January

This year in iEarth has been a busy one, continuing on our ambitions set in our action plan four and a half years ago. The start of the year was marked by a hectic few weeks, when a group of iEarthers attended a conference in Gothenburg. Associate professor and focus area leader A. Mattias Lundmark co-chaired a session at the 36th Nordic Geological Winter Meeting at the 10-12th of January 2024. During this conference Elena V. Brattebø and Siri Tungland presented «Students as partners – obstacles, possibilities and solutions for geoscience higher education». iEarth also had two posters at the conference, with the poster «Facilitating student engagement in geological fieldwork using Activity Bingo» by Lisa Julianne Nystad, and «Improving geoscience education: How course and student representatives work at university of Oslo, Norway» by Marie Aas and Markus Haugen. The start of the year also marked the onset of a very exciting project led by our national student leader, Siri Tungland, called “Continous Feedback in Teaching”. This project started in one course at UiB but have, over the course of the fall semester, been implemented in all mandatory courses at UiB as well as some courses at UiO. The first iEarth publication of the year came early, with iEarth postdoc Kirsty Dunnett and Focus Area II leader Anders Mattias Lundmark publishing “The complexities of moving topics between disciplines: the case of buoyancy and isostasy” in the International Journal of Science Education.  

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February

iEarth students arranged Career Day for students and businesses in and around Oslo on the 22nd of February. Career guidance and networking were focus areas for the event that ended with an excellent dinner downtown.

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March

March began with the first Digital Learning Forum of the year, with an interesting perspective on “Make teaching a scientific enterprise through evidence-based teaching practice” by Anders Schomacker and Carly Faber. In the following days, there was the annual gathering of the iEarth educational research group (ERG) members. For a national consortium where the members are spread across the country coming together is of the utmost importance. This time the group met at UiT’s field station in Skibotn – in snowy, yet sunny conditions. Here, the group spent two days discussing different aspects of their research.

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March also saw the start of a new seed project focused on creating a national database for local field laboratories. To jump-start the process a workshop was arranged in Bergen where participants brainstormed ideas for different local field laboratories in- and around Vestland.

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To round off a hectic month Bergen's' iEarth students, led by Elena Brattebø and Siri Tungland, arranged a career day at the institute. The day included presentations from Sammen Karriere, the Norwegian Tunnelling Society and representatives from different businesses including Sweco, Vår Energi and Petroleum Geo-services (PGS) (now Tomlinson Geophysical Services). After lunch the different companies had stands where students could come and discuss future career opportunities. The event ended with dinner downtown with 75 attendees comprised of both students and business representatives.

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Towards the end of the month, Iver Martens hosted an insightful DigitalLearningForum titled “Collaboration with society”. Marking the end of a great month, iEarth Ph.D. Dario Blumenschein together with his supervisor Focus Area I leader Bjarte Hannisdal published “Social Network analysis and educational change: unravelling the role of innovative teaching staff in a higher education environment” in the journal Studies in Higher Education.  

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April

In April the GeoIntern-course in Bergen hosted their first ever innovation workshop in collaboration with UngtEntrepenørskap and Multiconsult. Where the students created innovated solutions towards a task handed to them by Multiconsult.

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April also saw the third and fourth Digital Learning Forum of the year, with Dario Blumenschein presenting an insight to his PhD with the title “From coffee breaks to collaborations: studying social networks to understand change in higher education” and Anna Pienkowski introducing “The Field TA Academy at UNIS: supporting teaching and learning in the field and beyond.” Last but not least, this month also saw iEarth Ph.D. Rafael Kenji Horota together with a plethora of co-authors publish their study “VRSvalbard - a Photosphere-Based Atlas of a High Arctic Geo-Landscape” in the journal First Break. On the 24th of Kjersti Birkeland Daae held a webinar on their activity bingo project for ScotGEESE.

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May

The month of May began with a visit to Oslo and Bergen from Dr. Andrew Folkard from Lancaster University. Andrew talked about how geoscientists often encounter “wicked problems” that require a multi-disciplinary approach. To train our students, we should “show them just how our study connects to the real world in a holistic way”. Around the same time, the GeoIntern-course ended at the different institutions, with a fun gathering with poster presentations from the students. To round off another month of iEarth activities, Benjamin Robson hosted a Geospatial Artificial Intelligence (AI) Workshop funded by an iEarth SEED project. Bjarte Hannisdal rounded of an eventful spring semester with a DigitalLearningForum on "What would "Integrated Earth Science Education" mean, anyway?".  

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June

To celebrate the end of another successful semester of the GeoIntern courses, share experiences and develop strategies for the future the GeoIntern group met in Rosendal for a 2-day workshop. Simultaneously, Dario presented at the INSNA-conference in Edinburgh with the title “Understanding Educational Change: Social Network Analysis and the Teaching Climate in Higher Education”.

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July

July was a quiet iEarth month, but we could celebrate the finishing report from work-package 5, work-life relevance, being approved by HK-dir. Excellent work by everyone involved!

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August

To accommodate the large Bachelor student body, of which many students struggle to find places to study, we launched the “Bachelorrom” at UiB in late August. This space can accommodate 50+ people and was available for students every tuesday from 0800:16:00. For 2025, the bachelorrom will be available all mondays from 08:00-16:00.

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September

In preparation for this year’s GeoLearning Forum members of the ERG group including Kirsty Dunnett, Carly Faber and Julien-Pooya Weihs travelled to Maria Weurlander in Stockholm to work on their “Geoscience Education Guide”. While there the group gave a SAMTAL@SU (Science and Mathematics Teaching and Learning) presentation to the local geoscience department. Later that month, iEarth education chair Kjersti Daae attended the RAISE  (Researching, Advancing & Inspiring Student Engagement) conference together with previous iEarth Professor II Catherine Bovill. Together they held a workshop based on the “doughnut round” (Fleiszer et al., 1997) teaching approach and how it can be used in different learning environments. Bjarte Hannisdal and his team also got a qualification project from NFR on CoDesign. This project will be in collaboration with Vestlandets Innovasjonsselskap (VIS), and the aim is to assess potential for commercializing CoDesign framework as a research driven innovation.  

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October

This year’s edition of the UiB Læringskonferanse was hosted at the newly refurbished Nygårdsgaten 5 and included presentations and stands from iEarth representatives. Among them were iEarth Ph.D. Gerald Decelles III that talked about uncertainty in teaching and learning. Furthermore, another iEarth Ph.D. Julien-Pooya Weihs and iEarth education chair Kjersti B. Daae presented posters. Last but not least, GeoIntern course responsible at UiB Kenneth Mangersnes gave audience an insight into the intricacies of connecting work and learning. Towards the end of the month Johanna Annala hosted a thought provoking Digital Learning Forum on “Who decides what we are teaching? Conflicting interests, power struggles, and the role of academics in educational reforms”.

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November

Before departing for the GeoLearning Forum iEarth centre leader Jostein Bakke accompanied by GeoIntern TA Jarle Sleire and national leader Siri Tungland travelled to Oslo for a SFU network gathering. There, they got to know other SFUs and saw the inspiring work being done elsewhere. After the event they travelled to Tromsø and joined up with the rest of iEarth’s core team for the annual strategy meeting. The meeting focused on the future of our SFU and how, without funding for all iEarth institutions, we can ensure that the ideals and the culture iEarth represents, continue forward in the future. Finally, it was time for the annual GeoLearning Forum (GLF). This year, the event was held between the 7th and 8th of November in beautiful Tromsø and had a total of 116 participants, half of them being students! Highlights of the GLF included keynotes from Pro-rector at UiT Katrine Tveiterås, iEarth Professor II Maria Weurlander together with the ERG group and lastly, UiT AI team leader Marko Lukic. Equally impressive was the student engagement. Not only were students active in all table discussions, but also responsible for much of the program, such as a thought-provoking workshop that highlighted the importance of cross-subject collaboration.

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Towards the end of the month two digital learning forums were hosted, respectively on student recruitment and retention by Anders Mattias Lundmark and “Collegial learning and cultural change in higher education” by Klara Bolander Laksov. We want to take the opportunity to thank everyone involved in iEarth in 2024, and especially to our digital seminar presenters.

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December

To round out the year, iEarth hosted the last Journal Club of the year, which was the 8th Journal Club hosted this year. In Bergen we also hosted a SEED-project gathering, highlighting the incredible work done by recipients of our SEED funding.

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As the year ends, we want to thank everyone who has been involved in the iEarth activities in 2024. Special commiserations to Kirsty Dunnett and Kenneth Mangersnes who's contracts have or will shortly end. We thank you both for all your hard work and entusiastic engagement in iEarth through all these years, we will indeed miss you both and hope to keep connected through our joint work of changing the geoscience education in Norway! Good luck in the future and we wish you all the best on your future endeavours! As the summer of 2025 is closing which will mark the end of iEarth funding from HKdir and we will enter a new phase of iEarth by expanding the national network and working towards a new model of running iEarth and continuing the important work of educational development in geoscience.

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We look forward to another exciting year for iEarth in 2025 and wish everyone a happy holidays and a happy new year! See you in 2025!

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