A very intense period is about to be completed, and besides finishing the two courses I have been responsible for during P4, I also attended the yearly dialogue meeting focused on educational quality. Among the attendants were the Vice Present for education Leif Kari and the Dean of Faculty Katja Grillner, and the meeting gave me the possibility to describe and discuss strengths and opportunities, as well as threats, for all of the ITM School’s educations on 1st, 2nd and 3rd cycle level. The goal is that these dialogues will lead to increased quality and long term improvements. Besides this, I also had the pleasure to attend KTH’s graduation ceremony on May 29. It was a very impressive and beautiful arrangement, I really appreciated the opportunity to present and congratulate all ITM’s graduates. 🙂

Two important educational issues to emphasize

If you as a teacher have students that contact you because they haven’t registered for an exam in time, there is no idea to send an e-mail to the administrators asking them to register the student manually afterwards. This is not possible and not allowed at KTH, so instead we should refer the students to the guidelines here. There they can find information on how they should go about to try to participate in the exam anyway. The guidelines say that:

Students who have not registered for the exam in time, may write the exam if there is a free seat in the examination hall. The student has to submit a valid course registration transcript. Note! Digital transcripts do not apply in this case. 

Moreover, it is also important for us to remember that exams can only be corrected with an ink pen, and that points and grades should be clearly marked in the boxes on the cover pages. Otherwise it will not be possible to scan the corrected exams.

But now that all of us are approaching summer vacations it’s time to summarize all P4 courses, complete the work of writing and correcting all the examination and enjoy the knowledge gained by all our excellent students when conducting their master thesis projects.

/Anna Jerbrant, Director of First and Second Cycle Education at ITM

I guess that most of us have an intense focus on two major educational issues right now; concluding period three and designing all the exams that have been ongoing this week and also updating course plans for the next academic year. These updates are significant since from HT19 all courses that are included in special eligibility need to be included.

Changing and updating ITM’s course plans according to KTH’s new regulations regarding intended learning outcomes and grading criteria is considerable work and I’m very grateful for the effort that all colleagues have put into this. But since all of us have not finished the changes yet I also want to send a reminder to those of you that have not been able to submit anything yet. If you want to read more about this, and get some useful ideas, please check out this website here.

I would also like to promote (again) that KTH is arranging the third SoTL Conference at Campus Valhallavägen in Stockholm, 28-29 of March. Read more about the Conference SoTL here.

/ Anna Jerbrant, Director of First and Second Cycle Education

This week I have some new and exciting educational events to tell you about. At first I would like to emphasize that all ITMs teachers will have access to a digital coach for the first six months of 2019.

Jonas Thorén  is a media pedagogue, coach and producer that will devote one day a week to help ITMs faculty to design and produce digital teaching material. Jonas can for instance help us with:

• Tutorials when recoding video lectures
• Tutorials when editing recorded material
• Powerpointdesign for e-learning
• ”Storytelling” and different media formats for e-learning
• Access to handbooks, guides and templates for e-learning
• And many more things

So, if you’re interested in getting some good ideas on how to digitalize your teaching please contact Jonas at jt3@kth.se

One of the things that Jonas already has helped ITM faculty with is producing three videos focused on gender and equality. The videos were recorded by Charlotte Holgersson, Anna Wahl and Alice Marshall together with Jonas. I’m one of the seminar leaders within the Prosam course and therefore I got to view these excellent videos and then had the pleasure to discuss them with the students (attending their first year in the I-program). Their insights, reflections and suggestions for strategies to create a more inclusive environment was amazing. So, if you want to both get some insights on a useful JML educational element, as well as a good example of what our digital coach can help us create, take a look at the videos by using the following links (but they are in Swedish):

https://play.kth.se/media/En+inkluderande+studiemiljo%CC%88-+Presentation+av+Charlotte+Holgersson/0_la5l7ni2

https://play.kth.se/media/Presentation+av+Anna+Wahl%2C+omJ%C3%A4mst%C3%A4lldhet+p%C3%A5+KTH/0_4njqd0uu

https://play.kth.se/media/J%C3%A4mst%C3%A4lldhet+p%C3%A5+KTH/0_qsl1r9r6

Finally I would like to promote that KTH is arranging the third SoTL conference in March 2019. The conference will take place at KTH, Campus Valhallavägen in Stockholm, 28-29 of March. If you want to know more about the conference please check out this website:

https://intra.kth.se/en/utbildning/utveckling-och-hogskolepedagogik/kth-sotl/conference-2019

We are in the middle of the semester and our days are filled with teaching and research activities at the same time as the daylight is becoming shorter and shorter. But luckily the advent season is coming up, which means that we are allowed to start hanging up advent candelabra and some Christmas decorations. This is something at least I enjoy very much:).

One of the most important news coming from me as dean of Education is that we are changing the guidelines for how we at the ITM-school should manage the written exams. There will be a school management decision that describes ITMs guidelines for managing written exams as a complement to the KTH exam rules. One of the most important aspects in the decision is that all teachers shall send a digital version of their exams to the studentexpeditions at least three working days before the exam date. This since it’s the studentsexpeditions responsibility to print the exams, make sure all the exam guards get their copies as well as delivering it to the FUNKA unit. This means that the possibility for teachers to print the exam themselves and then deliver it directly to the exam rooms disappear.

In addition we have also reinstate that the studentexpedition sends out an email to all the examinators approximately one week before the exam with the information on how many student that are notified, a room placement list (which shows the rooms that are booked for that specific exam) and a reminder to submit the exam to them no later than three days before the examination date.

Based on this I hope that the preparations and executions of all of our written exams will be improved and more efficient.

Another important educational issue is that ITM has specified the procedure for reporting a disciplinary matter (if we suspect that a student have been cheating). This process has been described in a presentation that I hope have reached all of you! If not please let me know.

Finally I hope you all read our Present Sigbritt Karlsson blog, Flexible employers wanted, where she shares her thoughts on the future working life for our students. https://www.kth.se/blogs/president/2018/10/flexible-employers-wanted/

If not I can recommend it since it was very interesting!

/Anna Jerbrant, Director of First and Second Cycle Education

One of the most important news coming from me as Dean of Education is that we are changing the guidelines for how we at the ITM-school should manage the written exams. Right now we are preparing a school management decision where Jan Wikander will determine ITMs guidelines for managing written exams as a complement to the KTH exam rules. The decision will be taken later on this autumn and it has been discussed (I hope) in several different groupings (so that you’ve had the possibility to influence it). One of the most important aspects in the decision is that all teachers shall send a digital version of their exams to the studentexpeditions at least three working days before the exam date. This since it’s the studentsexpeditions responsibility to print the exams, make sure all the exam guards get their copies as well as delivering it to the FUNKA unit. This means that the possibility for teachers to print the exam themselves and then deliver it directly to the exam rooms disappear.

And although the decision isn’t formally made yet, it is desirable that we implement this routine right away, for exam period 1.

In addition we are also reinstating the routine that the studentexpedition will send out an email to all the exminators approximately one week before the exam with the information on how many student that are notified, a room placement list (which shows the rooms that are booked for that specific exam) and a reminder to submit the exam to them no later then three days before the examination date.

Besides this other interesting educationally focused things are happening at KTH. The Vice Dean of Education, Per Berglund, welcomes KTH’s staff to four seminars focusing on education and quality:

• The first one is on October 23^rd and is focused on Language Policy 2.0, which is a policy for a bilingual KTH.
• The second one is on November 12^th and is focused on discussing experiences from the work done with the program analysis performed during 2018.
• And the third one is on November 27^th and are focused on a Higher education excellence program. This since KTH needs to introduce a clear incentive structure to highlight the importance of pedagogy and encourage an excellent educational environment (according to the development plan 2018-2023).

Finally I would like to take the opportunity to market two of ITMs new educational programs. From the fall semester of 2019 we will include both a Masters Programme in Sustainable Production Development (given by the Department Sustainable Production Development located at Campus Södertälje) and our ämneslärarutbildning med inriktning mot teknik, årskurs 7-9. This program gives students an opportunity to work within two professions, as both högstadielärare and högskoleingenjör.

Have a nice week!

/ Anna Jerbrant, Director of First and Second Cycle Education