Greetings from the Department – 1.12.2023

Instituttleder Ørjan Totland. Foto: Eivind Senneset, UiB

Dear all,

At the time of writing, many of us are at a teachers’ meeting at Voss. The main themes are guidance and the way forward with the development of teaching quality after bioCEED is no longer an SFU. Both are important topics these days; quality of supervision is important for both supervisors, students and the department, and I am very happy to experience that we have a great experience-sharing culture at BIO. The way forward with quality development after bioCEED is definitely also important. Especially now that funding in our sector is being turned even more towards credit production and implementation. One of the most important things for us at BIO in the coming years will be to reduce the dropout rate. How do we get even more of our students to complete their studies with us? The vast majority of students who start with us certainly have an ambition to finish, but too many drop out, early in the course of their studies. It is by no means unique to BIO, but it must be corrected anyway, both for us and the students.

Many thanks to bioCEED who are now organizing their last teachers’ gathering for BIO. These gatherings have definitely contributed significantly to developing our teaching towards more student-active forms of learning, which has been documented to contribute positively to the student’s learning and motivation. It is clearly an ambition for BIO to continue with teacher meetings, so that we develop even more.

I look forward to meeting many of you at the HSE seminar and subsequent Christmas party next week.

I wish you all a very good weekend.

Hilsen Ørjan