From teaching to learning: how to successfully redesign university-level biology courses to increase quality and learning out-come

The Arctic Biology Department (AB) at The University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS) is part of a new centre for excellence in education: bioCEED, and a partner in a newly funded Knowledge-building project (PRIME) within the FINNUT call from NFR, where the over all goal is to improve the quality of higher education in biology. To reach our goal, a set of new teaching-tools, like inquiry-based learning, will be tested, and the effect will be evaluated and reported through close co-operation with educational resea rchers. There are many pit-falls and challenges within these projects, and to learn from other biology departments that already have been through similar processes will be very valuable. The redesign of the Ecology program at the University of Otago, New Zealand, to implement inquiry based learning throughout the degree program has ended up as a text-book example in successful program-redesign and inquiry-based learning planned across courses. The process was facilitated, documented and published in coope ration with educational researchers. Pernille Bronken Eidesen shall assure that the AB department at UNIS fulfils its responsibilities within PRIME and bioCEED. With this application, Eidesen apply for funding to cover a shorter (3,5 months) research-stay at Otago University, to facilitate the on-going educational research and educational quality improvement within the bioCEED and PRIME consortia, and potentially developing comparative studies and more international collaboration in the field of education al research focusing on biology as discipline.