The conference theme is "Competence - more than the sum of knowledge and skills" / "Kompetanse - mer enn summen av kunnskaper og ferdigheter".

‍

‍

iEarth abstracts at the MNT conference

‍

Formative course evaluation through continuous student feedback

Siri Tungland, Kaja Friis Ruud, Dario Blumenschein and Henk Keers.

Most student evaluations in university STEM education are currently done at the end of the semester and therefore are summative. We developed and tested a new student evaluation method. This method can be done at regular intervals throughout the semester. Moreover, it is formative, as it is possible for the teacher to adjust the teaching methods based on the survey and discuss the results with the students. It consists of a simple survey with two questions. The first question is related to the learning outcomes. The second question typically is related to student preparation or involvement in the course. The survey has been conducted at natural science courses of the University of Bergen. Results on the use of the survey for three courses are presented. The consensus among both students and teaching staff is that this method is a valuable tool to improve teaching. The development and implementation of the project is a student initiative.

‍

‍

Co-creating course projects in introductory meteorology and oceanography: Enhancing and building motivation through group supervision and collaboration with former students.

Anna-Marie Strehl and Kjersti Birkeland Daae.

Small research projects aligned with a course are thought to help the students grasp theoretical concepts, apply skills that they acquired previously or during the course, and provide training in academic writing. The outcome of student projects, however, strongly depends on the effort that the students are willing to invest in their projects. We encourage students to take the lead in their own education and to learn from each other, and have tested three methods to support the students’ learning: The students design their own research question, we apply group supervision to support students during the execution of the research project, and we enable exchange with former students. By enabling students to choose a project topic of their interest, their motivation can be increased, inherently improving the learning outcome for the individual student. Group supervision facilitates learning beyond the individual projects and makes use of the individual strengths and knowledge of the students. Including more experienced students in the project development benefits both the current and former students and enables knowledge transfer across cohorts.

‍

‍

Co-create your own adventure.

Kjersti Birkeland Daae, Mirjam S. Glessmer.

We have run a 3-year project financed by the Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills, HK-dir, under the program for student active learning, on implementing student-staff collaborations to co-create learning at the Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen. Throughout the project, we have explored and learned new ways of implementing co-creation at multiple levels within a course. Here, we invite you to join our co-creation journey guided by the Mountain Code. We share ideas on how you can plan and carry out the journey together with the students.

‍

‍

"Why don't my students come to class?"

Anders Mattias Lundmark, Kristian Bjelbøle Bakken, Ingrid Anell, Lars Eivind Augland, Clinton Phillips Conrad, Kristina G. Dunkel, Leticia Rodriguez-Blacno, Karianne Lilleøren-Staalesen, Henrik Hovland Svensen and Desiree Treichler.

Students' academic success is positively correlated with attending teaching activities. Despite this, not all students attend regularly. As a teacher, having students not show up may feel like a personal failure; is it my teaching that is uninspiring (blame the teacher)? Or are the students just lazy (blame the students)? Perhaps the students don’t think attendance is important to academic success (blame the education system)? Or do they have to prioritize other activities, such as work (blame socio-economic factors)? Maybe they have health issues (blame bad luck)? In this study we explore the answers from 54 students in the geoscience bachelor program at theUniversity of Oslo to a survey on their views on attendance, and their reasons for attending or not attending. We use inductive thematic analysis to investigate what entices students to attend and what makes them stay away, and discuss potential measures to increase attendance.

‍

‍

Improving students' programming skills through Collaborative Scientific Python

Julien-Pooya Weihs & Daniel Oddmund Lid.

Scientific programming is an increasingly important part of the scientific curriculum and careers overall. However, students often struggle to see its uses and benefits, and where and how to begin learning it. At the same time, teachers face challenges in defining clear programming goals and creating new teaching materials that integrate the complexities of scientific programming. To address these issues, a pilot course of five lectures over two weeks was created at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Bergen in Spring 2024. This course aimed to help students understand and practice the basics of scientific collaborative Python, focusing on common Python packages, standard scientific procedures, basic Git commands, and collaborative tools. Designed with methods supported by didactic literature, the course emphasized active participation and group work, using real-world geophysical data. Pre- and post-course data were collected via surveys from 12 of the attending students. We here present the main structure of the course, and the resources developed for it. We also share the reported positive impact on students’ motivation, self-efficacy, and sense of belonging. Additionally, we highlight the students' reflections on the integrated Python-Git framework at the centre of the course.

‍