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

The autum term of 2018 has started and our P1 courses is up and running, as well as new Ladok. Another administrative news is that KTH this week released a new version of the rules for written examinations (KTHs anvisningar för tentamensregler), that mainly includes these changes (compared to the rules announces a year ago):

• Lärare ska rondera i tentasal för att svara på frågor
• En giltig ID-handling är ett krav enl det beslut KTH tidigare fattat.
• De som inte anmält sig ska överlämna utkrivet kursregistreringsintyg (inte bara visa i t ex mobil).
• Insläpp ska ske senast 10 min innan tentan börjar, men att det kan ske tidigare

Good for us all to know 🙂

Another area for discussion right now is pedagogical development by the help of digitalization. So, therefore I also want to inform you that there is resources availabe at Media Production where we all can receive coachning when it comes to developing Flipped Classroom in our courses.   If you’re interested in develop your course, or learn more about this, please contact Jonas Thorén (Media Designer & Media Coach)

Finally, I also want to emphasize that KTH arranges the third SoTL (scholarship of Teaching and Learning) conference for the faculty. The conference will take place at KTH, Campus Valhallavägen in Stockholm, and will start in the afternoon March 28 and end in the afternoon on March 29, 2019. Call for abstracts begins on September 10^th.

Have a nice weekend!

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA

Finally we have reached the end of the spring semester, after a very intense period. The last couple of weeks my time has been filled with both examination, research conferences and the graduation ceremony for our master of science students in the City Hall. During the graduation ceremony the presentation of the diplomandi was mixed with musical entertainment by the KTH academic orchestra conducted by director musices Gunnar Julin and the student choir. It was a very impressive and beautiful arrangement, I really appreciated the opportunity to present and congratulate all of ITMs graduates 🙂

Coming closer to 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. But this week has also offered other exciting and interesting education-focused events. For instance I got to see the impressive work done by the students in the Energy Management course (MJ2410), since they presented their project results in Sing-sing (where my office is located). The students have studied each Tokyo district, during the course, to propose solutions for a more energy efficient Tokyo in the year of 2040. The initiative is based on a collaboration between KTH and the Gadelius company (which operates in the interface between Sweden and Japan). The students proposed creative and innovative solutions based on a holistic approach in order to reduce the energy use in buildings, increasing the amount of renewable energy and reducing carbon dioxide emissions. On June 4^th, five groups presented their solutions to Japanese ambassadors, KTH representatives, external companies and the Gadelius company. The two winning groups won a trip to Tokyo in September to present their solution proposals for various representatives from companies and representatives for Tokyo City.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA

Here’s a picture from the event:

The main focus for the strategic education development work at ITM-school right now is to identify, formulate and discuss the educational parts of the development plan. This work will be executed during May through two workshops (on May 8^th and May 29^th ), and if anyone is interested in participating in these please send an e-mail to me anna.jerbrant@indek.kth.se.

Besides that, we also have a number of more operational issues to work with, for instance regarding the master and batchelor thesis projects (that are coming to an end in May/June) as well as discussions about the results of this year’s admission of new students to our programs.

Beyond this, I hope you’ve seen the interesting article in Campi regarding the so called PriU-groups? The initiation of these groups is based on a need to strengthen the collegial influence within the decision making focused on KTHs education. The purpose of the PriU-groups (that where initiated at the beginning of last year) are to gather faculty with educational responsibility in order to find new perspectives and solutions for a lot of different kind of problems. The organizers of the PriU-groups have (since April) made sure that the groups are open to all staff – teachers and administrators – who feel committed and want to be involved and change our education. The aim is to strengthen the quality of education, by taking advantage of more of the expertise within the entire KTH organization, and therefore groups focus on everything from digitization and internationalization to working life and practical issues such as premises, schedules and planning. Read more about it in Campi.

In Campi you can also read about the new manual that KTH has provided that is focused on how teachers can achieve the best effect when making filmed lectures online. The interest in e-learning has increased significantly during the last couple of years, largely due to KTH’s initiative on MOOCs, massive open online courses, which has enabled that a large number of lecture videos has been produced. Jonas Thorén, at KTH’s media department, who produced many of the films, has therefore produced a handbook with the purpose to help teachers with presentation design and video production. Very interesting! If you want to read more about it go to Campi.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA