bioCEED – Centre of Excellence in Biology Education

Full name: The Centre of Excellence in Biology Education
Affiliation: The University of Bergen, the University Centre at Svalbard (UNIS) and Institute of Marine Research
Field of study: Biology
Website: bioCEED – Centre of Excellence in Biology Education
SFU status: 2014–2023
Centre director: Professor Vigdis Vandvik
Assistant director: Pernille Bronken Eidesen

bioCEED develops biology educations that fill future needs in science and society. We achieve this by connecting scientific knowledge, practical skills and societal applications throughout our educations. We build on the strengths of the research culture to develop a collegial and scholarly teacher culture.

There is a rapid development in the roles and responsibilities of biology – and biologists – in society. Today, evolutionary thinking is important not only in the biology sciences, but also in medicine, information technology, management, humanities and social sciences. The practical skills of biologists, from genetic engineering to ecosystem assessment and analysis, are increasingly in demand in research, industry, and governance. The global challenges related to food production, environment and climate also requires biological solutions.

The rapid developments in the role of biology and biologists in society place new demands, not only to the content of biology education, but also to how we, the educators, educate tomorrow’s biologists.

bioCEED will make use of the entire biological ‘triangle’ in education by giving students experience with theoretical knowledge, practical skills, and socially relevant tasks throughout their studies. This will be achieved in part by providing internships in research, management and industry, by strengthening practical training in lab and field, and by providing good resources for teachers and students to build transferrable skills throughout the programmes.

bioCEED works for a change from a culture of "teaching" to one of "Learning", where student learning are at the core of all teaching and learning activities. The students are engaged in their learning process and in developing teaching, with possibilities and responsibility for their own learning. Such a change can only happen if teachers are prepared and willing to change and develop teaching. bioCEED supports a collegial teacher culture with a scholarly approach to teaching and learning. By bringing the strengths of the research culture into educational practice, bioCEED is establishing a culture of sharing, development and scientifically based teaching practice.

bioCEED has four main focus areas:

  1. Teacher culture
  2. Innovative teaching
  3. Practical training
  4. Outreach

bioCEEDs focus areas are reflected in their projects:

biopraksis: Work practice through internships as part of the biology education. The students use their biological knowledge on relevant practical tasks and gain experience from working as a biologist. Go to biopraksis

Artsapp: An app for species identification developed by students. Go to Artsapp

Bioskills: online platform that aims to develop transferrable skills across the biology curriculum by streamlining and linking teaching and learning of skills like numerical competence, scientific writing, communication, lab- and field – throughout the curriculum. Go to Bioskills

Teach to Learn (TE2LE): TE2LE aims to stimulate student creativity and develop collaborative, communicative and pedagogical skills, through student-created video tutorials to teach their peers key scientific concepts. Go to Teach to Learn

Read more about these and more of bioCEEDs projects

  • Application

    Feedback

    Concept

    The institution applies for the establishment of a Centre for Excellence in Biology Education, with UiB and its department of Biology as the host institution in collaboration with the same institution’s Higher Education Research Unit, the Department for Arctic Biology at University Centre Svalbard and the Institute of Marine Biology. The idea is to reshape biology education in a broad spectrum of biology programmes, to align it with changes in research, student behaviour and societal demand. It proposes to work via seven strategies that cover learning, learning environments, student motivation, leadership and dissemination.

    Strengths and weaknesses
    The application addresses the transformation of biology education in a visionary way. It sets out to change a culture of ‘teaching’ to one of ‘learning’, and involves several central organizations in the field. The academic environments engaged together form a coherent whole and many if not all parts are of international scientific significance. Its educational track record is more varied, with a blend of educational models, and outcomes which vary between outstanding and average.

    The plans are exciting for integrating a wide variety of biology programmes and could, if successfully implemented, propel biology education at these institutions to international pre-eminence. Integrating many institutions and programmes will confront the centre with a major organizational challenge. The structure of seven work packages might also be overly complex and difficult to implement. Bringing about a change of culture on the scale that is proposed here is a task of some magnitude and the road from vision to practice could therefore have been discussed in more detail.

    International collaboration will be vital to the success of the centre and strategies in this respect could usefully have been included.

    Grade: 5
    Site Visit: Yes

    Centre

    The declared aim of the Centre is to reform biology education in response to changes in the biological sciences, in higher education, and in society’s needs. BioCEED is built on the vision that the expanding role of biology – and biologists – places new demands on both the content of education provided and the training of tomorrow’s biologists. Consequently, new approaches for integrating the learning of biological content, knowledge and skills with practical training in more generic skills will be developed.

    Strengths and weaknesses
    BioCEED is an ambitious attempt at establishing an outstanding environment for education in a research-driven environment. The NOKUT Team (NT) was impressed with the visions and leadership, including the commitment from university leadership, to realize the aims of the proposal. The partnership between three different institutions appeared credible with each bringing complementary strengths (such as research, teaching and stakeholder relationships) to the consortium.

    The centre leadership was energetic and visionary, however there were signs that the commitment to the centre idea varied among the wider staff body. While the plans were, by and large, convincing and feasible, the current status of biology education across the consortium partners is not uniformly outstanding. Strategies to deal with quality differences need further development. This is a key area for demonstrating the effectiveness of the Centre’s dissemination.

    The NT was impressed by the ambition behind the centre, the open and frank accounts of the challenges of biology education and the clear visions of education reform to align it better with the successful research environment.
    A strength of the proposal was the ambition to collaborate with other biology environments in Norway to ensure a more widespread transformation of the relatively traditional structure of biology education in Norway. In the time between being short-listed and the site visit, the proposers had secured agreements to be engaged in the Centre’s work from several providers of biology higher education in Norway and the NT regarded this as a strong indication of likely success in terms of the ambition to bring about change on a national scale.

    Although some of the proposed innovations were promising and exciting, others appeared more routine. Efficient ways of monitoring progress and change were proposed and these should be effective. However, a stronger overarching plan may be needed, particularly to achieve some of the higher level goals.

    The added value of the centre, beyond already ongoing work to reform the educational programme, could have been made clearer.

    Overall, the NT were impressed with BioCEED’s proposals and believes that the proposed organisational structure and work plan can succeed in bringing about some of the desired changes. The NT would encourage the team to be willing to take be adventurous and willing to take risks in testing new approaches.