During February this year, I had a phase of reading about the “tyranny of participation“, and this morning on the bus I read the super interesting article “Beyond participation: reimagining silence as pedagogical presence in the university seminar” by Hope (2026), in which she reinterprets silence from a lack of participation to forms of participation […]
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 […]
In March, Rachel Forsyth and I were invited to give the keynote at Stockholm University’s teacher conference 2026. The conference theme was “teaching for democracy and sustainability”, and about a year before the conference, we ambitiously announced we would be talking about “Teaching for tomorrow — trust, agency and sustainability in higher education”. Now the […]
I am still on the “tyranny of participation” trip, this time reading about students’ experiences in peer discussions and inequities in roles that students take on in those discussions. Generally, we assume that students learn through peer discussions, but we also know that not all students learn equally in that format. What are the barriers […]
This is one of these texts that I wish I had known earlier: to give to students to help them understand their learning, but also to teachers as a super easy introduction to how to think about difficulties in learning: “Making things hard on yourself, but in a good way: Creating desirable difficulties to enhance […]
After reading about the “tyranny of participation” the other day, I looked into some more literature citing Gourlay (2015) to possibly get some ideas of how to encourage cognitive engagement without assuming what that would look like from the outside.
Very intrigued by that title, especially since I just wrote about student engagement as something positive, that all universities claim to want! Gourlay (2015) describes that traditionally, student engagement is described as behavioural, emotional, and cognitive engagement with a learning situation (and possibly beyond), other people in the context, and the content — often set […]
Why is it that even though most people agree (and most university policies state) that active student engagement is desirable, there are still large lecture theatres being built? Loughlin (2025) explores the “theory of action”, which distinguishes between what people or organisations say they do (for example in mission statements or policies; “espoused theory”) and […]
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 to. It is about how some people find joy and meaning in almost everything they do, whereas for others, the experience of life in general […]
Teaching for sustainability is about so much more than teaching the content and skills described in the SDGs, or even the cross-cutting sustainability competencies. Today, I talked with teachers who asked what they could do in their courses where the curriculum does not mention anything related to sustainability, and if they should even do anything. […]
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 teachers and students on a continuum from “just” actively engaging students towards fully shared responsibility, i.e. “co-creation” or “Students as Partners”. We give 13 different […]
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 with some resistance, both from students who need to put in more work, and from teachers. An article by Cook-Sather (2014) sheds light on difficulties […]
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, relatedness in the environment I am building, or what can I tweak to create conditions in which these contritions for feeling intrinsically motivated are more […]
I’ve been a fan of working with rubrics for a long time, but somehow I don’t seem to have blogged about it. So here we go! Rubrics are basically tables of learning outcomes. The rows give different criteria that are to be assessed, and then performance at (typically three) different levels is described. Below, I’ll […]
Participation in shared production of artefacts is a great way to learn in a community, because putting things on paper (or, as we will see later, on online slides or physical whiteboards) requires a clearer articulation of the topic of discussion, and a level of commitment to a shared meaning (Wenger, 1998). We give two […]
I’ve been talking about the importance of leaving room for topics that students are really interested in for a long time. Today, I want to tell you about my first experience with this: Back in 2012, in my first year teaching the “introduction to oceanography course”, a student came up to me after the first […]
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 in an introductory course in meteorology and oceanography (GEOF105) at the geophysical institute, UiB. The students come from two different study programs: BSc in climate, […]
I just love giving students choice: It instantly makes them more motivated and engaged! Especially when it comes to big and important tasks like assessments. One thing that I have great experience with is letting students choose the format of a cruise or lab report. After all, if writing a classical lab report isn’t a […]
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 legat and conducted together with Jakob Skavang, Elin Darelius and Camille Li, that we started last year at the Geophysical Institute in Bergen: Bringing together […]
I’d love your input: If your student lab for GFD tank experiments had to downsize, but you had to present a “wish list” for a smaller replacement, what would be on that list? Below are my considerations, but I would be super grateful for any additional input or comments! :-) Background and “boundary conditions” The […]
“Ask your students to take a picture to help them connect theoretical lecture content to the reality of their everyday life”! This is the title of a post I wrote for an issue on current technologies and their integration into teaching of the journal “Teaching in the Academy” that is being distributed to everybody who […]
