We are in the middle of the second period of this academic year, the 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.

When it comes to educational issues I attended a very interesting seminar yesterday arranged by vice dean Per Berglund. The focus for the seminar was on the work that is being done to develop KTH’s quality assurance system according to national and international requirements. We all got a brief overview of national requirements and European guidelines for quality assurance of higher education as well as an overview of how the Sci-school works to develop KTH’s systematic quality work in a collegial and efficient manner. This was very interesting and gave good insights for the work that we all have to do next year. We will discuss this from a ITM-school perspective on the faculty club on December 18^th, so I hope you all can participate then.

Finally as part of the public debate that has been ongoing, I hope you all read the blog of our President Sigbritt Karlsson where she shares these words with us, and I will let them be the final saying in this weeks blogg:

At KTH a good work environment is something we need to protect on a daily basis. This particularly concerns harassment, for which there is zero tolerance. In its Diversity Policy, KTH has stated that all forms of discrimination, harassment, sexual harassment and victimisation are subject to zero tolerance. This is what is applicable, and all deviations from this must be dealt with. In this way, we can maintain an attractive environment for both work and study that encourages creativity in education, research and collaboration.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA

Now the first period of this academic year has passed and I hope you all consider the courses and examinations within your responsibility as successful.

When it comes to educational issues – at both ITM-school level as well as KTH level – several important things are ongoing:

The first very important, and gratifying, thing is that the President (together with the Vice Dean) of KTH decided to transform the track Industrial technology and sustainability (within CMAST) into a separate master of science in engineering program. This is something that the ITM-school has worked for during a long time and therefore this is very welcome news.

I also hope that all teachers with courses that ends in P1 has seen the information from the canvas project that they this week released a new feature that facilitates performance reporting from Canvas to Ladok. The function is accessed from the left menu in all canvas webpages under the name “Exportera Resultat (BETA)”. If you have any questions about this please contact the Canvas project manager Michael Welin-Berger.

Finally, KTH has decided to implement målrelaterade betygskriterier (target-related grading criterias) on all courses with a graduated grading scale. These målrelaterade betygskriterier are to be introduced to all KTH courses in a step by step model from now on. This means that from HT18 all new courses needs to have målrelaterade betygskriterier, from HT19 all courses that are included in special eligibility needs to have it and from HT20 every course at KTH will have målrelaterade betygskriterier. It is the examiner’s responsibility that the grading criteria is published in the course PM prior to course start, and also that they are available after the course has been completed. If you want to read more about this view document v-2017-0740 at kth.se.

/ Anna Jerbrant, GA