Fredrik Berg

Europastudier - bachelorstudium

Michael J. Geary

The learning objectives are reviewed annually by the programme leader and discuss at the programme council level. This is part of an annual review process. We ensure that there is a thread running through the courses in years 1-3 and the intended learning outcomes are adjusted to reflect this learning progression. Generally, the learning environment is good to very good. Clearly, the past 12 months have been challenging due to the Covid-19 pandemic but the teaching staff have ensured that there has been limited disruption to the carrying out of teaching duties, for the most part digially. There are no reasons to undergo a more regular evaluation of the programme.

BEUROP provides students with a broad knowledge of the European Union from a historical and contemproary perspective. The Bachelor thesis allows students delve deeper into a chosen topic linked to the wider themes examined over the course of the three-year degree programme. From a quality perspective, our monthly teaching meetings ensures that we regularly monitor issues linked to the quality of teaching, supervision, assessment methods, grading etc. These meetings also ensures that colleagues teaching in the programme are aware of inter-related issues from other courses. The sharing of experiences helps address quality-related questions. We also focus on learning progression from years 1 to 3 not only from a content perspective but also via the assessment methods. The courses are regularly updated in keeping with new advances in the subject area and/or publications that provide new insights to topics under discussion across the Bachelor programme.

NTNU:TIA:REST

Det humanistiske fakultet

Faculty of Humanities

Lise Rye

SUMMARYThis report focuses on two quality areas: program design and social and working life balance, although other areas are also touched upon (i.e., strategic importance, and internationalization). For the first area, we review the existing structure of the program, with a particular focus on the relevance of our courses to the internationally recognized field of European Studies (ES). The ES program has undergone a number of curriculum changes in the past several years. However, communication with past and current students about the content of the courses and the nature of semester assignments indicates that more thorough evaluation of program design is necessary. Using course plans and student feedback from course evaluations we examine whether the present content of our courses gives students an accurate overview how the European Union (EU) functions. Furthermore, we look to the future and assess whether the courses on offer should be amended to reflect more recent and ground-breaking developments in the field. For the second area, we evaluate how well our program prepares students for future employments, especially in the public sector or in international institutions. Recent studiebarometer reports show that the ES program ranks relatively low on the work life-relevance index. To address this problem, we examine how work life relevance can be improved through consultation with practitioners in the field. Finally, to better understand how our program contributes to successful employability post-graduation, we carry out two surveys of past BA and MA students. We find that the program functions quite well and should be continued into the future. The existing program is of high caliber and is competitive with European/EU Studies programs at other universities. The program is highly relevant to the current European job marketplace, particularly in Norway, which has many economic ties to the EU. As such, it is of great value to NTNU. One of the key strengths of the MA program is the second semester (abroad) internship, which should continue to be strengthened. A similar internship requirement at the BA level may be highly beneficial. To further strengthen the program, we recommend the following: <ul><li>Redesigning a significant portion of the curriculum to provide more specialized training in practical EU matters and highly relevant policy areas without, though, diluting or even sacrificing the offer’s academic nature. This may entail hiring new faculty who are experts in EU law, environmental policy, energy and technology in the EU, EU democracy and development aid, and European defense/foreign/security policy.</li><li>Incorporating more methodological training at the BA and MA levels.</li><li>Reflecting on the utility of establishing a Ph.D. programme in European Studies.</li><li>Other measures are detailed on pages 27-30 of the report.</li></ul>

Rune Kristian Hansen

Anna Brigevich

The previous evaluation, which was a five-year report, highlighted three areas for improvement in the ES program. First, the report found that students wished to see more methods training, especially in preparation for writing their BA thesis. In response to this, one of our courses was redesigned to include a methods component. The course EUR: European Integration Theory was significantly overhauled, and is now called "Integration Theory and Methods." The course now includes five lectures on theories in the field and five lectures on methodological approaches. The methods lectures are complemented by four seminars, where students are tasked with carrying out exercises that allow them to practice the methods covered in the course. This has worked very well, and students indicated that the hands-on activities in the seminars were very helpful in preparing them for the BA Thesis. The students from EUR2201 then went on to write their BA theses in the following semester. Upon completion of the thesis-writing, we then surveyed these students to see how well prepared they felt. Even though we had given them more methods training than the previous cohorts, we still found that students wanted even more methods training. Granted, some of the students writing their theses did not have the revised EUR2201 course. Hence, we will monitor the situation closely this year to see if there is improvement on this metric. The second area of improvement was to add more contemporary issues to the course subjects. For example, students wanted to learn more about the EEA and how it impacts EU-Norway relations. Additionally, they wanted more courses to incorporate a discussion of environmental politics and green energy initiatives, which they view as highly relevant for their job prospects. We have only been partially successful in this regard. The course EUR2101: Norway in Europe has been reworked to include a stronger EEA component. At the same time, we have not been able to successfully incorporate a greater discussion of environmental politics. The big problem here is that we hired a new associate professor to start in the Fall of 2023 to teach EUR1001: Introduction to the EU course, which would be developed to have a more "green" component. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the professor quit unexpectedly, and course was never revised. The third area of improvement was in the quality of the BA thesis instruction. Students wished for more face-time with their advisors. However, we are quite understaffed. We lost two lecture positions the year before. The new associate professor hire was meant to be a replacement. However, given that he quit, the existing teaching staff ended up with even more advisees that we had in the years prior, when we were already short on teaching staff. Therefore, the only way forward in ensuring the quality of advising and teaching is fill the position that we were supposed to have gotten when the new hire quit. However, there has not been any discussion of helping us fill this position. At the moment, we are relying on a PhD and a post-doc to do some of the teaching and grading, which is not an ideal solution, as they lack the high level of expertise and availability of time that teaching positions require.

Despite the aforementioned challenges, there is all indication that the program works very well and no major changes are needed. First, our admission numbers remain steady across all five "major tracks": political science, Spanish, English, French, and German. Political science remains the most sought-after track. However, recent conversations with the languages-track students indicate that they are also quite satisfied with their choice of track. In the past, students were tempted to move from the languages tracks to political science. However, better advising by the languages and ES raadgivers seems to have eased the anxieties that some students feel about the requisite language acquisition that is necessary at the start of the program. We are also attracting a good number of Erasmus and foreign exchange students. Fore example, in the EUR2102: European Identity course there is typically about ten foreign students out of 60 each semester. This speaks to the internationalization of our program. The fact that the course is taught in English is a major draw. Furthermore, students seem very happy to have a majority of their courses in English. For example, the last student evaluation from EUR1001 revealed that students liked that the course was taught in English because the source material was in English anyway and because it attracted international students who could share their perspectives on life outside Norway. Student evaluations across the six core subjects indicate that the students like the types of assignments they are engaged in because they prepare them for work life post-graduation. In EUR1001, students commented that they liked the regular seminar discussions because they helped them acquire oral presentation skills. In EUR2102, students were happy to choose the option to work in teams to research and produce a podcast episode on Norway and the EU. In EUR2102, students are tasked with writing an empirical paper that makes them engage with a variety of datasets, thereby honing their data analytics skills. In short, all of our courses move beyond simply lecturing and engage our students in a number of creative and beneficial ways.

It is clear that we are in need of an additional permanent faculty member. As the report above shows, we are "down" a colleague who quit unexpectedly. We are have "staunched the blood flow" by hiring two temporary staff. We have yet to see the results of the student evaluations, but anecdotal evidence suggests that this has not produced good results. Even when one of our permanent teaching staff comes back from sabbatical in spring of 2024, we will be short a person. To further add to the complication, we will have another staff member go on a year long sabbatical when the aforementioned staff member returns. We are hoping that the Onsager Fellow that was recently hired can potentially teach some of the courses. However, temporary teaching staff are not a good substitute, generally speaking, as the lack the level of expertise and rigor required to make a fully-functioning program.

Europastudier - bachelorstudium - BEUROP