Support package

This section will guide you to the competency development events and inspirational materials that can support you in engaging your students in collaborative and group work activities. 

‘The support package’ is the product of collaboration between the Nordic Nine project team, the D&I office, and Student Affairs. Setting the focus on collaboration and group work allows us to address ​key concerns of three of CBS’ strategic initiatives: Student well-being, Diversity, and Gender Equality, and Nordic Nine (specifically, the development of collaboration capabilities that lie at the core of NN6 and NN8). The alignment of the agendas around collaboration aims to reduce complexity and make the strategic agendas more operational and concrete for all of the involved stakeholders – students, programs, course coordinators, and lecturers. Study Board members had an opportunity to inform and shape the support package through a set of workshops that took place in September 2022. 

Competency development
Collaboration and group work are instrumental in building a community of learners among students. This, in turn, helps ensure student well-being, a sense of inclusion, and the development of important capabilities. However, there is also a risk of a group break-up, conflict, and marginalization of individual students that are detrimental to both individual well-being and their learning outcomes.

The competency development workshops and webinars in this section aim to support the teachers in engaging students with collaborative activities in a way that leverages the differences between the group members and limits the risk of negative events. Some of the offerings are planned as on-campus workshops allowing you to experiment with the tools and techniques through a guided process and some will take place as webinars that are easier to fit into your schedule. 

Competency development offerings

Collaborative learning

In this hands-on webinar, the participants will be introduced to the main pedagogical principles of collaborative learning. We shall discuss its main benefits and common challenges and explore the wide variety of activity types available to teachers. The participants will learn how to approach the selection of collaborative activities and how to frame them to maximize student learning.

Format: 90-minute webinar, online

10 May, 2023, 14.30-16.000: Sign up here

Design tools for inclusion in the classroom

In this workshop we introduce you to the design-based approach and present a selection of tools used by designers to structure processes. We will also do a range of activities together to apply some of these tools and reflect on how they can help us address the inclusion issues we are facing in our own teaching practice. Design tools that we introduce and practice in the workshop include “speaking rules” that can be employed to redefine the social roles of students in coursework and class discussions and push a more equal distribution of speaking time among students. We will also work with problem-framing, to first re-design our challenges before trying to create the optimal conditions for inclusion in the business school.

Format: 3 hours, on-campus

1 March 2023, 13.00-16.00: Sign-up link

28 April 2023, 09.00-12.00: Sign-up link

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) for group work 

Based on learning sciences’ research on how humans learn best, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a framework that supports the design of inclusive and accessible learning. 

The workshop will open with a presentation of the UDL framework, its theoretical underpinnings and its main principles for implementation. The main part of the workshop will focus on how to apply UDL in group work, specifically when students work in groups on medium or long-term collaborative tasks or projects.  

UDL guidelines will be discussed to answer these questions: What barriers to learning does group work usually create and how can these be reduced?, How can group work be designed for diversity, giving all students equal opportunities to thrive? Participants will consider UDL recommendations to design inclusive group work and will identify specific strategies that can be implemented in their courses.  

Format: 2 hours, on-campus

9 March 2023, 14.00-16.00: Sign-up link

17 May 2023, 10.00-12.00: Sign-up link

Generation Lockdown: getting a new generation of students involved and engaged in your classes

In this workshop we examine how you as an educator can help your students develop successful study strategies for the courses you teach. The focus is not on major, time-consuming changes to your planning or teaching. Rather, it is about the little changes in your classroom preparation and execution that help students to better understand and navigate the course – and to use efficient study techniques that support learning.  

Key topics: 

  • What are CBS students’ main challenges – especially after several years in lockdown? 
  • Matching how you frame the curriculum to the students’ level of academic insight 
  • The little things you can do in your preparation and teaching that make a big difference to students 

The workshop is also available on demand to groups of educators from e.g., a particular study program. The workshop can also be offered in Danish. 

Format: On-campus

Dates are TBA

Instructional design for formative peer assessment 

The quality of instructional design influences greatly the efficiency of peer feedback activities as formative practices and therefore has a significant impact on the learning benefits obtained by students.  

This webinar will focus on the use of peer feedback as a learning tool and will present some of the key issues to consider when designing formative peer feedback activities. 

The main topics will be  

  • choosing and introducing the activity 
  • aligning the activity with the course’s learning outcomes  
  • guiding students in assessment  
  • supporting students in feedback provision  
  • encouraging self-reflection 
  • facilitating proactive recipience of feedback  

Format: 90-minute webinar

23 February 2023, 15.00-16.30: Sign up here

14 June 2023, 14.00-15.30: Sign up here

Diversity and Power: An Experiential Learning Process 

In this course, teachers will themselves be participants in an experiential and interactive learning process that leverages the group dynamics as content for reflection. The course uses a democracy education method from the NGO sector that encourages the diversity of the group to emerge. Through activities around identity, decision-making, competition, and collaboration, teachers get to reflect on the group’s ability to engage in a democratic process. They also get the opportunity to reflect on how they react to the tension inherent to this type of learning. The ‘learning by doing’ philosophy underlying this course means that teachers will then be able to allow such learning moments in their classrooms, not shying away from the discomfort characteristic of such a reflexive form of learning.  

Format: 3 hours, on-campus

13 June 2023, 13.00-16.00: Sign-up link

Understanding and supporting student well-being: How to integrate well-being in teaching using tools to improve collaboration capabilities

“I do not dare to tell others if I think a subject is difficult. I’m just dealing with it myself. But why the hell aren’t we talking about it to try to find a solution? No one dares to announce that they think things are difficult. I believe it’s because nobody wants to be perceived as being stupid. In essence, you are scared of what others might think.”

This is how a CBS student accounts for feelings of inadequacy, which pose a threat to well-being, learning, and the transformative capabilities of Nordic Nine, of which several, especially NN#6 (You critical when thinking and constructive when collaborating) presuppose the courage to be open-minded. This problem must not be pathologized but taken seriously. One way to do that is to see group work and classroom setting as an entrance to enhance the student’s courage and collaboration capabilities. 

Recognizing that human beings would get along with each other better, were they able to understand one another better, and that this understanding is not to be got out of books, the research has developed tools for students to train this humanity capability as a dynamic social-emotional.

Format: 2,5 hours, on-campus

8 May 2023, 09.00-11.30 (Danish): Sign-up link

8 May 2023, 13.00 – 15.30 (English): Sign-up link

6 June 2023, 09.00-11.30 (English): Sign-up link

6 June 2023, 13.00-15.30 (Danish): Sign-up link

NN workshop at programme level 

This tailor-made workshop aims to create a shared understanding of the NNs among teachers on the programme and guide their further efforts around NN implementation in courses.

The workshop will be prepared in close collaboration with the Programme Director to reflect the teaching context and the immediate needs of the programme and will involve group discussions, teacher presentations and individual reflection.  

During the workshop, Teaching&Learning consultants will facilitate a discussion about selected NNs and their interpretation in the context of the programme. The workshop will also present examples of successful implementation of NNs in this programme and allow participants to reflect on their own courses. 

To schedule this workshop for your programme, please reach out to Varia Christie at vac.tl@cbs.dk 

Format: 2 hours, on-campus

The workshop is on demand.

Focus on good study techniques and student well-being

Take a look at UNIverse. 

The site is a supplement to my.cbs.dk – CSB’s student intranet – with content that can be used both by students with a specific problem that requires a here-and-now solution and those wishing to improve their study routines and perform better. It can also be valuable for lectures as inspiration on eg. study techniques and teamwork. 

The purpose of the new platform is to normalize (not trivialize!) the challenges students face and guide them toward solutions that work. Some of the content on the platform previously lived on my.cbs.dk, but was difficult to find. The content has now been supplemented by new areas such as study doubts and anxiety, and it all comes together in one place, namely in UNIverse. 

If you have any questions or input for UNIverse, you are welcome to write to universe@cbs.dk