This year's venue was the Scandic Hotel Ørnen in Bergen, which did an excellent job in accommodating us and making sure everything went smoothly. We were especially pleased with how we could do everything in one large room with plenty of space for the different activities and workshops as well as the poster session and the conference dinner.

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The event was kicked off by iEarth leader Jostein Bakke, followed by Atle Rotevatn, the Head of the Department of Earth Science at UiB, who underscored the importance of students and staff getting together to talk about education.

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Our first keynote speaker was Catherine Bovill from the University of Edinburgh, one of the iEarth visiting fellows. Cathy gave us an eye-opening overview of the why, the what, and the how of student-staff co-creation and partnership in higher education. In addition to evidence and examples, she also issued a welcome challenge for all of us to snap out of our complacency ("are we negligent?").

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The keynote thus set the stage for the rest of the program on day one, which was devoted entirely to the topic of co-creation. A string of activities was expertly led by Kjersti Daae, Mattias Lundmark, and Cathy Bovill. For example, we had a World Café sharing session with roundtable discussions on topics ranging from the fieldwork experiences and improving courses, to work-life experience in teaching and paid internships.

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During an extended lunch break, participants were encouraged to enjoy a rare glimpse of nice weather in Bergen and go outside, take a picture of something earth science-relevant and upload it to a Padlet map of Bergen.

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An afternoon workshop on the topic of co-creating learning used a self-directed learning approach known as 'Doughnut rounds' where participants from one table would pose questions to participants to a different table, give their opinion on the question, and then pose another question to a different table, until every table has both asked a question and provided an answer or opinion. These discussions made a clear impression on the attendees, as witnessed by the summary word cloud shown below.

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The last session on day one was a presentation of the iEarth Educational Research Group, led by Anders Ahlberg, showcasing the PhD and postdoc fellows and their exciting research projects.

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During the conference dinner (which was all vegan this time), we had a string of suitably tongue-in-cheek awards presented by a special awards 'Academy', comprised of Karen Tellefsen, Kristian Bakken, and Kjersti Stangeland. After dinner, Torgny Roxå delivered the "takk for maten" speech, offering some of his insightful reflections on the nature of change in higher education.

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Day two started off with our second keynote speaker, Robert Kordts from the Department of Education, UiB. Robert gave us an excellent introduction to the concept of self-regulated learning and the research evidence underpinning its importance to successful education. He also highlighted some of the practices that have been found to encourage self-regulated learning, including student portfolios.

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Continuing the theme of competencies, we then had two outstanding presentations. First up was Thea Krossøy, who shared her own journey, as well as her present employer Norconsult and how they work on competencies in recruitment. After that we had Kristel Kaselaan, Rie Botved, and Elena Brattebø share some personal reflections on formal and non-formal learning from a student perspective.

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The keynote and the subsequent presentations segued nicely into the workshop on professional portfolios for students, led by Bjarte Hannisdal. During the workshop, students and staff were asked to think about what might be included in a portfolio and reflect on the opportunities and challenges associated with the use of portfolios. The discussions highlighted the need to consider transversal competencies and how student and staff perspectives on the importance of such competencies might differ.

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The promise of portfolios as a catalyst for competence awareness was underscored by Head of Education at the Department of Geosciences at UiO, Karianne Lilleøren, who referred to the use of portfolios as a "no-brainer".

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After lunch we had a poster session with 12 presentations of educational development projects from across the consortium. We congratulate Tereza Mosočiová, Anne Mol and the student-led SCOPE project on receiving this year's GLF poster award!

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The final activity was a feedback and reflection session, led by students Elena Brattebø and Truls Aaby, who did an amazing job interactively summarising the event.

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Jostein Bakke ended the 2022 GeoLearning Forum with extending our sincere thanks to Torgny Roxå, who is gradually stepping down from his formal commitments. Torgny will of course remain a key influence on the iEarth change initiative, and we are delighted that he will still be involved in some of our research activities.

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In addition to those mentioned above, we need to extend a special thanks to the following people who helped plan, organise, and make the GLF a success: Mirjam Glessmer, Dario Blumenschein, Thomas Thuesen, Solveig Toppe Tolaas, and Siri Tungland.

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See you all next year!

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