| 1. |
- Cronhjort, Mikael, et al.
(author)
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Leadership and Pedagogical Skills in Computer Science Engineering by Combining a Degree in Engineering with a Degree in Education
- 2020
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In: 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE). - : IEEE. - 0190-5848. - 9781728189611 ; , s. 1-9
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- In this full paper on innovative practice, we describe and discuss findings from dual degree study programmes that combine a master's degree in engineering with a master's degree in education. This innovative study programme design has emerged in Sweden due to an alarming demand for more Upper Secondary School teachers in STEM subjects. Studies on alumni from these programmes indicate that the graduates are highly appreciated not only as teachers in schools, but also in business and industry, e.g. in roles as IT consultants and computer science engineers. Data indicate that the breadth of the combined education, and especially leadership and pedagogical skills, are important factors for these graduates' success as engineers.
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| 2. |
- Högfeldt, Anna-Karin, et al.
(author)
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Leadership, support and organisation for academics'€™ participation in engineering education change for sustainable development
- 2022
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In: European Journal of Engineering Education. - : Informa UK Limited. - 0304-3797 .- 1469-5898.
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- This work spotlights the experiences from ten years of implementing sustainable development in all educational programs at a technical university. With a focus on the critical issue of involving more academics in the work, experiences are shared through an ethnographic account including focus group interviews. "€˜Sustainable development"€™ has been perceived as both superficial and overwhelming; unclear yet somehow predetermined; it has been perceived to demand non-existent space in the curriculum; and it has challenged the academics regardless of the subjects'€™ relatedness to sustainability. It is concluded that the evolution of a web of interconnected people, key academics, activities, norms and tools has contributed to an increased participation. The work for authenticity, reliability and feasibility, along with institution-wide and long-term academic development tools is presented.
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| 3. |
- Högfeldt, Anna-Karin, et al.
(author)
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Mellan vision och praktik i förändring : Övergripande arenor och nätverk som hållbara mötesplatser?
- 2020
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In: Hållbart lärande.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Universitet över hela världen svarar med olika strategier och initiativ på det ökandeförändringsbehovet av den högre utbildningens innehåll, form och resultat (Geschwind, 2019). Dettabidrag syftar till att analysera hur KTH:s övergripande nätverk och arenor för utbildningens utvecklingkan fungera som mötesplatser och bidra till en dialog mellan vision och praktik i förändring.Det finns en medvetenhet om förändringsarbetets komplexa natur inom högre utbildning (Högfeldt,2018; Roxå et al, 2011; Kezar, 2011; Fisher & Henderson, 2018), där övergripande ledord och visionersällan kan översättas i omedelbar handling i lärares och studenters vardag (Barman et al, 2016). Vanligtförekommande barriärer för förändringsarbete är organisationens strukturer, profilering ochvärdesättning (Trowler, 2001; Hellawell & Hancock, 2001; Edström, 2017). UKÄ (2017) drar slutsatsenatt det som kännetecknar goda förutsättningar för förändringsarbete är ledarskap och lärareskunskapsbildning och engagemang. Bendermacher et al (2017) visar i en kartläggning att de mestvälfungerande miljöerna har en sammanhållen kvalitetskultur som är inkluderande och tillåter ad-hocbottomup-initiativ. KTH har senaste decenniet arbetat med att utveckla arenor för att tillvarataorganisationens kraft och kompetens.År 2012 startades programansvarigas nätverk, PA-nätverket, efter att en intern utbildningsutvärderingidentifierat programansvarsrollen som otydlig och svår. Nätverksträffarna hålls månatligen. Exempelpå teman är genomströmning, jämställdhetsintegration och programsammanhållning.Studierektorsnätverket bildades 2017, där de månadsvisa träffarna behandlar teman som digitalexamination och bättre användning av lärosalar. Vid ett par tillfällen har nätverken gemensammaträffar med teman som studentinflytande och särskild behörighet för kurser.Nätverken kompletteras med s.k. storträffar som är öppna för alla på KTH 1 . Storträffarna hållsterminsvis och varar en halvdag. Varje deltagare kan delta i tre rundabordsdiskussioner och haromkring tio olika teman att välja på. Efter diskussionerna sammanfattar bordsledarna i plenum.Storträffen avslutas med att vicerektor för utbildning ger sina reflektioner och diskuterar hur arbetetgår vidare. För att underhålla det kontinuerliga arbetet mellan storträffarna arrangeras olika grupper runt prioriterade frågor, öppna för alla anställda och studenter. Här utbyts kunskaper, förslaggenereras och storträffarna används för förmedling och återkoppling.Analysen vilar bland annat på enkäter i samband med storträffarna. 2019 var 83% av deltagarna nöjda.Majoriteten framhöll att de fått nya idéer och fått dela egna erfarenheter. Endast 5% uppger att deinte var bekväma att delta aktivt i diskussionerna. Antalet deltagare vid träffarna har successivt ökat,och vi ser att olika roller och funktioner hittar fram. Samtidigt vet vi att det är många som inte hittarsin plats i den här typen av sammanhang. Vi vill med detta bidrag analysera KTH:s arenor och nätverkgällande i vilken utsträckning de uppfyller behovet av att stärka kopplingen mellan vision och praktik.
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| 4. |
- Högfeldt, Anna-Karin, et al.
(author)
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Organizing for Capacity and Involvement among Faculty, Students and Staff in Engineering Education Change : 10 Years of Development
- 2021
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In: Proceedings of 2021 World Engineering Education Forum/Global Engineering Deans Council, WEEF/GEDC 2021. - : Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.. ; , s. 340-348
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- KTH, as most universities, is going through major transformations to respond to the challenges in society. In this contribution, we present ten years of development work that has aimed to enable strengthened participation in educational change, across KTH's organizational boundaries-among teachers, students, and administrative staff. A practitioner and action-oriented approach has guided the development work, from 2011 to today, in creating new meeting arenas. The pandemic outbreak and the associated paralysis of our normal activities proved to lead to an increased importance of the established arenas for educational issues. A broadening could be seen in participating actors and a significant increase in the number of participants. We conclude with emphasizing the value we see with organizing for participation in the transformation of higher education.
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| 5. |
- Riese, Emma, 1992-, et al.
(author)
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Experiences and lessons learned by offering introductory training for teaching assistants who teach computer science
- 2021
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In: KTH SoTL. - Stockholm : KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Teaching assistants (TAs), students that are employed to assist the faculty, play an important role in many courses, by for instance conducting tutorials, helping and guiding students, and assessing assignments [1]. Especially in the courses that are given to a large number of students, TAs are widely used as a way to enable one-to-one tutoring and individual feedback [2]. However, previous studies have shown that TAs are not always offered sufficient training [3]. In 2019, the EECS school decided to initiate a mandatory training course for all computer science TAs [4], and this is a brief report on the experiences of this initiative. The purpose of this initiative has been to make our TAs more comfortable and prepared in their TA role. This includes multiple aspects, for instance, to empower the TAs to ask for well-defined lab grading criteria, if that is missing.The first offering of the TA training course was given in January 2020. The course consists of five modules (expected time for each module in parentheses): 1. HR questions (30 min) 2. Classroom teaching (60 min) 3. Helping students and supervising lab sessions (60 min) 4. Workshop regarding assessment (120 min) 5. Discussion and reflection seminar about modules 1-3 (90 min)Modules 1-3 are online modules in Canvas [5], each containing several quizzes. Modules 4-5 are scheduled sessions that first took place on campus but since March 2020 have been conducted through Zoom. During the spring semester, the course was given in Swedish. In the summer of 2020, the course material was translated to English, and modules 4 and 5 are since then offered in both English and Swedish. The TAs are paid the same hourly salary for taking part in the TA training as they earn for teaching. TAs that are employed as amanuensis (sv. amanuens) are also required to enroll in the course and for them it counts as part of their competency development. All TAs that have participated in the TA training course have been given the opportunity to anonymously fill out a customized course evaluation, and informed consent to use the answers for research purposes has also been collected.Most of the TAs enrolled in the training course have given it positive reviews. A commonly mentioned strength of the course has been the interactive sessions, meeting and discussing with other TAs. Many TAs have also experienced the course as valuable for their TA development. For example, a TA wrote: “Great initiative, the course gives you tools that will make your role as a TA easier, and some grounds to develop within!”As instructors in the course, we have also learned from the processes and continued to improve and develop the course throughout the year, based on the feedback from the TAs. During the conference, we will be able to share more examples from the course content as well as results from the course evaluations.To offer an introductory TA training course has been a great experience for us involved in the course and, in general, resulted in positive evaluations from the TAs who participated in the training. A portion of what we teach is specific to computer science, while other elements of the training are more general and focus on pedagogical aspects and the TA role. We hope this initiative of TA training can spread across KTH and are more than happy to share our course material and experiences.
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| 6. |
- Björn, Camilla, et al.
(author)
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Engineering students reflect on work-life relevant learning
- 2023
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In: SEFI 2023 - 51st Annual Conference of the European Society for Engineering Education: Engineering Education for Sustainability, Proceedings. - : European Society for Engineering Education (SEFI). ; , s. 203-211
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- As engineering education is a professional education, it should prepare students for working life. However, there are obvious limitations to the amount of content that is possible to cover and the authenticity of the learning environments. In this study, we investigate the students' awareness and perception of these limitations by answering the following two research questions: What competencies do the students view as work-life relevant? How do students reflect on their opportunities to learn these competencies? The context of the study is the five-year Master of Science in Engineering and Computer Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Throughout the programme, the students attend a programme-integrated course with four reflection seminars including written assignments each year. In their fourth year they wrote reflections on their perceived work-life readiness and 38 of these reflections were analysed thematically in this study. We find that students expressed an elaborate view of what constitutes work-life relevant competencies. They readily identify learning experiences in the programme where they have developed such competencies, for instance through projects. They also show an understanding that there are limitations in the ability of the university environment to achieve fully authentic learning experiences. Many students see it as their own responsibility and necessity to complement their education with other opportunities for work-life relevant learning, such as hobby projects or internships. Others seem relaxed about any gap they may have in their work-life preparation and expect to learn on their first job.
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| 7. |
- Björn, Camilla, et al.
(author)
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Variables Affecting Students' Success in CS2
- 2023
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In: ITiCSE 2023. - : Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). ; , s. 257-263
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- When trying to understand student success in computer science, much of the attention has been focused on CS1, leaving follow-up courses such as CS2 less researched. Prior studies of CS2 have often taken a deductive approach by focusing on predetermined variables such as CS1 grades, the impact of different paths from CS1 to CS2, gender and race. Although this has resulted in a better insight into these variables, we wonder if there might be another way of viewing which variables affect the students' success in the course. We have therefore chosen an inductive approach to better understand what these variables might be and how they interplay. This was done by analysing 16 semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in CS2 who have another speciality than computer science. The interviews focused mainly on the students' methods for succeeding in the course, experiences of the course and programming background. Through a thematic analysis of the interviews, we found the following five main success variables for CS2: programming competence, computer literacy, opportunity to receive help, ability to help oneself and teaching. These variables can in several cases be related to the ones previously addressed, however, they can also offer a different perspective on student success in the course.When trying to understand student success in computer science, much of the attention has been focused on CS1, leaving follow-up courses such as CS2 less researched. Prior studies of CS2 have often taken a deductive approach by focusing on predetermined variables such as CS1 grades, the impact of different paths from CS1 to CS2, gender and race. Although this has resulted in a better insight into these variables, we wonder if there might be another way of viewing which variables affect the students' success in the course. We have therefore chosen an inductive approach to better understand what these variables might be and how they interplay. This was done by analysing 16 semi-structured interviews with students enrolled in CS2 who have another speciality than computer science. The interviews focused mainly on the students' methods for succeeding in the course, experiences of the course and programming background. Through a thematic analysis of the interviews, we found the following five main success variables for CS2: programming competence, computer literacy, opportunity to receive help, ability to help oneself and teaching. These variables can in several cases be related to the ones previously addressed, however, they can also offer a different perspective on student success in the course.
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| 8. |
- Bälter, Olle, et al.
(author)
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English-medium instruction and impact on academic performance: a randomized control study
- 2023
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In: Applied Linguistics Review. - : Walter de Gruyter GmbH. - 1868-6311 .- 1868-6303. ; In Press
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Stakeholders and researchers in higher education have long debated the consequences of English-medium instruction (EMI); a key assumption of EMI is that students' academic learning through English should be at least as good as learning through their first language (usually the national language). This study addressed the following question: “What is the impact from English-medium instruction on students’ academic performance in an online learning environment?” “Academic performance” was measured in two ways: number of correctly answered test questions and through-put/drop-out rate. The study adopted an experimental design involving a large group (n = 2,263) randomized control study in a programming course. Student participants were randomly allocated to an English-medium version of the course (the intervention group) or a Swedish-medium version of the course (the control group). The findings were that students enrolled on the English-medium version of the course answered statistically significantly fewer test questions correctly; the EMI students also dropped out from the course to a statistically significantly higher degree compared to students enrolled on the Swedish version of the course. The conclusion of this study is thus that EMI may, under certain circumstances, have negative consequences for students’ academic performance.
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| 9. |
- Kann, Viggo, 1964-
(author)
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Att ta upp jämställdhet, mångfald och likabehandling med datateknikstudenter på KTH 2015-2021
- 2021
-
Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Att ta upp frågor om jämställdhet, mångfald och likabehandling i en ingenjörsutbildning är viktigt men känsligt. Vi har utvecklat seminariet Minoriteter och likabehandling för civilingenjörsprogrammet i datateknik på KTH och gett vid tre tillfällen inom den programsammanhållande kursen. Vi analyserar vilket motstånd seminariet stötte på år 2018 och beskriver hur vi arbetat för att seminariet skulle kunna ges smidigare år 2021. Data från studentenkäter visar att motståndet har minskat och att merparten av studenterna tycker att seminariet nu är givande.
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| 10. |
- Kjellgren, Björn, et al.
(author)
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Gärna pedagogisk utveckling - men inte utan tid och erkännande: Lärares syn på pedagogik och utvecklingsarbete
- 2020
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Conference paper (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Kvalitet i högre utbildning förutsätter ett kontinuerligt och hållbart engagemang för pedagogiskutveckling bland lärare och ledning. Universitetsledningens intentioner framgår i de styrdokument,handlingsplaner och visioner som tas fram på lärosätet och innehåller som regel fina ord omutbildningens betydelse även vid forskningstunga institutioner. Det är svårare att skaffa sig en bild avden undervisande personalens bild av detta, dels för att de flesta av dem inte är inkluderade idiskussionerna och dels för att det kan finnas ett gap mellan de frågor som lärare ser som relevantaoch de frågor ledningen är intresserad av att driva.Åren 2014-2016 genomförde KTH en satsning för att bredda det pedagogiska engagemanget ochminska avståndet mellan universitetets högskolepedagoger och övriga lärare genom att utsepedagogiskt intresserade lärare till pedagogiska utvecklare på deltid. Några av dessa pedagogiskautvecklare utvecklade en enkät för att undersöka hur den undervisande personalen såg på en radfrågor relaterade till arbetssituation, förutsättningar för eget och kollegialt lärande, undervisningensmeritvärde och tankar om nuvarande och framtida pedagogik. Undersökningen var också tänkt attutifrån ett kollegialt perspektiv utforska hur lärarna såg på den faktiska situationen jämfört med derasidealbild av universitetspedagogik och universitetsarbete. Tanken var även att följa utvecklingenlongitudinellt för att identifiera trender och resultat av pedagogiska satsningar. Enkäten har hittillsskickats ut två gånger, 2016 (2240 respondenter, 20,0% svarsfrekvens) och 2019 (2534 respondenter,16,8% svarsfrekvens).Vi kommer i vårt bidrag att redovisa några av de intressantare resultaten från undersökningarna ochdiskutera implikationerna av dessa både för lärare och för universitetsledning. Vi finner att det blandrespondenterna finns ett starkt pedagogiskt intresse och en tendens till ökat kollegialt samarbete kringpedagogik, något som i litteraturen lyfts fram som ett tecken på framgångsrika mikrokulturer. Det finnsockså en konstant syn på att universitetet inte gör tillräckligt för att stödja och premiera pedagogisktarbete och ett relativt svagt förtroende för universitetets pedagogiska ledarskap men också förstudenternas pedagogiska engagemang. Vi kommer också att lyfta fram studien som en potentiellmodell för gräsrotsdrivna pedagogiska initiativ och redogöra för den speciella arbetsgång som liggerbakom vårt arbete. Inför framtiden visar vi också på de effekter det kan tänkas få, exempelvis genomatt permanentas som en del av universitetets kvalitetssäkringsarbete. Sist men inte minst kommer viatt betona vikten av att lärarnas åsikter kopplas till studenternas upplevelser av lärmiljöer och till derasmöjligheter att reellt bidra till det pedagogiska förändringsarbetet vid universitetet.
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