Achieving generic competences through a cross-disciplinary research based course in Arctic Technology

In a research based course in Arctic Technology, different teaching activities were used to support learning of both technical and generic competences. The active learning was based around a 3-weeks field work period in Greenland in combination with lectures, assignments, project and peer group work prior to and after the field work.

The students represent a heterogeneous group of nationalities, previous experiences and scientific subjects. It was clearly seen by the learning outcome and assessment that students who used the offered feedback options during the course actively were more successful in achieving both the scientific and generic competences than the students who did not.

The students evaluate the course as being highly motivating for further learning and they get confident by successfully having executed a research based project in a new context. The project and field work support the process of developing generic competences and are preparing the students to become professional engineers.

For the future teaching of the course we have some suggestions for improvements: • Include peer-work as a learning objective and specify rubrics of how to give feedback to make it more worthwhile for the students • Include the hand-ins of draft articles in the review process as an required element to pass the course, to distribute the work load and secure that all students receive process feedback • Explicitly tell the students that in the course there is focus on developing generic engineering competences, so they are more aware of this, instead of just focussing on improving their scientific competences.