Author
In English further down.
Välkommen tillbaks till jobbet!
Kära kollega, först och främst vill jag välkomna dig tillbaks till KTH efter semestern. På grund av reserestriktioner antar jag att du har tillbringat sommaren i Sverige. Kanske har du till och med upptäckt några nya guldkorn i ditt närområde? Hur som helst så hoppas jag att du har fått chansen att vila och njuta och gjort dig redo att kicka igång terminen med ny kraft!
KTH:s ledning har precis lämnat nya besked om att vi ska ha som målsättning att arbeta minst två dagar i veckan på campus om omständigheterna tillåter det. Våra enhetschefer är än mer viktiga i och med att de leder arbetet med att planera verksamheten. Nya grepp måste tas. Det kan exempelvis vara så att arbetstiden på KTH planeras så att personal inte åker i rusningstrafik. Det kommer alltså innebära att det blir en kombination av distansarbete och arbete på campus samt att möten till stor del kommer att vara digitala även i höst.
Du som redan har börjat arbeta på KTH campus har nog inte kunnat missa våra nya studenter. ”Nollorna” välkomnas av både ITM-personal och faddrar och vi kan höra dem sjunga och spela musik precis som tidigare år. Ibland känns det nästan som vanligt, men i själva verket är situationen långt ifrån vanlig.
Undervisning kommer att fortsätta ske digitalt med vissa inslag av salsundervisning i en del kurser. Vårt fokus är att låta de nya studenterna på grund- och mastersnivå ha vissa föreläsningar på våra campus. Det är extra viktigt att de nya studenterna får en bra start i sin nya studiemiljö för att de ska kunna gå hela vägen i mål och få ut sin examen.
Avslutningsvis tänkte jag dela med mig av ett par semesterminnen. Jag var faktiskt större delen av tiden hemma i trädgården, där jag odlar grönsaker och bär av olika slag. De har jag njutit av i sommar! Dessutom har jag lärt mig äta ogräs som jag vanligtvis kastar i komposten. En tripp till 
Hälsingland med familjen blev det också, där vi vandrade i de vackra skogarna kring Harsa och besökte en av mina favoritplatser Järvzoo. Lite fiske blev det också och jag lyckades få upp ett par öringar ur den klara fjällsjön, som ni kan se på bilderna.
/ Pär Jönsson, Skolchef vid ITM
Welcome back to work!
Dear colleagues,
I wish to warmly welcome all of you back to KTH after your vacations. Due to the travel restrictions, I assume that most of you have spent your vacations in Sweden? Maybe you even discovered some new lovely places in your nearby area? In any case, I hope that you now had had a chance to relax and enjoy and are ready to start this new working period with some extra energy!
Today, KTH’s management gave new information that we should work at least two days a week on campus if the circumstances allow. Our unit managers are very important in that they lead the work of planning the business. New ways must be tried. It is possible, for example, that working hours at KTH are planned so that staff do not travel in rush hour traffic. Thus, there will be a combination of working from home and on site this autumn, and meetings will mainly be digital.
Some of you that has started to work on site has already seen that the new students have arrived at KTH. The, so called, zeros (nollor) are taken care of both by the ITM personnel as well as by the older students. We can hear singing and music as usual this time of the year. It is almost like one feel that things are as normal, but they are not. Teaching will continue to take place by using digital tools even though we now start to introduce class room teaching in some courses. The focus is to let the new Bachelor and Masters students to attend some classes at KTH. It is especially important to make sure that the new Bachelor students get a good start in their new study environment to ensure a successful study progress.
Finally, I wish to share something of what I have done this summer. I actually spent most of the time in my home. We grow lots of vegetables and berries so I have enjoyed eating them as well as learned how to eat some of the weeds that I normally remove and throw away. I took a short trip to Hälsingland with my family to walk in the beautiful forests around Harsa and to visit one of my favorite places in Sweden, namely Järvzoo (jarvzoo.se). I also did some fishing and was able to catch some trout in a really beautiful mountain lake, as you can see from the pictures.
/ Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School
Author
In English further down.
“Det är svårt att vara badvakt på distans”
I skrivande stund kommer beskedet från rektor om förutsättningar för höstterminen 2020. KTH öppnar för campusförlagd utbildning höstterminen 2020 och ger succesivt tillträde för studenter i KTH:s lokaler fr o m lördagen den 1 augusti 2020. Undervisning får bedrivas på alla KTH-campus i enlighet med regeringens besked och Folkhälsomyndighetens rekommendationer.
Inom stödverksamheten planerar vi för att komma tillbaka till arbetsplatsen. Många av oss har suttit hemma under ett antal veckor medan andra har varit på plats som vanligt. Vissa av funktionerna och arbetsuppgifterna är av sådan art att hemarbete inte fungerat. ”Det är svårt att vara badvakt på distans”.
Tanken är att vi ska vara bemannade på våra campus direkt efter semestrarna och i samband med inskrivningen av våra nya studenter. Men vi inväntar direktiv från KTH innan vi beslutar hur vi gör, och besked har utlovats före midsommar. Som sagt, det är bråda dagar att få igång planeringen inför detta. Personligen ser jag fram mot att komma tillbaka in i ”gamla” vanor, men framförallt ser jag fram mot att få träffa mina kollegor och alla andra på KTH.
Stödverksamheten har tillsammans med en referensgrupp (lärarrepresentanter) tagit fram ett utbildningsmaterial riktat mot ITM:s projektledare. Syftet är att skapa en digital kurs med namnet ”Kurs för projektledare på ITM-skolan” som på ett kortfattat och lättförståeligt sätt beskriver de regler och rutiner som är anpassade för KTH för att uppnå en rättvisande bild och resultat av de ekonomiska händelser som sker i ett projekt. Tanken är att materialet ska uppdateras efter att behov uppstår, samt att projektledaren kan sätta sig in i olika frågor när tid finns för detta digitalt. Vi återkommer under hösten med ett färdigt informations- och kursmaterial.
Som ni förmodligen redan känner till ska all information på webben tillgängliggöras. Lagen träder i kraft den 23 september 2020. Lagen om tillgänglighet till digital offentlig service (DOS-lagen) kräver att digitalt innehåll ska vara:
- möjligt att uppfatta, oavsett eventuell nedsättning av exempelvis syn eller hörsel,
- hanterbart, dvs möjlig att interagera med,
- begripligt,
- robust, dvs kunna användas med ett brett spektrum av olika användarprogram, såsom webbläsare eller tekniska hjälpmedel.
ITM:s kommunikationsenhet planerar genomförandet av detta arbete, eftersom mycket av de dokument vi har publicerade måste tillgängliggöras.
ITM:s HR-enhet passar på att informera om att lönerevisionen kommer att senareläggas i år. Dock är revisionsdatum fortfarande den 1 oktober 2020. Anledningen till detta är att arbetet blivit uppskjutet på grund av Covid-19. Det innebär att vi inte har lika bråttom att komma igång med de enskilda lönesamtalen direkt efter sommaren. Vi avvaktar ytterligare information i frågan.
Vi har målgång den 15 juni för alla anställda som varit med och motionerat under de senaste veckorna. Vi startade den 18 maj ”KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER”. Det hela går ut på att peppa varandra och att vi ska röra oss mer. Vi får anledning att uppmärksamma ITM:s tre aktivaste lag före midsommar.
Sista men inte minst vill jag och hela stödverksamheten önskar er alla en riktigt trevlig och välförtjänst sommarledighet. Det kan vi alla behöva innan vi drar igång igen i höst! Vi passar också på att tacka för ett gott samarbete under vårterminen.
/Christina Carlsson, Administrativ chef för ITM
“It is difficult to be a lifeguard at a distance”
At the time of writing, a message comes from president Sigbritt concerning the how to run KTH during autumn semester 2020. KTH will resume campus-based education and provide successive access for students at KTH’s premises from Saturday, August 1, 2020. Teaching may be conducted at all KTH campuses in accordance with the government’s message and the recommendations of the Public Health Authority.
The Professional support teams (administration) plan to return to our workplaces. Many of us have been working remotely for a number of weeks while others have been on site. Some functions and tasks are impossible to execute remotely. “It is difficult to be a lifeguard at a distance”.
The aim is to be back on campus immediately after the holidays and in connection with the enrollment of our new students. However, we still wait for directives from KTH before deciding how we do it, and this information will come before midsummer. That said, it is urgent to start planning for this. Personally, I look forward to getting back into “old” habits, but above all, I look forward to meeting my colleagues and everyone else at KTH.
The Professional support teams, together with a reference group (teacher representatives), have produced a training material aimed at ITM’s project managers. The purpose is to create a digital course called “Course for project managers at the ITM school” which briefly and easily teaches the rules and routines adapted for KTH to achieve a true picture accurate results of the economic events taking place in a project. The idea is that the material will be updated as needs arise, and that the project manager can immerse themselves into different questions digitally when there is time for this.
We will come back later with completed information and course material.
As you probably already know, all information on the web will have to be made accessible. This new act comes into force on September 23, 2020. The Act on Access to Digital Public Service (DOS-lagen) requires digital content to be:
- possible to perceive, regardless of any impairment, for example, sight or hearing,
- manageable, ie possible to interact with,
- understandable,
- robust, ie can be used with a wide range of different user programs, such as browsers or technical tools.
The ITM Communication team is planning the implementation of this work, as many of the documents we have published must be made accessible.
ITM’s Human Resources team announces that the salary audit will be delayed this year. However, the revision date is still October 1, 2020. The reason for this is that work has been delayed due to covid-19. This means that we are not in such a hurry to get started with the individual salary discussions immediately after the summer. We await further information on this issue.
The finish-line for “KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER” is due June 15 for all employees who have been involved and exercised in recent weeks. It all comes down to pep-talking and coaching each other to be more physically active. We will pay attention to ITM’s three most active teams before midsummer.
Last but not least, me and the entire Professional support team wish you all a really nice and well-deserved summer vacation. We may all need that before we start again this autumn! We also take the opportunity to thank you for a good cooperation during the spring.
/Christina Carlsson, Head of Administration
Author
It’s now been over two months since we all started working mostly from home. Everything is very different now, and I myself would have organized a conference last week. To still “meet” some of those who would have been here from all over the world, we had a Swedish fika via Zoom Friday afternoon. Everyone had promised to make really strong Swedish coffee to drink in front of the computer.
While some like the new working situation, others feel lonely. It is perhaps most difficult for those who are far from their home country, especially many doctoral students. Therefore it is important for us supervisors to keep in close contact with our doctoral students, not only for the research to continue as well as possible, but perhaps primarily for the human contact.
The research studies that can go on more or less as usual are the ones that are mostly performed in front of a computer. It’s more difficult when experiments are required and worst of all if the planned experiments were intended to take place outside Sweden. Hopefully we can return to more normal research studies this fall.
PhD defences and licentiate seminars have since March 25th, when we had the first digital defence with the respondent on link from South Africa, been held on Zoom. We have so far managed about ten PhD defences and one licentiate seminar and have another 15 to look forward to before the summer break begins. It has overall worked out very well and I see ahead that we, post-corona, will make sure to broadcast our events – we can then certainly expect a larger and more international audience. But clearly it will be nice when we can celebrate the new doctors IRL as well.
I will take the opportunity to give an update of the responsible persons for our doctoral programmes, DAs:
- Luca Urciuoli new DA for Industrial Economics and Management
- Stefan Hrastinski new DA for Education and Communication Studies
- Lyuba Belova new DA for Education and Communication Studies
Find all DAs at ITM here
/ Malin Selleby, Director of Third Cycle Education at ITM
Author
Dear colleagues,
We are entering the last weeks before the vacation period. By now, I believe most of you have already planned your vacation together with your closest manager and if not please make sure to do so.
Currently, we are in the exam period of this semester. Despite that alternative examinations have been introduced in some courses, the majority of the exams will be given as written exams, which are overseen by examinators, other faculty and PhD students. The President Sigbritt Karlsson has decided that also the re-exam period in the fall will be given using digital exams as well as alternative examination solutions. Here, I wish to point out that the PhD students as well as the faculty will act as examination supervisors, to make sure that no cheating takes place during the exams.
Talking about the future and especially the fall. How will KTH look like in August?
The president and her team have been planning for different scenarios that might take place in the fall. Our first priority is that period 1 should start as normal. However, as all of you know the outcome of the present situation is hard to predict. Thus, at ITM and KTH we are preparing for alternative scenarios in many ways. For example, under the lead of Anna Jerbrant, teachers at ITM have prepared risk analyses to understand what courses that are most critical to find alternative solutions for. Here, it is clear that it is especially important to identify courses that include practical experiments and to develop strategies on how to run these courses so that the required learning outcomes can be met. Here, one course at the Department of Industrial Production has successfully been held in an alternative manner during period 4, which may serve as a good example for other courses at ITM.
I also wish to mention that the administrators under the lead of Christina Carlsson also are planning for alternative ways of receiving the almost 1600 (!) new students that are expected to begin their studies at ITM in the fall. Overall, I believe that it is very important that we communicate updates regarding how the new semester will start up both to employees at ITM and to all students. Here, we are lucky to have a strong communication team at ITM that will help us with this very important task!
Finally, I hope that many of you have joined the KTH ACTIVE TOGETHER event. As we said earlier, the purpose is both to stimulate to exercise and to communicate with each other. The team that I belong to is led by the PhD student Reinol Josef Companero Del Carmen (called RJ). We share different photos taken during our exercises including pictures of ourselves performing different exercises such as running, walking, hiking, weight lifting, etc., but also pictures on landscapes or animals we have seen during our exercises. For example, myself I have already seen moose, deer, hares and squirrels as well as beautiful sunsets during my exercises. The participation in this event has certainly made me being more active than before and I hope you have had the same experience!
/Pär Jönsson, Head of the ITM School
Author
What happened during the Storträff? What can be said about future learning spaces? And how do we increase quality in education? Anna Jerbrant, Deputy Head of School, focus on future oriented activities and shares some of those with us.
For eight weeks now, we have all executed our work-tasks from home and mainly interacted with each other through Zoom. Even though this in many ways has worked out great, at least I look forward to meet all of my colleagues IRL ☺ But in the meantime I can focus on future oriented activities and share some of those with you.
For instance, last week I attended the yearly dialogue meeting focusing on educational quality. The dean and vice dean of faculty (Anders Forsgren and Sofia Ritzén) managed the meeting and as usual I got the possibility to describe and discuss the strengths and opportunities, as well as weaknesses and threats (quality wise), for all of the ITM school’s educations on 1st and 2nd cycle level. The goal is that these dialogues will lead to increased quality and long-term improvements for all our educations.
Another very interesting and future oriented activity was this week’s Storträff, which I hope a majority of you could participate in. Storträffen is something that occurs once every semester, were the vice-president for education invites teachers, educational leaders, other staff and student representatives to a meeting that raises current and prioritized issues for KTH’s education. Yesterday we both got to listen to the thoughts and reflections from the president as well as the vice-presidents. We also had three discussion sessions in breakout-rooms focused on different important subjects, for instance examination on a distance (both supervised and unsupervised), how to help students avoid plagiarism, connections to professional practice and engagement with external actors in education, sustainable development and education, a follow-up of the implementation of goal-oriented grading criteria’s and so on.
Major parts of the meeting were recorded and will probably be published here: www.kth.se/social/group/prioriterade-fragor-/
The next Storträff will be held on December 3rd 2020.
Finally, I would like to promote that KTH is arranging the fourth SoTL conference for its faculty on 10 March 2021. The KTH Scholarship of Learning conference is aimed at all teaching staff, all pedagogical leaders, all levels of management and educational administration staff at KTH. The main theme of the 2021 conference is Learning Spaces: the physical, virtual and social rooms or arenas for learning that you and/or others have created and acted in. The conference will take place at Campus KTH, at Valhallavägen in Stockholm and you can find more information here: https://intra.kth.se/utbildning/utveckling-och-hogskolepedagogik/kth-sotl/conference-kth
So, let us all plan for participating and submit papers where we describe all the knowledge that we have gained during this spring semester!
/ Anna Jerbrant, Deputy Head of School
Hälsingland med familjen blev det också, där vi vandrade i de vackra skogarna kring Harsa och besökte en av mina favoritplatser Järvzoo. Lite fiske blev det också och jag lyckades få upp ett par öringar ur den klara fjällsjön, som ni kan se på bilderna.