators on her company Memogic‘s youtube channel, and I watched the interview with Inna Fischer (in German) yesterday. Inna’s energy was…

Thinking about my positionality as a teacher and researcher in academic development

February 28, 2024

positionality

Kirsty “gave me the task” to (that sounds harsher than it was — she pointed me to a super interesting article and we agreed to both) do a concept map…

Currently reading Högfeldt et al. (2023): “Leadership, support and organisation for academics’ participation in engineering education change for sustainable development”

February 22, 2024

Implementing education for sustainability throughout an institution is a huge challenge, so I am currently reading up on what we might be able to learn from other places. Högfeldt et…

Reading about a sense of belonging, and how it is more complicated than we might think

February 14, 2024

belonging

Belonging is a tricky concept and there is no consensus on how to measure it. And belonging can be in the university environment, in a course, in a discipline, with…

Currently reading Part III of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

February 2, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, and the first part and second part of the summary of “PART II: Choosing teaching…

Currently reading Part III of the book “Sustainable Development Teaching – Ethical and Political Challenges”, edited by Van Poeck, Östman, Öhman (2019)

February 1, 2024

Following up on “PART I: Education and the challenge of building a more sustainable world” that I summarized here, and the first part and second part of the summary of “PART II: Choosing teaching…

“It feels like having a smart friend which we ask anything and it can answer”: Currently reading: “Exploring Students’ Perceptions of ChatGPT: Thematic Analysis and Follow-Up Survey” (Shoufan, 2023)

January 31, 2024

GenAI

I’m currently thinking a lot, and talking with a lot of students, about what builds trust between students and teachers: Mostly that teachers ask questions, listen, and respond. But then…

Thinking about student attendance. Podcast recommendation: “Talking Learning and Teaching” with Tom Lowe

Now that my working assumption is that trust is essential for student learning, what about trust that our “students”, i.e. the participants in our academic development workshops, have in us?…

Currently reading: “Teachers interacting with students: an important (and potentially overlooked) domain for academic development during times of impact” (Roxå & Marquis, 2019)

January 20, 2024

corridor of tolerance

I’m currently talking about trust between students and teachers at every opportunity I get, and recently Torgny pointed me to an article that he wrote a while back that I…

Kolb (1984), Olsson & Roxå (2013), and McAlpine & Weston (2000): Learning cycles and how closely do you stick to your planned teaching?

January 19, 2024

Experiential learning cycles are everywhere in my work in academic development, so here is a brief overview over how they are used to describe and support teachers developing their teaching.

“Faculty matter: So why doesn’t everyone think so?” (reading Kezar & Maxey, 2014)

January 15, 2024

And one more post about teacher-student relationships: a summary of “Faculty matter: So why doesn’t everyone think so?” by Kezar & Maxey (2014).

Teacher-student relationships (Hagenauer et al., 2014 & 2023)

January 12, 2024

trust

You might have noticed that I am exploring different concepts of what makes a good teacher-student relationship recently: belonging, caring, and most recently, trust. Why am I not just picking…

(An attempt of) setting priorities in a team to avoid burnout

We have recently shared our experiences with a Bingo game to nudge students to make the most out of fieldwork (Glessmer et al., 2023), and I have created Bingos for other…

How can we adapt a teaching method for our purposes? The “Doughnut rounds” example

September 4, 2023

#CoCreatingGFI

One thing that often surprises me is how seriously many teachers take teaching methods. As in, there must be fixed times for each of the phases of think-pair-share. Or there…

Currently reading: “Geeky Pedagogy” by J. Neuhaus

September 2, 2023

The subtitle “A guide for intellectuals, introverts, and nerds who want to be effective teachers” really intrigued me, and below is a collection of thoughts on it.

Revisiting Universal Design for Learning

August 29, 2023

I have again been chewing on the “Universal Design for Learning” idea for the last couple of days. This was prompted by us agreeing that we want to let participants…

iEarth journal club on ‘Education as Relational Process’ by K. J. Gergen

August 17, 2023

iEarth

For this week’s iEarth journal club, we are reading the chapter ‘Education as Relational Process’, from Kenneth J. Gergen’s book ‘An Invitation to Social Construction‘. My thoughts below.

Doing things together instead of alone: structures for Collective SoTL — a guest post by Kirsty Dunnett

August 7, 2023

Kirsty sent me this super interesting text with a vision of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) being a collective enterprise, rather than a mostly individual one. I love the…

Just three emails to improve student grades and retention? Yes, please!

July 30, 2023

Sitting on the ferry back to Sweden, I listened to one of my favorite podcasts, “tea for teaching“. The episode was on the role of faculty engagement, specifically showing students that…

Published now: “Activity bingo: Nudging students to make the most out of fieldwork”

July 29, 2023

Kjersti and I, together with Linda and Francesco, just published an article in Oceanography on the fieldwork bingo we developed for the student cruises earlier this year (and that came…

Currently reading: “Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education.” by Felten et al. (2023)

July 13, 2023

trust

Last summer, I sat in the botanical garden with Rachel Forsyth and had a super interesting conversation about the importance of trust between teachers and students, and what I do…

Derivatives and Concept Images — a guest post by Kirsty Dunnett

July 12, 2023

Another guest post by Kirsty Dunnett about the difficulty of applying skills from a maths course in the context of geoscience courses, and what can be done to make it…

Currently reading: “Five moves towards an ecological university” by Kinchin (2023)

July 11, 2023

teaching for sustainability

How can we imagine future universities that are less market-driven and more socially just, focussed on community and sustainability? Possibly by using a different metaphor, that of ecology, according to…

Another serious game for teaching sustainability that I like: the Climate Fresk

July 10, 2023

As you’ve seen from my recent Biodiversity Collage posts, I have gotten into serious games as tools for teaching. Today, I am reading up on a different game, the Climate…

Currently reading: Lots of Robson et al. articles on gamification

July 5, 2023

game

community of practice

This week, I gave a presentation on “supporting teachers at LTH to teach about sustainability” to an EU project with partners from universities in lots of different countries, and in…

Currently reading: “Competencies for advancing transformations towards sustainability” (Redman & Wiek, 2021)

June 1, 2023

What competencies should we be teaching students so they will be best equipped to work towards a sustainable future? The (really useful, me thinks!) Redman & Wiek (2021) framework.

How to show students that they matter, inspired by episodes of two of my favourite podcasts

May 25, 2023

Yesterday I went on a lovely after-work walk with one of my favorite podcasts (check them out, all highly recommended!), and I want to mention two podcast episodes Iistened to recently,…

Currently reading “How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction” by Dancy & Hodari (2022)

May 16, 2023

This article has repeatedly been making waves in my circles over the last couple of months: “How well-intentioned white male physicists maintain ignorance of inequity and justify inaction” by Dancy &…

Reminding myself of “Whistling Vivaldi: How stereotypes affect us and what we can do” (Steele, 2011)

May 9, 2023

As I was gathering my favorite three books on learning and teaching to wave at the participants of our “introduction to teaching and learning” course today, I realized I never…

Teaching Kugel (1993)’s “how professors develop as teachers”.

May 5, 2023

Another article that I just re-read for my teaching next week is Kugel (1993)’s “how professors develop as teachers”. Kugel describes the development of teachers in 6 stages that are…

Teaching about “Personal theories of teaching” (Fox, 1983)

May 4, 2023

In preparation for next week’s course, I just read Fox (1983)’s “Personal theories of teaching” and decided that it’s worth some time and discussion. So here is what I am…

Currently reading: “Reach everyone, teach everyone: Universal design for learning in higher education” (Behling & Tobin, 2018)

April 25, 2023

UDL

“Reach everyone, teach everyone” — that title caught me right away, and I’m glad I ordered and read the book by Tobin & Behling (2018)! They manage to make Universal…

Currently reading: “Disarming Racial Microaggressions: Microintervention Strategies for Targets, White Allies, and Bystanders” (Sue et al., 2019)

April 21, 2023

I have another recommended reading for you! I found this really nice framework for disarming microaggressions, both targeted directly towards the perpetrator, but also institutional and societal macroaggressions, in Sue…

“Supporting students in higher education: proposal for a theoretical framework” Kirsty Dunnett summarizes De Ketele (2014)

April 18, 2023

Who are you travelling with? A guest post by Kirsty Dunnett. A summary and some thoughts on: Supporting students in higher education: proposal for a theoretical framework By J.-M. De Ketele…

Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (3/x)

April 6, 2023

This is the third part (part 1 here, part 2 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019).…

Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (2/x)

April 4, 2023

This is the second part (part 1 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it…

Currently reading Darby & Lang (2019) “Small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes”. My summary (1/x)

assessment

I am so lucky to work with so many inspiring colleagues here at Lund University, and today I read my awesome colleague Rachel Forsyth’s new book on “confident assessment in…

“The slow professor — Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy” by Berg & Seeber (2016)

February 6, 2023

burnout

I have been recommended the book “The slow professor” from many different directions. It brings the “slow movement” (of slow food, slow travel, etc) into academia. And since I am…

Wamsler et al. (2021)’s literature review on “Linking internal and external transformation for sustainability and climate action”, and “Inner Development Goals”

February 3, 2023

Especially when it comes to teaching about climate change or sustainability more generally, it seems unavoidable to really consider mental states. While the dominant discourse around climate change has been…

“Integrating learning and work: Problems and prospects”: Currently reading Ellström (2001)

February 3, 2023

co-creation

Yesterday, I had a really inspiring chat with a colleague and they mentioned a model by Ellström (2001) that really helps think about how much freedom vs guidance we want…

“Transforming the lowest-performing students: an intervention that worked” — Deslauriers et al. (2012)

February 2, 2023

iEarth has started a journal club! And the first article to be read is about “Transforming the lowest-performing students: an intervention that worked”. My summary below :-)

Currently reading: Relationship-rich education (Felten & Lambert, 2020)

February 2, 2023

I read the book “Relationship-rich education. How human connections drive success in college” by Felten & Lambert (2020) almost a year ago and found it super inspiring, but also very…

Emotionally-responsive teaching

February 2, 2023

When I was recently thinking about emotions and teaching about sustainability, I came across the term “emotionally-responsive teaching” that really spoke to me, even though I did not really know what…

More “head, hands, and heart” in sustainability education, this time by Öhman & Sund (2021)

February 1, 2023

Talking about sustainability teaching, one model that seems to resonate with many teachers I speak with is the “Head, hands, heart” model by Sipos et al. (2008). I came across basically…

Thinking about emotions and teaching about sustainability

January 21, 2023

In communicating about climate change specifically, and other sustainability challenges, there is often the debate around how to kickstart people into action. Paint the doom-and-gloom (i.e. realistic) picture so people…

Breathing practice: Where freediving and academic development collide

January 20, 2023

I recently wrote a lot about the emotions that we experience when really thinking about sustainability and the challenges that we face when we take it seriously (e.g. here), and…

“Systems conveners in complex landscapes” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2014)

January 19, 2023

If I had to pick one book that has influenced my current thinking about teaching and learning the most, I would pick Wenger’s 1998 “Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and…

From “education for sustainable development” to “education for the end of the world as we know it” (reflecting on Stein et al., 2022)

January 17, 2023

A lot of things are happening around teaching sustainability at LU right now! As I am planning the second iteration of my “teaching sustainability” course, I am reading more about…

Reading Gin et al. (2021) on “how syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms”

January 13, 2023

This is mostly a “note to self”: Found a really interesting article on “how syllabi can serve as communication tools for creating inclusive classrooms” by Gun et al. (2021). A…

Currently reading: “Using self-explanations in the laboratory to connect theory and practice: The decision/explanation/observation/inference writing method” by Van Duzor (2016)

January 12, 2023

How can we scaffold laboratories in a way that doesn’t micromanage the students, keeps the task interesting, and helps the students to make sense of what they are doing and…

Four misunderstandings about sustainability (after Block & Paredis, 2019)

January 11, 2023

teaching for sustainability

July 16, 2022

literature

Yes!! People are actually responding to my “send me an article that is currently inspiring you!” request! In a comment to my blog post “Summaries of two more inspiring articles…

Currently reading: “Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort” by Woolley & Fishbach (2022)

June 28, 2022

recommended reading

I really enjoyed reading the article “Motivating personal growth by seeking discomfort” by Woolley & Fishbach (2022). They investigate the discomfort, for example awkwardness, we often experience when engaging in…

Currently reading: “Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban Legends in Education” by Kirschner & van Merriënboer (2013)

June 28, 2022

Recommended by CEE

June 14, 2022

When “collective tragedy”, for example terrorism, or natural catastrophes like hurricanes and floods, or pandemics, happens, it is difficult to decide whether, and how, to act as teacher. Should we acknowledge…

Microaggressions: How intent and impact don’t always go together.

June 9, 2022

I’ve recently started including the topic of microaggressions in my academic development workshops, and here is one reflection on the topic (including the super helpful sandals&boots-analogy by Presley Pizzo). I…

My notes from last week’s ICED22 conference

June 7, 2022

Starting out with a wave watching picture from my walk before the first day of the conference. When in Aarhus, I had to get in the 90 minute walk before…

Reducing bias and discrimination in teaching: an annotated, incomplete — WORK IN PROGRESS! — list of references

June 2, 2022

Already at the time of posting, I have added to my to-read list for an updated version of this post. Please let me know of any additional literature I should…

The Curious Construct of Active Learning: A guest post by K. Dunnett (UiO) on Lombardi et al. (2021)

May 24, 2022

‘Active Learning’ is frequently used in relation to university teaching, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects where expository lecturing is still a common means of instruction, especially…

Catching up on my reading of Trigwell and Prosser et al. (1996, 1999, 2000)

May 21, 2022

There is a whole body of “historical” research by Trigwell and Prosser and co-authors that I’ve successfully ignored until now, but that is being referenced in conversations around me so…

Effective learning techniques for students: Currently reading Dunlosky et al. (2013)

May 15, 2022

for students

I want to give you a quick summary of the super useful article “Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions From Cognitive and Educational Psychology” by Dunlosky et…

Article just published: Collaborative Sketching to Support Sensemaking: If You Can Sketch It, You Can Explain It

May 14, 2022

What a lovely Birthday gift (and seriously impressively quick turn-around times at TOS Oceanography!): Kjersti‘s & my article “Collaborative Sketching to Support Sensemaking: If You Can Sketch It, You Can Explain…

Using peer feedback to improve students’ writing (Currently reading Huisman et al., 2019)

May 7, 2022

I wrote about involving students in creating assessment criteria and quality definitions for their own learning on Thursday, and today I want to think a bit about involving students also in…

Co-creating rubrics? Currently reading Fraile et al. (2017)

I’m currently thinking so much about how to make academia a more welcoming and accessible environment, and just read the article “Microaggressions: Intervening in three acts” by Thurber & DiAngelo,…

Thinking about decolonising the curriculum (inspired by Dessent et al., 2022)

January 14, 2022

[Edit 5.9.2022: I just read “Decolonization is not a metaphor” by Tuck & Yang (2012) and I am very much using decolonization as a metaphor in the blog post below. That…

Reading about quality cultures in academia (Harvey & Stensaker, 2008)

January 12, 2022

quality

With my new job as academic developer at Lund University, I’m reading even more about changing academic cultures than before (but don’t worry, I have a couple of wave watching…

Just published: Co-Creating Learning in Oceanography

December 15, 2021

Kjersti and I just had an article published: “Co-Creating Learning in Oceanography” (Glessmer & Daae, 2021)! In this article, we discuss ways in which to share responsibility for learning between…

Students as partners as a threshold concept for students and teachers?

December 9, 2021

One of my goals as a teacher is to change culture towards responsibility for student learning being shared equally between teachers and students. This is an idea that is met…

Kaur & Noman (2020): A study applying self-determination theory on Students as Partners

December 9, 2021

I love using self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000) as a framework against which I check all teaching I develop. Is it even possible for students to feel competence, autonomy,…

Guest post by Kjersti Daae: Using voting cards to increase student activity and promote discussions and critical thinking

November 16, 2021

I got permission to publish Kjersti Daae‘s iEarth conversation on teaching (with Torgny Roxå and myself in April 2021) on my blog! Thanks, Kjersti :-) Here we go: I teach…

A review of change theory in STEM higher ed (Reinholz et al., 2021)

November 14, 2021

More reading for my “leading educational change” course run by iEarth and BioCEED! Today on how change theory has been used in STEM higher education over the last 25 years…

Communities of practice

November 14, 2021

Summarising my reading on “communities of practice”, and my views on how this framework might be useful for thinking about change in our context, for our iEarth/BioCEED-led course on “leading…

Quick summary of literature on the Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform

November 12, 2021

As preparation for our next meeting in iEarth & bioCEED’s course on “Leading Educational Change”, I am reading up on “Teacher-Centered Systemic Reform” (TCSR). The motivation to develop TCSR as…

Podcasts on learning and teaching, career development, and mental health in academia

November 10, 2021

podcast

Over the summer, I’ve really gotten into podcasts, mainly to get new perspectives and ideas on university teaching, and also on life in academia. Here are several that I listen…

8 steps to accelerate change in your organization (Kotter, 2018)

November 10, 2021

I’ve been thinking a lot about driving change recently (especially in the context of the “leading educational change” course by iEarth and BioCEED), and found the Kotter Inc. website on…

Vicarious experiences in learning

November 6, 2021

In a recent iEarth teaching conversation, we talked about enthusiasm, and about what mechanisms might be at play if having an enthusiastic teacher really leads to better learning. Torgny then…

Currently reading: “Leveraging Multiple Theories of Change to Promote Reform” (Kezar & Holcombe, 2019)

November 4, 2021

I am attending a course on “leading educational change”, run by two Norwegian centres for excellence in education, iEarth and BioCEED. The course brings together people working on educational change…

Learning together across courses — our iSSOTL presentation

November 4, 2021

Last week, Kjersti Daae and I gave a virtual presentation at the iSSOTL conference, and here is a short summary. We presented an ongoing teaching innovation project, funded by Olsen…

Reflections on the GeoLearning Forum 2021

November 1, 2021

On October 21. and 22., I attended the fourth iEarth GeoLearning Forum (GLF). The GLF is an opportunity for geoscience teachers and students from all over Norway to meet up and…

The story of Robert and Susan (Biggs, 1999)

October 22, 2021

I attended iEarth’s GeoLearning Forum today and yesterday, and had a lot of great conversations with amazing students from the four iEarth institutions: Universities of Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø, and UNIS.…

When flying turns out to not be essential for academia (after Jack & Glover, 2021)

August 12, 2021

Yesterday morning on Twitter, I saw this quote: “The sudden grounding of academics has demonstrated that air travel ‒ previously deemed a necessary part of a successful academic career and…

A tool to understand students’ previous experience and adapt your practical courses accordingly — by Kirsty Dunnett

June 11, 2021

Last week, I wrote about increasing inquiry in lab-based courses and mentioned that it was Kirsty who had inspired me to think about this in a new-to-me way. For several years,…

Increasing inquiry in lab courses (inspired by @ks_dnnt and Buck et al., 2008)

June 4, 2021

My new Twitter friend Kirsty, my old GFI-friend Kjersti and I have been discussing teaching in laboratories. Kirsty recommended an article (well, she did recommend many, but one that I’ve…

“Wonder questions” and geoscience misconceptions.

June 1, 2021

Recently, as part of the CHESS/iEarth Summer School, Kikki Kleiven lead a workshop on geoscience teaching. She gave a great overview over how to approach teaching and presented many engaging…

Why should students want engage in something that changes their identity as well as their view of themselves in relation to friends and family?

podcast

Thanks to Corona and my minimum of 10k steps a day, I now have a good hour every day that I increasingly often use not to quietly ponder my surroundings…

My wave watching picture book for kids is out!

April 21, 2021

A wave watching book for beginners and those who appreciate the art and science of wave watching! Now available to order here or via any book store or online dealer…

“Invisible learning” by David Franklin

April 18, 2021

Several things happened today. I had a lovely time reading in the hammock I tried to kill two birds with one stone (figuratively of course): writing a blog post about…

Metaphors of learning (after Ivar Nordmo and the article by Sfard, 1998)

April 17, 2021

On Thursday, I attended a workshop by Ivar Nordmo, in which he talked about two metaphors of learning: “learning as acquisition” and “learning as participation”. He referred to an article…

Student evaluations of teaching are biased, sexist, racist, predjudiced. My summary of Heffernan’s 2021 article

March 11, 2021

One of my pet peeves are student evaluations that are interpreted way beyond what they can actually tell us. It might be people not considering sample sizes when looking at…

An overview over what we know about what works in university teaching (based on Schneider & Preckel, 2017)

March 2, 2021

I’ve been leading a lot of workshops and doing consulting on university teaching lately, and one request that comes up over and over again is “just tell me what works!”.…

Why students cheat (after Brimble, 2016)

February 24, 2021

Recently, one topic seemed to emerge a lot in conversations I’ve been having: Students cheating, or the fear thereof. Cheating is “easier” when exams are written online and we don’t…

Published in Oceanography: How to Teach Motivating and Hands-On Laboratory and Field Courses in a Virtual Setting

January 9, 2021

recently published

One of the few “behind the scenes” shots of me taking #WaveWatching pictures! See the super awesome current right at my feet? :-D⁠⠀ ⁠⠀ Similar to kitchen oceanography, I believe…

Mind-set interventions

December 1, 2020

intervention

Two years ago, I was really into daily writing in my bullet journal. I used it to plan out my day, week, month, year, but also to set goals and…

Even though students in the active classroom learn more, they feel like they learn less

November 13, 2020

If you’ve been trying to actively engage students in your classes, I am sure you’ve felt at least some level of resistance. Even though we know from literature (e.g. Freeman…

A workshop on building and maintaining a mentoring network in academia

November 2, 2020

Last week I gave a workshop on “taking ownership of your own mentoring” at Kiel University again (link to the pptx slides in case you want to give a similar…

Teaching field courses in a virtual setting

October 7, 2020

For many people it has been (and still is!) a huge hassle to quickly figure out ways to teach field courses in a covid-19 world, and I can relate so…

Asking questions that aim at specific levels of the modified Bloom’s taxonomy

September 5, 2020

Bloom's taxonomy

I’m currently preparing a couple of workshops on higher education topics, and of course it is always important to talk about learning outcomes. I had a faint memory of having…

Alles andere als trockene Theorie (Repost)

August 31, 2020

Unser “DryTheory2JuicyReality” Projekt wurde durch den PerLe-Fonds für Lehrinnovation gefördert. Hier ist ein Repost eines Beitrages, den ich für den Blog “Einfach gute Lehre” geschrieben habe. „Meeresströmungen im Wassertank“: Lehre, die Wissenschaft…

#TeachingTuesday: Student feedback and how to interpret it in order to improve teaching

May 26, 2020

Student feedback has become a fixture in higher education. But even though it is important to hear student voices when evaluating teaching and thinking of ways to improve it, students…

#TeachingTuesday: Some things I read about making good lecture videos

May 19, 2020

Just imagine you had written an article on “Student Satisfaction and Learning Outcomes in Asynchronous Online Lecture Videos”, like Choe et al. (2019) did. What excellent timing to inform teaching…

Anna is answering questions on our Nature article at #ShareEGU20

May 8, 2020

It feels like an enourmously long time ago that our article on “ice front blocking of ocean heat transport to an Antarctic ice shelf” got published in Nature, but it…

Using campsites for scicomm

April 16, 2020

Last summer at the Science in Public conference in Manchester, I heard a talk by Anna Woolman on science communication in campsites. It stuck with me as a really good…

Our Nature article in 20 tweets

March 6, 2020

(Not true, there were 22 tweets, but apparently I can’t count! :-D) For those of you that don’t follow my Twitter, here is what I posted over there the day…

Playing in a 13-m-diameter pool on a merry-go-round results in Nature article

February 28, 2020

A long, long time ago (ok, in fall of 2017) I got the chance to join Elin Darelius and Anna Wåhlin’s team for a measuring campaign at the Coriolis platform…

#SciCommSunday: The reason why I choose to post selfies on my #SciComm Social Media

January 19, 2020

“I don’t want my face on the internet!”, “My science should speak for itself, it shouldn’t matter who I am as a person!”, “I just don’t like what I look…

Fastest way to read up on the science of science communication? This book!

January 12, 2020

(Werbung ohne Auftrag // This blogpost is not sponsored) I strongly believe that all scicomm efforts should be grounded in the science of science communication. That means reading a lot…

Melting ice cubes experiment published in kids’ journal Frontiers Young Minds

June 28, 2019

Frontiers for Young Minds

On publishing in a journal peer-reviewed by kids, and suggesting it as a first journal new PhD students should be asked to write for You guys might remember my favourite…

My kids’ article on the formation of sea ice is out!

June 15, 2019

I recently published an article about how sea ice forms which, I think, turned out pretty well. But the coolest thing is the illustration that Jessie Miller did to go along with…

“Continue. Start. Stop.”. An article supporting the usefulness of my favourite method of asking for student feedback on a course!

December 17, 2018

I’ve been recommending the “Continue. Start. Stop.” feedback method for years an years (at least since my 2013 blog post), but not as a research-backed method but mostly based on…

Communicating Climate Change — a book you should definitely know about!

October 18, 2018

In a presentation about science communication I gave on Monday, I recommended a couple of resources for scientists interested in science communication. For example the amazing climatevisuals.org for advice on which images…

“Laboratory layered latte” – combining latte and double diffusion. Easily my favourite paper ever!

December 16, 2017

My friends know me well. Especially A&I, which was proven again when they sent me the link to an article about two things that I am mildly obsessed with: Latte…

Some things are better left unseen — research shows that watching yourself in a video meeting is not a good thing

September 26, 2017

I’m a big fan of virtual meetings: For planning outreach activities taking place in France with a team in Norway while sitting in my office in Germany (see here, and definitely…

Response of the ACC to climate change #scipoem

September 25, 2017

The response of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current to recent climate change* Around and around the southern pole The Antarctic Circumpolar Current, inspiring Around and around the southern pole Seemingly without…

#scipoem on an Darelius et al. article about ice shelves

September 18, 2017

“Observed vulnerability of Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf to wind-driven inflow of warm deep water”* Let’s talk ab’t a favourite paper “Observed vulnerability of Filchner- Ronne Ice Shelf to wind-driven inflow of…

Tale of arctic melting and deep water formation #scipoem

September 11, 2017

Tale of arctic melting and deep water formation Freshwater freezes long before saltwater does, and it also floats on top of saltwater. In the Nordic Seas, deep waters are formed.…

A #scipoem on upwelling of tropical OMZ waters in a warmer climate

September 4, 2017

“Simulated reduction in upwelling of tropical oxygen minimum waters in a warmer climate”* Let’s pick apart this article’s title, inaccessible to most people out there. Even though we know it…

Double the trouble — a poem about double-diffusive mixing in the ocean

August 28, 2017

On my blog’s fourth Birthday (!!!), it’s time to try something new. How about some celebratory oceanographic poetry? Obviously the topic has to be my oceanic pet process, double-diffusive mixing……

I am missing institute seminars! Or: Why we should talk to people who use different methods

August 22, 2017

You probably know that I have recently changed my research focus quite dramatically, from physical oceanography to science communication research. What that means is that I am a total newbie…

How to make your science meaningful and accessible to any audience

August 18, 2017

#COMPASSMessageBox

Are you hesitant to do outreach because you don’t really know how to convey your message to an audience that isn’t as fascinated by your field as you are and doesn’t have at least…

What you know about science is not necessarily what you believe about science

June 7, 2017

I’ve been working in science communication research for a good half a year now, and my views on outreach are constantly evolving. When I applied for this job, I was…

Outreach is about more than about the perfect presentation (or even the perfect hands-on tank experiment!)

July 7, 2016

In most of my blog posts on outreach I focus on how to run the _perfect_ experiment. And while I still think that’s awesome, I recently read an article by…

Waves on Pinnau in Mölln. By Uwe Glessmer

You learn better when you explain to yourself

July 5, 2016

literature

I just read a really interesting article on explaining to yourself as a mechanism for learning by Tania Lombrozo. We have talked about peer instruction being valuable because explaining to others helps…

Mirjam Glessmer and Timo Lüth leading a workshop for university instructors

You learn better when you think that you will have to teach

June 30, 2016

Have you ever worked as student tutor? Then you’ve probably felt like you understood the content of the course you tutored a million times better after tutoring it. Or at…

How to know for sure whether a teaching intervention actually improved things

March 10, 2016

How do we measure whether teaching interventions really do what they are supposed to be doing? (Spoiler alert: In this post, I won’t actually give a definite answer to that…

How to learn most efficiently when participating in a MOOC

March 3, 2016

How to learn most efficiently when participating in a MOOC? Yes, I’ll admit, that title promises quite a lot. But there is a new article by Yong and Lim (2016)…

Laborpraktika didaktisch gestalten – unsere Broschüre jetzt auch als pdf!

January 25, 2016

Am Zentrum für Lehre und Lernen der Technischen Universität Hamburg-Harburg haben wir eine Broschüre zum Thema “Die Spannung steigern – Laborpraktika didaktisch gestalten” geschrieben. Das pdf ist -> HIER <- abrufbar.

“Taking ownership of your own mentoring” – our chapter has been published!

December 22, 2015

Have you ever wondered how to take ownership of your own mentoring? Well, wonder no more and check out the chapter we wrote about just that!

How your behavior as an instructor influences how your students behave during peer instruction phases

December 17, 2015

It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you that how you behave as an instructor influences how your students work during peer instruction phases. But do you know what…

How your students might be hurting themselves by skipping classes

December 10, 2015

literature

Mandatory attendance is seldomly done in german higher education. The system relies on a series of examinations, and whoever passes those get the degree, no matter how much or how little time…

Why you should shuffle practice problems rather than blocking them

December 8, 2015

We like to get into the flow when practicing something, and we like to have our students concentrate on one particular type of problem at a time until they have…

Stages of group development

October 23, 2015

Last weekend I had the chance to fill in for a colleague and help run a training course for student tutors. One of the topics was what kind of group processes…

Does multitasking hurt learning? Show ’em!

October 7, 2015

I am reading the “Faculty Focus” mailing list, and a side-note in one of their recent posts, “Why policies fail to promote better learning decisions” by Lolita Paff, really struck…

Preparing my workshop on how learning works

September 23, 2015

As you know, I’m preparing a workshop for teaching assistants in mechanical engineering at Dresden University of Technology. And even though I’ve given similar workshops successfully more than once before, it…

And even more on motivation

September 21, 2015

Last week we talked about motivation quite a bit: First about why do students engage in academic tasks?, then about how motivation is proportional to the expectation of achieving a…

Motivation proportional to the expectation of achieving a goal?

September 16, 2015

In the last post I talked about a paper on “Motivating Learners: A Primer for Engineering Teaching Assistants” by Torres-Ayala and Herman (2012). Today, I want to present a different…

Motivation: dangle a carrot rather than threaten with a whip!

September 14, 2015

Why do students engage in academic tasks? Next week I am giving a workshop on teaching large classes at TU Dresden. I gave a similar workshop there in spring, but…

Can there be “too much” instruction? Apparently yes!

September 7, 2015

literature

I recently, via the blogpost “lessons from a toy” by Eyler (2015), came across the article “The Double-edged Sword of Pedagogy: Instruction limits spontaneous exploration and discovery” by Bonawitz, Shafto, Gweon, Goodman, Spelke and Schulz (2011).…

When math hurts

August 31, 2015

literature

One of the larger projects I am currently working on deals with connecting the math courses, which are compulsory for all freshmen at my university and taught for most students together,…

Drawing to learn II

August 10, 2015

From reading the paper on “Drawing to Learn in Science” in my last blog post, I got browsing the literature and I came across the paper “Drawing to learn: How…

Drawing to learn

August 7, 2015

On the sciencegeekgirl blog (which, if you don’t follow it already, you should definitely start now!) there recently was a post on “drawing to learn sketching and peer instruction“. She…

Of the importance of giving opportunities to practice

July 31, 2015

literature

When you are short on time and want to teach as much as possible in a given time, how do you allocate time to different activities and are there any…

How do you make sure your students come prepared to your flipped course?

July 29, 2015

As I mentioned a while back, we are preparing a flipped course. And the biggest question always is how to make sure students actually prepare for class. Because if they…

Reviewing “ocean drifters – a secret world beneath the waves”

June 17, 2015

plankton

Do you remember how you loved watching the movie in Richard Kirby’s guest post on my blog a while ago? All that amazingly beautiful plankton? Well, here’s good news for…

Why care about ocean literacy?

June 8, 2015

literature

Ocean literacy, the “understanding of the ocean’s influence on you – and your influence on the ocean”, is obviously a topic near and dear to my heart. But a recent paper by…

Multiple representations – a better chance to understand what’s going on?

June 1, 2015

literature

I’m currently advising a team of teachers who have taken great care to make sure they all use the same representations of a problem. They use the same symbols, have…

Importance of designing experiments

May 29, 2015

literature

At work, we are currently editing a brochure on designing and carrying out lab courses, and we are working on a lot of projects which aim at redesigning labs. And…

Facilitating student group work

May 18, 2015

Grouping students together for collaborative work is easy, but how do we make them work as a team? Collaborative learning is often propagated as the ultimate tool to increase learning…

Finding the right instructional method for different kinds of knowledge

May 8, 2015

When reading Anderson & Krathwohl’s 2001 revised taxonomy of educational objectives, I really liked how they made clear that different kinds of knowledge require different instructional approaches as well as…

Currently reading: A revision of Bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives

May 6, 2015

I am currently reading the Anderson & Krathwohl (2001) revised taxonomy of learning outcomes. They modified some of the higher levels of the original Bloom (1956) taxonomy and now use a continuum of cognitive processes from…

Teaching: intentional and reasoned act

May 4, 2015

I’ve talked about Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives before but I have to admit that I’ve only gone back and read the original Bloom (1956) book and the revised taxonomy by Anderson…

Conceptual change and wooly hats

April 22, 2015

literature

“Conceptual change” is one of the big words that gets thrown into every conversation on teaching and learning these days. But most people I talk to don’t really have a…

Peer instruction! Combine it with individual thinking or discussions with the whole class?

literature

Do we really know how student attention develops over time? One thing that is shown over and over again in teachers’ trainings is the curve of how student attention peaks…

Why talking to your neighbor might help more than listening to the lecturer

September 24, 2014

Why does learning through peer instruction work? As you might have noticed by now, I’m a big fan of concept questions combined with “talk to your neighbor” peer instruction. And…

Learning with fluid toys

September 22, 2014

How fluid toys can be used to demonstrate principles of fluid mechanics. I guess every attempt to hide that I LOOOOVE fluid toys of any kind is futile. So imagine…

Making science topics relevant to students’ lives increases interest and performance

September 17, 2014

literature

Duh! That students are more interested, and hence perform better, when they are motivated to learn something sounds not terribly surprising. But did you know that you can actually increase…

Will getting it wrong help or hinder future learning?

September 3, 2014

literature

A bit more reflection on cartesian divers. When I wrote the two previous posts, I had known cartesian divers for a very long time in many contexts, for example as…

Category: literature