About the project
The GeoIntern project is a national project at UiT (Arctic University of Norway), UiO (University in Oslo) and UiB (University in Bergen) to increase the work life relevance among geology students. The work market is continuously changing, and students in geology have for a number of years wanted more and closer collaboration to geological related industry. Through offering the bachelor students a subject that enhances the industry scope, dynamics and approach to geoscience we have through three years been working with increasing the work life relevance for geology students.
The national student evaluations done by the educational institutions for geoscience in Norway in 2018 and 2019 made it clear for the need for enhanced work life relevance among geoscience students. In 2020 a big effort was made to apply for financing for a pilot for a project to increase the work life relevance in geoscience.
The GeoIntern project recieved funds from Result and NT-faculty fall 2020, and project funding from ARB-portfolio from HK-Dir (The Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills) new year 2020. We established and started the first pilot of an internship subject (GeoIntern) at UiT spring 2021. This was followed by the first national pilot with GeoIntern as a course for bachelor students at UiT, UiO and UiB spring semester of 2022, with a total of 25 students. Spring 2023 is the last semester with external financing from HK-Dir. 40 students attends the course this semester at UiT, UiO and UiB.
The course has a wide portfolio providing teaching and training of several 21st century skills, an introduction and overview of the labor marked for a geologist, innovation and entrepreneur skills as a foundation for the student's self awareness of their own competencies and potential. The philosophy behind developing the subject has been to provide the students insight in their own skills and knowledge as a foundation to map out todays labor market and reflect towards the futures labor market and the possibilities there are when they have finished with a degree in geoscience. During the course we send students out to geology related internships. A big effort has been put down to gather businesses and organisations that can receive and offer students internships. During the project period we have approx. 50 geoscience related businesses that have offered unforgettable internships for the students that have followed the course GeoIntern.
Through continuous evaluations we have worked to create and develop a course that brings the students as close as possible to the working life. All teaching and internship activities are closely monitored, and feedbacks has been used for a dynamic course development. The voice of the students has been an important principle for developing the course for offering the highest educational standard for the students.
The project group has, besides the project leader, been consisting of project coordinators, course responsibles at the involved universities. We have had regular meetings to cooordinate the national implementation of GeoIntern, to assure experiences has been transfered and to avoid diplicate of work between the educational institutions. Through the Centre for Integrated Earth Science Education (iEarth), GeoIntern has played a key role for the national quality of education development.
During the project period it has been important to promote the activities wide, and we have given a number of presentations about GeoIntern and our learing points from the project period, locally, regionally, nationally and internationally. A list of speaches and presentations that have been given is available under the Outreach tab.