One main goal for the workshop was for the students in the iEarth student organizations to get to know each other and discuss their experience being a part of iEarth. Another was student engagement and what the earth science education should look like in the future. Elena Victoria Brattebø and Matias Lundmark hosted the workshop.

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On Friday, all the students arrived in Oslo and attended a pub lecture organized by the iEarth student organization at UiO. The pub lecture was held by Terje Koren Berntsen with the theme “Climate sensitivity”. On Saturday a lunch meeting was held where the theme “Why should students be engaged in their own education” was discussed. After the lunch meeting the students went minigolfing at Oslo Camping. Sunday was the main workshop day, starting with Mattias Lundmark introducing the theme “How do we learn best?”. This interesting topic allowed the students to discuss about their own experiences of learning and reflect on how to become better learners. After this session the rest of the workshop revolved around “Where do we want to come in terms of geoscience education” and “What should be our role as students and iEarth student organization”.

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Some of the main points the students raised are the importance of a safe learning environment, better communication between staff and students, and active learning in the education. There were also practical suggestions for teachers; I’ll share two examples here. The students came with an easy way for teachers to get feedback from students during the semester through a QR-code that we’ll ask teachers to try out. Another thing we would like teachers to try out was a suggestion for how to get questions and discussions going early in a course: one student had a really good experience from a course where the teacher kept a chat open during the lecture and encouraged students to post anonymous questions, which the teacher addressed under way. This led to lots of questions, and after a short while, the students felt safe to ask and discuss without the anonymous chat.

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It was a fantastic weekend characterized by incredible engagement from the students. They got to know each other better and discussed important topics related to geoscience higher education and iEarth. Giving students a chance to get together across the iEarth department is incredibly valuable, but also, including students in discussions about learning and teaching with staff when they return home with experiences and suggestions to share. The workshop was arranged by Elena Victoria Brattebø, The national student coordinator and Mattias Lundmark, leader of focus are 2.