Bioeconomy Digital Log

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I am passionate about teaching…

“because I can motivate students to think critically and explore potential connections between disciplines, people and projects results.”

The teaching project allows students to…

“reflect on what they learn during the master’s program, connect ideas of the different modules, access useful resources to be active students and self-reflect on their motivation, expectations, skills and competences.”

My role in the teaching project…

“Understand the needs of the students and try to generate resources that address these needs with digital communication solutions or digital guidance.”

My goal…

“is to offer a basic form of digital guidance by providing the right tools to students so they can be more successful in their studies. I also intend to motivate them to participate in activities beyond the lectures, become proactive students and promote a space that allow them to think about their future as bioeconomists.”

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Idea generation:

With almost nine years of teaching experience in the M.Sc Bioeconomy, it has become evident the importance of setting spaces for students to reflect on their path in the learning journey and envision their professional future. Thus, we wanted to guide the students in the understanding of the connection of provided content in the mandatory and semi-elective modules so they can gain skills on systems thinking. Additionally, we also aimed to motivate students to develop their normative and transformative thinking as these are elemental and interconnected thinking areas of the bioeconomy and sustainability (Urmetzer et al. 2019). In addition, this helps students to make decisions on frequent questions such as the elective modules to be selected and what research topic to focus on based on their academic background, interests, and expectations.

Project objective:

To develop a first version of a self-directed Digital Bioeconomy Learning Log. The idea of the tool is to provide support and guide students in their learning path through the complexity of the bioeconomy. The Digital Bioeconomy Learning Log consist of a toolbox with different resources, one of those is the self-reflection process of students and provide guidance to understand the master program.

Current status / further steps / feedback / further development:

The digital tool has been designed in ILIAS and has two main parts:

1. Knowledge Hub: a hub of potential activities and important information to guide the student during their students. This hub of resources includes information about student groups, bioeconomy committees, access to the bioeconomy mailing list, relevant podcasts, among other resources.
   
   
2. Self-reflection questionnaires: the students answer some specifically designed guiding questions that make them reflect on the bioeconomy and at the same time give them resources to decide their own path. We co-created the tool with the students to fulfil their needs as much as possible through two trial rounds with a group of students who identified learning challenges and their strategies for successful learning.

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I find concepts like experiential learning or service-learning interesting. These approaches emphasize hands-on, practical experiences that allow students to directly apply theoretical knowledge in real-world settings by linking any service to the community with academic learning. I think the bioeconomy has a lot of potential to solve real-life problems and that is why I think the service learning could be fitting perfectly if students try to bring bioeconomy solutions to the general public.

Another concept is the collaborative online international learning, where students from countries could engage with each other and discuss about any topic e.g. bioeconomy and even work in projects together.

Finally, one of the most important topics in science from my perspective is science communication. It could be interesting that students use the projects and results of their work in class and work on the communication of those topics through visualizations, tangible elements or writing texts to reach any type of public.

I would love to try this last concept taking advantage of the work that students already have done and motivate them to communicate it in different ways either digitally or with tangible elements.

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When you look back on the support for the project, what was particularly helpful for you?
The organisation team was helpful, always open to supporting the project and the process. The exchange with the other team also helped to learn from their ideas and experience.

What tip would you give to people who are interested in support?

• Always think about the final user. You might have a set idea about the solution, but I found that is key to ask the potential users of the solutions because this could improve the usage of the tool/ resource.
  
  
• During or even before submitting the project, take the time and opportunity to discuss with the organisation team as often as needed, because this helps the idea to develop quicker.

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