Daily Archives: Friday December 5th, 2014

Exam time and pre-Christmas activities

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Eva Gerdts

So we are in advent again, and many courses will have exams before the autumn semester comes to an end on 12.12.14. This is a busy time for both students, lecturers, censors and the academic administration.  In addition, detailed planning of new curriculum for the school of medicine is ongoing.  This issue was once again on the agenda at the Faculty Board meeting on 26.11.14.  The framework for teaching and exams was approved.  In the future curriculum there will be at most 19 hours of scheduled teaching activities every week, and there will be exams at the end of each semester covering the multi-disciplinary learning goals.  In addition, at the end of 3rd and 6th year, a practical station exam (OSCE-exam) will take place.  Each semester, a semester council responsible for teaching and exam activities will be established, and K2 will be responsible for three of these semester councils, as well as for final exams on the 6th study year.  In order for the semester councils to have as strong a foundation as possible for its important work, it is now time for the heads of the academic sections, in coordination with people in charge of courses and topics, to gather lecturers and plan when and how teaching will be done of the individual topics in the new curriculum.  A detailed plan for distribution of study credits between courses in different semesters is the starting point for this important work.  The new curriculum will be implemented for first-year students from autumn 2015 and onwards, and in autumn 2016 a new curriculum will also be implemented for fourth-year students.  Thus there will be a 4-year period where teaching will follow both the new and the old curriculum.  I know that several academic sections are already well underway with this work, and it is important to finish our part of the teaching planning as soon as possible.  I kindly ask this to be sent to head of academic affairs within January 31, 2015.  Updated information on the new curriculum is available at http://www.uib.no/mofa/63484/ny-studieplan-medisinstudiet-ved-uib (in Norwegian)

Good luck with this important work!

Eva

Horizon 2020 – Spotlight: Scoping papers Work programmes 2016/17

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Scoping papers are working documents, sent to the Programme Committee for the Horizon 2020 Specific Programme for discussion in the context of the preparation of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2016-2017. As such, information and descriptions of activities indicated in this document may not appear in the adopted Work Programme 2016-2017, and likewise, new elements may be introduced.

The scoping papers released so far set out in more detail the coming main priorities for each part of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme. Member States, European stakeholders and initiatives from society and industry, as well as Horizon 2020 Advisory Groups have been consulted throughout 2014, and their input has been taken into account for strategic programming and drafting the scoping papers. After another round of Advisory Groups consultations on developing the Work Programme contents, the adoption of the Work Programme for 2016-2017 is planned in the third quarter of 2015.

The Horizon 2020 Strategic Programming Document which gives guidance for the development of the Work Programme 2016-2017 defines the key priorities for the framework program 2016/17 and the Focus Areas which are relevant to Pillar 2 (Industrial Leadership) and 3 (Societal Challenges). Compared to the current programme where 12 Focus Areas had been identified, the draft specifies 9 candidate areas whereof 3 are new ones: Internet of Things, Automated road transport and Industry 2020 and Circular Economy. Personalizing health and care which has been a focus area of the last strategic programme, does not longer appear, but will still have its anchoring within the Societal Challenges Pillar as one individual Call on Promoting healthy ageing and personalised healthcare. 5 subareas are specified in the scoping paper on “Health, demographic change and well-being”:

1. Ageing: from early development to the elderly
2. Translational research
3. Population health and health promotion & sustainable health and care systems
4. Infectious diseases
5. ICT for health

The scoping papers are, although they are confidential documents, available at certain websites and through the national Research Councils. You can look at them here.

Follow-up of the HSE-seminar

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As a follow-up to the HSE-seminar we had this autumn, we would like to remind everyone about performance appraisals for 2014. Performance appraisals should be conducted with nearest leader.  Everyone employed in principal employment should be offered a performance appraisal.  Technicians and PhD-Candidates will conduct their performance appraisals with their research group leader.  Those who have not been offered a performance appraisal in 2014 should contact their research group leader.  Professors with principal employment will be offered performance appraisals in 2015 when the new Head of Department is employed.

hms