We use SoTL projects a lot in our academic development work, and from an appreciative inquiry approach: hyping up and building on the good practice we see and carefully addressing the rest when we feel that can be done without harming relationships. We typically talk about the very good and interesting projects we see, but […]
Another article that I read just now and that really resonated with me is Laidlaw (2026), where they explore teachers’ reactions to GenAI as an identity crisis, not a skills gap.
I loved the book “Designing and Facilitating Workshops with Intentionality” by Tolu Noah (2025) so much when I read it last summer! I have very fond memories of sitting in my parents’ garden with the book, working through it by applying everything to a course I was preparing, so when I saw the invitation to […]
Yesterday, I participated in a workshop by the Swedish Education for Sustainable Development working group, and it sparked a lot of thoughts. The workshop was one of those formats where the agenda is set at the beginning of a meeting, based on what topics participants bring. In my breakout group, we discussed whether it is […]
I browsed this book and I think it is SO USEFUL, especially probably for people who don’t have a ton of experience with leading staff development workshops.
There are tons of different formats for regular academic development events with the goal to foster and enhance discussions of teaching and learning, each with their own theory of change and responding to different boundary conditions. In this paper, we compare three that were run within the iEarth project.
Innovation seems to still be one of the favourite buzzwords around, and in teaching, it often means fancier technology, larger group sizes that purportedly have even better learning outcomes, and all of that, of course, based in evidence showing typically large numbers of some sort. In this framing, Thirkell (2026) writes, “[p]edagogical innovation risks becoming […]
Torgny told me to read this, so I did… I only skimmed most of the details of the US landscape of centers for teaching and learning, but I found it really helpful to read about the Hub-Incubator-Temple-Sieve (HITS) framework (short introduction of the four lenses also in the evaluation guide for centers for teaching and […]
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 […]
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
A while back in Bergen, I had a writing session with three of my favourite colleagues, on a project which we have nicknamed “how to SoTL” — writing a low-threshold introduction to SoTL for busy teachers, with the idea that people who might be interested in publishing in TOS Oceanography or the Nordic Journal of […]
What competences do educators need to Teach for Sustainability? Corres et al. (2020) review 14 articles that describe educator competence frameworks (all of them from within Europe, but not chosen for that specific reason!). My main takeaways below!
Today, I finally watched Anne-Kathrin Peters’ keynote at the Teaching and Learning conference at the University of Bergen (check it out here), and in it she mentions the article “Pain and pleasure in working with sustainability and transformation at a Technical University: An exploration of the role of educational developers through collaborative autoethnography” by Peters […]
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 to be fair, it was Elmgren and Henriksson before!) and we’ve got it in the office now! Here are my notes on a super quick […]
Talking Learning and Teaching is quickly becoming one of my favourite podcasts! This morning, I really enjoyed the episode with Erik Brogt on “Pedagogical Content Knowledge in the Third Space”. Actually, I was really surprised how much I enjoyed listening to it; I usually get bored pretty quickly by academic developers trying to figure out […]
When I first put together my Teaching Consultations Menu (see below; inspired by Noah (2025)’s awesome book), I discussed how I really liked the menu because of how easily it conveyed how different offers related to each other (starting out with reflections that can stand for themselves or lead into “main” consultations or projects, dessert […]
I have been planning to read “SoTL in action: Illuminating critical moments of practice” edited by Chick (2023) for literally weeks, and then when I finally managed to put my hands on it in one of the university libraries (summer opening hours here are a joke!) I had already invested so much energy into this […]
I am still trying to read up on SoTL for a project I am working on, but keep getting side-tracked (but at least this time it is by a SoTL book. After a super quick detour from the book to an article it cites, on my favourite topic still, social media, that is…. :-D).
I’ve been vaguely interested in the persistence of emotions ever since Marlis’ presentation about eco-emotions since at least mine can fluctuate enormously (which makes it very hard to fill in any surveys that is asking about emotions because I never know whether they want to know how I feel right this second, or on average […]
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 favourite Tea for Teaching podcast, and it is such a treasure trove!
My colleague Torgny Roxå had a new paper come out (on our shared Birthday no less!) on how academic development depends on context. Together with colleagues from Bratislava, they investigate the “educational choice architecture” (ECA), the boundary conditions that nudge teachers towards certain choices, much like big department stores get customers to buy things they […]
Sharing is not always caring! And especially expecting others to share things about themselves that they might not be ready to share. The editorial “Positionality statements in engineering education: A European perspective” by Kirsty and myself that is now published (contact me for a pdf if you don’t have access!) has been in the works […]
I recently interviewed a bunch of teachers about thresholds they have faced and overcome, or are still facing, regarding teaching for sustainability. One question was where they would turn for inspiration and support if they wanted to develop their teaching. Despite me asking this clearly in my role as academic developer in their institution who […]
“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 & McGrath, 2020)
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 changes to teaching practice. So what to do about that?
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” (or more recently, the “returner problem“): Despite sometimes enthusiastic responses during academic development workshops, these most often do not translate into changed teaching practices. There […]
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 think in those terms to understand better why some colleagues do what they do!
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 several courses, as are inspirational presentations, or individual seeking of informations in podcasts or blogs. Those approaches depend both on what individuals seek out, and […]
Our work as academic developers at CEE is based on how we think that relationships between teachers work, and using that to influence their conversations in a way that improves teaching. Here is (part of) the literature we base this understanding on (a lot of this from in-house research, or close collaborators).
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? Does that work in a similar way, or how is it different?
