Canvas courses help KTH researchers progress in their roles
Canvas Research Collaboration Competence courses are now offered to KTH researchers to help them deepen their knowledge and progress in their professional roles. Annika Stensson Trigell, Vice President for Research, explains why KTH is investing in the education.
What is the purpose of KTH’s Canvas courses?
“Researchers – primarily leaders of research collaborations that include several parties – need to be knowledgeable in various disciplines that aren’t part of the ordinary research programme. Being responsible for competence centres, research platforms, strategic innovation programmes or EU-projects requires proficiency in fields like intellectual property law, ethics, data management and communication.
Since 2019, the Research Support Office has arranged thematic seminars covering these topics – seminars that are tailor-made for KTH researchers and research collaboration leaders.
Our researchers are busy and often time expertise is required in certain phases of collaborations, for example while building a competence centre. That’s the reason why we’ve developed the content for several of the thematic seminaries and converted them into online courses,” says Stensson Trigell.
Why has KTH chosen to invest in this project?
“By making the courses available to KTH researchers when the content is needed for their work we hope that more will participate. The aim is also for research collaboration leaders to be able to learn from other leaders, and to understand who to turn to from the KTH research support team when they have questions.
Several of our researchers come from other countries and may not know Swedish laws, rules and regulations that a KTH researcher should know of. That sort of knowledge needs to be up to date, so the idea is for researchers to easily be able to update themselves by taking the courses.”
What impact do you hope the Canvas courses will have?
“I hope to support the researchers by making the content of the courses more easily accessed. The idea is to add more course modules in the future, depending on the demand. We want to facilitate for researchers who decide to become leaders of research collaborations and to, in the long-term, improve the quality of KTH’s research collaborations.
We’re also making the support more efficient, so that the researchers have more time to research.”
Katarina Ahlfort
Photo: KTH