Dedicated teachers rewarded with KTH's Pedagogical prize
The two teachers Carl Dahlberg and Rodrigo Muro were awarded KTH's Pedagogical prize for 2024 in December, with excellence in teaching and encouragement of critical thinking among the motivations.
Carl Dahlberg is a researcher at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and teaches on the MSc programmes in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering and Materials Design. He was nominated for his commitment to teaching, his desire to constantly improve and his great teaching skills.
"I have a rather traditional teaching style. I write on the blackboard and try to alternate it with stimulating interest through classroom experiments, for example. Students tend to appreciate this, as it breaks the monotony. I alternate my teaching with anecdotes, being a bit joking sometimes to take the edge off the seriousness without taking away the seriousness of the teaching,’" Dahlberg says.
Encourages critical thinking
Rodrigo Muro is the Programme Director of the Master's Programme in Architectural Lighting Design at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment. He was nominated for his pedagogy, which creates learning through practical activities and encourages critical thinking and innovation.
"It is important for me that students know how to think about a problem without solving it for them, to give them the theoretical tools. It's also about how they can integrate the theory and knowledge learnt into practical applications. How to get students to immerse themselves in real-life situations without giving them the answers. Allowing them to create their own questions with critical thinking, as well as promoting important aspects involved in lighting design, such as integrating sustainability and technology for well-being," Muro says.
Evaluating teaching
Carl Dahlberg has been recognised for his self-recorded lectures, which he delivered during the pandemic and which are still used by himself and other teachers. He has also spent a lot of time evaluating his teaching statistically.
"There is a lot of information available in Ladok. You can try to evaluate your pedagogical performance, understand student groups better and over time see what it means if you make a change in the course. If you measure, you can see if there is a permanent improvement or deterioration and you can try to see trends in outcomes. It's a fairly crude tool, but if you have eight cohorts of 150 students each year, you get quite a lot of statistics after a while," Dahlberg says.
Has introduced the topic of daylight
Rodrigo Muro is mentioned for his involvement in turning the Architectural Lighting Design master's degree into a master's programme in the near future and for introducing the subject of daylighting to architecture students.
"We created a studio in grades four and five focusing on daylight and how to plan architecture around it. The studio was successful and very popular with students. It was much needed as the subject is missing in early education. Now there are discussions about introducing the subject of light in the architecture programme and it is important to develop the education," Muro says.
Text: Sabina Fabrizi