How can we best use digital tools to help students get a better overview of their study progression and what is required to succeed in the courses they take? SLATE Professor Kirsty Kitto and the LAFE project will take on this question.

We are proud to announce that our colleague Professor Kirsty Kitto has received almost NOK 1 million in support for the new SLATE project LAFE (Learning Analytics for Feedback and Engagement). The project will develop digital dashboards to help students with their study progression.

Earlier this year, the University of Bergen (UiB) announced that it would allocate eight million kroner for quality development in education. Pilot projects were the most competitive category: Out of nineteen applications, five projects received funding. The largest allocations are going to four pilot projects, which will contribute to strengthening first-year students' learning, mastery and sense of belonging to the academic communities. Each of the projects will receive NOK 920,000.

One of the projects that received the most support is LAFE, led by Professor Kirsty Kitto. The project's digital dashboard will be developed in collaboration with the students themselves, and among other things, will help them understand what mandatory requirements remain before the exam, gain better insight into which data the university collects concerning them, and reflect more on their own learning and study progression.

The LAFE project will have SLATE collaborating with academic environments at the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Science and Technology and the Faculty of Psychology at UiB.

Developing the UiB Learning Infratructure

"In my opinion, this is an important step in the development of UiB's learning infrastructure. The goal is to help students better understand the requirements of their studies, develop more effective learning strategies and strengthen their ability to reflect critically on both their own learning and the digital traces they leave behind," says Kitto.

Read more about the projects and their funding (only in Norwegian).

The funds will be used, among other things, to buy out lecturers at several faculties, strengthen the technical development of the dashboards and involve students in the design and development work. The ambition is that the solutions will eventually be able to be used by far more students at UiB.

"It is gratifying that a large number of academic communities have applied for funding for quality development, and that the number of applications that are worthy of support is high. In many academic environments, development projects have come together and developed development projects that can strengthen education within their fields of study or across disciplines. This is very important in order to work collegially with the quality of our education," says Pro-Rector for Education at UiB, Sigrunn Eliassen.