‘Proyecto INTER-ES’: An experience applied to language teaching

IInterdisciplinary

Vol. 1, No. 3 S J

Vantaa Regional UnitLaurea University of Applied Sciences

Studies Journal

2011

ISSN 1799-2702

Interdisciplinary Studies JournalISJ is an international forum exploring the frontiers of innovation, creativity and development. Each paper submitted to ISJ is subject to a double blind peer review. The journal does not limit itself to traditions specifically associated with one discipline or school of thought per se but embraces consideration of emerging issues assessing novel terrains and encouraging change. ISJ aims to publish papers on diverse subjects related but not limited to business management, tourism,leadership and development of preventive welfare work, health promotion, social services, business information technology, regional development, beauty care, correctional services, and nursing. All the ISJ papers contribute to raising awareness and rethinking interdisciplinarity. ISJ is known to serve both industry and academic communities by advancing the premises for implementing research into practice. The quarterly journal issues published under a distinguished list of editors, including special issues, comprise an expected annual volume of over 700 pages.

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ISSN 1799-2702

Guest EditorCampus Encounters 2011 conference papers

Dr Tarja KantolaPrincipal Lecturer Laurea Otanniemi

Laurea University of Applied [email protected]

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL Vol. 1, No. 3 2011 © Vantaa Regional Unit (Laurea) 1799-2702 1

Dr Mohammad AZIM Professor Mihail KULAPOVSwinburne University of Technology, Australia Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics, RussiaDr Suman BANERJEE Dr P. K. MISHRANanyan Technological University, Singapore Siksha O Anusandhan University, IndiaProfessor Ramesh BEHL Professor Abdallah OMEZZINEInternational Management Institute, India University of Nizwa, Sultanate of OmanDr Meena CHAVAN Dr Kees RIETSEMAMacquarie University, Australia Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, the U.S.Dr Nimit CHOWDHARY Dr Jurgis SAMULEVIČIUSIndian Institute of Tourism & Travel Management, India Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, LithuaniaProfessor Jerry COURVISANOS Dr Jeannie J. SCOTTUniversity of Ballarat, Australia H-E-B School of Business & Administration, the U.S.Dr José Guilherme LEITÃO DANTAS Dr Carol SEAGLEPolytechnic Institute of Leiria, Portugal University of North Carolina, the U.S.Dr James GILLEPIE Professor Ainin SULAIMANUniversity of Illinois at Chicago, the U.S. University of Malaya, MalaysiaAsst Prof Michael GUIRY Dr Rajesh Kumar TYAGIUniversity of the Incarnate Word, the U.S. HEC Montreal, CanadaDr Robert INBAKARAN Dr Lorraine WARRENUniversity of Canberra, Australia University of Southampton, the UKAssoc Prof Sandra JONES Dr Ali Hussein Saleh ZOLAITRMIT University, Australia The Bahrain of University, the Kingdom of BahrainAssoc Prof Byron KEATINGUniversity of Canberra, Australia

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International Studies Journal (ISJ) welcomes contributions from both academics and practitioners in the form of original papers and case studies in the subject areas indicated, and on similar topics. It may publish book reviews and commentaries on developments in interdisciplinarity as well as notes on research work in progress and reports of relevant conferences. The ISJ readership consists of academics and (post) graduate students together with executives and managers, policy makers and administrators from both public and private sector.

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INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES JOURNAL Vol. 1, No. 3 2011 © Vantaa Regional Unit (Laurea) 1799-27022

International Reviewer Panel

Professor David Kaufman Professor Mohamed Ibrahim EraqiSimon Fraser University, Canada Fayoum University, EgyptProfessor Jeanne Maiden Dr Stanislav IvanovPoint Loma Nazarene University, the U.S. International University College, BulgariaProfessor Richard Kouri Professor Wolfgang AlthofNC State University, the U.S. University of Missouri – St. Louis, the U.S.Professor Alberto Zanzi Professor James GilsinanSuffolk University, the U.S. Saint Louis University, the U.S.Assistant Professor Shishu Zhang Dr Shishu ZhangH-E-B School of Business and Administration, the U.S. H-E-B School of Business and Administration, the U.S.Assistant Professor Doan Winkel Professor Peter NaudeIllinois State University, the U.S. Manchester Business School, the UKVisiting Assistant Professor Bethany Davidson Dr Linda McMannessWestern Carolina University, the U.S. Baylor University, the U.S.Dr. oec. HSG Hans Vettiger Associate Professor Carlos TexeiraUniversität Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein University of British Columbia – Okanagan, CanadaAssociate Professor Thomas J. Reichlmayr Professor P. GroenewegenRochester Institute of Technology, the U.S. VU University Amsterdam, the NetherlandsDr Margaret McLean Associate Professor Danny BarashThe University of Auckland, New Zealand Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, IsraelProfessor Nicos Komnikos Assistant Professor Michael GuiryAristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece University of the Incarnate Word, the U.S.Dr Rod Gapp Associate Professor Per BlenkerGriffithUniversity,Australia Aarhus University, DenmarkDr Shawn P. Daly Professor L.J.R Bert ScholtensH-E-B School of Business and Administration, the U.S. University of Groningen, the NetherlandsAffiliated Associate Professor Bertil Thorngren Dr Alcina Augusta de Sena Portugal DiasStockholm School of Economics, Sweden Universidade do Minho – Braga, PortugalDr Junette Perez Professor Shuyi ZhangDe La Salle University, Philippines Shanghai Finance University, ChinaAssistant Professor Shih Yung Chou Associate Professor Ghazali MusaH-E-B School of Business and Administration, the U.S. University of Malaya, MalaysiaAnalyst Alastair Blyth Associate Professor Carlos Eduardo Moreno

MantillaOrganisation of Economic Co-operation and Development, France

Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Colombia

Associate Professor Keith SawyerWashington University, the U.S.

Interdisciplinary Studies Journal (ISJ) received 20 submissions via the Encounters11 conference collaboration. After a rigorous international double-blind peer review process involving 35 reviewers representing 19 countries from 5 Continents, 8 articles were accepted for publishing in the ISJ - Creating Wellness, Vol. 1, No. 3.


In this issue

Double-blind peer reviewedSummaries and implications for managers and executivesService Design as a tool for regional innovations

Soile Juujärvi, Kaija Pesso, Pekka Räsänen

‘Proyecto INTER-ES’: An experience applied to language teachingAna M. Fernández Vallejo

Supporting graduation with thesis intensiveAltti Lagstedt, Raine Kauppinen

Progressive inquiry in agile software development education Raine Kauppinen, Altti Lagstedt

Case method as directed learning in professional ethicsLeticia Bañares Parera

Social media perceptions on Finnish tourism sectorJohanna Heinonen

Social Constructivist Approach to Multicultural Entrepreneurship LearningGer Yucel, Evariste Habiyakare

“Get a Life” -project – Holistic career and entrepreneurship counselling for university studentsTarja Römer-Paakkanen

EPILOGUEFlashes from the Encounters 2011

Edited by the Encounters11 Conference Chair Dr Tarja Kantola

Research notes

LbD in practiceInternational experiences at Porvoo Campus

Hanna-Mari Makkonen

Forthcoming ISJ Calls

Submission guidelines

Presenting Laurea Porvoo

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Double-blind peer reviewed

Summaries and implications for managers and executives (pp. 5-12)


Service Design as a tool for regional innovations

Soile Juujärvi, Kaija Pesso, Pekka Räsänen

Laurea University of Applied Sciences and the vocational college Omnia develop new ways to produce learning and services in the area of Suurpelto, in Espoo. As one of the main objectives of the joint project KOULII (2010-2012) is to create a new model for R&D&I that integrates Service Design (SD) with practice-based regional innovation activity. This paper describes the beginning phase of the project, guided by realistic evaluation as a research strategy. Educators’ initial conceptions of SD and the evolving SD process are elaborated within a theoretical framework presented by Vijay Kumar (2009). The results showed that the educators were the most familiar with users’ needs as a starting point for SD and the least familiar with the SD process and methods. Kumar’s process model proved to be useful in explaining the initial phase of the project and can be applied as a tool for promoting regional innovations.

Main PrinciplesSD includes several methods, varying from simple ones, such as collective using post-it sticks, to very complex ones, such as the blue-print method. Based on the analysis of successful academic and professional projects, Kumar (2004, 2009) has created a generic framework called a design innovation process. The framework consists of seven key modes that innovations go through. Our research strategy is realistic evaluation (RE) that can especially be applied in the evaluation of projects with clear objectives. The target group of this study were 34 educators from Laurea and Omnia participating in the project,representingvariousfieldsofeducation,theprojectpersonnelofsixpeopleandthreeexperts,actingaslecturersand consults. Video-recording was used as the main data collecting method.

Key ImplicationsWehaveorganizedresultsaccordingtoprinciplesKumar(2009)definedasthekeyprinciplesforsuccessfulinnovations:(1)Build innovations around people’s experiences (2) Think of innovations as systems and not just products(3) Cultivate an innovation culture in organisations, and (4) Adopt rigorous design processes and structured methods. Some participants pointed out how client satisfaction is not always a criterion for maintaining and delivering services especially in the public sector and some services are abolished despite positive assessment from clients. Some participants had also recognized that delivering a service is embedded in a culture that service providers maintain through their values and ways of behaving. The results show that the UAS and vocational college educators had relatively good initial understanding about the main principles of SD at the beginning of the project (see Kumar 2009). In the light of the results, adopting rigorous design processes and methods seemed to be the educators’ weakest point on the SD orientation. It is essential to grasp the SD as along-termprocesswithdifferentstages.OurfinalaimistointegrateSDwithpractice-basedregionalinnovationactivity.It is important also to have other stakeholders and interests groups involved in the joint innovation process for various reasons.


‘Proyecto INTER-ES’: An experience applied to language teaching

Ana M. Fernández Vallejo

This paper explains what INTER-ES project is, how it was designed, how it was implemented and what the results were. INTER-ES project is a learning experience based on the use of Moodle as a work platform and Spanish business language course, with the following aims: improving communication skills, promoting intercultural communication, implementingbusinessknowledgeandabilities, improving thosespecificskills for the informationsociety,anddevelopingnegotiationstrategies and teamwork. Since Moodle is an online learning platform, it captures some of the advantages it had achieved with distance learning, its immediate predecessor at the classroom level.

Main PrinciplesThe novelty of the project lies in the approach taken. INTER-ES project is not based on a “teaching method.” It is a method of collaborative learning opportunities. Students put into practice the language skills and business knowledge acquired in the course of their respective degrees. INTER-ES project is a business language course that combines the use of technology and distance learning with face-to-face activities, or “blended learning.” The assigned tasks and role-plays foster dialogue and negotiation skills. To design an adequate and effective e-learning stage, it is essential to have clear and predefinedelements.Secondly,itisessentialtoconsidertheneedsofstudents.Third,itisimportanttoovercomeoneofthemostcommonproblemsofstudente-learning:lonelinessandisolation.

Key ImplicationsOurexperiencewithMoodlewiththeFirstEditionofINTER-ESprojectleadstothefollowingconclusions:

1. The Moodle platform is suitable for building an international business environment where it is possible to develop intercultural awareness.

2. This platform combined with an adequate methodological design offers students the opportunity to practice their communication skills in an environment of authentic communication.

3. Moodle is adapted to new learning models, enabling teamwork and communication. From this perspective the students share information, build knowledge, generate skills and attitudes, always from previous experiences (in the classroom or in real life), to the extent that they engage in the acquisition of new proposals and interact. Therefore, the platform enables a type of joint student-centered learning.

4.Unfortunately,wehaveidentifiedsomelimitationsespeciallyinregardtoreal-timecommunication.Moodleoffersonlytext and not audio chat or video, so it is necessary to leave the platform and use other tools like Skype to get in touch with other groups. Even so, oral production is done mainly in the negotiation team.


Supporting graduation with thesis intensive

Altti Lagstedt, Raine Kauppinen

A new kind of intensive support course for students writing their thesis was experimented at HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes in Spring 2010. The support course was aimed at students who either had trouble getting their thesis started or who had already started one, but had not been able to advance their thesis for a while. The main focus in the intensive thesis course was to empower the students in advancing the thesis work itself and provide support as the students worked with their own theses as empowered learners. The fundamental idea was to create such a work oriented environment supported by occupational instruction and guidance that it was like students were not in school but having a daytime job. It seems that the earlier support activities, based on the consultative approach, are not enough. There is still space for new approaches and more research should be done, “the thesis intensive” is a one possible alternative path where to continue.

Main PrinciplesThere is the Polytechnics Act (Ammattikorkeakoululaki, 2003) and the Government Decree on Polytechnics (Valtioneuvoston asetus ammattikorkeakouluista, 2003) which describe how the universities of applied science should act. In that Government Decree on Polytechnics it is said that a thesis is a compulsory part of the degree, so it is in the law that every student has to write a thesis (Valtioneuvoston asetus ammattikorkeakouluista, 2003). The new support course developed was called “the thesis intensive”. It was aimed at students who either had trouble getting their thesis started or who had already started one, but for a reason or another, had not been able to advance their thesis for a while. The main focus was to empower the students in advance the thesis work itself and provide support as the students worked with their own theses as empowered learners.Thepossiblecandidateswereselectedfromthestudentregister.Thedurationofthecoursewasoneweek(fiveworkingdays)andforeachdaytherewereseparate,beforehanddefinedobjectives.Anelectroniclearningenvironment(BlackBoard) was used, and at the end of each day, the students saved their latest results to BlackBoard. When the week was over, there was a feedback meeting where the students were able to comment on the course, ask last questions and give anonymous feedback regarding the course using a feedback form.

Key ImplicationsThe results gained regarding “the thesis intensive” were very encouraging. There were many positive results in this course. Firstly, our target was to get approximately 10% of potential students to the course. Secondly, all the students were very motivated to work. Thirdly, we got very positive feedback from the students after the course. Based on these results, thesis intensives will be organised also in the future. Some development targets have already been found. In later courses, studentsaredividedinthreegroups:firstgroupforthosewhodon’tknowtheirtopicyet(andhavenosupervisoreither);secondgroupforthosewhohavestartedtheirthesis,butwhoarestuckanddon’tknowhowtocontinue;andthethirdgroupforthosewhoarefinishingtheirthesisandneedmostlyhelpforwriting.Anotherdevelopmenttargetistotakebettercareof those students who, after a promising start in “the thesis intensive”, vanish totally. t would be, in addition, useful to do a research about those students, who didn’t attend “the thesis intensive” course even though their thesis work obviously didn’t make any progress. What kind of support activities might help them? All in all, it could be said that “the thesis intensive” was definitelyonestepforwardtotherightdirection.


Progressive inquiry in agile software development education

Raine Kauppinen, Altti Lagstedt

During the ongoing curriculum development work, a software development course in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes was redesigned. In addition, the setting and learning objectives of the old and the new course anddiscussiononhowtheseobjectiveswerefulfilledintheimplementationofthenewcoursecomparedtothepreviousexperiences from the old course are presented. Also, the learning process and framework supporting progressive inquiry constructed for and applied during the implementation as well as the theoretical background for it is discussed. Finally, the results of analysis based on the experiences gained from the case study regarding the applicability of the learning process and the framework applied for agile software development education are presented.

Main PrinciplesThe software development framework to be applied on the new course, Scrum (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p.3-5) was selected, since it follows the agile software developing principles and, based on our own experiences, is largely used in companies. The key learning objectives of the new course were set to be project and group work via application of Scrum inasoftwaredevelopmentproject,applicationofsoftwaredefinitionsandsoftwaremodeling,designandimplementation.Inframework of this the case study, the usage of traditional teaching methods such as the amount of lectures and exercises was minimized compared with the old implementation. All the work was also done in pairs and roles that were rotated after each sprint making sure that every team member works with every team member reducing the risk of subgrouping.

Key ImplicationsOverall, we found out that the iterative nature of our Scrum based agile learning framework supports problem-based learning and progressive inquiry as a learning method. During sprints the development team applied the shared expertise to create working theories, critically evaluate them leading to search for new knowledge, to setting new questions and to creatingnewworkingtheories.Weexperiencedthattheflexibilityprovidedbytheframeworkalsosupportedprogressiveinquiry and problem based learning. Our Scrum based agile learning framework provides good support for team building andcontinuouslyimprovingitsworkingmethods.Weweresatisfiedinthatmultiplesprintsgavedevelopmentteamsmoretime to learn how to implement product owner’s requirements stated as user stories into a working piece of software. The experiment shows that in agile software development education, it is not always necessary to advance so that the theory isfirstcoveredthoroughlyandonlyafterthatbegintoapplyit.Basedonourexperiences,weproposethatalthoughthisexperiment applied our framework in learning of software development domain using progressive inquiry and problem based learning, the framework is generalisable to other domains as well.


Case method as directed learning in professional ethics

Leticia Bañares Parera

Thisstudyconsiderstheusefulnessofthecasemethodintheteachingofprofessionalethicsatdegreelevel.Infirstplace,the study will frame professional ethics within the context of university studies as a subject which is necessary in order to provide the university student with a rounded education. Once this subject has been contextualized within the university sphere, the main objective of this study is to demonstrate how the case method constitutes an especially suitable tool within this subject, as it transforms the teaching of ethical behavior into directed learning. The case method is an interactive methodoflearninginwhich“real”orprobablesituationsareworkedon.Whatisspecificaboutthismethodisthatisaguidedlearning in which students are involved, consciously and responsibly, in their own learning.

Main PrinciplesThis study will frame professional ethics within the context of university studies as a subject which is necessary in order to provide the university student with a rounded education. This study considers how the tool is adapted to the teaching of “professional” ethics as well as its incorporation into the university curriculum. Recent experience shows us that theoretical andtechnicaltraining–withintheuniversityfield–isabsolutelyessentialtostudents’education,butitalsoshowsusthatthis is not enough to prepare students to face their own personal and social responsibilities. It is also important that students acquire “personal” training not as something “added”, but rather as the foundation that confers sense on their subsequent activities.

Key ImplicationsThe objective of professional ethics is not only to resolve questions posed by great dilemmas, but rather to ensure that its principles are present in any relevant decisions made by the worker. The case method is a tool that is suitable for teaching professionalethicsbecause:

1. The case method is a didactic process that encourages students to further their knowledge and that stimulates their need to discover.

2. Above all, the case method fosters the exercising of creativity due to the complexity of the situations presented and because of the need to search for alternatives.

3. The case method is a didactic process that aims to recuperate the social dimension of teaching, given that the planning as well as the work and discussion is accompanied at all times by a consideration of others and for others.

4. The case method is a didactic process that aims to develop the capacity to ask questions, requiring an intense effort of concentration on the part of the student in the face of problems.

5.Itisadidacticprocessbasedontakingdecisionsasaresultofareflexiveandcriticalattitude.


Social media perceptions on Finnish tourism sector

Johanna Heinonen

Customerencounteriscrucialforafirmandservicequality,itgivesanimpressionofafirmanditswayofhandlingthings.Especially insmallandmedium-sizedtourismfirmsthedistinctivecompetitivecore liesonservicesandfirm’sability toprovide them. Because of the increased use of this new media among customers it is essential for tourism companies to know how to use it and how to create the same atmosphere of caring and trust as in face to face contact. It is worth knowing what happens in the service situation in internet or social media and what kind of aspects should be taken into consideration while determining how successful the encounter has been.

Main PrinciplesIn order to get started with this task it is important to know how small and medium-sized tourism companies use social media at the moment and how they see the customer service they provide. It is also essential to study customers’ point of view and their wishes while using social media. The basic questions are

•Howcompaniesperceivesocialmediaasoneof theircommunicationchannelsandhowthesechannelsareusedvs.customers’ point of view to social media as a communication channel and the ways they would like it to be used?

•Whatarethecriticalpointsincommunicationinsocialmediabothfromcustomers’andcompanies’perspective?

•Howcustomerserviceissuesaretakenintoconsiderationinsocialmediastrategies?

Service quality is always a combination of the expected service and the experienced. By answering research questions in quantitative study the gaps between the companies’ and customers’ perspectives might be found as well as recommendations for the small and medium-sized tourism companies can be given.

Key ImplicationsThis research is of quantitative nature, which helps in inductive reasoning in the research problem area. Social media seems to be an easier and cheaper way to get publicity to a company than the traditional media, like newspapers, television, radio etc. However, it needs engagement and time from the company and it must follow the plan as much as any media. The biggest difference and the greatest challenge in social media is the customer impact. By giving customers free hands and let them make their voice heard, a company can gain much in forms of publicity, customer loyalty, brand creation and finally,profits.Theresultsfromthisresearchwereclear.Companiesareinterestedinsocialmedia,buttheyhaven’trealizedthe challenges and the new way of working, yet. The most important issues and ways to improve service in social media wouldbetheincreaseofuserimpactandmoreefficientandplannedfollowup.Thefirstonewouldhelptoenhancetheencounters with customers in the moment of truth in social media and the latter one would help in improving the media, its use and product development.


Social Constructivist Approach to Multicultural Entrepreneurship Learning

Ger Yucel , Evariste Habiyakare

So far, there is little academic research about teaching and learning entrepreneurship in different educational institutions. For instance, except the individual psychological traits found easily in literature, there is little research about how entrepreneurship could be taught in today’s multicultural classes. This paper focuses on experimental learning environment in which students were invited to learn and to develop their entrepreneurship skills in two Entrepreneurship Camps (EC). We use a social constructivist approach to discuss the planning and the implementation of these entrepreneurship camps. The two experiments show that team work, networking and cooperation were valuable for developing a good business plan. Planning and executing the implementation according to plan is also vital for success despite the fact that one should also keepacertain levelofflexibility. InaccordancewiththeSocialconstructivistview,toachievegoodresults, thelearnersshould be allowed to own the learning process without much interference from the instructors.

Main PrincipalsLearners should be constantly engaged and challenged with tasks that refer to skills and knowledge just beyond their current level of mastery. The critical goal is to support the learner in becoming an effective thinker. It is important to achievetherightbalancebetweenthedegreeofstructureandflexibilitythatisbuiltintothelearningprocess.MCELCampsmay be associated either to Problem Based or Project Based Learning because among other similarities these methods are organized around a shared goal (project), both promote active learning and both are learner centered constructive strategies (Savery 2006). The MCEL project consisted of organizing and implementing two entrepreneurship camps as learning environment for multicultural students at HAAGA-HELIA Porvoo in Finland. The MCEL required students to work in groups of 5 - 6 and to take responsibility for generating a unique applicable business idea and for a location of their own choice. The learning took place throughout a process. The MCEL Camps created authenticity by providing students with the same experience they are likely to face after completion of their studies. All factors, resources and limitations were dictated by the markets in the chosen sector.

Key ImplicationsA feedback session was arranged and participants and experts were asked to assess the whole process. There was a consensusonthefacttheplanningandorganizingofthefirstcampwassuccessfulalthoughitwasthefirstMCELcamparranged by the students. During the MCEL Camps, we also observed some factors that can act as barriers for the learning to take place. Time management is prerequisite for such MCEL camps to succeed. Two issues were stressed as the most valuablelearningthattookplaceineachcamp:

- Team work, networking and cooperation were valuable although hard to learn

- Planning and executing the implementation according to plan is vital for success despite the fact that one should also keep acertainlevelofflexibility.

When asked about the most needed skills for such learning to take place, the following skills were brought up by the camper students:planning,teamwork,organizingtheteamefforts,developingbusinessidea,patience,presentationandpublicspeaking and cooperation. The camp leaders on the other hand, underlined taking responsibility, organizational skills, making a budget and leadership skills on top of their list. The two MCEL camps increased students´ awareness about why they had to learn certain things and many were able to internalize a lot of knowledge through these two camps. For teachers these two MCEL Camps supported the earlier believe about using group-work and brainstorming techniques to enhance classroom learning.


Get a Life project – Holistic career and entrepreneurship counseling for university students

Tarja Römer-Paakkanen

This paper is based on an ongoing project (Get a Life) that aims to promote future-oriented thinking and pro-activity among university students. Before starting the project we made several studies or inquiries to get a wider view of the student counselling process. First we made a quantitative inquiry, so that the students can consider their experience and their need of career or entrepreneurship counselling. The main data was collected by focus-group interviews of student counsellors and teachers. We also collected data by an adaptation of the Canadian DACUM (Developing A Curriculum) model which is used to analyse the contents of the requirements of various occupations.

Main PrinciplesTheaimofthispaperistofindsomeanswersandsomeadvicehowtorenewourtrainingprogrammesandcounsellingmodelsfromthecareerpathandentrepreneurshippointofview.Thefocusinthispaperisonthefollowingproblemareas:

•Whatkindofcareerandentrepreneurshipcounsellinguniversitystudentsneedandwant?(Inquiryforuniversitystudents)

•How should we connect career counseling and entrepreneurship education? (Focus-group discussions with studycounsellors, career counsellors and teachers)

•Whatkindofthecompetencesandattitudesdostudycounsellorsneedwhenenhancingstudents’pro-activityandcareerplanning? (DACUM analysis with study counsellors)

The framework of this paper lies on the theories dealing with the general competence and attitudes and expertise of student counsellors, the theories and practices in entrepreneurship education and on the career theories. As the aim of our project is to develop some tools to promote pro-activity and entrepreneurial spirit and skills among university students, the concepts of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behavior are in central position at our project.

Key ImplicationsThe research approach is both quantitative and qualitative. With the simulation tool the students can safely map and test future scenarios and create various future paths for themselves. Our studies show that the career and entrepreneurship education process in higher education is not a linear process. Rather, it is more of a spiral process in which the different levelsofcareerandentrepreneurshipeducationaremoreinter-dependentandco-existent.Thescientificoutcomeoftheproject will be a pedagogical model, whilst the practical outcome will be a virtual handbook for career counsellors. The project also predicts some long-term future scenarios on the development and changes in working life. Preliminary results of this project show that a distinct line should be drawn between how the student counsellor should meet the student, to be interested in students’ every -day life and how to teach entrepreneurial attitude and behaviour in the career path. The results of this study can be implemented when planning and developing the training programmes and curriculum from career and entrepreneurship point of view.


Service Design as a tool for regional innovations

Soile JuujärviLaurea University of Applied Sciences, Laurea Otanniemi, Espoo, Finland

Kaija PessoLaurea University of Applied Sciences, Laurea Otanniemi, Espoo, Finland

Pekka RäsänenOmnia, The Joint Authority of Education in Espoo Region, Espoo, Finland

AbstractLaurea University of Applied Sciences and the vocational college Omnia develop new ways to produce learning and services in the area of Suurpelto, in Espoo. As one of the main objectives of the joint project KOULII (2010-2012) is to create a new model for R&D&I that integrates Service Design (SD) with practice-based regional innovation activity. This paper describes the beginning phase of the project, guided by realistic evaluation as a research strategy. Educators’ initial conceptions of SD and the evolving SD process are elaborated within a theoretical framework presented by Vijay Kumar (2009). The results showed that the educators were the most familiar with users’ needs as a starting point for SD and the least familiar with the SD process and methods. The results suggest that Kumar’s process is useful in explaining the initial phase of the project and can be applied as a tool for promoting regional innovations.

Keywords: service design, practice-based innovation activity, realistic evaluation (RE)

IntroductionLaurea University of Applied Sciences and the vocational college Omnia develop collaboration between the secondary and tertiary level vocational education as well as novel ways to produce learning and services in the area of Suurpelto in Espoo. One of the main objectives of the joint project KOULII (2010-2012), funded by the European Social Fund, is to create a new model for research, development and innovation activity (R&D&I) that is based on the concept of Service Design (SD). SD refers to user-driven planning and shaping a service experience so that a service responds to the user’s needs as well as to the service supplier’s commercial purposes.

Suurpelto is a new area in Espoo which will be undergoing a heavy construction process in the next ten years and serves as a living lab environment for the project. Planning Suurpelto has been guided by the vision work of the City of Espoo, construction firms and land-owners aiming atenabling proximity of services, ecological sustainability and possibilities to connect smoothly work, family and leisure activities. Educators, students and other actors in the area will develop and experiment the services and products suitable for the needs and life situations of users interacting with them (Project application Koulii, 30 June 2010).

As an integral part of the project, evaluation research,

employing realistic evaluation as a research strategy, is carried out covering all phases of the project. Data has been collected from seminars, workshops and experiments in order to outline the evolvingmodel of R&D&I. In the firstphase of the research, we have chosen a program theory for the SD process taking place in the project. In this paper, we introduce the project and its main ideas, elaborate principles of SD and the selected theory of a design innovation process (Kumar, 2009) in the light of present findings, aswell as discuss their implications for further development. Ourresearchhasbeenguidedby the followingquestions:(1) what are educators’ conceptions of SD like at the beginning of the project, and (2) what is a SD process like at the beginning of the project?

The background of the project During four last decades, the focus of societies and economy has shifted from industrial production to the provision of information and services. Services now represent the majority of the gross domestic product of developed nations, being the major employment sector. Despite this, investments for research and development have been low in the service sector, as well as client satisfaction (Mager, 2009).Thedissatisfactiontrendisstillcontinuing:Lastyearcustomer satisfaction of companies decreased most in Finland and in Russia, being the lowest with IT-services and


the highest with pharmacies (Yle News, 24 January 2011).

Successful and innovative companies have however startedtorealisetheneedforservice-specificapproaches,methods, roles and structures that all represent Service Design (SD). SD is a rather new concept being firstintroducedasanacademicfieldintheearly1990’swhentheKöln International School of Design was established at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne. In the past, design usedtobeassociatedwithmakingproductsgood-looking:desirable, useful and usable. To date, design has however changed its scope and extends to the experience that clients have with products and services. Furthermore, the recent design also reaches the processes and systems that are behind these experiences. To summarize, SD is the design of overall experience of a service, as well as the design of the process and the strategy to provide that service (Moritz, 2005.) It aims to ensure that services are useful, usable and desirable from the client’s point of view, and effective, efficient, and distinctive from the supplier’s point of view.Nowadays SD has established its position as a multi-disciplinary platform and education that has credibility in teaching, research and practise all over the world (Mager, 2009). Rigorous processes and structured methods are characteristic of SD, and even though creativity plays a big role it is rehearsed with a high degree of discipline (Kumar, 2009;Moritz,2005).

As the educators of future service providers and deliverers, we got interested in the possibilities of SD when thinking about launching a project related to planning services for the new area, in Espoo, called Suurpelto. It is a rapidly growing area in the middle of Espoo with 325 hectares of park-like forest that used to be empty until the fall 2010, when the firstinhabitantsmovedin.Thegenericplanningprocessofover ten years has been rather unique in terms of combining various stakeholders, such as building companies, land owners and city representatives. According to the created vision, Suurpelto will be an ecological city close to everything. Homes, workplaces, culture, and pastime services will all be within walking distance and this way, inhabitants will have more time to focus on the things that matter the most. The planning aims at creating satisfaction as well as promoting ecological sustainability and possibilities to smoothly connect work, family and leisure activities (Suurpelto Marketing). However there are not yet any services available in Suurpelto, except for a municipal day centre and an internet-based shopping service. In terms of our project, Suurpelto serves as a genuine living lab for the educators and students of Laurea UAS and the vocational college Omnia.

The Koulii project represents regional development work that is prescribed by law as one of the main tasks for the universities of applied sciences (Ammattikorkeakoululaki,

2003). According to Vesa Harmaakorpi, universities of applied sciences and vocational colleges represent practice-based innovation activity in their endeavours of regional development (see Konsti-Laakso, 25 October 2010). Practice-based innovation activity is derived from doing: knowledgeactivity isorganisedaroundaparticularapplication and is diffuse and heterogeneous by nature. Innovators need to gather and combine different types of information from different types of sources. This kind of knowledge activity is called Mode 2, in contrast with Mode 1, science-based innovation activity that leans on homogeneous knowledgeandfocusesonclearlydefinedproblem-solving(Gibbonsetal,1994;Melkas&Harmaakorpi,2008).Mode2 activity is nurtured by innovation networks that connect people with different aims and knowledge interests. Especially important for innovations are the so-called “weak ties” in social networks - people with different backgrounds and interests - as they bring novel information to innovators (Granovetter, 2005). It is also important to identify “structural holes” between homogeneous networks and to be able to communicateacross theminorder tofindnewknowledgefrom different groups (Burt, 2004). According to Harmaakorpi (2008) the potential of practice-based innovation activity lies in its capacity to outline recent and future client needs by utilizing weak ties and structural holes. In order to enable fruitful innovation activity, the Koulii project has to gain an acknowledged position as one of the actors in the region, as well as to create a diverse network among inhabitants and other regional actors (companies, authorities, associations).

The reason why we turned to SD while searching for innovative methodology for regional development is that both practice-based innovative activity and SD represents the user-driven approach. They share the similar interest to have clients and users involved in innovation activities, preferably throughout the whole process. The concept of ‘co-creation’ crystallises the essence of user participation. According to Satu Miettinen (2009, 11) “co-creation allows the customer (client) to co-construct the service experience to suit her context, and the SD process offers methods to enable this.” In turn, according to Brigit Mager (2009, 38) co-creation means that clients and customers will be thoroughly integrated into the exploration and creation process, and even become co-producers and co-creators of value. The ultimate goal will be collaborative services, where users makeasignificantcontributiontoservicedelivery(Manzini,2009).

BecauseSD isanovelapproach in thefieldofvocationaleducation, we wanted to examine the conceptions and views of the teachers involved in the project. How familiar are they with the principles of SD? What should they learn more? Asthesecondgoal,wewantedtoexplorethefirstphaseof


the project in terms of the SD process. We have chosen SD principles and a process model presented by Vijay Kumar (2009) as a theoretical framework, within which results are reflected and interpreted.When comparing principles andprocess models presented by Moritz (2005), Mager (2009) and Kumar (2009) we concluded that they have much in common. However, Kumar’s model proved to be the most jargon-free and generic, and therefore suitable for the purposes of our project, in which all participants are novices ratherthanexperts inthefieldofSD.Inaddition,Kumar’smodel is the only one that explicitly unites innovation and SD processes. Because we have built our theoretical understanding in interaction with empirical observations, as realistic evaluation suggests (see below), we present our theoretical framework and results connected with each other.

Method

Realistic evaluation as a research strategyOur research strategy is realistic evaluation (RE) that is a rathernewmethodologicalapproach,beingfirstintroducedby Pawson and Tilley (1997). RE can especially be applied intheevaluationofprojectswithclearobjectives;itstrivesfor the evaluation of several aspects, such as effectiveness, efficiency and applicability and draws conclusions bycomparing observations against evaluation criteria. RE includes also process evaluation which focuses on examining how interventions and measures are carried out and evaluating their outcomes. RE aims at utilizing gathered knowledge immediately, in order to redirect activities towards desired goals. The role of a researcher is not to stay neutral but to act as a developer in order to enhance progress. (Anttila, 2007).

The concepts of ‘model’ and ‘program theory’ are essential to realistic evaluation. A program theory is a theory about “what works for whom and in what circumstances” (see Pawson & Tilley, 2007). It involves a basic idea of how goalsareachieved,explanationsforexpectedinfluencesaswell as grounds for future measures. A program theory is derived from previous research literature, successful similar projects and experts’ knowledge, but surrounding peoples’ tacit knowledge can serve as an important source as well. (Anttila, 2007).

The construction of the present program theory is based on the recent literature concerning SD and informal discussions with SD experts, but certainly our tacit knowledge has also affected our decisions. In the course of research, a program theory is checked and improved based on empirical observations (Anttila, 2007) and it is also the case for us. By utilizing so called abductive reasoning (see Anttila, 2007,

p. 62), we have compared our observations and preliminary results with the evolving theoretical framework.

Participants The target group of this study were 26 educators from Laurea and Omnia participating in the project, representing various fields of education, the project personnel of sixpeople and three experts, acting as lecturers and consults. At the beginning of the project, the educators involved formed teams with 3-8 members who were followed by videotaping at the workshops. A number of attending participants varied from time to time. At some occasions, there were also some other people present, such as working life partners, students and residents of Suurpelto. All individuals present undersigned a personal study agreement and an informed consent form.

Data collecting and analysisVideo-recording was used as the main data collecting method. Present data is based on video-records of the educators’ walking trip to Suurpelto (4 October 2010), a lecture on SD at the seminar (25 October 2010) and three workshops held on October – December 2010. The data is 5 hours 20 minutes altogether. The lecture on SD was fully transcribed, yielding 15 pages with the font Times Roman 11 and line 1. The material was analysed by using inductive content analysis by reducing, grouping and abstracting the data relevant to study questions (Tuomi & Sarajärvi, 2004) with the aid of the programme QRS Nvivo (see Luomanen & Räsänen, 2000). The analysis resulted in 37 subcategories and 9 main categories that were then arranged under preselected themes derived from the theoretical framework (SD principles). The content analysis was checked by another researcher with 80 % agreement on the subcategories and 90 % agreement on the main categories. For the sake of clarity, the names of the established categories are not mentioned in the results section, but the contents of the categories are fully described.

Another data was selectively transcribed and analysed in order to describe the process of idea development of the each team across time, resulting in the descriptions of three stages of development. These descriptions were presented to each team in order to check the reliability of the analysis. The teams fully agreed with the researchers on the descriptions and also gave some additional explanations that were further utilized in interpreting the results.


Results

Understanding SD principles In this section, we present the results of the content analysis based on the lecture on SD, held by a SD expert to the teachers and the project personnel. The lecture lasted 2.5 hours and included a lively discussion. In addition, at the beginning of the lecture, everyone told their definition ofSD. This material was taken under scrutiny because it was expected to reveal the teachers’ as well as the lecturer’s basic understanding on SD. The width of the discussion and emerging questions would point out which should be the next steps in the project. We have organized results according to principles Kumar (2009) defined as the keyprinciples for successful innovations: (1)Build innovationsaround people’s experiences (2) Think of innovations as systems and not just products (3) Cultivate an innovation culture in organisations, and (4) Adopt rigorous design processes and structured methods. It is worth noting that plausibly neither the audience nor the lecturer was explicitly aware about these principles; nevertheless they coveredalmost all discussion.

Build innovations around people’s experiencesInnovation process start with an objective of understanding how end-users use intended offerings, whether they are products or services. In design innovation, the emphasis is to create innovations that have a good fit with users. They are more focused on what people do, their behaviours, activities, needs, and motivations (Kumar & Whitney, 2007).Therefore innovation should be built around what can be learnt from people’s overall experience. Focusing on experience can lead to surprising opportunities for innovation that are firmly grounded in people’s daily lives (Kumar 2009, 92).

The view on people’s experiences as a starting point of SD was commonly acknowledged and shared by the participants. According to them, SD refers to planning and developing services basing on clients’ and end-users needs, and responding to their needs in a tailor-made way. SD involves collecting feed-back on how needs are satisfied and expectationsmet. Itmeans adopting clients’perspective as a point of departure while working with them. The lecturer emphasised that SD means a genuine attempt to solve a user’s problem. Instead of just responding to a user’s needs satisfactorily, we should try to delight her or him with our services and products. In SD, the highest outcome to be achieved should be a delighted client. We should set divergent target levels for satisfaction and delight.

The lecturer emphasized that if we want to ground

innovations in users’ experiences, we have to get them involved in the SD process from early beginning. Users can participate in planning through testing early ideas and prototypes. The quality of services depends on the quality of collaboration with users and clients. It is important to inspire users to participate and to give their word. Sustaining good communication is not however always an easy task and requires competency. Some participants wondered about why it is so difficult for professionals to take users into aplanningprocess.Forexample,itisdifficultfortheeducatorsto take students to the ongoing project.

Some participants pointed out how client satisfaction is not always a criterion for maintaining and delivering services especially in the public sector and some services are abolished despite positive assessment from clients. The question emerged how we can really get to know clients’ needs and feelings. Which are appropriate methods to gather information on clients’ needs, in case of elderly people, the disabled or immigrants?

Think of innovations as systems and not just products

An offering, whether it is a product, a service, or a media/messages, belongs to an overall system with many interconnected parts. Innovators need to understand how this system works in order to gain a deep understanding of the offering itself... This broad view of the system is likely to provide us with more opportunities for thinking about innovations that we would not have thought of otherwise. (Kumar 2009, 93).

The teachers used to think a particular service as a part of a service chain. Several participants had observed how a certain part of a chain had failed to meet end-users’ needs, despite its functionality in other parts. These failures seemed to be especially typical of services at the public sector, as end-users’ actual needs were disregarded. For example a disabled client was not able to participate in rehabilitation activities already planned and agreed, because no-one carried her with a wheelchair down to a taxi. As another example, a home helper had just time to put the coffee machine on, but not time to have a cup of coffee with an elderly client. It seems to be a personal contact that validates a good service experience. There may be lack of trust between deliverers of different parts of a chain, resulting in a poor service experience.

Some participants had also recognized that delivering a service is embedded in a culture that service providers maintain through their values and ways of behaving. Service providers’ expertise as well is a crucial part of services that can easily pass unnoticed in the innovation process. One reason for this may be that expertise is often based on tacit


knowledge not easily accessible to developers. The lecturer also pointed out that many recent challenges, such as care for the elderly are very complex requiring planning a system of services, rather than planning separate sets of services.

Cultivate an innovation culture in organisationsThe goal here is to cultivate a mind-set among people in an organisation that everyone’s actions can add to the overall value of the organisation’s offerings, and to foster an environment in which all members of the organisation are proactively engaged in innovation thinking as part of their daily activities. Innovation practice is a collaborative activity, People with competency in various fields need to come together to make a process thorough, inclusive and valuable... One of (these) steps is to promote frequent collaborations among people with diverse expertise by bringing them together as team members in the innovation process. Frequent interactive work sessions and brainstorming activities are conducted. (Kumar, 2009, 94)

Although the lecture was not focused on the organisational and cultural aspects of the innovation process, the teachers raised related critical factors in the discussion. The lecturer stated that creativity requires the acceptance of making mistakes and the tolerance of half-done things. Several participants had however experiences of non-tolerance of mistakes in their past or recent organisations. Organisations also tend to filter negative feed-back from clients andworkers, and to strive for solutions similar to ones made by other corresponding organisations. With regard to educational organisations, there is another obstacle to creativity. Teachers’ expertise is built on knowing, and therefore it is difficult to admit one’s own ignorance thatmayneverthelessbethefirststeptowardsadoptingamind-set of creativity. One participant pointed out that in order to cultivate an innovation culture in an organisation, there should be forums for idea development, on which ideas could be regularly discussed and reviewed. Many ideas may seem premature at the recent moment, but after a couple of years they will be ready for further development.

The project manager emphasised that an innovation culture requires multi-disciplinary team work. The Koulii project offers an opportunity to collaborate across the fields ofeducation and organisations and recruit expertise from networks outside. This kind of collaboration takes a form of team work which is characterized by members’ positive dependency on each other. One participant with experiences from the past project pointed out that without support from surrounding people and culture even most enthusiastic teachers get frustrated with their lonely efforts.

Adopt rigorous design processes and structured methods

Innovators in companies need an integrated practice model that synthesizes design, technology, business and other processes. Integrated planning processes that are easily understood and collaboratively used by innovation teams are likely to increase the success rate of innovations... It is possible to create innovations using well-developed processes for recognizing people’s needs and contextual demands, but a high degree of discipline is necessary for these processes to work. Successful innovations emerge from well-informed, purposeful, and disciplined processes and their applications. This requires reliable frameworks, structured methods, and rigorous tools (Kumar, 2009, 94).

ThelecturerdefinedSDasamind-setthatemploysconceptsas tools for thinking. It means a systematic way of thinking which narrows and enlarges its focus according to the tasks and demands of the SD process. SD is iterative by its character, involving many cycles of development based on feed-back loops. Furthermore, SD is a mixture of analytical thinking and intuitive thinking, rational and empathic thinking. With regard to business, the lecturer emphasized that the good SD does not mean expensive solutions, but rather other way around, because it often makes processes simplerandmorestraight-forward.SDtriestofindoutcost-effectivesolutionsthathoweverhavegoodfitwithusers.

SD includes several methods, varying from simple ones, such as collective using post-it stickers, to very complex ones, such as the blue-print method. However, all methods share the point to make invisible things visible and tangible. Whatever that helps to make things visible and thus sharable, can serve as a method. The lecturer emphasized that human mind likes such simplicity, as well as enjoys playfulness and fun that are associated with many SD methods, for example games. Prototyping was given as a special example of SD methods. A prototype exhibits a preliminary idea of a product or service in a tangible form that users can perceive, test and assess. Participants had a varying degree of experience in using SD methods. Observation, interviews, prototyping, personas and blueprints were mentioned.

The teachers were especially interested in methods exploring users’implicitneeds;howfeelings,unspokenneedsandtacitknowledge can be systematically recognized and studied. The lecturer gave examples of adequate methods, such as drama, narratives and personas. It became however clear that those methods are very challenging to use despite their obvious “easiness”. One of the project experts expressed that methods training shall be included in the agenda of the projectatthefirstplace.


A design innovation process Based on the analysis of successful academic and professional projects, Kumar (2009) has created a generic framework called a design innovation process. The framework consists of seven key modes that innovations go through, as shown in Figure 1. All modes are necessary to be accomplished for a successful innovation process. Thesemodesareorganizedaccording to twodimensions:understand-make (vertical) and real-abstract (horizontal). The position of the modes is determined by the innovator’s mind-set and activities during the mode (Kumar, 2009, 94). This means that SD alternates between examining reality and using abstract thinking, as well as between understanding and making concrete things alongside the innovation process.

Seven successive modes constitute the innovation process, even though the suggested order may sometimes be logical rather than temporal. In terms of our project, the succession of modes represents a rough temporal process, serving as a guideline for managing the process in an optimal way. We havebeenintouchwiththefirstfourmodesinourprojectso far, and therefore in the following we will focus on those modes,especiallythefirstone.

In the firstmode sense intent (1), thegoal is to establishan initial “innovation intent” based on an intuitive sense of wherenewvaluemightlieandhowtofigureitout(Kumar,2009, 95). According to Kumar, an innovation process often starts with a rough goal, a hunch, a gut feeling, or some form of initial prompt. Two primary activities taking place in

this mode are (a) framing the problem space through the quick analysis of the situation, and (b) actively sensing the relevant changes and trends in the world, in people’s lifestyles, business, technology and public policy. Sensing intent is followed by the mode

know users (2) which refers to understanding current or potential users, and relevant stakeholders. In this mode, users’ manifest and latent needs are under scrutiny, by using novel techniques investigating people’s actual behaviour. The goal is to learn and extract insights from observations, “to see into” a situation, and to identify problems users currently encounter in their daily lives. Especially important is to seek unmet and unspoken needs which can lead to unexpected innovations.

The mode know context (3) refers to exploring surrounding context including other companies making offerings, market composition, comparable innovations in other industries, public regulations, available resources and technologies, and so forth. The goal is to understand the current state of the context and its history. In order to organise abundant information in a reasonable way, interdisciplinary teamwork is strongly recommended. After gathering information about users and context, the mode frame insights (4) emerges. Inthismode,themaintaskistobringstructuretofindingsby analyzing the data in multiple ways, so that important patterns are revealed to innovators, giving rise to further insights. The next step is to translate insights into potential innovation concepts, by creating design principles or criteria. Principles are “actionable, idea-generating, forward-looking

Figure 1. The innovation process with seven modes (Kumar, 2009)


statements” that can be used to think of concepts, such as “innovation should enhance social interaction”, whereas criteria mean standards and rules on which innovation ideas can be based, for example “reduced cost”(Kumar 2009, 97-98).

In contrast with previous modes, the successive modes are more oriented to making than to understanding. Explore concepts (5) focuses on structured brainstorming to identify promising opportunities and to explore new concepts, originating from insights and

principles/criteria framed in the previous mode. Even at this early stage of exploration it is useful to construct sketchy prototypes in order to sharpen team discussions and get feed-back from users. The successive mode frame solutions (6) concentrates on evaluating concepts generated earlier and identifying those that bring the most value to clients andbusinesses.Toensuresuccessfulfit,conceptsmustbeiteratively prototyped and tested in real-life situations, before investing too much in implementation. The most promising concepts are then framed as overall solutions and illustrated through stories and scenarios, so that users and clients get a real sense of what a service or product could be. Finally, the mode realize offerings (7) means evaluation of solutions in terms of real value for users and economic value for companies or service providers. After evaluation it is time to defineviablestrategicdirectionsandlaunchimplementationplans that will realise services and products on the market. (Kumar, 2009, 98-100.)

In the project Koulii, there has been a strong emphasis on buildingthefirstmodesenseintentinaproperway.Thisispartly due to unique characteristics of the project, and partly due to practical considerations. As a point of departure, Suurpelto still lacks almost all services. All public as well as private services are under a planning process, yielding possibilities to different types of innovations, incremental, standard or even radical ones (see Grupp & Maital, 2001). This means that there is a lot of open space for creativity to start with. We started with individual brainstorming (writing down ideas on post-it stickers) followed by group brainstorming (walking around Suurpelto in groups and presenting ideas to other groups) and again by individual brainstorming (by using the ThinkTank program), finallyresulting in sorting out 150 individual ideas into 31 clusters that served as a basis for forming multi-professional teams. It seemed that especially walking around Suurpelto in small groups prompted ideas that survived for further elaboration. Some participants stuck to their original ideas from the early beginning.

We wanted to build teams around concrete pilots that could connect members to each other. The teams were formed on a voluntary basis around shared interests in further idea

development. The team building was based on group work activities that proved to be time-consuming but nevertheless necessary for establishing a common mental space and routines for co-operation and communication. The purpose was to construct a preliminary innovation intent that initially defines the likely users, needs, potential offerings, andbenefits(Kumar,2009).Groupactivitiesincludedvisualizingan early innovation intent as a collage of pictures, and later on describing the innovation intent in detail by answering questions on a worksheet. The innovation intents of each team were then presented to a group of stakeholders and other actors in the area at a seminar held on December 2010. It was crystallised in the one minute “elevator speech” as following quotations exemplify.

Best everyday living 24/7 (Parasta arkea 24/7): We aim at acting as a network and produce well-being services that are versatile and experimental for inhabitants in Suurpelto in every day of the year. We act in a client-focused way so that services cover everything from household activities to hand-crafting, from sports to rehabilitation and enjoyment.

People make Suurpelto (Ihmiset tekevät Suurpellon). It is people that make Suurpelto. Our services enable diverse community development in Suurpelto. We weave a network of meetings in which everyone wants to be involved. We create a breeding ground for joint events and actions, so that you feel at home in Suurpelto and feel proud of living here.

Initial process of two teamsNowwewill briefly describe the initial process of the twoteams mentioned above.

The team Best everyday living 24/7 consisted of a lecturer from Omnia and four lecturers from Laurea representing the fieldsofhealthcareandsocialservices. Furtheranalysisrevealed that they had brainstormed dozens of services for families and children that would help carrying out daily activities and increase physical and psychological wellbeing. The emerging network of actors will provide services to people ofdifferentages:smallchildren,teen-agers,adultsandtheelderly. The network will be managed by a coordinator, and it will be based on the principles of sustainable development and low threshold. The prices will be reasonable, based on using service vouchers and exchange of services. Families will be interviewed about their hopes and expectations, and asthefirststep,studentswillphotographtheareaSuurpeltowith children in order to catch a children’s viewpoint of this area.Laterontheteamrefinedthatserviceswillnotonlybepurported for families with children, but everyone.

The team People make Suurpelto consisted of two lecturers in social services and a principal lecturer from Laurea, and


one adult student joining the team later. A group of students also participated in working as a part of their studies. The team focused on exploring and developing the concept of community and rationale behind building community. Accordingly, the sense of community has three dimensions - region, interaction and the sense of belonging - which community development and related services should lean on. Community development supposedly requires that people have time, space and places to meet each other and that joint actions are rewarding and facilitate everyday activities. Furthermore, joint events and shared traditions should be highlights of everyday life and promote the Suurpelto spirit. The team defined their role as facilitators for communitydevelopment. It was seen as a huge endeavour that cannot be done alone, and therefore actions have to should be based on networking. Inhabitants and other stakeholders should first define their conceptions of community.At theend of the process, the team sharpened their mission as follows: Our purpose is to support the inhabitants’ jointaction, sense of belonging, and development of an exchange economy. We wish to provide services for inhabitants and stakeholders with the similar aim. This aim is to promote diverse community development in the area, which will in turn enhance inhabitants’ and actors’ rooting in Suurpelto.

The overview on the data shows that a shared gut feeling or firmbelief has been a departure point for teamwork inboth cases. The members have kept their original ideas from early beginning, even though they have started to enrich and explore them. The members were also quite unanimous and co-operative in their work, sharing similar interests and language. In contrast with Kumar’s model, neither team had started to research on clients’ or users’ experiences and context in any systematic way, even though they had already sketched future services. The teams were nevertheless aware of the significance of knowing users’needs as a starting point of development and another of them was quite reluctant to brainstorm particular services because of that. One obstacle to research was that there were still few people in the area. The teams did not follow Kumar’smodelstrictly:theyhadalreadystartedworkingonthefourthmodeframeinsights,astheyhadstartedtodefinecriteria and principles for future services. Actually the team Peoplemake Suurpelto had already jumped into the fifthmodeatthefirstworkshopwhenstartingtobrainstormtheconcepts of community. It is worth noting that both teams had contacts with other actors and stakeholders that have plausiblyinfluencedtheirwork.

DiscussionThe results show that the UAS and vocational college educators had relatively good initial understanding about the

main principles of SD at the beginning of the project (see Kumar, 2009). They seem to have adopted the idea of the primacy of identifying clients’ needs as a point of departure for SD, and were eager to learn more about relevant data collecting methods that would allow access to even unspoken needs and tacit knowledge.

They also recognised services as a part of a larger system and saw a particular service delivery as an output of a service chain. It was fully acknowledged that in order to improve services, they must be considered as a system, not just as ‘products’. The educators were also aware about thesignificanceofcultivatingan innovationculture in theirorganisations and had ideas how to enhance it.

In the light of the results, adopting rigorous design processes and methods seemed to be the educators’ weakest point on the SD orientation. According to the accumulating SD literature(Moritz,2005;Designingserviceswith innovativemethods, 2009) the SD process and methods are fully integrated, and methods have a different purpose at different stages. SD methods can roughly be divided into two main categories:thoseidentifying,discoveringandunderstandingthe service content and the users, and those prototyping, creating, generating and modelling new services (Miettinen, 2009). It is important to distinguish these two types of methods, because they are applied in different stages of the process. The educators know-how on these methods seem tobedependenton theirfieldofspecialisation; it ishowever important that their expertise should cover both aspects of methods. In terms of our project, there is a need for clarification ofmethods suitable for differentmodes orstages.Thisbringsustotheimportantpoint:itisessentialtograsp SD as a long-term process with different stages.

We presented Kumar’s model of SD, called the design innovation process, and applied it in our analysis, in order to test its usability for the project. The analysis showed that theteamsstudiedtouchedfivemodesof themodel in theinitial phaseof theprocess, focusinghoweveron the firstmode, creating the innovation intent. The teams did not however follow the temporal order of the modes, jumping over getting to know users and context that can be argued to be the cornerstone for SD. The reasons for this were partly practical;theeducatorswerenotawareoftheprocessmodelbecause it was not yet taught to them, and there were not yet so many inhabitants in Suurpelto to be contacted with. Ithoweverseemsthattheteamsdidnotstartfromscratch:the educators had already knowledge on plausible users’ needs based on their previous experiences and they also received novel information through stakeholders during the process. The teams were also able to create initial criteria and principles for sketched services, in which they plausibly utilized their explicit expertise and tacit knowledge, as well


as theoretical thinking.

The above raises the question whether it is necessary to followtheorderofmodesstrictly,orshouldmoreflexibilitybe allowed. In our opinion, the modes also represent mind-sets (see Moritz, 2005), so it is usable to switch them, but at the same time it is equally important to check that all modes are properly executed. The modes can act as guidelines and help to plan and analyze a complex process in detail. To us itseemsthatSDincludestwomainstages:knowingusersand contexts, and creating services, and it is important to distinguish them in practice. This however sets a challenge toeducation,becauseweareusedtoplanningservicesfirst,and to collecting feed-back from clients afterwards, and this model is also transferred to students in R&D&I-activities. SDshiftsfocusonknowingneedsofclientsfirst,whichmayhelp to make R&D&I projects more effective. For example, it is a common experience that students do not have enough clients involved in their projects, even well-planned ones, which is obviously due to lack of special knowledge on their needs, interests and contextual factors. Implementing SD in a long run will change the ordinary structure and the process of R&D&I activities at universities of applied sciences and vocational colleges.

This study is focused on a real-life project, where an environment and changing conditions may cause severe limitations. In our case, little number of residents available presentssuchalimitation;wedonotsurelyknowwhetherthe educators’ partial ignorance of exploring clients’ needs was due to this fact. Because the data was unobtrusive, we could not check our interpretations at this stage of the research. Another fact obviously affecting the results is that the educators were not aware of Kumar’s principles and model as a guiding program theory for our project at the time data was collected. We see this however as a strong point in our study, because we wanted to get to know the baseline of the educators’ understanding on SD. We will continue to investigating the usability of Kumar’s model as a tool for regionalinnovationsinmorespecificterms;whataboutthemodel works for whom and what circumstances (Pawson & Tilley, 1997).

ConclusionsThe aim of this study was to investigate UAS and vocational educators understanding on the SD process and principles at the beginning of the Koulii project. The results indicate that educators have a lot of prior knowledge on clients’ needs and services but lack expertise in applying rigorous SD methods and processes. SD requires further training and education in the project and respective educational organisations. Applying SD at a larger scale will obviously

lead to changes in recent R&D&I activities.

Our final aim is to integrate SD with regional innovationactivity.Nowwehave takenfirststepsbyworkingout theinnovation intents largely within the project. In future, it is important to have other stakeholders and interests groups fully involved in the joint innovation process. The present fresh ideas lean on the principles of co-producing and collaborative services requiring networks with shared interests (Manzini, 2009). The teams also need the flowof novel knowledge from different groups in order to stay creative(Granovetter,2005;Melkas&Harmaakorpi,2008).The role of regional networks in the SD process is not specifiedyetandawaitsfurtherstudy.

ReferencesAmmattikorkeakoululaki. (2003). [Law on Polytechnics] Suomensäädöskokoelman:o351–358.Helsinki.

Anttila, P. (2007). Realistinen evaluaatio ja tuloksellinen kehittämistyö [Realistic evaluation and effective developmentwork].Hamina:AKATIIMI.

Burt, R.S. 2004. Structural holes and good ideas. American JournalofSociology,110:2,349–399.

Designing services with innovative methods. 2009. S. Miettinen&M.Koivisto(Eds.)Helsinki:UniversityofArtand Design.

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowothny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., & Trow, M. (1994). The new production of knowledge.London:Sage.

Granovetter, R. (2005). The impact of social structure on economic outcomes. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 19:1,33–50.

Grupp, H., & Maital, S. (2001). Managing new product development and innovation. A microeconomic toolbox. Cheltenham:EdwardElgar.

Harmaakorpi, V. (2008). Käytäntölähtöisen innovaatiotoiminnan innovaatioympäristöt [Environments of practice-based innovation activity]. In N. Mustikkamäki & M. Sotarauta (Eds.) Innovaatioympäristön monet kasvot. Tampere:Tampereenyliopistopaino,108–131.

Konsti-Laakso, S. (25 October2010). Innovation activities and Living Labs. Susinno. Lecture at the Koulii project seminar, Työväen Akatemia, Kauniainen.

Kumar, V., & Whitney, P. (2007). Daily life, not markets:customer-centered design. Journal of Business Strategy 28:4,46-58.

Kumar, V. (2009). A process for practicing design innovation. JournalofBusinessStrategy30:2/3,91-100.

Mager,B. (2009).Servicedesignasanemergingfield. InS. Miettinen & M. Koivisto (Eds.) Designing services with


innovativemethods.Helsinki:UniversityofArtandDesign.28-42.

Manzini, E. (2009). Service design in the age of networks and sustainability. In S.

Miettinen & M. Koivisto (Eds.) Designing services with innovativemethods.Helsinki:UniversityofArtandDesign.44-59.

Melkas, H., & Harmaakorpi, S. (2008). Data, information and knowledge in regional innovation networks. Quality considerations and brokerage functions. European Journal ofInnovationManagement,11:1,103-124.

Miettinen, S. (2009). Designing services with innovative methods. In S. Miettinen & M. Koivisto (Eds.) Designing serviceswith innovativemethods.Helsinki:UniversityofArt and Design. 10-25.

Moritz, S. (2005). Service Design. Practical access to an evolving field. Köln International School of Design.Available at http://stefanmoritz.com/welcome/Service_Design_files/Practical%20Access%20to%20Service%20Design.pdf

Pawson,R.,&Tilley,N.(1997).Realisticevaluation.London:Sage.

Project application Koulii. (30 June 2010)

Suurpelto Marketing. Smart living. A brochure.

Tuomi, J., & Sarajärvi, A. (2004). Laadullinen tutkimus ja sisällönanalyysi [Qualitative research and content analysis].Helsinki:Tammi.

Yle News, 24 January2011. Suomalaisten tyytyväisyys palveluihin laskussa [Finns’ satisfaction with services is decreasing]. TV broadcast.

About the authorsSoile Juujärvi ([email protected])isaSocialPsychologist,DoctorofSocialSciencesandPrincipalLectureratLaureaUAS. Her research interests lie in moral development and ethics and she is a co-author of the book Eettinen herkkyys ammatillisessa toiminnassa [Ethical sensitivity in professional action] (2007). She currently works as a R&D&I expert in the Koulii project (Koulutuksen Integraatio & Innovaatio), continuing with her research interests in community development.

Kaija Pesso, MNSc, Doctor of Health Sciences and Principal Lecturer at Laurea UAS. Her research interests lie in ethics and health promotion and she is also a co- author of the book Eettinen herkkyys ammatillisessa toiminnassa [Ethical sensitivity in professional action] (2007). She currently works as a R&D&I expert in the Koulii project.

Pekka Räsänen has graduated in engineering and works as a Project Manager at Omnia development services, currently in the Koulii project. He is studying MBA degree of leadership in education at the University of Jyväskylä.


‘Proyecto INTER-ES’: An experience applied to language teaching

Ana M.Fernández VallejoUniversity of Navarra, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

AbstractThis paper explains what INTER-ES project is, how it was designed, how it was implemented and what the results were. INTER-ES project is a learning experience based on the use of Moodle as a work platform and Spanish business language course, with the following aims: improving communication skills, promoting intercultural communication, implementingbusinessknowledgeandabilities, improving thosespecificskills for the informationsociety,anddevelopingnegotiationstrategies and teamwork.

The novelty of the project lies in the approach taken. For one thing, INTER-ES project is not based on a “teaching method.” It is a method of collaborative learning opportunities. Students put into practice the language skills and business knowledge acquired in the course of their respective degrees. Also, INTER-ES project is a business language course that combines the use of technology and distance learning with face-to-face activities, or “blended learning.”

Theassignedtasksandrole-playsfosterdialogueandnegotiationskills.Oralabilitiesarepractisedfirstoffplatformamongtheteammembersofthesamecountry,andthenontheplatform,wherewefindacommunicationstructurethatpromotesinterculturaldialoguewhiletrainingwrittenskills.Thefinalresultisacomplexstructureofinterrelatedtasksimplementedina way that integrates the contents of business/administration studies, the cultural standards of each country, ICT skills and foreign languages.

Keywords: moodle, learning experiment, spanish language.

Introduction

The XXI century brings with it the presence of technology in all areas of life (business, health, economics, politics, etc.). The citizen cannot live without it, nor are the possibilities of technology outside the scope of education. One can see how the new tools of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are being integrated into the classroom. Traditional models of teaching are being, if not replaced, then at least reinforced or supplemented with new tools. The teacher (digital immigrant) must adapt to the current technology and exploit the possibilities that this medium offers, not only because it opens a fascinating technological panorama, with cutting edge teaching tools, but also because the student feels comfortable in the digital realm and is especially attracted to everything that theInternethastooffer.Inaway,theteacherfindsinthedevelopments of the web a way to build bridges to the digital natives (Prensky, 2001), thus bridging the gap that often exists between the learner and the teacher. Therefore it is vital that the teacher be able to leverage the familiarity and skill with which the student is able to handle the Society of Knowledge, and put that skill into practice.

But no less important has been the new world which contributed to the arrival of the Internet - or rather, the

democratization of internet-globalization. With the internet, a new world political map has been created, where the borders are diluted and time is more flexible. This newinternational geo-political map has led to a change in interpersonal relationships,whichsignificantlyaffected theways of working at both local and international levels. The globalization that had been developed over the second half of the twentieth century has now been reinforced by new communication tools, tools that have arisen due to the establishment of the net. New modes of communication involve new relations, new ways of working and of course, new ways of learning and teaching a second language. On the one hand, globalization justified, more than ever, thecreation of virtual transnational scenarios where students from different countries could come in contact with no space-time difficulties. Furthermore, new technologies appliedto the world of education developed the tools needed to facilitate communication, interaction and international collaboration. But the teacher has to handle not only new technologies, developed from the last decade of the 90s. He/she also has to be alert to new pedagogical approaches and see how they improve the learning process. In this regard the new context of higher education which emerged from the Bologna Declaration (1999) is significant, thataside from important structural changes in the university, a new relationship between the teacher and the learner has


emerged: the teacher yieldshis/herprominence,and thestudent takes the reins of his/her learning process through active participation.

Theoretical framework and objectivesThe project comes supported, as we have announced, by the change of scenario that exists in university education, on the one hand, and on the other, by the use that university education makes of technological advances. Think for a moment about the new guidelines that govern the current European university. Before the start of the implementation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), the teacher had the prominent position, and the student was a passive recipient, a mere receiver of information. However, with the introduction of EHEA the learner is placed in a more prominent place in the learning process. He/she leaves the secondary role and starts a new relationship between the learner and the teacher, so that the dependence of the studentontheteacherismodified,anditisthestudentwhois given the task of converting information into knowledge, to assume the necessary skills for his/her future professional performance (Font and Masferre, 2010).

A brief description of the current university landscape should lead us, first, to the demands on education proposals forthe 21st century by the Delors Report (back in the mid-90s) (Delors 1996, 34) , which broke sharply with previous educational schemes. The ‘four education pillars’ of learning to do, learning to know, learning to live with others and learning to be certainly marked a change in what has been the main objectives of the education system. Designed in a linear fashion in the traditional system, they become complex and multidimensional, and so are reflected indifferent educational guides designed for college courses. In short, the educational challenges of the 21st century (definedprimarilybytheEHEAandtheDelorsreport)alsoaddanewcomponent:thepresenceofICT.

Innovative experiences, as well as literature and encounters are numerous (Alsic, LLT, Recall, Call, Calico, e-FLT, WorldCALL, Eurocall, Jalta Call, Coltt, Interact, OfficeInterActors) andshow the effort being made by university faculty to adapt to new educational and technological challenges (Feixas, 2000). For its part, the University of Navarra has been venturing into a department of Educational Innovation. Every year it promotes the implementation of educational projects that demonstrate concern for planning and innovative developments, among other objectives. Encouraged by this initiative, last September the ISSA-School of Management Assistant presented INTER-ES project to the department, the educational idea of which reflected the work carriedout for several years in ISSA, whose faculty has developed

different active methodology-based courses supported by the use of ICT and Web 2.0 technology. In this case, the INTER-ES project was born as an educational project designed to teach Spanish for business, therefore, the aim of this paper is to explain what the INTER-ES project is, and how it was developed. We believe that we have an example of how foreign language teachers can use the tools that ICT offers, how one of the learning management systems (LMS from now on), in this case Moodle, can create a suitable educational background and be potentially useful to the teacher of any foreign language.

Why Moodle as a platform?Moodle,created in2002,nowmanagessomefigures thatspeak for themselves. It is used in over 200 countries, has been translated into over 70 languages, and has over 20 million users, this suggests that this is a valuable tool (www.moodle.org). Without a doubt, one of the great advantages of Moodle comes from being an open source platform. In contrast to private platforms, e.g. Blackboard or WebCT (Bradnl, 2005), which seek personal gain achieved through licensing, the open source LMS are made available to all educationalcommunities freeofcharge(GNUGPL)(http://www.gnu.org) . In this sense, Moodle and other LMS such as ATutor(http://www.atutor.ca),areanopensocialcommunitywithoutborders,andamultilingualservicetoscientificandeducational training.

Another great advantage of Moodle is how easily the user can upload activities in a simple and almost intuitive manner. Moodle offers a module for tasks such as activities, forums, wikis, and glossaries, which not only guarantees effective access to information, but also involves the teacher and the learner in the course development, improving the results obtained, the acquisition of skills and increasing motivation.

Collaborative and interdisciplinary learning is another possibility that learning with Moodle involves. Students are required to participate in debates and negotiation sessions followed by tasks they must complete individually. In these previous meetings, the learner has to implement not only the language skills learned in language classes. It is also necessary to promote and apply the knowledge of the business world acquired in the remaining areas, which make up their studies.

Since Moodle is an online learning platform, it captures some of the advantages achieved with distance learning, its immediate predecessor at the classroom level. Noteworthy in this regard is its easy accessibility (which reduces spatial andtemporalbarriers), itsextraordinaryflexibility(weavingpersonal planning and respect for individual tempo with the corresponding reserves for the course), the possibility of course diversification (non-hierarchical construction


of knowledge), and the disappearance of the emotional dimension of teacher-student contact, a feature of the class sessions. But undoubtedly the most important aspect, taking into account the new European framework, is the fact that in Moodle the learner is central in the process of learning, building knowledge itself.

Once the work platform has been selected, some methodological-didactic reflections for any educationalproject should be considered. To design an adequate and effective e-learning stage, it is essential to have clear andpredefinedelements: thegiven startingpoint and theobjectives to be achieved. In the INTER-ES project, our participants are students with a B1 (Common European FrameworkofReferencehttp://www.coe.int/). inSpanish,plus related degrees from the area of business and administration, which will allow us, with a moderate effort, to work in a virtual environment similar to any real business situation.

Secondly, it is essential to consider the needs of students. INTER-ES project is not a Spanish business course which replaces the teacher-student class, but, rather it presents the linguistic tools necessary for written and oral communication in business world. INTER-ES project is designed as a support tool, complementary to “traditional” classroom instruction for students who wish to reinforce what is learned in the classroom through the use of role-play that emulates the life of business. We understand, therefore, that our project is to be presented as a collaborative tool that utilizes the different educational models (traditional and virtual, blendedlearning),intendingfirstthatthelearningprocessbestimulating and motivating for students, especially if we take into account that he/she will take charge of his/her learning.

Third, it is important to overcome one of the most common problemsofstudente-learning:lonelinessandisolation.Inthis regard, we believe that the structure of INTER-ES project, where participants are organized into three teams, becomes vital so that the learner does not feel alone, but an important member of a group, his/her team, and also part of a virtual community – INTER-ES project. Overcoming this problem is essential in language learning, because if there is no social interaction it is impossible to develop communication skills. Therefore, there is not only the student/student relationship, but there is also that of the student/tutor, which we will develop later.

Finally and probably the most important element to keep in mind is to clearly define the objectives. In the INTER-ESproject the main objective was to create a work environment that would reproduce a business cycle: three fictitiouscompanies that have transactions with each other and would work together. Atfirst, studentsdiscusshow to resolveagiven situation in accordance with the knowledge of the

acquired company, and then produce appropriate written records. Then, they produce a written agreement, on one hand, about the communication situation, and secondly, according to the instructions suggested and language skills acquired in the classroom. Each of the answers would determine how business relations started. It is not simply producing a text -an exercise that usually arises in class- but the student and other team members analyze the different existing views regarding the information to be provided, how it must be provided, maintain a critical and open attitude, and see how it is enriched with the proposals of their peers.

Project design and development of INTER- ESWe have developed this eight-week project for the 2010/11 academicyear,withstudentsfromfourcountries:Germany,Spain, Finland and Romania. In the first week, to avoidany problems arising from the platform management, part of the tasks are related to Moodle familiarization (shipping documents, changing passwords, tests, etc). The project, as has already been mentioned, is intended as a complementary activity, which is optional outside the strictly academic schedule. Therefore, students do not get ECTS, but a Diploma if they complete more than 75% of the planned activities.

Participants are organized into three teams, each supervised by a tutor. It is essential for proper functioning of the project that the members of each team be in the same place. It is fundamental that each of the teams come from different countries, since one of the goals we have set is to raise intercultural awareness to see how the training in each countryinfluencestheselectionandcontentapproaches.

Thecenterof theprojectpresentsafictionalscenario thatrecreatesatypicalsituationintheworldofbusiness:threefirms are contacted to respond to each other’s needs.In the first edition of INTER-ES project, we propose thefollowingscenario:ahotelchain(Team1)wantscustomizedSpanish wine bottles. They request information from a Spanish winery (Team 2), who in turn must notify one of its suppliers of bottles what the customer is requesting (Team 3). Each of the companies - hotel chain, warehouse and bottler supplier - is represented by a team. They must establish a communication triangle in which each team must contact his/her supplier or customer. Each week activities are established that each team has to address. There are two phases. In the first phase, the tutor explains his/herteam’s objectives, reviews certain linguistic structures that appear in practice and lists the tasks to be solved, whether individually or by the group. In the second phase, without the supervision of the tutor, the team discusses the activity


and begins drafting documents that will later be uploaded to the platform.

It is worth remembering that every week, at least one activity per team and one per individual must be uploaded to the platform. Through the following weeks, negotiations between companies will progress to the completion of a business cycle: brochure design, information requests, response,orders, receipt, and payment. The structure of each week is roughlythefollowing:

•a document related to the business world (letter, email,brochure ...), done as a team.

•personalinvolvementalsorelatedtobusinesslife,personalappearance for an interview, job description in the company, etc.

•aglossary,whereeachparticipantwillbeplacingnewwordsevery week. It is also possible that the tutor will include words he/she considers relevant to the document being worked on.

•aforumwheretheparticipantsarefreetotalkabouthimself,his/her concerns, hobbies, projects and recommendations. This forum will take place in a neutral setting such as a cafe where participants can ask questions, share information, etc.

•a personal blog, where each participant will assessthe development of the week: strengths, weaknesses,improvements.

•a technical forum to resolve any questions (technical,methodological, linguistic).

The proposed activities combine knowledge of business and administration, corporate communications, marketing, intercultural communication, ICT, and of course the B1 communication skills in Spanish. This will generate a structure very similar to what may occur in real life, aimed at achievingthefollowingobjectives:

1. Integrate cultural differences arising from international communication between corporate entities in different countries.

2. Improve knowledge related to the area of business and administration, particularly those related to the countries involved (market functions, business organization, human resources, etc.).

3. Improve the skills and techniques for understanding and writing technical and professional writing in Spanish, as well as oral skills.

4. Apply knowledge of software and new applications that have emerged in Web 2.0.

5. Develop key skills for career success: capacity forteamwork and negotiation skills, personal growth and a

continued desire for learning.

In carrying out the tasks the student or team should not feel alone, because there is an accompanying key figureatall times: thetutor.Thetutor isakeycomponentof thesmooth operation of the e-learning course. His/her role is goes far beyond simply the technical supervision of the proper management of the platform. He/she is there to facilitate, guide, support, encourage, assist in conducting activities, anticipate the problems that may arise, evaluate and analyze the activities, in addition to meeting each and every one of the team members in order to get the best out of them (Pampaloni, 2005).

In short, the student should always be advised and made to feel comfortable with the jump into Moodle, which does not mean that the tutor takes precedence over the student role in learning, but rather helps him make the best of himself.Therefore,first, thetutormustbeanexpert inthecontent, i.e. has to meet communicative content provided and the reasons for the activity. Second, he/she must be a specialist in Moodle, anticipating the technical problems that thestudentmight find -the tool shouldnotblockhim.And thirdly, he/she must monitor the behavior of students, encouraging them and urging them to follow the expected rate, intervening if necessary. There must be an element of socialization, creating an appropriate climate for learning, facilitating interpersonal relationships, keeping track of student activities, and keeping the discussions focused on the most relevant aspects. In short, although not participating in the platform, the tutor will be largely responsible for the success of the project.

Finally, the concepts of monitoring and evaluation are essential to the success of the project. Monitoring activities provide regularly collected information, while the evaluations are intended to give an assessment to each of the activities. Toevaluate each of the students,we concentrate first onthe level of participation and second on the level learning. To monitor the first (participation), the following datawere collected: number of connections made, number ofmessages sent to the forum, number of activities, number of posts in the blog.

It is interesting to highlight the usefulness of data collection through monitoring, both for the evaluation of the participation of each student and the assessment of the course structure. In fact, analyzing the data of the total connections of the course, the total number of messages sent by all pupils during the activities, you can reach conclusions about the quality of the project and the overall process. Also in this regard we have prepared a questionnaire for each week in whichstudentsreflectonthevaluesandknowledgeasifitwere a portfolio.


We have also believed it appropriate to use the assessment tool that each activity provides to measure the level of learning, on the basis that the rating that the tutor gives must be an incentive for students to continue to improve. Both the evaluation and the questionnaire should be performed for every student, and all or part of the following criteria will be considered,dependingontheactivity:

•NewknowledgeandawarenessofBusiness&Administrationculture in different European countries, experience in management information systems.

•Spanish language skills: listening, reading, spokeninteraction, spoken production, writing.

•Computer skills, including use of Internet and Web 2.0technology.

•Abilitytoworkinateam,negotiationandpersuasionskills.

•Intercultural awareness, confidence building,entrepreneurship.

•Motivation for lifelong learning and time, and stress andchange management.

Conclusions and possible improvementsOur experience with Moodle with the First Edition of INTER-ESprojectleadstothefollowingconclusions:

1. The Moodle platform is suitable for building an international business environment where it is possible to develop intercultural awareness.

2. This platform combined with an adequate methodological design offers students the opportunity to practice their communication skills in an environment of authentic communication.

3. Moodle is adapted to new learning models, enabling teamwork and communication. From this perspective the students share information, build knowledge, generate skills and attitudes, always from previous experiences (in the classroom or in real life), to the extent that they engage in the acquisition of new proposals and interact. Therefore, the platform enables a type of joint student-centered learning.

4. Unfortunately, we have identified some limitationsespecially in regard to real-time communication. Moodle offers only text and not audio chat or video, so it is necessary to leave the platform and use other tools like Skype to get in touch with other groups. Even so, oral production is done mainly in the negotiation team.

However, talking only of the platform in these conclusions is insufficient. Any effective methodological approachmust be able to incorporate an appropriate technological tool. In this case Moodle has shown that it is, along with

an adequate methodological design, interesting and motivating. Therefore, if we want to advance in the process of educational innovation, it is imperative that two distinct areas, technology and pedagogy, come together in order to build effective learning methods, whose motto is to be Docere,Movere,Delectare:Teach,Excite,Delight.

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About the authorAna M.Fernández Vallejo ([email protected]) has taught at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Navarra for 7 years. She holds a doctorate degree in Classics from the University of Navarra. Currently she is an Assistant Professor in ISSA-School of Management Assistance, where she teaches subjects related to the area of Communication in Business and Spanish as a foreign language. Her areas of research include new technologies related to the world of educationandcommunication,aswellasSpanishforspecificpurposes.


Supporting graduation with thesis intensive

Altti LagstedtHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

Raine KauppinenHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

AbstractA new kind of intensive support course for students writing their thesis was experimented at HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes in Spring 2010. The support course was aimed at students who either had trouble getting their thesis started or who had already started one, but had not been able to advance their thesis for a while.

Earlier, different kinds of thesis support courses have been organized, but they have been mainly of informative nature and the students are supposed to do the actual thesis work alone.

The main focus in the intensive thesis course was to empower the students in advancing the thesis work itself and provide support as the students worked with their own theses as empowered learners. The fundamental idea was to create such a work oriented environment supported by occupational instruction and guidance that it was like students were not in school but having a daytime job.

Keywords: thesis, empowerment, intensive

IntroductionNowadays, there is more and more discussion about how to minimise the number of students who suspend their studies. Insomecases,wastageisnotsuchaseriousproblem:forexample,during thefirstyear,astudentmightunderstandthat the programme she/he has chosen is not what she/he had expected, or he/she might get to another school/university, which he/she was originally interested in, but couldn’tgetinthefirsttime.Inthosecases,thewastageis,of course, bad for university because our funding system, butmightbegoodforstudents:fortheonewhodropsoutand also for the others who are motivated to stay.

There are also cases where the suspension is not so recommendable. The later a student suspends her/his studies, the more time and resources he/she and the university waste. The energy and actions to prevent wastage should be targeted to the students who have completed their basic courses and who have problems with advanced courses.

It is widely known that there are always a certain number ofstudents,whohaveabigdifficultiesinfinishingorevenstarting their thesis. There are always some students who have completed all their other studies but they are unable to start their thesis. Those cases are a big problem for anyuniversity; theuniversityhas spenta lot of resourceson those students, but is not getting funding from them.

But, in those cases, the problem is, however, much bigger for the students themselves; they have usedmany yearsof their lives for studying, but getting graduated seems to be impossible. This situation is often very frustrating for students, and causes more and more stress, which, in turn, makesitmoredifficulttoprogresswiththeirthesis.

At HAAGA-HELIA, in Business Information Technology Programmes, we have several support activities for preventing wastage. The basic idea is to support students all the way their studies, and contact them as soon as possible, if they seem to have problems with the progress concerning their studies. We have tried different kind of supporting actives for the thesis phase, as well but their results have been (more or less) controversial. We have studied some generally used thesis supporting activities (see chapter ‘Earlier support activities’ below), and based on them, on our own experiments and on the work oriented philosophy we use in other studies we have developed a new kind of intensive support course called “the thesis intensive” for students writing their thesis. This course was experimented at HAAGA-HELIA in Business Information Technology Programmes in the Pasila campus in the spring of 2010.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, the status and different types of thesis done in the universities of applied sciences and especially in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes is introduced. Then, earlier thesis project support activities are presented and the


theoretical background of the new course is discussed. After that, the new thesis intensive course is presented. Then, results and experiences of the new course are presented and discussed. Finally, conclusions about the experiences gained from the new course are discussed as well as further development ideas and topics for a further study are presented.

ThesisThere is the Polytechnics Act (Ammattikorkeakoululaki, 2003) and the Government Decree on Polytechnics (Valtioneuvoston asetus ammattikorkeakouluista, 2003) which describe how the universities of applied science should act. In that Government Decree on Polytechnics it is said that a thesis is a compulsory part of the degree, so it is in the law that every student has to write a thesis (Valtioneuvoston asetus ammattikorkeakouluista, 2003).

Universities have their own degree regulations and guidelines of what the role of theses is and how they should be accomplished. In the HAAGA-HELIA degree regulations itissaidthat(HAAGA-HELIA,degreeregulations):“Toearna degree, a student must successfully complete the courses andworkplacementconfirmedinthecurriculum,andwriteathesis and a maturity sample”. So the thesis is a compulsory part of the degree also in HAAGA-HELIA and there is no way of substituting it.

Compared with other studies, the thesis project forms a rather exceptional part of studies. In a thesis project the main purpose is not to learn something new, but show how a student is able to utilise the knowledge she/he has gathered from the earlier studies. Because of its special nature, the thesis has to be thought differently also from a pedagogical point of view. In this situation, the question is more of giving guidance and support than to teach new topics.

Traditionally the theses in universities are research oriented and are written with the support of a supervisor and seminar groups. The thesis is written independently, and it is up to a student how much he/she utilizes supervising and seminars. In universities, the purpose of a thesis is to showthatstudenthasunderstoodscientificthinkingandthescientificbackgroundofhis/herdegreeand thathe/she iscapable of starting post graduate studies and to develop into aresearcherforascientificcommunity.

In many universities of applied sciences, the theses are similarly research oriented as in traditional universities, even though the purpose of the universities of applied sciences is not to educate researchers, but actual workers and implementers for business world. So, having this kind of research oriented approach to the thesis project, the

thesis in the universities of applied sciences is not as well tailored to objectives and the obligations of education as inother,morescientificuniversities.Theremightbemanyreasons for having that kind of an approach, for example writing that type of thesis is an old tradition, that having been easily introduced in the new university environment. One reasonmight also be found the faculty background:most of the teachers have graduated from universities, and that type of thesis is the only type of thesis which they have ever seen. Whatever the reason might be, there could be a need for rethinking and discussion; forcing students towrite research oriented thesis in the universities of applied sciences, we neither help nor motivate students to graduate. They haven’t done much research work in their studies, and more importantly: most of them won’t do much researchwork after graduating either, at least not immediately. We are not teaching them to be researchers, and they are not aiming at it themselves either.

Even though the theses in the universities of applied sciences are mostly research oriented, there are some exceptions already. For example, at HAAGA-HELIA in the Business Information Technology Programmes, the thesis may be research oriented, but we have a more practical choice as well: most of our theses are system work type of thesis,which means that they rather demonstrate professional skills thanreflect researchwork. Inasystemwork typeofthesis student should develop an information system, or part of it. In those theses there is no seminar practice, but all the theses in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes are made in projects. Over 80% of our theses are made for clients, and in the normal case a thesis is a part of a larger system, which has its own development schedule. Because many of our theses are dependent on schedule of other projects, in our department, the thesis could be started anytime and all thesis have their own schedules, i.e. they are projects of their own. In this type of theses, a good seminar practice is very difficult or even impossible to establish.Instead of using the seminar practice, project practices are used in the thesis writing process to help a supervisor (and a student,aswell)toclarifythecurrentsituationofthethesis:what is done, what should be done, what kind of problems and risks exist, what should be done next and in which schedule. In the thesis project, a student acts as a project manager who plans and manages the thesis project and calls steering meetings together. In the steering meetings, a student presents a progress report, and the problems are determined and next steps and next meetings are agreed.

Most of our theses proceed quite well by following the standard thesis process, but there are always some cases, where the thesis project is not managed and after a promising start the student vanishes and the thesis work stops. Furthermore


therearecaseswherethestudentdoesn’tfindagoodtopicfor him/her - there can be too much uncertainty or too much ambition – and thesis work never starts.

Earlier Support ActivitiesEarlier, different kind of thesis support courses has been organized at HAAGA-HELIA and at other universities, as well. These include, among others, a thesis clinic, where students can receive help with their thesis related problems. Support courses of this kind are mostly focused on giving general advice and guidelines to students, who, after getting the information and in some cases discussing their thesis with an instructor, are supposed to be able to construct a clear vision of what to do and continue with their thesis work independently. So, these kinds of thesis support courses are mainly of informative nature and the student is supposed to do the actual thesis work alone.

There have also been other kinds of support activities, for example Maisterihautomo, In Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, which was not a support course, but more like continuous program for all university students who had problems with their thesis (Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, 2011).

At HAAGA-HELIA in the Business Information Technology Programmes, a thesis clinic was implemented a couple of times. In the thesis clinic, there were four meetings during semester and a discussion area for questions and discussion on BlackBoard (a learning environment used at HAAGA-HELIA). Every meeting there was a short lecture on the day’s topic and lot of time for discussion and questions. The discussed topics were the writing process, information search, the thesis process and its common pitfalls and project management. When the thesis clinic was being planned, the objective was to provide some supporting activity alongside the thesis supervising. Many good ideas were examined regarding the supporting actions implemented at HAAGA-HELIA and other universities, for example, Maisterihautomo (Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius, 2011). The basic idea of the thesis clinic was that it would be a place where students could came with problems of all kind; itwould be easy for them to come there and participate in the discussion. Meetings were held late in the evenings, so it was easy to come there even for those who were in a daytime job. Because most of the theses proceeded smoothly, the thesis clinic was optional and meant only for those students who needed extra support.

This kind of support can be seen as applying a consultative approach (see, for example, Pendelton D. et al. 1984) where the students can ask questions and get information on how to advance. The good thing with this approach is that it

aimsatanswering thespecificquestionsofeachstudent.However, it does not give them time or direct support for advancing the work or getting feedback of the work done.

The results of the thesis clinics weren’t as good as they could have been. Some students got help from the meetings, some had good conversations with a thesis coordinator, but all in all, the participation rate wasn’t very high. We calculated that the potential number of students, who might have needed support activities, was approximately 100-120 at that time, but, normally in a clinic, there were only 2–8 students.

Many times in the thesis clinic conversations, the students toldthatitisdifficulttofindtimetowritethethesis,andtheyquite well knew how to write the thesis in theory, but it is very difficulttostartinpractice.Afterthreethesiscliniccourses,we had a meeting within thesis coordinator and program managers, and we discussed how we should continue and how we could support the students better. We thought about different kind of supporting activities which we knew about and we had heard of, and how they could solve the problems we had. We discovered that none of our known practices or support activities seemed to solve those problems, so we decided to try something new. We decided to do an intensive support course. The main question behind the course “the thesis intensive” was that how the students, who are mostly working in ICT area and often are ICT professionals, are not able tofinish their thesis,whichshouldbesimilar tootherprojectstheydoeveryday.Ourhypothesiswasthefollowing:when they are doing their thesis, they are not working, but they are doing an exercise. So, we put them working.

EmpowermentBecause our own experiments show that the earlier approach (thesis clinics) in supporting students writing their thesis doesn’t work very well, new viewpoints were needed. Earlier supporting actions applied seemed to still leave some students too much alone with the work. Thus, more support for actually advancing the thesis and getting feedback of the work done was needed.

The new approach was to activate the students writing the thesis work in addition to answering their questions. Also, the aim was to give students the feeling that they are able to advance their thesis and that they can overcome the difficulties theymay experience during thework.Thisapproach is based on the theory of empowerment (Siitonen, J. 2000, chapter 5.1). Empowerment is a widely used method and there have been good results in empowering both students in schools and workers in companies (see e.g. Cleary T. J., & Zimmerman B.J. 2004 and Sayer, K. & Harvey, L. 1997), and that way it is seems to be a good method for use in University of Applied Science, which main


function is to be as work oriented as possible.

Empowerment requires support to overcome the obstacles experienced. Theses related obstacles were identified tobe the lack of time in advancing the thesis and the lack of feedbackof theworkdone.Also, itwas identified that thestudents saw the thesis as more of an exercise than work. To support the empowerment of the students, “the thesis intensive” setting was designed to be as work environment like as possible, meaning, for example, that the thesis work started at 8am and ended at 4pm (or later) and the workwas done in predefined location together with otherworkers and supervisors. The idea was that working as an independent employee “students learn how to set goals, select and monitor strategy effectiveness, make strategic attributions, and adjust their goals and strategies” (Cleary T. J., & Zimmerman B.J. 2004). Advice and short summaries were given by the thesis coordinator, but students were strongly encouraged to independent problem solving. The supervisors gave feedback and supported the progress of the work at hand. Even though the time of “thesis intensive” was very short (one week), the purpose was to have “cyclical feedback loops” (Cleary T. J., & Zimmerman B.J. 2004). In effect, the students were given occupational guidance as should be done in any setting where a new employee starts to work (see, for example the Lahti University of Applied Sciences 2007). Here the domain that the students as employees started working on was the thesis work.

Thesis intensive courseThe new support course developed was called “the thesis intensive”. It was aimed at students who either had trouble getting their thesis started or who had already started one, but for a reason or another, had not been able to advance their thesis for a while. It is commonly known that sometimes a thesis grows ”to be a problem bigger than life”, and if the thesis is delayed or paused, it is very difficult to get thework started again. Often supervising and other supporting activities concentrate on following the progress of the thesis project and a supervisor (and other supporting parties as well) mainly gives feedback and guidelines how to continue. It is enough as long as there is progress, but we assumed that when the thesis work really “gets stuck”, something else than guidance and good conversations are needed.

So, in “the thesis intensive” there were not so many general guidelines nor advice, but only short summaries, normally at the beginning of the day. The main focus was to empower the students in advance the thesis work itself and provide support as the students worked with their own theses as empowered learners. The fundamental idea was to put students to work and create such a work oriented environment supported by occupational instruction and guidance that, for the students,

it was like they were not in school but having a daytime job.

The possible candidates were selected from the student register.Theselectingcriteriausedwereasfollows:atleast150 credit points, registered to be present, at least one year from a thesis seminar (a preliminary course for a thesis) andnotyetfinishedtheirthesis.Theoneyearfromathesisseminar was selected to be a criterion because primarily we wanted those students who obviously should already have written their thesis and seem to be stuck with their thesis. We found 105 suitable candidates whom we sent a letter and email and invited them to “the thesis intensive”, 31 come.

Thedurationofthecoursewasoneweek(fiveworkingdays)andforeachdaytherewereseparate,beforehanddefinedobjectives. The course was organized so that the students cameto“work”at8:00amandleftat4pm(orlater).Athesiscoordinator and another supervisor were available for the students all the time to answer their questions. The thesis coordinator and the supervisor also encouraged students to tackle the problems they had and gave them feedback as the work progressed. After the end of each day, all the results produced by the students during the day were gone through and commented by faculty, so every student had comments related to his or her work waiting in the following morning. Bases of “the thesis intensive” are collected to Table 1.

On the first day, the purpose was to ensure that everystudent has a suitable topic for a thesis. With those students who had already started their thesis, the current situation was checked and decided if a student continues with that topic, or if there were good reasons to change topics. After the assessment of the situation, those students either wrote new topic proposal (if they changed topics of their thesis) or wrote or updated their project plan. With those students, who hadn’t started their thesis or didn’t even have glue of what their topic could be, the already completed studies were checked as was their orientation of studies, and what their areas of interest were. Based on their earlier studies, topics for a thesis were mapped and they started to write a topic proposal. During the day, the thesis coordinator commented on the unfinished versions of topic proposals, answeredquestions and had conversations to solve problems. After the work day (which with some of the students lasted 10 hours), the thesis coordinator evaluated all the topic proposalsandaskedsupervisorsforthem.So,afterthefirstday, every student had a realisable topic for their thesis and an approved topic proposal.

On the second day, the purpose was to write (or update) project plan for the thesis. In a thesis there should be a traditional type of project plan, so in the project plan, the student explains the background of the thesis; what theobjectivesand targetsare;what the restrictionsare;whatkind of results this project produces (and how they will be


evaluated);inwhatkindofstepstheworkwillbedone;whatthe time schedule of the project is, what kind of risks there are (risk analysis) and what project management practices will be used. Compiling a good project plan for a thesis took almost a whole day and all the time there was support available (the thesis coordinator and a thesis supervisor). Theseconddaywasverycritical:theprojectplanproducedhad to be so clear that the student felt it easy and safe to follow. After the second working day thesis coordinator read all the project plans and evaluated and commented them. So, after second day every student had a realisable and approved project plan.

The third day was for building the structure of the thesis report. In the morning, there was a short lecture to remind how to search for information in electronic databases and what good references are, etc. After that, all the students startedtooutlinethestructureoftheirthesis:whatchapterstherewill be;what therewill be in different chapters; andwhatsourcesandreferenceswillbeused(firstwithbullets,later with sentences and paragraphs). During the day, the thesis coordinator and supervisor had long conversations and solved the problems that came up. After the third working day, the thesis coordinator read all the results of the day and commented them.

The fourth day was for searching for more references, selecting the used methods (in this course research oriented thesis were favoured, but still most of the students did system type of work), planning and, if possible, executing next steps and writing up text they have outlined the day before. This was thefirstdaywhen thereweren’tsimilarobjectives forall the theses, but every student worked based on their own

topic and project plan. Also, that day there was a huge need for support and the thesis coordinator and the collaborating supervisor had long discussions with students. Students were encouraged to discuss with each other, as well, and that seemed toworkquitewell: theywereall solvingsimilarproblemsandthereforeitwaspossibletofindsimilarsolutions, as well.

The fifth day had a similar purpose as the fourth day: tocontinue with one’s own work and writing the thesis report. Attheendoffifthday,everystudentupdatedtheprojectplanand everyone was ready to tell what they are going to do in the next two weeks, when the next steering meeting was scheduled and what results should have to be accomplished by then. Also, after that day, the coordinator commented the results achieved.

An electronic learning environment (BlackBoard) was used, and at the end of each day, the students saved their latest results to BlackBoard. Every evening, the thesis coordinator commented the results also by using BlackBoard, so every morning the students had fresh comments waiting for them. Continuous feedback was one of the main principles in “the thesisintensive”:thepurposewasthateveryonecouldworkallthetime;nooneshouldstopworkingtowaitforcommentsfor results or answers to questions. In practice, that meant that the thesis coordinator did quite long days during the course:discussionandguidingduringtheworkingdaysandevaluating the results in the evenings. When group size was 31, it was essential that an assisting supervisor was also answering the questions. The assisting supervisor had long experience of supervising theses and clear vision on how to solve problems. In Table 2, essential characteristics of

The Start-up Targets The Earlier

experiences The Selection of the students

Contacting the students

The Methods

To get 10-15 dealyed thesis finished To have better support activity than earlier ones

Normal thesis supevising Thesis clinics

Pre-studies of thesis was done over a year ago Compulsory studies was done Student marked as a "present" in student register

Two emails for potential students One letter for potential students Newsletter in extranet Notice in infotv

Empowerment Daytime job, practical, work oriented approach cyclical feedback loops

Table 1


implementation of “the thesis intensive” are presented.

When the week was over, there was a feedback meeting where the students were able to comment on the course, ask last questions and give anonymous feedback regarding the course using a feedback form.

Res ultsThere were many positive results in this course. Firstly, our target was to get approximately 10% of potential students to the course. Even that seemed to be quite an optimistic target based on our earlier experiment with a thesis supporting activities (thesis clinic and some information meetings). We sent 105 invitation letters and got 31 students, so the expectations were surpassed.

Secondly, all the students were very motivated to work;everyone came at 8 am and most of the student continued till 5 or 6 pm, some even later. There were many good conversations, lots of good questions, a lot of peer support and good atmosphere during the whole duration of the course. The students were really working intensively all the time, and no Facebook updating or other unrelated actions were noticed at all.

Thirdly, we got very positive feedback from the students after the course. The feedback was collected by a form and it was possible to return it anonymously, and there were no negative comments or experiences at all. Some citations are asfollows:

“In my own work, it helped a lot that there was a week out of work and full days in school just to concentrate on this – at home it would not have succeeded this well”

“However, it was the best that mainly it was concentrated on the working itself”

” Excellent idea to get thesis forward”

” I reserved time just for making the thesis and a lot achieved in a short time”

” It is unquestionably good that for the whole week, eight hours per day, you have to concentrate only on the thesis.”

” Really functioning solution as a pilot; I recommend that it should be arranged also in the future!”

We got mostly positive feedback also from supervisors;some student found their own way to work and thesis work continued quite well. Some supervisors noticed that despite possibly good effects of course, the students reverted to poor project management and didn’t continue independently. In some cases the planned schedule of thesis work was proven to be unrealistic and the student wasn’t able to manage the changes.

30% of the students involved in “the thesis intensive” have finishedtheirthesis,whichisabettersuccessratethanwhatwas in for example in the thesis clinic. It could be better of course, and there is some kind of discrepancy between the positive feedback from the students and the number of finishedthesis.

The Implementation Objectives Working hours Daily targets Guidance For those who haven't start their thesis yet the objective was to find a topic, make a project plan, formulate a structure of thesis and find main points and sources for their thesis. Also the objective was to go through main pitfalls and empower students to continue independedly For those whose thesis was already started, the objective was to update the project plan, check the structure of their thesis, resolve possible problems and empower students to finish their thesis idependendly

From 8.00 to 16.00 Almost all students did 1-2 hour overtime per day

Day 1: accepted topic proposals Day 2: accepted project plans Day 3: The formulated structure of the thesis Day 4: Information retrieval and finding good sources Day 5: Main points added to the structure of the thesis, clear plan for next weeks

continous commenting Coodinator and one supervisor available all the time empowerment short summaries feedback form daily results

Table 2


DiscussionThis new work based approach to thesis support seems to be much more effective than the earlier, more consultative support activities. Judging by the number of attendances;the obtained feedback from students and obtained feedback fromsupervisors;andtherateofgraduations,itispossibleto say that “the thesis intensive” was a success.

Even though it could be said that “the thesis intensive” was a success, the results could, of course, have been better. Nearly 30% of the students invited to the course participated in it. Based on our earlier experience that was a really good percentage (and surprised us as well). However, it is reasonable to ask why majority, 70% of the students invited tothecourse,didn’tcome.Somestudentsnotifiedthattheywere interested, but weren’t able to get a leave at that time, but most of the students didn’t notify anything. It could be useful to research what kind of support activities they could utiliseandhowitwouldbepossibletosupporttheminfindingthe time to advance their thesis and keep the work going on.

There are also students who attended the course, but who havenotyetfinishedtheirthesis,andsomeofthemseemtobevanished.Whathappenedtothemisagoodquestion:

all the anonymously collected feedback was very positive and gave a reason to expect a better finishing rate. Still,theaveragenumberoffinishedthesis(andgraduations)isclearly higher than what it was when having earlier support activities. This implies that the thesis support based on empowerment and occupational guidance with an intensive time reserved to advance the thesis, works for those students attending “the thesis intensive”. These students seem also to be able to keep the work going after “the thesis intensive.”

ConclusionHow to support students with their thesis project is actual question, and different kind of support activities is already developed, and are still under development (see e.g. Graduremmi in Vallius-Leinonen 2010). It seems that the earlier support activities, based on the consultative approach, are not enough. There is still space for new approaches and more research should be done, “the thesis intensive” is a one possible alternative path where to continue.

The results gained regarding “the thesis intensive” were very encouraging. The feedback collected from the participating students was excellent and a significant number of theparticipants have now graduated. Based on these results,

The conclusion Results Next Steps

Our target was to get approximately 10% of potential students to the course, we got 30%

The good ones:

Students were very motivated to work The positive feedback from the students after the course

Mostly positive feedback also from supervisors

The quite good ones:

30% of the students involved in “the thesis intensive” have finished their thesis

70% of the students invited to the course, didn’t come.

The to be developed ones:

Some students vanished after promising start

To develope the ways to involve more students to thesis intensive To take better care of students in different phases To ensure that those who have been in thesis intensive would continue the writing after thesis intensive To check if there is something to develop in normal supervising as well

Table 3


thesis intensives will be organized also in the future. See results in Table 3.

Some development targets have already been found (see Table 3). The students who attend “the thesis intensive” haddifferentsituationwiththeirthesis:someofthemwerealreadyfinishingtheirthesis(andhadproblems,forexample,with writing) and some didn’t even know their topic yet. It is assumed that if the students are in smaller groups with peers with similar problems, it could be easier to dedicate support for them and they might get more peer feedback from each other. In later courses, students are divided in threegroups:firstgroupforthosewhodon’tknowtheirtopicyet(andhavenosupervisoreither);secondgroupforthosewho have started their thesis, but who are stuck and don’t knowhowtocontinue;andthethirdgroupforthosewhoarefinishingtheirthesisandneedmostlyhelpforwriting.

Another development target is to take better care of those students who, after a promising start in “the thesis intensive”, vanish totally. Whether there should be some intensive days for them, or should thesis supervisors be more active with those who have been in “the thesis intensive” or are there other means to solve this problem remain still unresolved. It would be useful to do a research where those students who have attended the intensive course but not finishedtheir thesis will be interviewed and asked about the reasons why they had ended their work and what kind of support activities could have helped them to continue. It would be, in addition, useful to do a research about those students, who didn’t attend “the thesis intensive” course even though their thesis work obviously didn’t make any progress. What kind of support activities might help them?

All in all, it could be said that “the thesis intensive” was definitely one step forward to the right direction. Nowweshould find out what are the next steps. One of the keyissues may be solving the question how to get the students to allocate time for the thesis work. For this, one possibility could be to explore the usage of “the agile learning framework” presently under development (Kauppinen, R. & Lagstedt, A. 2011, p. 7-10), for supporting the thesis work of the students who have trouble keeping the work going on.

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Sayer, K. & Harvey, L. (1997). Empowerment in business process reengineering: an ethnographic study ofimplementation discourses. ICIS ‘97 Proceedings of the eighteenth international conference on Information systems. p 427-440

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Vallius-Leinonen, K. (2010). Opiskelijoiden ohjauskäytänteiden kehittäminen. Publications of the University of Eastern Finland, General Series, No 5. Joensuun yliopistopaino. Joensuu.

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About the authorsAltti Lagstedt ([email protected])worksasaLecturer inHAAGA-HELIAUniversityofAppliedSciences.Heteaches business and software development related subjects in the Business Information Technologies Programmes. He also takes care of thesis coordination in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes. He has experience in working both the public sector and industry before HAAGA-HELIA.

Raine Kauppinen([email protected])worksasaLecturerinHAAGA-HELIAUniversityofAppliedSciences.He teaches software development related subjects in the Business Information Technologies Programmes and supervises thesis. Before HAAGA-HELIA, he has worked as a researcher and ICT project manager in the public sector.


Progressive inquiry in agile software development education

Raine KauppinenHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

Altti LagstedtHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract During the ongoing curriculum development work, a software development course in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information TechnologyProgrammeswasredesigned.Theauthors’firstimplementationofthenewcourseispresentedasacomparativecase study describing the differences between the old and the new course and the reasons for changes. In addition, the settingandlearningobjectivesoftheoldandthenewcourseanddiscussiononhowtheseobjectiveswerefulfilledintheimplementation of the new course compared to the previous experiences from the old course are presented. Also, the learning process and framework supporting progressive inquiry constructed for and applied during the implementation as well as the theoretical background for it is discussed. Finally, the results of analysis based on the experiences gained from the case study regarding the applicability of the learning process and the framework applied for agile software development education are presented.

Keywords:softwaredevelopmenteducation,progressiveinquiry,scrumbasedagilelearningframework

IntroductionOneofthechallengesininformationtechnologyfieldishowto teach good software development practices. Software development projects in industry are normally quite large in which experienced development teams work full time and whose duration is more likely near one year. However, in teaching the maximum length for a course is four months, wheredevelopment teamsofstudentsarefirst timedoingthat kind of work part-timely. In addition, best software development practices should be educated at the same time. In this situation a compromise has always be made between the time reserved to teach and learn the best practices and the time left to development work itself where the practices are applied and profound learning happens. There is no use in teaching the best software development practices if there is nothing to apply them to.

Also, in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes, more and more focus is aimed at getting learning process as practical and work like as possible. The focus is stated in HAAGA-HELIA’s strategy (HAAGA-HELIA 2009, p. 4). Because of this, several different approaches have been utilized (see, for example, Lagstedt, A. & Kauppinen, R. 2011, p.1) and results have been encouraging. Primary objective in using work like methods is to socialize students into the work culture in which they will work after graduation (King, R. C. and Sethi, V. 1998, p. 195-197). Another objective is to enhance the motivation for

studies in general and this way to also improve the learning results.

In order to get the best practices and their application in balance and getting learning process as practical and work like as possible, we applied similar ideas to a software development course aiming to learn agile software development following the agile principles (Agilemanifesto.org 2001). The course was held in HAAGA-HELIA Business Information Technology Programmes on Pasila campus in Fall 2010. In this course, a widely used agile software development method, Scrum, was selected to be the development framework used. The students attending the course had basic knowledge in programming, but developing software in a service-oriented way based on the needs of a customer and Scrum as a software development framework were both new to the students.

The basis for our work was the ongoing curriculum development work, where the software development course in question was redesigned. The new design was based on the similar course on the old curriculum and lessons learned from it as well from the courses in even earlier curriculums. However, major changes to the course was also made in redesigning phase one of the most significant being theswitch from RUP based iterative software development framework (IBM 2011) to agile Scrum framework (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p.3-5).

Our purpose in this work was to do a comparative case


studycoveringourfirstimplementationofthenewsoftwaredevelopment course. The aim of the case study was to compare the setting and learning objectives of the old andthenewcoursewherecomparableinordertofindouthowtheseobjectivesarefulfilledinthenewcourseanditssetting compared to our experiences from the old course. In addition, we surveyed the participating students for their experiences. Also, we wanted to describe the learning process and framework we constructed and applied as well as the theoretical background for it. Finally, we wanted to analyze the applicability of the learning process and the framework applied in our course implementation for agile software development education.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. First, the comparison between the old and the new course is presented and the theoretical background of the learning process and framework constructed and applied is discussed. Then, the learning process and the framework used and the course implementation as the case study are described. After that, the experiences of our case study are reviewed comparing them to our experiences of the implementations of the old course. Here, the experiences of the participating students are also discussed. Finally, conclusions about the case study and experiences gained from it are discussed as well as our analysis of the general applicability of the learning process and the framework used.

BackgroundThe software development course discussed in this paper is in the third semester in the curriculum and it is compulsory to all the undergraduate students. Students have had a basic programming course in their earlier studies. The course lasts two periods meaning 16 weeks in calendar time. In the course, software development is done in project by development teams whose members are students.

On the previous curriculum, the course was based on iterative RUP software development framework (IBM 2011) and its key learning objectives were project work, software definition and modeling, software design andimplementation. The course was based on three phases where the topic of the first phasewas software definitionand modeling, the second phase was mini-course on the applied implementation methodologies and the third phase was software design and implementation done in two equal length iterations. The project work was done using best projectmanagement practices: project planning, riskmanagement, progress monitoring, control and reporting. The stage-gate model was applied (Young, T. L. 2007, p. 26-30):Milestonesandsteeringgroupmeetingswereattheend of each phase.

In the new curriculum, the size of the course in credit units was reduced leading to the redesign of the course. In the new course, less focus was put on project work and it wasdecidedtogivepartialsoftwaredefinition,designandimplementation as a starting point instead of creating the software from the scratch. So, the focus of the new course was more on software modeling, design and implementation. It was seen that agile software development principles (Agilemanifesto.org 2001) were a lighter alternative for the system work methodology applied in previous curriculum providing a suitable starting point for the new, reduced size of course. Agile approach has also been adopted widely in the industry. For example, in survey conducted in February 2008, over two thirds of the 642 respondents indicated that their organizations are doing one or more agile projects (Ambler, S. 2008, p.1). Of those organizations that hadn’t yet started, 15% believed their organizations would do so within the next year.

As the software development framework to be applied on the new course, Scrum (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p.3-5) was selected, since it follows the agile software developing principles and is largely used in companies. According to the survey with 1298 respondents conducted in 2009, Scrum was the most often used agile software development methodology (West D. & Grant T. 2010, p.2). Also, Scrum incorporates most of the agile practices that the software developers believe to be most effective (Ambysoft 2009). In addition, even if Scrum or other agile software development method is not used, these practices are likely to be applied in the daily software development work in one form or another (Binstock A. 2011, p.1) since they encompass the best practices of software development industry.

In Scrum, software development is divided into short time periods called sprints. In these sprints, development teams develop software by implementing user stories. User stories are short stories describing what the customer of the software, a product owner, wants the developed software to do. At the beginning of each sprint, teams plan the sprint and select user stories to be implemented in the sprint from a list of user stories called a product backlog. A product backlog is organized based on the priorities set by the product owner. The selected stories are implemented during the sprint by the development team and reviewed in the end of the sprint by the product owner.

The key learning objectives of the new course were set to be project and group work via application of Scrum in a software developmentproject,applicationofsoftwaredefinitionsandsoftware modeling, design and implementation. The old and new courses are summarized in Table 1.

The design of course, according to the HAAGA-HELIA’s


strategy (HAAGA-HELIA 2009, p. 4), should apply investigative and developmental approach to learning.

Such approaches include problem-based learning (Poikela, E. & Nummenmaa, A., R. 2006, p. 9-10) and progressive inquiry (Hakkarainen, K., Lonka, K. & Lipponen, L. 2004, p. 9-24). Problem-based learning can be seen as proceeding progressive inquiry (Hakkarainen, K., Lonka, K. & Lipponen, L. 2004, p. 288-290). In problem-based learning, problems are used to select the contents and the method of learning

and to apply rational problem solving techniques for the problem domain (Poikela, E. & Poikela, S., p. 32-25).

In progressive inquiry, learning can be seen as a process, where the context is first created.After that the learnersparticipate in learning based on questions, apply shared expertise and construct working theories. After this, critical evaluation follows, often leading to search for new knowledge, to setting new questions and to creating new working theories. (Hakkarainen, K., et al. 2005, chapter 3) Our aim was to in our implementation of the new course

The old course The new course Required earlier knowledge

Basic programming Basic programming

Credit units 20 12Development team size 4-6 students 4-6 studentsSoftware development framework

iterative, RUP agile, Scrum

Starting situation Software development done from scratch

Software development based on existing partial software definition, design and implementation

Structure Three phases:- software definition

and modeling, 7 weeks

- mini-course on the implementation methodologies, 2 weeks

- software design and implementation 2x2 week iterations

Project work milestones and steering group meetings during all the phases

Based on 2-4 week sprints containing iterative software definition, modeling, design and implementation

Project work via application of Scrum, namely communication with product owner during sprints and sprint reviews

Learning methods Lectures, individual and group exercises, application of the learned theory and methodologies in the project work by the development teams

Short introductions to key topics, problems in the form of user stories for development teams to solve

Key learning objectives Project management,software definition and modeling, software design and implementation

Software modeling, design and implementation based on existing partial software definition, design and implementation

Table1:Summaryoftheoldandthenewcourse.


to build a Scrum agile based agile learning framework supporting problem-based learning and progressive inquiry.

Case studyBased on the background presented above, we constructed a Scrum based agile learning framework for our implementation of the new course as follows for the participating two teachers and twenty students. We decided that there will be four introductory weeks after which there will befivesprints,eachtwoweeks.Finally,therewastobetwoweeks for revising and retrospection of the topics learned. The students worked on the course 18 hours a week. The students worked all the working hours in a classroom so they did not need to study outside the classroom at all.

The introductory weeks contained short introductions to the key topics on the course which served as context building. Thestudentsformedfourfivememberdevelopmentteams.In introductory weeks, teams were given problems raising questions and leading to building of the working theories. One of the teachers was introduced to the teams working in the product owner role and the other working in system analyst and agile coach role giving the teams the contexts of the customer and the software development organization.

The Scrum based agile learning framework constructed for the case study implementation is presented in Figure 1. During the process, each development team did their own solution. In other words, although the teams started from the

same situation, they had their own product backlogs that the

product owner prioritized and added new user stories into with the system analyst.

In the framework, the usage of traditional teaching methods such as the amount of lectures and exercises was minimized compared with the old implementation (see Table 1). Instead, after short introductions to the key topics, the teams were given problems to solve by asking questions to the product owner and system analyst. Teams were building working theories in the introductory weeks and in sprints and critically evaluating them in sprint reviews and retrospectives. This often resulted in teams searching for new knowledge from available sources such as the product owner and system analyst, other team members, other teams, literature and internet-based knowledge repositories and building of new working theories.

The case study was evaluated by doing a comparative analysis between the experiences from the old course and from the case study implementation where applicable and by evaluating the case study implementation based on the experiences of the participating teachers and students. The experiences of the students were collected in a survey at the end of the course. Also, we benchmarked the case study implementation experiences with the industry experiences in agile software development by having a visitor from the industry discussing the industry experiences and comparing them to the experiences by the course participants.

Figure1:Theagilelearningframeworkconstructedforthecasestudyimplementation.


ExperiencesDuring the implementation, we gained experience in all the objectives discussed in the previous sections. Regarding overall software development knowledge, project work skills and software modeling we noticed that the development teams dealt with these topics only during the first fourintroductory weeks. This implies limited learning from these topics and, compared to our experiences with the old course implementations these topics were learned more thoroughly in the old course where the focus was also aimed more at these subjects. The most encouraging experiences we had were related to the usage of Scrum and our framework in the agile software development setting, estimation and team work.

Overall, we found out that the iterative nature of our Scrum based agile learning framework supports problem-based learning and progressive inquiry as a learning method. The introductory period created the context and Sprint by sprint the development teams improved their knowledge by applying the framework in the context of doing software development. Short sprints meant that teams had to carefully select the user stories they estimated they are able to handle in one sprint, but also that the teams intensively studied and learned the topics related to implementing the user stories during the sprint in a collaborative way. The knowledge gained by using this way of learning was related to both the applying the agile software development practices used in Scrum and the technical programming skills. The improvement of knowledge was measured using an exam with questions related to agile software development practices and, related to the technical programming skills, evaluated from the resulting software artefacts produced by

the development teams.

During sprints the development team applied the shared expertise to create working theories, critically evaluate them leading to search for new knowledge, to setting new questions and to creating new working theories. The knowledge gained was also shared among and between teams. It is worth noticing that this process of learning used in our Scrum based agile learning framework follows the learning process of progressive inquiry as presented by Hakkarainen et al. (Hakkarainen, K., et al. 2005, chapter 3). Table 2 summarizes the key elements of the progressive inquiry based learning process by Hakkarainen et al. and the corresponding elements of our Scrum based agile learning framework.

The key learning objectives of the course were successfully met with lesser amount of traditional teaching such as lectures or traditional assignments compared to the old course. The students learned also to evaluate and improve their working methods sprint by sprint, which this is also one of the key principles in Scrum (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p.14-15).

The development teams implemented new features during sprints according to the user stories added to the product backlog by the product owner and the system analyst. Some of the stories appeared in an illogical order and werepartiallyambiguousandconflicting.Also,someoftheproduct owner’s wishes and requirements as well as the priorities of the user stories changed during the development project. We found out that this made it necessary for the development team to communicate with the product owner and the system analyst in a continuous fashion in order to understand and elaborate the stories. The amount of face

Progressive inquiry Agile learning framework

Context creation Introductory period (team building & learning the working method)

Learning based on questions & shared expertise

Sprints (problem based collaborative work in self-directing development teams supported by product owner and system analyst / agile coach)

Working theories Releases (developed software & ways to do development and solve problems)

Critical evaluation Sprint reviews & project retrospective

Needed new knowledge & new questions

Release planning meetings, sprint planningmeetings & sprint retrospectives

Table2:Thekeyelementsoftheprogressiveinquirybasedlearningprocessandthecorrespondingelementsinthe agile learning framework.


to face communication was greater in this setting compared with the old course where much of the communication was done using through documentation.

An important aspect related to the implementation of user storieswasthedefinitionofdone.ThisisaScrumpracticeemphasizing self-directedness of the development team where the development team provides itself rules on when a user story is considered done. These rules are calleddefinitionof doneand they canbemodifiedby thedevelopment team, for example, based on the feedback from sprint retrospective. In our learning framework, a baseline definitionofdonewasprovidedandthedevelopmentteamsmodified itwhennecessary.Ourexperiencebasedon thecasestudy is that thedefinitionofdone isagoodwayofemphasizing testing, especially system and acceptance testing, as an activity done all the time during software development.Also,thedefinitionofdoneemphasizesthatitis the responsibility of each member of the development team to know when a user story is considered to be completed.

Using own product backlogs for each development team worked as planned. It supported the tailoring of the sprint by sprint goals for each development team based on their velocity as well as interest. This improved motivation, since the teams could focus on stories they were interesting, but required focusing from the product owner and system analyst in order to make sure that the key learning objectives were met by each team by the end of the development project. This is related to the selection of the problems that are used to select the contents and the method of learning in problem-based learning.

From learning perspective this meant that the product owner and system analyst had to make sure that necessary user stories were prioritized so that they were implemented in sprints triggering learning situations resulting in work towards the learning objective in question. Compared to the old implementations of the course, this provided more flexibility,sinceitwaspossibleineverytwoweekstodecidethe goals of the next sprint instead of once or twice in the old course where the goals of the next iteration were checked in steering group meetings. On the other hand, the old courses’ setting provided more equal resulting software between different development teams.

We experienced that the flexibility in selecting separatelythe user stories to be implemented for each development team sprint by sprint also supported progressive inquiry and problem based learning. This is because there is time for development teams to explore the different options of solving problems and to apply different rational problem solving techniques for the problem domain as problem-based learning requires. In addition, if the selected solution does not work or is not optimal, it can be improved during

next sprint either by the decision by the self-directing development team or by user story prioritized by the product owner or system analyst. This also means that there is not that much pressure to be able produce the optimal solution onthefirsttime,sincethereusuallyisapossibilitytoimproveit later. In the old course there was seldom time for this kind of exploratory learning, since the whole software was defined and designed thoroughly before implementationleaving quite little time for trying alternative solutions. Also, sincethedefinitionanddesignwerethoroughlydocumentedbefore implementation in the old courses’ setting it would have taken more effort to use an alternative solution than in the new courses’ setting were necessary documentation was updated or created near the end of the development project.

One of our key learning objectives for the new course was that the development teams would learn to estimate how large different user stories are compared to each other and how many user stories the team is able to complete in one sprint. In traditional project work, the estimates are made on task level and based on the amount of estimated working hours to complete a task. Also, there is not much feedback on how accurate the estimate was, since the estimate is usually done only once and the amount of working hours done and remaining are usually discussed as a whole in steering group meetings.

Since Scrum uses relative estimation at user story level and tracks the working hours remaining at the task level (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p. 11-13 and 16-19) and provides feedback opportunities and new user stories to estimate at least at the end of each sprint, we felt that this was a possibility to really be able to develop estimating abilities of the development teams. Estimation is done often and it is possible to utilize the knowledge of the previous estimates and accuracy. In estimation we utilized practice based on the story points and the planning poker (Cohn M. 2006, p. 35-41 and 49-60), which seems to be easy to learn and consume. The estimates of development teams improved sprint by sprint and were surprisingly accurate in how many user stories they were able to complete in sprints at the end of the course.

Another important key objective was to learn team work, since no matter what framework is applied software development in industrial setting is almost always done as team work. According to Kopakkala (Kopakkala, A. 2005, chapters 4-7) there are four phases in every team’s development. By supporting team’s activities with our Scrum based agile learning framework we tried to ensure that every team had a possibilitytodevelopmenttoanefficientteam.Thiswasdoneso that early on the course simpler user stories were given and the system analyst and the product owner supported


teams in completing the stories more actively. Later, the teams became more and more self-directing asking help actively when necessary and completing more and more challenging user stories that relied on the capability of co-operation between team members.

All the work was also done in pairs and roles that were rotated after each sprint making sure that every team member works with every team member reducing the risk of subgrouping. Our approach worked quite well although evenmoreemphasiscouldperhapsbeenput in reflectingthe team work and dynamics during the course. Comparing totheoldcoursewheretherolestentedtobefixedduringthe course and pair work was not used, the approach used was better in ensuring that the development team members worked evenly with other members. Also, according to our observations, the teams’ ability to work together improved and the worst pitfalls presented by Kopakkala (Kopakkala, A. 2005, chapter 20) were avoided.

Overall, our Scrum based agile learning framework provides good support for team building and continuously improving its working methods. This is based on Scrum’s key idea of self-directedness supported by retrospectives (Schwaber, K. & Sutherland, J. 2010, p. 14-15) after each sprint where the team analyses its work and decides on the improvements on its working methods. Also, our framework gives teams independent responsibilities quickly instead of controlling the work in detail. The organization of the work is theresponsibilityoftheteaminsteadofanauthorityfigure.However, the teams are not alone, but have supporting personnel available such as the product owner and especially the system analyst in agile coach role. The framework also leads into working method where the relevant issues have to be communicated throughout the team meaning that no issue or team member will be in the dark for very long time.

In addition to our analysis of experiences presented above we evaluated our implementation by having a visitor from the software development industry on the course discussing with the students how agile software development is done and what kind of work it entails. We were actually quite surprised how well the framework applied on the course matched the working methods described our visitor. Also, the observations discussed with the students were almost exactly the same the industry has observed. In this sense, it seems that the course succeeded in creating learning environment very similar to the actual working environments.

Also, we did a survey asking for feedback from the students at the end of the course. The feedback was mostly positive with some neutral comments. There were no negative comments. Positive comments were given, for example, about the work like setting and attitude on the course as well as about the possibility of learning by doing in a supported

way.

ConclusionsOverall, our experiences from the experiment are very positive. Compared to the earlier way of implementing the software development course we believe that on those objectives that are comparable, we did at least as well as on the earlier implementations. However, it is important to notice that some of the objectives of the earlier way of implementing the course were not in the focus of this implementation and as such, were not covered as well. Mainly, the project management and software modeling skills did not develop as well as earlier and that has to be taken into account later in the curriculum.

However, we were satisfied in that multiple sprints gavedevelopment teams more time to learn how to implement product owner’s requirements stated as user stories into a working piece of software. Also, teams’ ability to estimate time needed to implement different stories and split the stories into smaller subtasks improved sprint by sprint. In addition, the teams learned to communicate with the product owner and the system specialist – the interest group representatives of the system under development - in order to ask questions that helped them understanding the reasoning and contents of the user stories.

Furthermore, the experiment shows that in agile software development education, it is not always necessary to advanceso that the theory isfirstcovered thoroughlyandonly after that begin to apply it. Using the Scrum based agile learning framework we created we applied progressive inquiry and problem based learning in quite an opposite way. In this implementation, the development teams started doing first and, when necessary, found out and learnedthe theoretical knowledge and applied it. This way, the knowledge acquisition comes when there is need for such knowledge and the same knowledge will be applied later in different situations generalizing the knowledge.

In our Scrum based agile learning framework, it is possible to create such learning situations so that the product owner or the system specialist adds the necessary user story to the product backlog triggering the learning situation. The learned knowledge is transferred throughout the development team using Scrum’s means of communicating such as face to face communication, pair work and daily Scrums. If the knowledge needs to be transferred between multiple development teams, short presentation by the development team members can be used.

From a pedagogical viewpoint, working in independent development teams using our framework supporting progressive inquiry and problem based learning allowed


every team to progress in their own speed, which was important for learning: slower teams had enough time tothink problems over and faster teams had possibility to learn something extra. Even though some teams were slower thanothers,every team full filled the learningobjectivitiesof the course. As teachers who had experience mainly in more traditionally organized software development courses, we were surprised how much teams were able to learn and do during the quite short time of 16 weeks.

Also, we found out that this kind of setting requires taking a new perspective to both teaching and learning, but our experience shows that results can be very incentive. Important aspect of our framework is that it is based on a framework widely used in industry for software development. In this sense we have in our experiment both applied the framework in software development, but at the same time validated that Scrum can also be used as a general framework in other domains in addition to software development itself. In our case, the other domain was learning using progressive inquiry and problem based learning. So, in our case the participating students learned with the same framework they applied to software development, and with the framework they will very likely to use also during their career, if they work in software development related field.Working and learningcollaboratively is very similar to working in an actual software developing company, so students got quite a realistic picture of how real life service-oriented software development is actually done.

Based on our experiences, we propose that although this experiment applied our framework in learning of software development domain using progressive inquiry and problem based learning, the framework is generalizable to other domains as well. We see the framework as general agile learning framework that supports the use of progressive inquiry and problem based learning. The framework provides guidance on how to work as a team in a collaborative manner in order to build, share and enhance knowledge related to the target domain. An interesting target domain would be industrial application of the framework in domains such as occupational guidance of a new employee, organizational learning and sharing of organizational knowledge. The future work in this direction will require further research and applying the framework in industrial setting as well as benchmarking the framework with similar frameworks such as Learning by developing model created by LAUREA University of Applied Sciences (Kallioinen, O. 2008, p. 112-123).

In Spring 2011, we applied the framework in another implementation of the software development course discussed in this paper. For this implementation, we made the framework even further compatible with Scrum so

that instead of having 4 introductory weeks we have now applied the sprints from the beginning of the implementation using thefirstsprintasan introductoryperiod to theagilelearning framework we are following. In this introductory sprint we introduced the key concepts of the framework such as product backlog, user stories, release and sprint planning, estimating and sprint review without actually doing any software development tasks. Our future work from this viewpoint is to gather the new experiences to further improve the framework. Our future interest is also to apply the framework in other educational domains. One possible domain is thesis support where intensive individual work is done (Lagstedt, A. & Kauppinen, R. 2011, p.1) and could be supported with the framework presented in this paper.

In the software development education domain, we are interested to apply the framework in the future so that instead of a teacher acting as the product owner and providing the development case, the product owner and the case would be industry or HAAGA-HELIA internal development project based. We see this setting being feasible starting from the fourth semester for those students who have selected software development as their major. This way, we can provide very real work like, but still safe and controlled learning experience in software development based on the framework on the third semester while applying the same framework also in later studies, but in more challenging and real life software development related cases. We see this idea as an arc of learning leading towards work life in the third semester and moving on to learning with work life starting from the fourth semester supporting the HAAGA-HELIA pedagogical strategy “Learning with work life” (HAAGA-HELIA 2011).

Finally,ourfutureworkafterfinalizingthefirstversionoftheframework is to apply it in a more controlled experiments aimedatfindingoutwhatknowledge,skillsandcapabilitiesare actually learned and developed when applying the framework in software development domain. It would be interesting to study these further from both the individual and team level. This means that we need to definemeasurement points in the framework and design how and what knowledge, skills and capabilities are measured. For this, there is a need for defining the competence profilesincluding the relevant knowledge, skills and capabilities we aim at in software development education and the target levels for each of them in different phases of the curriculum.

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About the authorsRaine Kauppinen([email protected])worksasaLecturerinHAAGA-HELIAUniversityofAppliedSciences.He teaches software development related subjects in the Business Information Technologies Programmes. Before HAAGA-HELIA, he has worked as a researcher and ICT project manager in the public sector.

Altti Lagstedt ([email protected])worksasaLecturer inHAAGA-HELIAUniversityofAppliedSciences.Heteaches business and software development related subjects in the Business Information Technologies Programmes. He has experience in working both the public sector and industry before HAAGA-HELIA.


IntroductionThis study considers the usefulness of the case method in the teaching of professional ethics at degree level. In first place, the study will frame professional ethics withinthe context of university studies as a subject which is necessary in order to provide the university student with aroundededucation. Thejustificationfor thepresenceofprofessional ethics within degree studies is found in the general competences to be worked on that form part of the Tuning Educational Structures in Europe project. According to the results of this study, the competences which are most valued by employers and students are, surprisingly, interpersonal skills (The general competences include instrumental, interpersonal and systemic competences) . Professional ethics is, therefore, framed within what appears to be formulated as an “ethics of commitment”.

Once this subject has been contextualised within the university sphere, the next objective of this study is to demonstrate how the case method constitutes an especially suitable tool within this subject as it transforms the teaching of ethical behaviour into directed learning. It is true to say that the use of the case method is not at all new and that ithasbeenusedinbusinessethics;ithasbeenusedasaprincipal tool on MBA courses for decades. Nevertheless, this study considers how the tool is adapted to the teaching of “professional” ethics as well as its incorporation into the university curriculum. Ethics has frequently been relegated to the private sphere and the teaching of it – if it was offered at school – ended when the student began university studies, with it being taken up again only by those who were

trainingtobecompanydirectors.Thebenefitsof includingethics in the university education of students is, however, considered in this study with the aim of promoting an ethical approach to their actions in the subsequent exercising of their profession, whatever that profession may be. With this in mind, the case method constitutes a fundamental tool as it helps students to develop the skills which are necessary to ensure that ethical behaviour is not only the result of an adherence to strict rules of conduct.

The teaching of professional ethics at universitySociety and businesses expect universities to provide students with professional training as a priority objective. However, it is worth considering if this is in fact society’s most pressing need. It is becoming increasingly clear that the comprehensive training of the student at University is not merely provisional, but is instead derived from the very nature of this institution.

Recent experience shows us that theoretical and technical training–withintheuniversityfield–isabsolutelyessentialto students’ education, but it also shows us that this is not enough to prepare students to face their own personal and social responsibilities. Responsibility is not acquired through the transmission of contents or by learning techniques but, rather, involves the development of the student’s capacity to be responsible for their decisions and for the consequences of them in the future exercising of their profession . It is also important that students acquire “personal” training not as something “added”, but rather as the foundation that confers

Case method as directed learning in professional ethics

Leticia Bañares PareraUniversity of Navarra, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

Abstract Thisstudyconsiderstheusefulnessofthecasemethodintheteachingofprofessionalethicsatdegreelevel.Infirstplace,the study will frame professional ethics within the context of university studies as a subject which is necessary in order to provide the university student with a rounded education.

Once this subject has been contextualized within the university sphere, the main objective of this study is to demonstrate how the case method constitutes an especially suitable tool within this subject, as it transforms the teaching of ethical behavior into directed learning.

Thecasemethodisaninteractivemethodoflearninginwhich“real”orprobablesituationsareworkedon.Whatisspecificabout this method is that is a guided learning in which students are involved, consciously and responsibly, in their own learning.

Keywords: case method, professional ethics, guided learning


sense on their subsequent activities.

This comprehensive training could be brought to fruition, among other possibilities, with ethical education, considering that ethics is the science that deals with human behaviour with respect to its personal fullness. In other words, human nature is perfected by way of free decisions and in this way the person develops their abilities and comes increasingly closertofulfilment;theroleofethicsistohelptheindividualto “choose those actions that contribute to the harmonious and balanced development of the different potentialities of the human being” (Fontrodona, J. et al. 2010, 76). From this systematic perspective, it is clear that no aspect of human life can remain on the margins of ethical appraisal, because allactionsleadtoitsfulfilmentortakeusfurtherawayfromit.Within the context of personal actions, professional activity clearly occupies an important role given that work constitutes a fundamental sphere for its fulfilment .One could objectthat students do not go to University to learn how to behave ethically. But it is worth noting that ethical training – while always respecting their freedom - helps them to consider the need to behave ethically . The objective of this subject is not to force the student to act in a certain way, but rather to help them to be more responsible, that is, to learn how to evaluate their different behavioural choices using meaningful values and to acquire the appropriate criteria to be able to do this. This involves helping students to be more aware of how important it is that ethics be present in decision-making processes and also to learn how to take ethical criteria into account in their future professional conduct (Argandoña 1994, 750ff). In summary, the aim is to enable the student to act well in the personal sphere as well as in the professional and social spheres . In this sense, the university has a clear social function and should be at the forefront in terms of offering students not only what they ask for, but also what society needs of them.

What does professional ethics consist of?After having noted the reasons that justify the teaching of ethics at university, it is worth considering how such training can be carried out, given that the university constitutes a privilegedplacefordeliveringeducationwithspecificrigourand with a scientificmethodology which is inherent to itsmode of being.

First of all, it is worth pointing out that all ethical argumentation requires an anthropological foundation, as it is impossible to expound how the human being can achieve personal fulfilmentifwedonotfirstexplainwhatahumanbeingis.Itis important to know what the human being is in order to be able to explain how it should be in accordance with the goal towards which it tends. In other words, ethics should explain

what human good consists in –its development as human being– and how it can be achieved.

Secondly, oncewe find ourselves in the ethical field, it isimportant to distinguish between what we could call ethics “in general” which would encompass any sense of ethics and what we have called professional ethics. When the term ethical isused–withoutany furtherqualification–we referto ethical judgement, or the moral values of any human action in relation to the development of the person: theethics which is common to all individuals in all spheres of their existence. It has already been noted that professional activity, like all free activity, is susceptible to ethical appraisal. However, when we refer to professional ethics, we are alluding to ethics exclusively in relation to people’s behaviour specifically in the execution of their profession.In other words, professional ethics is ethics applied to the activities that are carried out within the framework of each profession. Professional ethics is usually understood as the ethical discipline which “incorporates the rules, obligations anddutieswhich themembersofaspecificcollectiveareexpected to fulfil and the rights they ought to respect”,(Fontrodona, 2010, 56). Nevertheless, it is important to take into account that ethics is not limited to avoiding doing things badly – or impelling workers to adhere to certain rules – but rather, it is an invitation to perform one’s profession aimingforpersonalimprovementandthebenefitofothers.Furthermore, the objective of professional ethics is not only to resolve questions posed by great dilemmas, but rather to ensure that its principles are present in any relevant decisions made by the worker.

When any position of responsibility is carried out within an organisation, it becomes clear that ethical criteria are neededinviewofthesignificancethatthedecisionstakencan have. On the other hand, it may appear that at other professional levels ethical criteria are not important because the decisions taken have little value. A director has, without doubt, more responsibility as his/her decisions affect a greater number of people and, because of this, they have a greater impact on the good of society. Nevertheless, the tendencywithin thesocietyofknowledge inwhichwefindourselves is that in all kinds of work a margin of decision-making be given in which the subject can exercise their creativity and initiative. Consequently, where there is the option to decide, there is also the possibility of doing things better or worse, the possibility of enriching oneself through the exercising of one’s profession, and the possibility of helpingothers:inshort,whereverthereisfreedom,thereisa need to speak of ethical appraisal.

Within these coordinates it is clear that – in the business sphere – professional ethics should be present not only at all levels of an organisation, but also in the execution of the different


occupations of its members. For example, a company may haveapressofficewheremediaprofessionalswork,alegalofficewhere lawyerswork,programmingcentreswhere ITexperts work, and each occupation must take into account the ethical principles which are derived from the correct exercisingof theirspecificoccupation.Continuingwith theexample of the company, it is clear that ethical guidelines are also required for “middle management”, which is to say for professionals who are not directors, but line manage others and are therefore mediators between different levels.

In terms of professional ethics, two dimensions can be considered: a more generic one which encompassesaspects common to all professions and whereby ethical principles applicable to any professional activity are studied, and another more specific kind in which the principlesapplicabletoeachspecificprofessionalactivityarestudied.At this point it is worth pointing out that professional ethics is not the same as the ethics codes of different professions. In most countries, ethics codes are drawn up by professional colleges and are established as a way of preventing incorrect practices with regards to the exercising of a certain profession, whereas professional ethics, as we have seen, aims for something higher. Professional ethics invites somethingmore;ithasapositivefunctionandtries–likeanyother ethics – to achieve personal excellence understanding the profession as a service and place in which the individual relates and contributes to others.

Professional ethics and Corporate ethicsThequestionnowposedis:whatistheroleofprofessionalethics when a corporate ethics already exists and what relation is established between the two.

First of all, we must distinguish between what is understood by Business Ethics and what we mean when we refer to corporate ethics. With regards to Business Ethics, we could say that involves ethics applied to the company bearing in mind that this has its own legality and specific problems.Consequently, the problems contemplated within Business Ethics are ones related to the company’s main activities while Corporate Ethics are the ethical commitments and policies of each organisation which are expressed in the principles and corporate values of each company.

The purpose of this study is not to investigate Corporate ethics in depth –its history and development– but to consider if the presence of corporate ethics in organisations renders professional ethics unnecessary for those who work in the company. For this, it is necessary to ask if the declarations of values, corporate beliefs, ethics codes (“A code of business conduct, sometimes called a code of ethics, is a corporate document that develops the core values and the

guiding principles of a firm. It specifies criteria and rules for the correct handling of business dilemmas, issues or situations in which it is considered particularly important that managers and staff follow certain procedures approved by the firm’s management” (MELÉ, 2009, 229).) proposed bycompaniesatacorporatelevelaresufficientinordertoachieve an ethical climate in the organization. Experience shows that, on their own, these kind of documents and practices are frequently insufficient. In order to attain theethical quality of an organisation it is important, first, thatthe interest in achieving comes of a personal conviction –on the part of the management- and not a mere question of image;secondly,itisimportantthatallthedifferentmembersof the organisation try to abide by the specific aspects oftheir professional ethics; and finally, coherence should beaimed at in terms of personal ethics (the values of each of themembers),professionalethics(thespecificvaluesthatshould be present in the exercising of each profession), and the ethics of the company. If this is not the case, the efficacyof any corporatedeclarationof principlesmaybecompromised

It can therefore be suggested that professional ethics, for those who work in an organisation in which there is also a corporate ethics, is not only appropriate, but rather, an essential way of ensuring that the organisation is ethically healthy.

The case method in the teaching of professional ethicsThe range of objectives found in professional ethics prevents us from speaking of one single appropriate method for teaching it. We have already observed that ethics is a science, but one which is practical. For this reason, its teaching should include, on the one hand, a way of transmitting ethical principles (for example, classes, professional talks or lectures) and, on the other hand, more practical methods such as the case method, group work, etc.

However, the case method is not just one more tool in the teaching of this discipline. In what follows we will try to show why, and also to demonstrate how the case method can turn outtobeahighlyefficientinstrument.

The case method as a pedagogical tool was designed and developed in the 20th century (Davis M 1999, 143ff) . As is well known, the essence of this method consists in confronting a person with a situation in which they have to make a decision. The case as a teaching tool has been used in different ways according to who uses it and for which subject . However, like all tools it is limited and, therefore, it is not suitable in all contexts and it has not always been used correctly. In other


words, it has limits and conditions that should be respected. This has led to contradictory opinions with regards to the appropriateness of its use; sometimes its use has beenextolled and granted an exclusivist prominence, while other times it has been accused of impoverishing teaching.

The case method is an interactive method of learning in which “real” or probable situations are worked on (it is important that current situations are referred to). What is specificabout thismethod is that it is adirectedmodeoflearning in which students are involved – consciously and responsibly – in their own learning (Argandoña, 1999, 226).

Now we will demonstrate the possibilities and risks that its use brings (Llano Cifuentes 1998, 57ff) to show why it is a particularly useful tool in the teaching of professional ethics.

The case method is a didactic process for discovery.While traditional teaching is a didactic process which goes from “outside to inside”, in which the teacher imparts knowledge to the student who tries to understand the contents just as they have been imparted (the student is basically a receptor), the case method is an active teaching method.Theobjectiveisnotforstudentstoreceivespecificknowledge, but rather that – on the basis of what they have received – they are able to discover for themselves what that should learn. This involves fostering an attitude of discovery in students so that they discover for themselves what they would do if they found themselves in the situation given in the case . Therefore, this teaching method – the case method – is not about the reception of contents but, rather, about personal assimilation and therein lies its radical strength. This characteristic is particularly appropriate in terms of learning about professional ethics given that ethics – as we have seen – does not consist in the mechanical application of established behavioural norms, but requires instead careful judgement on the part of the one who decides. With this in mind, it is important that the student be aware of ethical principles when resolving cases, but that their application is specifictoeachsituation.

In the case method, what is principally fostered is the exercising of creativity.In the case method, the aim is to encourage the student to exercise creative thought. This does not mean that students do not use reasoning in the analysis of cases, but that above all they employ intuition, which is another use of the intelligence connected to the imaginative capacity. The case method enables the student to take decisions appropriate to aparticular roleand in the faceofspecificcircumstances.

In this sense, the teacher that uses the case method has a different function to that of the one who delivers a traditional class as now he/she becomes a “facilitator” who accompanies the student: the situation, then, is one ofguided learning. This mode of working contributes - in the teaching of professional ethics - to developing in students the necessary capacities for resolving complex problems in ambiguous and unclear situations, in which they have to balance ethical reflection with the search for alternativesthat help to humanise work and to turn it into a channel of growth for oneself and for others. Moreover, by learning through cases, the student perceives in a much clearer way thatthereisalwaysmorethanonewayofactingwell; thecontrastingdialogueandopinionofothersservetoconfirmthis.

The case method is a didactic process that attempts to recuperate the social dimension of education. With the case method, students learn to use their knowledge in the social context. Therefore, while traditional teaching tends to motivate the student to achieve results in an individualised way – the assessment methods of traditional teaching demonstrate this with their exams, whose aim is for students to show that they alone possess the qualities to be able to pass the test - with the case method the integration of the social dimension is facilitated . This is because a dialogue is established in the classroom which enriches studentsinsofarasitallowsthemtoconfirmtheiropinionsandtodiscoveraspectswhichtheyhadnotconsidered:inshort, the student learns to see the situation from a different perspective. In this sense, it can also be said that the case method is more similar to real life where one person does not run a business in isolation and, therefore, must always take into account the consequences of their actions. For this reason, the case study is particularly suitable for the teaching of professional ethics given that, as we have seen, ethics helps us to analyse the situation within its social context, to widen our scope of interest, and teaches us to consider the repercussions that our actions may have. Furthermore, the casesalso reflect thepoint that inexercisingaprofession– as in ordinary life – the freedom of others is interwoven, which is to say that it is always important to take into account the influence and determinants that may arise from thedecisions and behaviour of the people with whom we come into contact with in our work.

The case method is a didactic process that attempts to develop the capacity to ask questions.


Traditional teaching has focused, above all, on providing the student with a valid procedure for resolving a problematic situation following a question-procedure-response schematic. The case method does not seek to offerthestudentaspecificsolutiontoaproblem,butratherto demarcate the problem in a particular situation and to analyse and critically evaluate the possible options. In other words, what is basic and decisive in this kind of teaching is to have the problemwell defined and, only afterwards,to seek the most suitable way of resolving it. This feature resembles real life since, in reality, each person has to be able to identify and face problems. Therefore, the use of this method in professional ethics demands an intense effort of concentration from the student in the face of the problems posed and, at the same time, helps the student to evaluate the situation with ethical criteria, analysing the causes and studying the ethical implications of the alternatives presented.

A didactic process focused on decision-making. On some occasions, there have been attempts to use the case as a means of learning about possible solutions, as if the teacher merely distributed recipes or a scheme of diagnoses for matching potential therapies, or even in terms of applying invariable rules. But it is simply not possible to apply this method of proceeding to a real situation where characters are free beings and in which things vary. The case method is characterised not by the way it presents all possible solutions, but rather by the way in which – once the casehasbeenstudiedandtheproblemidentified–ithelpsthe student to make a decision, and one which is realistic. That does not mean that there is one single solution but, rather, and precisely because there are different solutions, the student needs to consider them all in order to be able to later decide which one seems to be the most appropriate out of those which are presented as viable. For this reason, its use in professional ethics contributes to developing a reflexiveandcriticalattitudeinstudentsthatwillhelpthem– in the future exercising of their profession – to analyse situations from an ethical point of view with proposals based on behaviour which accords with human dignity. It should be remembered that there is no single response in ethics – the good can be achieved in various ways – but, at the same time, there are principles – few and very general ones – that should not be transgressed as this would imply a risk to human dignity.

Conclusions •Theteachingofprofessionalethicsatuniversityhasaclear

social function in that it prepares the student with respect to their personal and social responsibility in the exercising of their profession. With this subject, the student is motivated toachievepersonalimprovementandthebenefitofothersin the exercising of their chosen profession.

•The goal of teaching professional ethics is to help thestudent to exercise and to learn to take into consideration ethical criteria in decision-making processes.

•The case method is a tool that is suitable for teachingprofessionalethicsbecauseit:

1. encourages students to further their knowledge and that stimulates their need to discover.

2. fosters the exercising of creativity due to the complexity of the situations presented and because of the need to search for alternatives.

3. aims to recuperate the social dimension of teaching,

4. aims to develop the capacity to ask questions, requiring an intense effort of concentration on the part of the student in the face of problems.

5. It is a didactic process based on taking decisions as a resultofareflexiveandcriticalattitude.

It could be argued that this method implies a very slow learning process, but this actually becomes an essential feature; which is to say that it is important to recognisethat teaching through cases only has an impact in the long term, or in other words, it is a method which pays off in the future.Itispreciselythislong-termprofitabilitythataccordswith the teaching goals of the subject given that the aim – with professional ethics - is not for students to acquire the greatest quantity of knowledge, but for them to be able to apply it in practice and to acquire skills that will help them to carry out their profession justly in the future.

The case method is a practical way of directing learning which is focused on real life and, precisely due this practical nature, the students’ very own errors can prove formative astheycanbeeasilyintegratedintotheteachingprocess:itcould be said that this kind of learning is in itself characteristic of human behaviour.

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About the authorLeticia Bañares Parera ([email protected]) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Navarra. Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Navarra. Member of the “Institute of Anthropology and Ethics” at the University of Navarra and Associate Member of the Institute “Business and Humanism” at the same University. Her research has focused on Anthropology and Business Ethics. She has published a book on the culture of work in organizations, as well as articles in professional journals. She has also worked on projects concerning human resources and human development in the exercise of professional activities. Currently a Professor at ISSA, where she teaches courses in Anthropology, Ethics and Organizational Psychology.


Social media perceptions on Finnish tourism sector

Johanna HeinonenHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Porvoo, Finland

AbstractThe Internet has become an important part of our daily lives. Almost 60 % of Finns use the Internet many times a day and over 40 % of them are registered on some social media platform. Over half of the Finns buy from web shops, most frequentlyflighttickets,accommodationorothertourismservices.Thereforeitwouldbenaturalthattourismcompanieswould use social media, which are both effective and cheap.

This paper has studied customers’ and companies’ attitudes towards social media. Two quantitative researches were madeonline:oneinvolvingcompaniesandtheotherinvolvingcustomers.Theresultsrevealtheexistenceofseveralgapsbetween companies’ and customers’ views about the use of social media. For instance, companies are not aware of their customers’ buying habits in the Internet or their wishes of social media services. Companies do not have proper follow up ormeasurementsystemstoknowiftheirsocialmediastrategieshavebeensuccessfuloriftheircustomersaresatisfied.Companies implement their old marketing strategies in social media and do not let customers show their opinions or create the content.

Based on the results from the quantitative analysis, the author discusses the key underlying causes for such gaps and other suggestions on how these gaps could be closed.

Keywords: social media, customer encounter, tourism sector

IntroductionOne of the most critical elements in producing services is a customer encounter, a situation where the customer and the server meet face to face. This is especially true for smallandmedium-sizedtourismfirms,wherethedistinctivecompetitive core would be about services and the firm’sability to provide them. Furthermore, the challenge is not only to provide qualitative services as such but also to communicate with customers in such a manner, that they feel overwhelmed by good service.

However, we live in an era of the Internet and various forms of digital communication where a personal face-to-face contact is minimal or does not exist at all. An increased use of the new media among customers makes it essential for tourism companies to know how to use the media and how to create an atmosphere of caring and trust, just as in a face to face contact. It is worth knowing what happens in service situations on-line and across social media, and the kinds of aspects that should be taken into consideration while determining how successful the encounter has been.

Unfortunately, quite often in traditional media companies seem to forget the customer’s point of view. When

encountering a customer in a new medium, the social one, thecompanyfindsitselfinaquiteunfamiliarsituation,wherethe old ways do not work anymore. Such are some of the future challenges that companies face, and this paper aims to give several ideas about how and where company’s activities can go wrong and discusses some strategies companies could adopt in order to improve the situation.

Research problem and objectiveThis paper aims at mapping out the situation and at rising company´s awareness about the potential of using social media in their marketing efforts (or strategies). Furthermore, the results of this study will serve as a base to suggest how companies could act to close some of the common gaps found in the use of social media.

Toachievetheaboveobjectives,thestudyaimsatfindinganswerstothefollowingresearchquestions:

•HowdotourismcompaniesinFinlandperceivesocialmediaas their communication channels?

•Howaresocialmediachannelsusedintermsofcustomers’understanding the role of social media and in terms of how


customers would like companies to use social media?

•Whatarethecriticalpointswhencommunicatinginsocialmedia from both customers’ and companies’ perspectives?

•Howcustomers’viewsandcustomerservicearetakenintoconsideration when developing communication strategies that involve social media?

•Whichstrategiescouldbeusedtoenhanceabetteruseofsocial media in tourism sector in Finland?

Byfindinganswerstotheseresearchquestionstheintentionis to help SME’s especially in tourism sector in Finland, to improve their communication strategies to reach their potential customers.

Literature review

Definition of social mediaSocial media is a term describing web services that receive most of their content from users. Blogs, wikis and online journals offer unique ways to capture, share and store accumulated knowledge about the employees of a company. A social media website interacts with its users while sending them requested information and invites people to interact with the site and other visitors. (Kaplan – Haenlein 2010, 60;OECD2007.)These definitions fall under the generalterm of an online community, which, according to Hanson (2000, 295), focuses on online social gatherings where the communication is multidirectional and repeated.

Marketing in virtual platforms and in social media can be defined as “network-enhancedword ofmouth” (Jurvetson1.5.2000) or as “a piece of content so good that people want to pass it on” (Bonello 2006, 38). Customers’ opinions are highly affected by communal experiences given by their network in social media. Communal experiences are becoming even more important than personal ones. (Jacobs 2010, 1.)

Presented below is one model of the divisions in social media. Figure 1 shows why people use social media. As it can be seen the uses are various and refer to sight, hearing, verbal and non-verbal communication, feelings, views and opinions.(Solis2009;Kaplan–Haenlein2010,61).Socialmedia are basically about social interaction and dialogue by different tools and different channels in the Internet and that each time, when a customer is in contact with the company, is a moment of truth in terms of image building, marketing and customer service (Dutta 2010, 2; Black 2010, 206).This means companies can’t concentrate on one channel strategy anymore. (Evans 2008,3).

Theexistenceofsocialmediaandtheirinfluenceonpeoples’

lives is accepted. People wish to use the Internet and get involved in services offered through the online network. Therefore actively working social media are the answer to people’s needs. The question arises however about how thisfulfillmentofneedsisdoneandhowitshouldbedoneto function as a tool helping human beings’ development and not destroying societies. (Fletcher, Bell & McNaughton 2004, 133.)

Every age group, society, and the business world at large use social media. Especially universities and companies are beginning to embrace social media. They are realizing their full potential and implications for using them as a component of their overall marketing mix. Social media are also used as a source of information between the company and its clients and encourage clients to share information among themselves.(Solis2008;Kaplan–Haenlein2010,59.)

Even though social media give an individual an opportunity to be faceless and impersonal, they also give many ways to emphasize one’s individuality and many users wish to be respected and recognized, which leads to the personalization of orders, mails, etc. By anonymity the media however encourage people to express themselves more freely without paying attention to the quality of the expression. (Hanson2000,292;Kaplan–Haenlein2010,61-62.)

Social media offer activities that involve socializing and networking online through words, pictures and videos. Social mediaredefinehowwerelatetoeachotherashumansandhow we as humans relate to the organizations that serve us. Media are about dialogue, two-way discussions, bringing people together to discover and share information (Solis 2008;Kaplan–Haenlein2010,61-62).

The possibilities online and in social media are borderless. Theycanhelpfindnew friends, keepupwith theexistingones and even rebuild the old, lost connections. They develop new ways for information sharing and studying and they can offer experiences and relaxation. (Hanson 2000, 292;Kaplan–Haenlein2010,61-62.)

In a virtual world people are equal because of the non-existing personal contact and the symbols tightly connected to the face-to-face encounters, such as age, gender, title, feelings, mimes etc. The disadvantage with this is that the lack of hierarchy and feelings can easily cause misunderstandings and confusion. It is also easy to be impolite and react in ways that would not be possible in the real world. (Hanson 2000, 107- 108.) This impersonality can also cause trouble, because it is easy to steal one’s identity and affect one’s private life. Therefore, it is important to notice that caution is advisable also in social media. (OECD 2007, 95.)

There are many ways of being successful in social media. Still, there are some common elements for a company to


notify when planning their social media strategy. The most important is to remember that the whole idea of social media concentrates on discussion and openness. This means that the customers should be allowed to express their feelings in companies’ social media platforms and companies shouldn’t be afraid of negative feedback. That only gives an opportunity to show how much a company cares for its customers. (Kaplan – Haenlein 2010, 65 -67; Mangold –Faulds 2009.)

Anotherimportantthingistoletgooftheoldtraditions;toberelaxed, humble and honest. This pressures companies to becreativeandfindnewwaysofengagingcustomersandfindactivitiesforthem.Beinginsocialmediaisaconstantwork, which means that the company must be active and bring up new topics for discussion. (Kaplan – Haenlein 2010, 65-67;Mangold–Faulds2009.)

Because social media ideology is very different from the traditional promotional mix, a company must follow up its and customers’ actions continuously and systematically. Measurement is one of the keywords if a company wants to be successful in social media. (Evans 2008,4.) Keywords

are also keeping up conversation, giving information, being interesting and relaxed, engaging customers, reliability, openness, frequent updating and gathering feedback. (Kaplan–Haenlein2010,65;Mangold–Faulds2009,357-359;Evans2008,3-5.)

By planning social media actions carefully and by measuring the success, companies can gain good results, reach many potential customers and create widely known image with quitesmallfinancialeffort.However,becauseofitactiveandlively nature social media require time from the company and its employees. (Evans 2008,3-5.)

Customer encounter and service qualityService is a process that is longer than a momentarily encounter (Grönroos 2001, 229; Zeithaml – Bitner 2000,3). Therefore a service can be defined as an extendedservice offering, which includes accessibility of service, communication (the encounter) with service organization and customer’s participation in a service process (Grönroos 2001,299;Storbackaetal.1999,16).

Therefore service quality can be defined inmany various

Figure1:Theconversation prism in Web2.0 (Solis 2009)


ways. Quality depends on how customer’s experiences are equivalent to customer’s expectations. Therefore a customer is always the one who decides whether the service is good or bad and this judgment can vary from a customer to another. (Grönroos1998;Zeithaml–Bitner2000;Parasuramanetal.1985.)Servicequalitycanbedefinedaswithfivevariables:tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy(Zeithaml–Bitner2000,82–85;Parasuramanetal.1988;Berryetal.1993).

Service quality is always a combination of the expected service and the experienced service. External marketing and marketing communication are the main elements that affect the expected quality. Also corporate image, mouth-to-mouth communication and customer’s personal needs have distinct meanings in expectations. The experienced quality is emphasized by corporate image, the service or product itself and the way it was delivered to a customer (the encounter and face to face communication). It can be concluded that themain issue inproducingqualitativeservices is to fulfillcustomer’s expectations or even exceed them. (Grönroos

1998, 65-66, 311.)

The creation of service quality with its different aspects can be described as Grönroos (1998) has done in Figure 2. Five dimensions can be outlined while studying how customers perceive service quality. The first of these dimensions isreliability, i.e. company’s capability to perform the service it promises to its customers. Another one is responsiveness, which means the company will give customers the help they need in order to provide the demanded service. The third one is assurance, which is an outcome of employees’ professionalism, knowledge and polite behavior as well as theway they create trust and confidence.The fourth oneis empathy including caring and personal and tailor-made attentiontoeachseparatecustomer.Thelast,thefifthoneis tangibles by which the place where service is produced, the equipment that is used, personnel and written materials are meant. (Zeithaml – Bitner 2000, 82).

Services are thus unique situations in which a customer andaserveractivelyparticipate(Lehtonenetal.2002,48;

Figure2:How good service and communication are created in a service organization (Grönroos 1998, 483.)


Zeithaml – Bitner 2000). Both employee’s and customer’s expectations and behaviour have their effect on the moment of truth and thus in the success of a service encounter (Parasuramanet al 1985;Gummesson2002, 67). Abadcommunication and encounter with the organization can spoil a good service product altogether. (Grönroos 2001, 299).

Customer encounter can be considered as the core competence of a service business (eg. Day 1990; Möller& Anttila 1987; Carson et al 1995; Johannisson 1996).Customer encounter is thus crucial for a firmand servicequality, it gives an impression of a company and its way of handling things. Every employee participates in customer encounter by his or her own behaviour and in this way strengthens or weakens the corporate image and customer relationship. (Poikolainen 1994; Pesonen et al. 2002, 7.)This behavior is targeted as well to internal customers (colleagues, contractors, stakeholders etc.) as to external customers (Grönroos 2001). Therefore it is important that everyoneinthefirmunderstandsthecustomerexpectationsthat have been created by corporate image, external marketing or previous service experiences (Jokinen et al. 2000, 228-229; Lundberg et al. 2000). Furthermore aqualitative service experience demands professional servant (Lämsä – Uusitalo 2002, 119).

Social media, customer service and tourismThere are almost 6 million foreign visitors to Finland annually and their origin lies all over the world (MEK 2010). When tourists are seeking for information about destinations, they rely on personal experiences, the Internet and discussions with their relatives, friends etc. These discussions can happen face to face but also via different platforms and social media channels in the Internet (MEK 11.8.2010;Steinbauer – Werthner 2007, 65ff). Thus, one could say that social media is a new opportunity to tourism. A big amount of companies – actors – in tourism business are small and medium-sized without so much money to spend, while the potential customers – tourists – lie all around the globe. There is a distinctive need for cheap and effective way to reach customers and engage them.

There is a clear tendency in tourism industry, which changes the marketing platform from traditional media towards the Internet and social media. Virtual platforms like TripAdvisor and LonelyPlanet have gathered thousands of followers and they have changed towards social media platforms, where people can discuss and change views of destinations and other travel purposes. (Gretzel&Yoo2008;Vermeulen&Seegers2008;Xiang&Gretzel2010.)

Tourism is considered to be a knowledge intensive business where marketing depends on the images companies create and on the tools that are used to deliver these images. This means that marketers in tourism industry should understand the challenges and possibilities given by this new technology and take it into consideration while planning actions. (Xiang – Gretzel 2010, 179 & 186 – 187.)

Serviceencounterscanbedividedintothreedifferenttypes:remote encounters, phone encounters, and face-to-face encounters (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003, 102-104). While talking about social media, the remote encounters, i.e. the encounters without little if any human contact, are the ones that appear most frequently. In remote encounters a special emphasis should be put on the technical quality of the service (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003, 102-104), because it is the only visible thing for the customer.

In social media a special feature is the creation of trust, which is no longer created and ruled by companies, but by the users and their recommendations and inputs. This means that contents in social media is user generated and negative feedback cannot be hidden anymore; somethingthat can be challenging as well as rewarding for companies. Furthermore, social media encourage customers to become more engaged with a company and its products and by this way strengthen its brand. (Harris – Rae 2009, 24-26.)

By putting the user – the customer – into the center of action, social media change the view of traditional view of marketing and customer service. Instead of giving information, companies should divide opinions and encourage their followers to take action and give feedback, which can be used then in developing brands and products as well as correcting the possible mistakes made by the company. Customer’s role in customer service becomes dominant and active. (Harris – Rae 2009.)

Summary of the literature reviewBased on the theory presented earlier, one could apply social media dimension to the Grönroos’ model of Moment of Truth (Figure 3).

Because of the special nature of social media, moment of truth does not require the presence of the employee or manager anymore. Still, personnel and management have an important role, while they are responsible for that the contents on social media platforms contribute in achieving the company’s goals. They are also responsible for following up the social media actions and the overall success of social media strategy. This means that they have to understand the social media as a tool and have a wide network on different social media platforms.

Customers are active in the moment of truth and they rely


more on the communal experiences than the individual ones. Their expectations are created by the traditional media as well as the word of mouth in social media environment.

In order to guarantee a successful service in social media, a company must pay attention to the functionality of the platform, the contents there, reliability, interactivity, openness. It is also important to have a working follow up system, clear measurements and gather actively feedback from the users.

Research approach and methodThe initial idea of this research was to identify how tourism companies could use social media successfully, so that the customer satisfaction would become attainable. This research offers a practical view of the differences that customers and companies have in tourism sector. The study uses quantitative methods to create a general view of the tourism industry and how social media are used in tourism.

Twodifferenttargetgroupswerestudied:tourismcompaniesand their customers. In order to reach both target groups an online survey was chosen, as it distributed the questionnaire to a large sample effectively and economically.

The questionnaire was based on the theoretical background of studies in social media, tourism and customer satisfaction. It was divided into four sections (the questionnaire for companies) and into 3 sections (the questionnaire for customers). The four sections in the company questionnaire were Background questions, Use of social media in the company, Follow-up of the social media and Measurement of social media. In the customer questionnaire the sections were Background questions, Use of social media, and Companies’ opinions of social media actions. The question types used in the questionnaires varied from selection and multiple choice questions to Likert scale from 1 to 5 in order to achieve a view as wide as possible. Also open-ended questions were used when necessary to give depth to the answers. No information about the respondents, their

Figure3:ModifiedmodelofTheMomentofTruth


whereabouts etc. was gathered which ensured that the respondents remained anonymous.

The online questionnaire was coded. The data were gathered in a numeric and verbal form as a file in CSV-format. This filewas transferred to thestatisticsprogramSPSS and then analyzed.

The research was carried out during February 2011. The questionnaire was distributed to tourism companies in Finlandbyemailvia local touristoffices. Itwasdistributedto private persons via different channels in Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, tourism related discussion forums and groups etc.).

The total number of company respondents was 595, which is 2,5 % of all the Finnish tourism companies. Most of the respondents (76 %) used social media in some form and almost half of those who did not had thought it as a possibility.

The number of private respondents, i.e. customers’ representatives, was 406. All the companies divided among all different business fields andall the regions inFinland.

Among private respondents there were 62 % males, all age groups between 20 – 70 years were represented and the division into different areas in Finland was quite equivalent to companies’ division.

The reliability of this research is based on several grounds. One is the anonymity of the responses; the respondentscould answer freely about their practices and hopes. The amountofrespondentswascritical:inbothgroupstheaimwas to gather at least 300 responses to ensure the statistical reliability. One of the goals was to get responses from companiesofdifferentregions,businessfieldsanddifferentsizes. Customers’ profiles showed both genders, differentregions and different age groups. The questions were tested beforehand, so that there weren’t any ambiguities or mistakes. The online-questionnaire and its functioning were also tested beforehand.

Discussion of resultsIn the following chapter the results of the quantitative research are explained. Questions on were formulated based on the

Figure4:Use of different social media channels


modifiedmodelofGrönroos’MomentofTruth.Thus thereare question about the channels used, the purpose to which they are used, how important certain issues are experiences

in social media and a few question about updating and follow up systems.

Most frequently used social mediaWhen comparing the answers from companies and private persons some interesting differences were found. As for the channels of communication, companies prefer homepages and Facebook, while other channels are used less. Customers use mostly Facebook and homepages as well, buttheirselectionofmediaismuchwider;forinstancetextmessages, YouTube, Webshops and Wikis are used by 40 %ormore of respondentswhile the similar figure amongcompanies lies around 30 % or less (Figure 4).

Purpose of social mediaOne issue where some interesting points could be found was the purpose of social media use among companies

and customers. One fourth of companies considered giving information as the most important purpose in their social media strategies. Also giving information of offers and answering questions was considered valuable. Customers think mostly the same way as companies, but they also value blogs and shopping opportunities besides the plain information (Figure 5).

Important issues in social mediaWhen asked, which issues were considered most important, the customer service, reaction speed and reliability were in the top three of both groups (Table 1). However, companies valued more the image, atmosphere and other things attached to brand creation in the company. Customers instead experienced clearness, interesting contents, feedback possibilities and sharing company’s personal viewmoreimportantthancompaniesthemselves.Specificdifferences could be found in such topics as Atmosphere, Closeness and Storytelling, which companies valued more than customers. On the other hand, customers considered feedback, clearness of social media site and sharing

Figure5:Purpose of social media use


management’s views more important than companies.

This small difference can also be the reason why companies feel that they have got good results in social media in such areas as sharing information, creating image and reactingfast,whiletheyaredissatisfiedwiththeirresultsingathering feedback and using it, increasing understanding of customers, strengthening customer loyalty and creating discussion.

Creation of the contents in social mediaAnother interesting difference comes up when the respondents were asked who should create the contents of social media (Figure 6). Largely the results are quite similar, but while 16 % of customers see that anyone should be capable of creating contents the corresponding figure forthe companies is 4 %. Also the share of customer impact is considered bigger among customers than companies.

Over 64 % of the customers think that companies’ social media sites should be updated at least couple of times in a week and 50 % of the companies announce doing that. However, almost 10 % of the companies tell that they update their information more seldom than once a month. (Figure 7)

These results are also supported by the question where people were asked, if they consider companies’ social media sites to be planned and organized, when 78 % of those companies claim this to be the situation, to which only 46,5 % of customers agrees.

Awareness of customer behaviorCompanies were quite unaware of their customers’ behavior intheInternet;almosthalfoftherespondentsdidnotknow,how often their followers visited their social media sites (Figure 7). In the research 47 % of the companies were not measuring their social media impacts and 65 % of respondents did not know what their customers thought of their social media strategy.

Conclusions and recommendationsThe research can be considered quite reliable. There were manyrespondents:595companiesand406privatepersons.Companies were divided to all regions in Finland, to all businessfieldsintourismindustryandtheywereofallsizes.Private persons were of both genders, all age groups and respondents came from all regions in Finland. There were

Table1:Importanceinsocialmedia


Figure6:Creator of the contents in social media

Figure7:Updatingcontentsinsocialmedia


Figure8:Companies’knowledgeofcustomers’frequencytovisitsocialmediasites


few complaints about problems in the network connections, but even these were solved. No one considered the questionnaire to be too long or hard to understand. Therefore one can say, that respondents are representatives for the population and their answers can be considered reliable.

Based on the results we can consider that there are significant gaps between management perceptions andthe actual situation. Most of this is due to the fact that companies do not have a working follow up system or a proper measurement system for their social media actions.

Only half of the companies use some sort of measurement to follow the social media. About 40 % of the companies follow up social media at least once a week, 20 % once a month and almost 40 % more seldom. This means that even updating social media platforms happens more seldom than customers would have hoped. In social media, which is an active media requiring fast reaction, even once a week is too seldom. It can also be asked what the good results in reaction speed would be according to the companies considered good among customers. Naturally, the reaction speed is faster than by using a traditional way.

Companies are also quite unaware of how often their customers follow their pages. Almost 50 % of the company respondents do not know how often their followers visit their sites and 65 % of respondents do not know what their customers think about their sites.

These results show clearly that companies do not have enough knowledge of their customers and their wishes in order to produce social media services customers expect.

This research concentrates on the company – customer relationships and does not provide enough information for handling internal problems in a company.

By starting a social media campaign or a site, due to the nature of social media, a company gives a clear sign to its stakeholders that it is interested in its customers and customers’ opinions and it wants to share daily actions in the company with them. If the social media reality is then old-fashioned, administrated and controlled by the company without any possibility to user impact, the external communication given to the customers becomes false and misleading.

According to the results of the research one can consider that tourism companies are really interested in social media as their marketing tool and that the media are considered as a good addition to the traditional marketing tools. Still, it isdifficultforcompaniestorealizethedifferencesbetweentraditional marketing channels and social media. Social media are seen as a channel to distribute information and strengthen corporate image; theway companies use

traditional media for advertising.

Customers also feel that social media give new possibilities to companies and are worth using. However, customers would like to take a more active and uncontrolled role, which is characteristic of the social media. This would enhance the customer loyalty, increase the discussion and enable an easy and reliable way for customer feedback, which could be used for developing the company and its products.

Companies could also reconsider their media mix in social media. At the moment the traditional forms like home pages and text messages are used with Facebook, but the variety of channels customers use is much wider. This can also cause misunderstanding and dissatisfaction among customers. The expectations differ from the reality, the experiences from the social media.

Social media seem to be an easier and cheaper way to get publicity for a company than the traditional media, like newspapers, television, radio etc. However, they require engagement and time from the company and the company must have a plan as much as in other media. The biggest difference and the greatest challenge in social media is the customer impact. By giving customers free hands and letting them make their voice heard, a company can gain much in forms of publicity, customer loyalty, brand creation and finally,profits.

The results of this research were clear. Companies are interested in social media, but they have not yet realized their challenges and the new way of working. The most important issues and ways to improve service in social media would be the increase of user impact and a more efficient andplannedfollowup.Thefirstonewouldhelptoenhancetheencounters with customers in the moment of truth in social media and the latter one would help in improving the media, its use and product development.

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About the authorJohanna Heinonen ([email protected])M.Sc.(Econ.),MAhasworkedasaSeniorLecturer inmarketing and entrepreneurship in HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences since 2009. She has a long experience as a consultant on tourism sector and as an educator in marketing. Heinonen writes her dissertation on customer encounters in social media of tourism sector.


IntroductionOf all players who feature in the management of the modern world economy, it is the entrepreneurs who most attract attention. The word ‘entrepreneur’ is widely used, both in everyday conversation and as a technical term in management and economics. An entrepreneur is one who creates a new business in the face of risk and uncertainty forthepurposeofachievingprofitandgrowthbyidentifyingopportunities and assembling the necessary resources to capitalize on them. Although many people come up with great business ideas, few act on them. However, entrepreneurs do (Zimmerer and Scourborough 2006, 4).

In many cases, entrepreneurs are seen as heroes, as self-starting individuals who take great personal risk in order to bringthebenefitsofnewproductsandservicetomarkets.Inaddition, there is also an expression of concern at the pace of economic and social change entrepreneurs bring and of the uncertainty they create especially in the competition environment. People admire their talents or may even question the rewards they get for their efforts. Whatever

instinctive reaction to entrepreneurs, it is not possible to ignore their impact on communities (Wickham, 2001, 2).

The received understanding is that successful entrepreneurs engage in continuous discovery, involving both cumulative improvements and radical departures from well established routines (see Woo, Daellenbach and Nicholls-Nixon 1994). Furthermore, intangible resources such as knowledge, skills, attitudes and social capital have now assumed prominence as important supplement to traditional economic and tangible resources. However, entrepreneurship is no longer merely an isolated and discontinuous innovative effort made by individuals with Calvinistic attitude to work and life and who see things differently from everybody else and pursue them single-minded. These attributes are doubtlessly essential but not a sufficient requirement for the development ofbusiness today.

Looking at the literature on entrepreneurship, it is seen as stemmingfromthreesources:thecontributionsofeconomicwriters and thinkers; from psychological trait approachon personality characteristics; and a social behavioralapproach (see, Deakins 1996, 7). Much effort have gone into

Social constructivist approach to multicultural entrepreneurship learning

Ger YucelHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Porvoo, Finland

Evariste HabiyakareHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Porvoo, Finland

Abstract There is little academic research about teaching and learning entrepreneurship in different educational institutions. For instance, except the individual psychological traits found easily in literature, there is little research about how entrepreneurship could be taught if it can be taught at all. This paper focuses on an experimental learning environment, Entrepreneurship Camps (EC, in which a group of multicultural students participated to test and develop their entrepreneurship skills.

This learning experiment is tested and analysed within the social constructivist paradigm, which suggests that learning takes place because of the interactions in a group where students can test their ideas, synthesize the ideas of others, and build deeper understanding of what they are learning.

Constructivism is often associated with pedagogical approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing. The interactive Entrepreneurship camps were considered as an appropriate testing ground for learning within social constructivist paradigm. Our experiment aimed at testing whether the EC would achieve “entrepreneurial preparedness” (Cope 2005, p. 378)forinvolvedstudents.Inlinewiththisaim,weidentified7groupsoffactorsactinginconcerttoinfluencethelearners´entrepreneurship readiness.

Keywords: social constructivism, learning, entrepreneurship camps


identifying entrepreneurial characteristics and it has diverted research away from other important areas concerning the entrepreneur’s ability to learn from problem solving and to gain from their business experience (Deakins 1996, 21 ;Wickham 2001, 20).

So far, there is little academic research about teaching and learning entrepreneurship in different educational institutions. For instance, except the individual psychological traits described above, there is little research about, how entrepreneurship could be taught. Furthermore, we need to know, which factors are considered to be of importance to foster entrepreneurial teaching and learning leading to entrepreneurial readiness.

There has been a significant growth in academicentrepreneurship programmes world-wide. As Katz & Green (1996) conclude, the number of resources ranging from text-based to internet-based entrepreneurship resources developed to support entrepreneurship education has been increasing.

In order to support such education, entrepreneurial learning tools have been experimented in different cultural contexts. For instance, on European level, the Junior Achievement Young Enterprise (JA-YE) concept has been applied in many countries (http://www.ja-ye.org). It has been arguedthat entrepreneurship is a process of learning, involving particular knowledge and skills necessary for creating a business (Gartner 1988).

With theseexperiments,weaimatfindinganswers to thefollowingquestions:

1. How can entrepreneurship be taught to multicultural students?

2. What may be the factors that act as enablers and facilitators for the learning and preparedness to take place?

3. Which factors act as barriers and inhibitors for entrepreneurship learning and readiness to take place?

4. Which strategies could educational institutions put into place to ensure effective entrepreneurship teaching and learning?

In this paper, we consider learning to be a process that leads to some type of action. In this process, people make changes in their knowledge base and memory storage by accumulating facts, developing and enlarging concepts and ideas about life, and by creating entirely new ideas, attitudes, models, images, or patterns. In addition, learning may take place in private and shared settings. In this perspective, learners may perform activities either alone or with other group members. Some of these situations may be under the learner’s own control like in library and classes. Other

situations may be controlled by others like in job training.

Debates on learning in a controlled environment (like schools)havegeneratedconflictingviews (seeBransford,John D., Ann L. Brown, and Rodney R. Cocking, 1999).

The first view emphasizes learning as a passive processor a gradual absorption of knowledge aiming at increasing learner’s own knowledge base.

The second view emphasizes memorizing knowledge through active role. However, in this view, memorized information is hard to internalise and transfer across domains.

The third view consists of acquiring facts or procedures to be used. Accordingly, this may lead to acquisition of skills like reading, writing, and mathematics. This view also emphasizes using and practicing the acquired knowledge and skills so that the actions become automatic.

The fourth view is about learning as making sense and understanding reality. In this perspective, reality may be self constructed. Learner makes active attempts to abstract meaning while learning and using new material to update and modify existing beliefs. Trying to understand things and to acquire the ability to explain them, not just remember them (Bransford et al, 1999).

In our paper, we focus our attention on the fourth approach and discuss the social constructivist approach to learning.

Social Constructivist Approach to Entrepreneurship LearningThe constructivism theory is generally attributed to Jean Piaget, who articulated mechanisms by which knowledge is internalized by learners. He suggested that through processes of accommodation and assimilation, individuals construct new knowledge from their experiences. When individuals assimilate, they incorporate the new experience into an already existing framework without changing that framework. This may occur when individuals’ experiences are aligned with their internal representations of the world, but may also occur as a failure to change a faulty understanding; for example, they may not notice events,may misunderstand input from others, or may decide that an eventisaflukeandisthereforeunimportantasinformationabout the world. In contrast, when individuals’ experiences contradict their internal representations, they may change their perceptions of the experiences to fit their internalrepresentations (See Bransford et al, 1999).

According to this theory, accommodation is the process of reframing one’s mental representation of the external world tofitnewexperiences.Accommodationcanbeunderstoodasthemechanismbywhichfailureleadstolearning:when


we act on the expectation that the world operates in one way and it violates our expectations, we often fail, but by accommodating this new experience and reframing our model of the way the world works, we learn from the experience of failure, or others’ failure. Constructivism is a theory describing how learning happens and is often associated with pedagogic approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing (Dewey, in Bransword, et al, 19, p.77).

Social constructivism views each learner as a unique individual with unique needs and backgrounds. The learner is also seen as complex and multidimensional. Social constructivism encourages the learner to arrive athisorher versionof the truth, influencedbyhisorherbackground, culture or embedded worldview. Thus, it does not only acknowledge the uniqueness and complexity of the learner, but actually encourages, utilizes and rewards it as an integral part of the learning process (Wertsch 1997). Historical developments and symbol systems, such as language, logic, and mathematical systems, are inherited by the learner as a member of a particular culture and these are learned throughout the learner’s life. This also stresses the importance of the nature of the learner’s social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society. Without such interaction it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to utilize them. (Ibid)

Furthermore, it is argued that the responsibility of learning should reside increasingly with the learner (Glasersfeld, 1989). Von Glasersfeld (1989) emphasizes the fact that learners construct own understanding and that they do not simply mirror and reflect what they read. Learnerslook for meaning and will try to find regularity and orderin the events of the world even in the absence of full or complete information (ibid). Furthermore, according to Von Glasersfeld (1989), sustaining motivation to learn is strongly dependentonthelearner’sconfidenceinhisorherpotentialfor learning. These feelings of competence and belief in potentialtosolvenewproblemsarederivedfromfirst-handexperience of mastery of problems in the past and are much more powerful than any external acknowledgment and motivation (Prawat and Floden 1994).

Social constructivism, suggests that knowledge is firstconstructed in a social context and is then appropriated byindividuals(Bruningetal.,1999;M.Cole,1991;Eggan& Kauchak, 2004). Accordingly, the process of sharing individual perspectives-called collaborative elaboration (Meter & Stevens, 2000)-results in learners constructing understanding together that wouldn’t be possible alone (Greeno et al., 1996). Kukla (2000) argues that reality is constructed by our own activities and that people,

together as members of a society, invent the properties of the world. Other constructivist scholars agree with this and emphasize that individuals make meanings through the interactions with each other and with the environment they live in. Knowledge is thus a product of humans and issociallyandculturallyconstructed(Ernest1991;Prawatand Floden 1994). McMahon (1997) agrees that learning is a social process. He further states that learning is not a process that only takes place inside our minds, nor is it a passive development of our behaviors that is shaped by external forces and that meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities. Learners with different skills and backgrounds should collaborate in tasks and discussions to arrive at a shared understanding of the truthinaspecificfield(DuffyandJonassen1992).

The theory of constructivism suggests that learners construct knowledge out of their experiences. Constructivism is also often associated with pedagogical approaches that promote active learning, or learning by doing. Social constructivism thus emphasizes the importance of the learner being actively involved in the learning process, unlike previous educational viewpoints where the responsibility rested with the instructor to teach and where the learner played a passive, receptive role. Social constructivists consider learning as a social process. It does not take place only within an individual, nor is it a passive development of behaviors that are shaped by external forces (Savery and Duffy, 1994).

Meaningful learning occurs when individuals are engaged in social activities and, that is what exactly aimed at these two entrepreneurship camps. In social constructive model, the nature of the learner’s social interaction with knowledgeable members of the society is important. Without the social interaction with more knowledgeable others, it is impossible to acquire social meaning of important symbol systems and learn how to use them.

According to the social constructivist approach, instructors have to adapt to the role of facilitators and not teachers (ibid). The difference lay in the area of focus. One is teachercenteredtheotherislearner-centered;learnerhasan active role in one and passive role in the other. Where a teacher gives a didactic lecture that covers the subject matter, a facilitator helps the learner to get to his or her own understanding of the content (Bauersfeld, 1995). In didactic teaching, the learner plays a passive role and in the later scenario the learner plays an active role in the learning process. The emphasis thus turns away from the instructor and the content, and goes towards the learner. This dramatic change of role implies that a facilitator needs to display a totally different set of skills than a teacher (Kotila & Mäki 2008, Brownstein 2001, Gamoran, Secada, & Marrett, 1998).


One other characteristic of the constructive model is that the instructor and the learners are equally involved in learning from each other (Holt and Willard-Holt 2000). Learners compare their version of the truth with each other’s and that of the instructor’s to get to a new, socially tested version of truth (Kukla 2000).

The task or problem is thus the interface between the instructors, members of the society and the learners (McMahon 1997). This interface creates a dynamic interaction between task, instructors and learners. As a consequence, learners and instructors should develop an awareness of each other’s viewpoints and then look to their own beliefs, standards and values, thus being both subjective and objective at the same time (Savery 1994). Some studies argue for the importance of mentoring in the process of learning (Archee andDuin 1995; Brown et al.1989). The social constructivist model thus emphasizes the importance of the relationship between the student and the instructor in the learning process.

Learners should be constantly engaged and challenged with tasks that refer to skills and knowledge just beyond their current level of mastery. This captures their motivation and buildsonprevioussuccessestoenhancelearnerconfidence(Brownstein 2001). To fully engage and challenge the learner, the task and learning environment should reflectthe complexity of the environment that the learner should be able to function in at the end of learning.

The context in which the learning occurs is central to the learning itself (McMahon 1997). The learning environment should also be designed to support and challenge the learner’s thinking. (Di Vesta, 1987). According to Gulikers, Bastiaens & Martens (2005, p. 509-510), an authentic learning environment “provides a context that reflects theway knowledge and skills will be used in real life.”

“This includes a physical or virtual environment that resembles the real world with real-world complexity and limitations, and provides options and possibilities that are also present in real life.” (Gulikers et al. p. 509-510) in Engestrom (1994).

While it is advocated to give the learner ownership of the problem and solution process, it is not the case that any activity or any solution is adequate. The critical goal is to support the learner in becoming an effective thinker. This can be achieved by assuming multiple roles, such as consultant and coach.

It is important to achieve the right balance between the degree of structure and flexibility that is built into thelearning process. Savery et al. (1994) contends that the more structured the learning environment, the harder it is for the learners to construct meaning based on their conceptual

understandings. A facilitator should structure the learning experience just enough to make sure that the students get clear guidance and parameters within which to achieve the learning objectives, yet the learning experience should be open and free enough to allow for the learners to discover, enjoy,interactandarriveattheirownsociallyverifiedversionof truth ( Savery et al. 1994).

Entrepreneurship Learning Camps EC may be associated either to Problem Based or Project Based Learning because among other similarities these methods are organized around a shared goal (project), both promote active learning and both are learner centered constructive strategies (Savery 2006). However, according to Savery (2006) the difference is that; in problem-basedlearning, problems are ill defined where else in Project-BasedLearningstudentsaregivenspecifications.

“….learners are usually provided with specifications for a desired end product and the learning process is more oriented to following correct procedures.” (Savery, 2006, 16).

He also criticizes cases and projects for diminishing the learner’s role in setting the goals and outcomes as compared to problems. However, while working on a project, learners are likely to encounter several “problems” that generate “teachable moments” Savery (2006, 16). Another point Savery (2006, 16) makes, is about the role of the teacher in project-based learning, which also corresponds to the role different advisors played in these two entrepreneurship camps.

“Teachers are more likely to be instructors and coaches (rather than tutors) who provide expert guidance, feedback and suggestions for “better” ways to achieve the final product. The teaching (modeling, scaffolding, questioning, etc.) is provided according to learner need and within the context of the project.” Savery (2006,16).

The project consisted of organizing and implementing two entrepreneurship camps as learning environment for studentsatHAAGA-HELIAPorvooinFinland.ThefirstECwas organized on the 09th April 2010 and lasted for 24 hours and the second took place on the 8th of May 2010 and lasted 12hoursforpracticalreasons.BoththefirstandsecondECwere organized at the same school and participants were students coming from West and East European countries, Asia and Africa. Furthermore, there were different experts bothfromtheAcademia,frombusinesslifeandfromfinancialinstitutions. In both camps, participants were divided into different groups and each group had a room of its own and several other facilities were in use in different stages of the process e.g., computer labs, the gym and the cafeteria.


Auditorium was used for presentations and feedback in opening and closing ceremonies.

The learning objectives of the entrepreneurship camps were setatanearlystage:

-To get students acquainted with the entrepreneurial skills and to provide the students in Porvoo (Finland) with idea of entrepreneurial possibilities after graduation.

-To develop team work skills, communication, negotiation and problem solving skills, organizational skills, leadership skills and project management skills.

Students were given the learning objectives and the expected outcome of the process (viable, profitable,unique business idea). Furthermore, after completion they presented their results, got feedback and suggestions for further development from the experts. The camp leaders played the role of coaches. After a careful consideration and analysis of the related theories, we could conclude that the Constructivist Model was suitable for analysis of these entrepreneurship camps as a learning environment. After all, the focus in these camps was on the learners thinking about learning (not on the subject/lesson to be taught) and the learner was to give meaning from different experiences to construct own knowledge base about entrepreneurship. The process is a social process, task based on group-work and some experts of the society are involved (See Savery et al.1994).

The EC required students to work in groups of 5 - 6 and to take responsibility for generating a unique applicable business idea and for a location of their own choice. The learning took place throughout a process. This task also facilitates internalization and externalization of knowledge and allows learners to create “usable knowledge” from “disconnected facts” (Bransford et al. 1999).

Participants were encouraged to develop ownership for the overall problem or task through developing own business ideas and business plans. As much as possible, advisors avoided imposing their ideas on participants who were required to develop a unique and applicable business idea. The process started with a brain storming session, during which all group members introduced their potential business ideas. Each idea was discussed and negotiations took place among the group members to reach a consensus on the best idea to work with. After the consensus was reached, then the group members devoted attention into developing a viable andprofitablebusinessplan.Through this teamdynamicsstudents learned quickly that sharing and networking in teamwork was a key if they were to develop a successful business plan. At the end of the process, one could observe that the most successful teams seemed to be those whose group members learned quickly from each others.

The EC created authenticity by providing students with the same experience they are likely to face after completion of their studies. All factors, resources and limitations were dictated by the markets in the chosen sector. Students were required to search e.g., price levels, competition, demand and future trends. In addition, they were required to evaluate theirownresourcesandtoconsiderotherfinancialsources.The goal was not to create empty ideas, but also implement them. An organization named Tuli, has been set to help in assessingthesuccessfulbusiness ideaand infinancingapossible start-up with a support up to 50.000 €.

TheECcampsweredesigned to reflect thecomplexityofthe environment in which the learner will be expected to function at the end of the learning. Participants were invited to do a proper competition and risk analysis and to show which strategies they could use to penetrate such.

Anchoring entrepreneurship camps in a Social Constructive frameworkEC process was totally in the hands of the learners as both camp leaders and advisers hardly interfered with the process. Advisors were there only when and if the learners needed them as counselor not as dictators of what has to be done and how it should be done. However, to avoid monotony, there were key control points planned before hand in which the learners participated in some games aiming at raising team spirit and at creating connection between groups and members. These games have been essential in supporting the group work and belonging.

Implementation of Entrepreneurship Camps at Porvoo Campus in Finland Thereisnouniqueefficientwayofteachingentrepreneurshipto multicultural learners. After all each individual is unique and has own background. Right from the start, EC as a learning environment was set to challenge the learners’ thinking and analytical skills. This was done through giving each individual time to think and to come up with own proposition of what could be a good business idea. In the later stage, each had opportunity to present own business idea and then to compare it with other group members’ ideas to choose the one with more viability. In this interactive process;learners were called on to constantly present and explain their solutions until a consensus was reached. Analytical skills were required and played a decisive role through the process, as the group members had to acquire information from different websites and companies to disseminate that information in order to construct own business plan.

Although the group’s coach could play devil’s role to get


the discussion and creative process going, participants remained owners and responsible for their ideas. Learners were encouraged to test ideas against alternative views and contexts. This process occurred especially during debates within different groups as they had to test ideas related to competitiveness, demand, marketing, pricing, resources and uniqueness of contexts. This testing continued all along the development process until the business plan was presented for possible selection as best business idea of the camp. At the end of each camp, an assessment session was organized to allow professionals, experts, camp leaders and campers to choose the winning team.

During the whole process, there was opportunity for support and time for reflections on both the content learned andthe learning process. This opportunity was given during the preparation of the business plan and the discussion

at the end of the camp. Teachers, experts and campers themselvesreflectedtheiropinionsontheideasandinthesession for peer assessment. Process did not end there. Participants were again asked to revise their business plan and to reconstruct it based on the comments offered after the end of these camps. Finally, the process was a social process and there was an interaction with the more knowledgeable members of the society. First of all, EC were planned around groups and learning occurred in group works with interaction. Secondly interaction with the more knowledgeable members of the society was also provided by the experts who were invited to both the opening and closing of the camps.

Social Constructivist Model Multicultural Entrepreneurship Learning CampsLearning around a task Learning by creating a business planOwnership of the task Own business idea, designed and planned by studentsAuthenticity of the task No scenario; challenges, limitations, resources are dictated by th e markets

Background culture and unique-ness of the learner

Different cultural backgrounds. Each learner is given opportunity to reflect upon own proposal which is presented to the group members.

Complexity of the learning environ-ment

There are many issues to take into consideration to succeed with the task. They only had access to consultants when needed, the rest is real life conditions

Ownership of the learning process No interference, instructors are there as consultants and counselors. They do not dictate what to be done.

Challenging the learner Selection of the best idea challenges the learner to come up with the best possible answers to the problems of a real life situation.

Relationship between the student and the instructor in the learning process

Existence of dynamic interaction between task, instructor and learner. Instructors play a role as facilitators and coaches

Testing the ideas against the alter-natives and collaboration among learners

Testing occurs in several stages; e.g., debates to choose one idea as group’s, testing the idea against market parameters

Opportunity for support and time for reflection

Each group has a coach and instructors as counselors for support and there are periodical pauses for games and reflections

Learning as active social process and interaction

Existence of community members with varying expertise ensures social interac-tions

Structuring of the learning process No structure is imposed in advance Assessment of the learning process and outcome

Presentation to the audience, peer assessment and expert assessment. Session for evaluation of the whole process.

Table1:MulticulturalEntrepreneurshipLearningCampinaconstructivistframework

Source:AdaptedfromJohnR.SaveryandThomasM.Duffy(1994,pp.1-16)


Observations and results of Entrepreneurship Camps at Porvoo Campus A feedback session was arranged and participants and experts were asked to assess the whole process. There was a consensus on the fact the planning and organizing ofthefirstcampwassuccessfulalthoughitwasthefirstECarranged by the students. However, most of the business plansgeneratedinthefirstcampwerenotrealistic.Forthesecond camp, the general feeling was good especially when it comes to learning and experience point of view. Some participants said it was the most useful project they had ever participated in a group at school.

At thisstage, it isappropriate toreflectbackupontheECand to shed light on our observations and hopefully give answers to the questions raised in introduction. To do so, let

usfirstsummarizeourkeyobservationintoamodelwhichwill be explained later.

The model simply focuses on the entrepreneurship learning and readiness without regard to origin of the learners or where the Start-Up could be established. Reference to multicultural learners should not be seen as limiting or implying that a foreigner would learn differently from a local participant. Rather, it is recognition of the fact that most participants to the EC were of foreign origin and that this experiment was of multicultural character. The term Multicultural Entrepreneurship Learning Camps could have been easily used. Nevertheless, a more neutral term such as Entrepreneurship Camps is more appropriate in this perspective.

The model does not assume that participant had already entrepreneurial experience and thus has accumulated substantialknowledgeandfinancialresourceswithwhichto

Figure1:Amodelofentrepreneuriallearningandreadiness


start own business in the host country. In essence the model may well apply to any entrepreneurship learner. However, what vary is the order and content of the variables listed in each square depending on different markets and industries to be entered. The principle on which the model rests is learner and should stand different business contexts.

The domain that influences the learning and readinessto engage in entrepreneurial activities and process is itself influenced by the individual characteristics and theenvironmental characteristics. Each of these factors is preceded by antecedents. The optimum combination of these collective factors and initializers/triggers, at a point in time, will set the entrepreneurial process in motion. The critical effect on the motion of the process is the strength of the enablers. They make a difference between one learner and another in their ability to engage in the entrepreneurial process despite the fact that they may be located in the same business environment and participate in the same EC and courses. The unknown quantity at this stage is the specific“hierarchyofeffects”intheinitialization/antecedentpartoftheprocessthatwillenablealearner´sdefinitionofcausality, which can be then be tied to outcome (creation of a Start- Up, which is not given in the model) so that the cause and effect will be completely evident. This is a subject of future inquiries. However, the success of the ECs should not only be measured with the number of “converts” but increasing the chances of survival if they decide to pursue a career as an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial readiness is a function of three forces that actonthelearner:namelymotivationalfactors,informationsources and enabling factors. This can be called the initial trigger domain.

It is about the everyday business details that are required to take into consideration when planning and implementing aStart–Up; for exampledoingasearchandevaluationof the best way to set up own business, general planning, analyzing potential partners, completing the necessary documentations etc.

It is the process of giving life to the entrepreneurial process. There are two forces that act in opposite direction that have impact on the entrepreneurial learning and implementation process.

On one hand there are entrepreneurial barriers whose effect is to delay the learning and entrepreneurial implementation process and or break or otherwise impede progress which has already begun. On the other hand, there are accelerators that act to speed up the learning and the entrepreneurial activities or otherwise encourage progress which has already been set in motion.

There are other business related factors which may have a

bearing on the pattern the Start- Up may follow once initiated. However we can assume that there are other factors which areexternaltotheStart-Upandoverwhichexertinfluenceover the pattern of the progress. Since the entrepreneurship camps did not address the Start-Up process and pattern, i.e what happens after the EC are completed, that subject can be perhaps for future studies.

To sum up, the total acceleration effect in present and future entrepreneurial activities is affected by current market experiences and perceptions. The feedback from the market experience affects perceptions in both accelerators and the initial trigger domains. That may produce an effect of speeding up more or slowing down present and future entrepreneurial processes.

Conclusions and suggestions The fourth question raised in the introduction of this paper was stated as follow: which strategies could educationalinstitutions put into place to ensure effective entrepreneurship teaching and learning?

There is no ready answer to this question and based on the fact that our learning experiments focused only on two EC, it isdifficulttogeneralizeourobservations.

Nevertheless, based on these observations and our earlier knowledge we could make following recommendations to educational institutions aiming at teaching entrepreneurship and at creating entrepreneurial readiness among learners.

Our recommendations are based on the fact that universities and educational institutions must cooperate and network with business actors and other actors in their effort to create needed entrepreneurial knowledge. To succeed in that, universities and these core actors are surrounded by three distinctive pillars inputting in the entrepreneurial knowledge creation. These three pillars are namely the education in entrepreneurship, the research in entrepreneurship and then practicing of entrepreneurship. In addition, these three pillars are interlinked too. For instance, there is a clear link between research in entrepreneurship and educational practice which then produce adequate dictactics to improve knowledge. Education keeps asking for evaluation from the research in entrepreneurship to make sure that the knowledge is up to date and current.

In the same line there is a clear link between education in entrepreneurship and practicing entrepreneurship, internships and incubators. Through experience, practice in entrepreneurship may shape education which in turn creates ideas and talent through the process of knowledge application.

Businesses keep demanding knowledge from research


and through a process of knowledge valorize the existing business may also gain academic insight to improve their working habits and success. It is then imperative for educational institution to keep a good balance between these three pillars not ensure good and positive outcomes.

The loose involvement of teachers and advisors proved to be a two edged sword. On one hand, giving total ownership of the process to participants was highly encouraged and on the other hand there was a general feeling that the instructors and experts could have intervened more in the planning phase and to enforce deadlines as it was done during the firstcamp.Bydoingthatonecouldavoidproblemslinkedtocoordination and to a lack of sharing of responsibilities.

With such project and problem-based learning, a lack of project management skills may prove to be disastrous. To curb on such short coming, each camp must then have a project manager, who act as responsible for overseeing the activities and coordinating the efforts of different actors. In the EC camps teachers played a role as coach, yet today there is an increasing demand for new tools to help teachers to become good coaches. This paper does not go deeper into how teachers can enhance their coaching qualities for this kind of demanding task.

Finally,inspiteofthedifficultiesencounteredwiththesetwoexperimental camps, participants reported that seeing the whole process with own eyes was important and they learnt a lot from the failures as well. For instance, team work skills were as valuable as learning how to develop a business plan from a good business idea. Some participants took the roleofbeingpresenters,othersactedasfinancialexperts,idea creators and organizers for their respective groups. They learnt how to make the best use of everyone in the group and how to deal with differences in order to bring the best about everyone.

These two ECs were pilot-projects for creating entrepreneurial thinking among the students which is a part of the strategies of HAAGA-HELIA University of applied Sciences as an organization as well as for Porvoo Campus. Porvoo campus is adapting Project Based Learning (PBL) as a model of application in teaching/learning. In spite of the issues that need improvement, from a learning point of view, the goal of Entrepreneurship Camp was reached.

Now we have good evidence of which factors have profound bearing on the entrepreneurial learning and readiness. As Bransford (1999) states that learning with understanding is like internalizing the knowledge, not just memorizing. And there is also difference between ‘usable knowledge’ and ‘list of disconnected facts’. ‘All learning involves transfer from previous experiences’ (Bransford 1999, pp 51-78). He also stated that “knowledge that is taught in only single context

is less likely to support flexible transfer than knowledgetaught is in multiple contexts” “Bransford, 1999, p78). Entrepreneurship camps, if well planned, have the potential to support this type of learning and transfer.

For teachers these two EC supported the earlier believe about using group-work and brainstorming techniques to enhance classroom learning.As Bransford (1999) puts it;“One major contrast between everyday settings and school environments is that the later place much more emphasis on individual work than most other environment” (Bransford 1999, p 74). Even John Dewey contended that: ‘Schoolshould be less about preparation for life and more like the life itself’ (in John D. Bransword p.77). One of the important missions of teachers and counselors should be to minimize the gap between everyday life and school environment.

To be successful, guiding counselors may need to jump in to help the organizers to create a short road map. For instance the emphasis should be put on producing a real life and realistic business plan with emphasis on needed resources and the available capabilities for implementing such a business plan. In addition, during the EC implementation process, advisors should be involved at least in some control points to assess the progress together with the participants. That would avoid surprises that may occur at the end of the EC process.

With our contribution, it is hoped that further inquiries and research will be conducted to enrich the debate on how best educational institution can teach entrepreneurship and thus increase entrepreneurship readiness among its students.

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About the authorsMr Yucel Ger ([email protected]) MSc (Econ.), Senior Lecturer in Haaga-Helia UAS, International Business and Tourism Programmes in Porvoo.

Married, has two kids 11 and 7 years old.

BorninJanuary1967inTurkey,receivedhisfirstdegree(BBA)fromDokuzEylulUniversityinIzmirin1991.

Worked in travel industry between 1991 and 1997, has been living in Finland since 1998 and worked as an entrepreneur for ten years between 1999 and 2009.

Evariste Habiyakare([email protected])DrHabiyakareisSeniorLecturerinInternationalBusinessatHAAGA-HELIA UAS. He completed his PhD in Economics and Business Administration in May 2009 at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. He has published 17 articles in well-respected international business journals and has presented competitive research papers in 20 international conferences. Before joining the academia, Dr. Habiyakare has worked for different Finnish-based corporations in Finland.


“Get a Life” -project – Holistic career and entrepreneurship counselling for university students

Tarja Römer-PaakkanenHAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

This paper is based on an ongoing “Get a life” -project that aims to promote future-oriented thinking and pro-activity among university students. Before starting the project we made several studies or inquiries to get a wider view of the student counselling process. First we made a quantitative inquiry, so that the students can consider their experience and their need of career or entrepreneurship counselling. Then we collected some data by focus-group interviews of student counsellors and teachers. We also collected data by an adaptation of the Canadian DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) model which is used to analyse the contents of the requirements of various occupations.

Thetargetofourprojectistofindsomeanswersandsomeadvicehowtorenewtheuniversitytrainingprogrammesandcounselling models from the career path and entrepreneurship point of view. The aim of this paper is to introduce the Dynamic model for counselling that we have constructed in the “Get a life” –project on the basis of our studies and on the basis of experiences and expert knowledge that we have in the project.

Thefocusinthispaperisonthefollowingproblemareas:

1) What kind of career and entrepreneurship counselling university students need and want? (Inquiry for university students).

2) How should we connect career counselling and entrepreneurship education? (Focus-group discussions with study counsellors, career counsellors and teachers).

3) What kind of the competences and attitudes do study counsellors need when enhancing students’ pro-activity and career planning? (DACUM analysis with study counsellors).

4) On the basis of our studies and professional experiences I introduce a dynamic model for counselling which is “get a life” –projects solution to help university students to outline their future career paths.

Our studies show that the career and entrepreneurship education process in higher education is not a linear process. Rather, it is more of a spiral process in which the different levels of career and entrepreneurship education are more inter-dependent and co-existent. On the basis of our studies and professional experiences we introduce the “Dynamic model for counselling” which is our solution to help university students to outline their future career paths.

The scientific outcomeof theproject is a pedagogicalmodel,whilst thepractical outcomeswill bea virtual handbookfor career counsellors and a simulation tool for the students. Within the simulation tool there are some long-term future scenarios on the development and changes in working life. With the simulation tool the students can map and test future scenarios and create various futures paths for themselves. The career counsellors will be able to utilize the simulation in their counselling sessions with the pedagogical model developed in this project. The simulation tool is going to have built-in guiding elements and references so that the students can use it also independently.

Keywords:career,entrepreneurship,counselling


IntroductionToday and even more in the future coping with work duties requires a self-directed approach to work. Employees are expected to make a commitment to work as if they were entrepreneurs within the company. Internal entrepreneurship calls for a responsible attitude towards work and its development as well as the willingness to use one’s creativity, innovativeness and competence for the good of the employer. People need to commit to an entrepreneurial attitude because they must renew their competencies and skills again and again. As the working life is constantly changing, the one-off degree earned in one’s youth no longer provides credible competence to last for the rest of the professional career.

The EU is strongly in favour of entrepreneurship, as it has definedentrepreneurshipasoneof thekeycompetenciesof life-long learning. In that context entrepreneurship refers to an individual’s ability to turn ideas into action. It includes creativity, innovation and risk taking, as well as the ability to plan and manage projects in order to achieve objectives. According to this framework, entrepreneurship supports all citizens in everyday life at home and in society and helps employees gain awareness of the wider context of their work and capitalize on opportunities that arise. It also provides the foundation for special skills and knowledge that entrepreneurs need when starting a social or commercial enterprise. (Commission of the European Communities 2005, 18.)

The goal in entrepreneurship education and training at university level is not to make the students rush to become entrepreneurs, but rather to provide the students with tools that enable realistic self-evaluations. The students should also be trained to learn to recognize different opportunities around them. The aims set for student counsellors in entrepreneurship and career counselling relate to the following points: 1) Development of the students’ pro-activeness and preparation to the future development in one’s career planning, 2) The development of the methods and tools to prepare the students into their working life, 3) Increase an active and realistic attitude and support students’ entrepreneurial behaviour.

In future, the question is whether the difference between successful performance in school and successful performance in business life can be discerned in time. Kupferberg (2003) emphasizes that creativity is more meaningful than competences. He believes that education and training are going to meet new challenges which are more than plain competences. Insight is an integral element of competence, bringing into play such characteristics as willpower, intuitive thinking, spirit and communication skills

that impact on ability to manage practical problem solving situations. The ability to learn from experience is valued and taken as part of the broader learning process. (Munch and Jakobsen 2005). The focus in valuating learning results in future will be on individuality and fragmentation, the vision beinganunlimitedrangeofpatchworkprofilesthatdiscardthe holistic concept of competence. The primary concern in the world of work will be on broad-based education linked to a personality that exhibits strength, individual initiative, independenceand theability to reachanalytically justifieddecisions. (Drexel 2003).

This paper is based on an ongoing “Get a life” –project that aims to develop some tools to promote pro-activity and entrepreneurial spirit and skills among university students. The tools should be used by both the students and by their teachers or counsellors. The main target is to help the studentstofindout theirownstrengthsandcompetenciesin the future society and in future labour markets. Also the student counsellors should feel that pro-activity and entrepreneurial spirit is important, and that entrepreneurship is one possible opportunity to their students. The recourses, attitudes and skills of the teachers are the critical preconditions when enhancing entrepreneurial behaviour of the students. The student counsellors who have personal experiences at entrepreneurship have also the most positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education.

“Get a Life” -project is mainly funded by the European Social Fund (ESF). In addition each of the business partners financestheproject themselves.Theproject iscarriedoutduring 1.9.2008–31.12.2011 and there are five Finnishuniversities involved: University of Turku/Finland FuturesResearch Centre (coordinator), HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, HAMK University of Applied Sciences, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, and Career Services of the University of Turku.

Targets of the paper Student counsellors are often left on their own – each making their own experiments, including various topics in counselling,andfindingwaysofteachingentrepreneurshiptoo. Of course, we usually ask feedback from the students but do the students really know how to find their careerpath and the entrepreneurship. With our project we aim to findsomeways to renew the trainingprogrammesandcounselling models at universities from the career path and entrepreneurship point of view.

Thefocusinthispaperisonthefollowingproblemareas:

1. What kind of career and entrepreneurship counselling university students need and want? (Inquiry for university


students).

2. What is an effective way of teaching career path and entrepreneurship? (Focus-group discussions with study counsellors, career counsellors and teachers).

3. Which are the core competences and attitudes that a student counsellor should have? (DACUM analysis with study counsellors).

4. On the basis of our studies and professional experiences I introduce a dynamic model for counselling which is “Get a life” -projects solution to help university students to outline their future career paths.

The results of above mentioned studies are interpreted from the point of view of enhancing the entrepreneurial and pro-active behaviour of university students and the dynamic model for counselling is constructed on the knowledge and experiences of the professionals and experts in our project or people who have taken part to our workshops.

Framework for the paperThe framework of this paper lies on the theories, studies and practices dealing with entrepreneurship education, the career theories, and the theories and practices on general competence and attitudes and expertise of student counsellors. As the aim of our project is to develop some tools to promote pro-activity and entrepreneurial spirit and skills among university students, the concepts of entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurial behaviour are in central position at our project and also in the dynamic model for counselling.

Entrepreneurial people are described on many ways using manydefinitions,butthemostcommontermsthatareusedwhen describing them are: Entrepreneurial orientation,entrepreneurial behaviour, entrepreneurial drive and entrepreneurial spirit. According to Lumpkin and Dess (1996, 137) the key dimensions that characterize entrepreneurial orientation include: A propensity to act autonomously,a willingness to innovate, a willingness to take risks, a

Figure1:Growthtoentrepreneurship:Triangulationofsocialisation,experiencesandeducation(Römer-Paakkanen and Pekkala, 2008).


tendency to be aggressive toward competitors and acting proactively relative to marketplace opportunities. Florin, Karri and Rossiter (2007) have found that the preference for innovation, non-conformity, proactive disposition, self-efficacy, and achievement motivation promoteentrepreneurial behaviour. Entrepreneurial drive means pro-activeness, innovativeness, willingness to take risk and enlargebusiness(Chirico,2007a,58;Chirico,2007b,142).Westerholm (2007, 126) found out that perseverance and pro-activity are the most important competences for small entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial spirit is widely used in articles and everyday language but we have not found any exact definitionof it. Theconceptsofentrepreneurial spirit andentrepreneurial drive are used as synonyms in our studies. Entrepreneurial spirit arises from positive self-esteem and entrepreneurial attitudes. People grow to entrepreneurship in a long learning process that starts already in childhood. Becoming an entrepreneur depends on entrepreneurial spirit, on attitudes, skills and motivation.

According to Römer-Paakanen and Pekkala (2008) growing to entrepreneurship could be understood as a triangulation process of socialization, education and experiences. The process develops in different environments or systems - in family (family system), in school (education system) and in free-time activities and hobbies (informal and non-formal systems). Counselling, coaching and mentoring form a supporting system and they are the catalysts in this process. Counselling focuses on an individual, and it produces self-directive actions. Its aim is to highlight competent learning and self-management.

In career counselling we should take account on that nowadays career and entrepreneurship education process in higher education is not a linear process. Rather, it is more of a spiral process in which the different levels of career and entrepreneurship education are more inter-dependent and co-existent. According a Brousseau’s pluralistic career model there are four different career concepts: linearcareer, expert career, spiral career and transitory career

(Brousseau, Driver, Eneroth and Larsson 1996, 56). In her study Takanen-Körperich (2008, 156) found two more alternatives to Brousseau’s pluralistic career concepts. She named them parallel career concept and explorative career concept. In the parallel career concept a person can at the same time be active in several fields. In the explorativecareerapersoncanbychangefindaquitedifferentkindofworking life and environment than the educational studies would indicate.

Arthur and DeFillippi (1994) developed the boundaryless career theory. According to that theory a person with a boundaryless career focuses on crossing career borders;he or she is not dependent on organizational promotions and career paths, but navigates the continuously changing work landscape (Sullivan and Arthur, 2006). Table 1 shows the major differences between boundaryless and traditional career (van den Born 2009, 105).

In practise at our university (HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences) we use so called method of personal career planning. It is a solution focused method that helps students realize and set personal employment and self-development goals. The students write their own personal career plans in two stages in a guided and interactive process. The first plan is written at the beginning of thestudies. The second is written after 1,5 – 2 years of studying. Writing the plan is guided by a set of questions concerning career planning and self-development. The written plans are evaluated and commented by the career counsellor. In addition, the student has also the opportunity to have a face-to-face discussion with the career counsellor. The students can utilize different individual career counselling services and instruments in writing their plans, such as the Career planning degree course and the customized career planning website. (Lampikoski and Römer-Paakkanen, 2004.)

The purposes of personal career planning method are to (GrantandGreene2001):

•help a student to set concrete and inspiring goals and

Table1:Comparisonoftraditionalandboundarylesscareers(vandenBorn2009,105).

Attribute Traditional Career Boundaryless Career Employment relationship Job security for loyalty Employability for performance

and flexibility Boundaries One or two firms Multiple firms Skills Firm specific Transferable Measurements of success Pay, promotion, status Psychologically meaningful work Responsibility for career Organization Individual Training Formal programs On the job Milestones Age related Learning related


objectives

•helpastudenttoclarifyhis/herplans

•helpastudenttomakeanactionplan

•helpastudenttoseizeopportunities

•helpastudenttoutilizehisorherpotential

•helpastudenttofindandrealizehisorhermission

•increaseastudent’smotivation

•increaseastudent’sdetermination

•help a student to make relevant and useful choicesconcerning studies and work placements

•helpastudenttofindhis/heridealworkfaster.

By supporting and promoting student’s career planning we help him or her to learn a career planning process. The objective of the process, from the student’s point of view, is to enter into a career path and to realize his or her career vision. The process has its basis on personal experiences of the student. As the time goes on, the student makes career plan1and2,andevaluatesandreflectshisorhervalues,interests, needs, skills, goals, objectives and visions. He or sheneedsversatileandflexibleguidancealongtheprocess.Some of the students need individual counselling and some want to participate in career planning classes. Several studentswillbenefitfromtheinformationofthecustomizedcareer www-pages. The students will get actual know-how, experience and skills by studying, by work projects, by work placements etc. Accordingly, students move day by day towards deeper understanding of their career goals, career options and career vision.The final result is the personalcareer plan and the understanding of the importance of an on-going career planning in the future. (Lampikoski and Römer-Paakkanen, 2004.)

Our holistic counselling thinking has some similarities with Peavy’S SocioDynamic Counselling, that is a general method of life planning and facilitates learning through the use of cultural tools and coconstruction. Peavy’s SocioDynamic Counselling aids help seekers to increase their ability to participate in social life. By social life is meant work, family, cultural identity activities, leisure, and lifestyle preferences, aswellasactivitiesrelatedtohealthandspiritualaffirmation.Peavys’s approach is also a holistic counselling method and resists the partitioning of counselling into many sub-specialties. (Peavy 2000, 7.) According to Peavy (2000, 4) most guidance- or help-seekers come to a counsellor for clarification, support, and hope, and are searching foropportunities to increase their capacities. According Peavy the principal goals of counselling are: 1) To increase thecapacity of the help-seeker to pursue goals that she values

(freedom of choice), and, 2) to increase the help-seeker’s capacity to participate successfully in social life (freedom of action). (Peavy, 2000, 4.)

Methodology and results of the different studies for our projectThe research approach in our project is both quantitative and qualitative. Before starting the project we had several interviews, inquiries and workshops to get a wider view of the student counselling process. In this paper I shortly introduce the quantitative inquiry, where the students can consider their experience and their need of career or entrepreneurship counselling. The second data I introduce here is collected by focus-group interviews of study counsellors, career counsellors and teachers. And in the third study the data were collected by an adaptation of the Canadian DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) model. The DACUM model is used to analyse the contents of the requirements of various occupations. When constructing the dynamic model for counselling we also utilized the data from a survey made to teachers and study counsellors and some workshops that were arranged in our business study expert groups.

A quantitative inquiry for students As the career counselling practises at HAAGA-HELIA are quite unique we decided to make a quantitative inquiry for our students to find out their experiences and needs ofcareer or entrepreneurship counselling (research question number one). In May 2009, we gave out a Webropol –survey of the need and future of career counselling to the students of the 3rd and 4th semester at the HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences. The hypothesis was that the students at this stadium are so advanced that work placement is current and the working life seems attractive to them. The sample covered 1887 students and 233 (12,3 %) students answered the questionnaire.

Altogether there were 35 questions in the survey (10 open questions and for the rest the answer was given by 5 scale evaluation).Thequestionsofthesurveywereclassifiedintothreedivisions:

1) Studies and counselling (employment prospects inthefield,inwhichareasthecounselling hasbeensatisfied,inwhichareathestudentswouldliketohave more counselling, what services they have used, if he orshehasbenefitedofthecareercounsellingetc.)

2) Career planning (knowledge and skills that are required inthefieldtheyareinterested,theemploymentsituationonthefield,planningthefuture,whatcouldsupportthecareerplanning, career goals, etc.)


3) Working (current work, working experience, the student’s opinion on becoming an entrepreneur etc.).

According to the survey it appeared that that only few students (12,5 %) had used the personal services of career counselling. Even so, they consider the career counselling very important as they search for their right field andtasks. 47,6 % of the respondents had used the career and recruitment pages on the students’ extranet site and 52,4 % had not used them. Most of the respondents (from 63 % up to 96 %) had no experience of using info sessions, cv-workshops, free-elective courses, electronic counselling or telephone counselling.

Therespondentscanroughlybedividedinthreegroups:

1) “Systematic” with long term plans (16 % = 10 persons) and “systematic” with short term plans (11 % = 7 respondents)

2) “Reflecting”, who consider different opportunities and“slowly reflecting”, who first will complete the studies andafter that will consider different opportunities

3) Those who do not plan the future at all (38 % = 24 respondents).

Of course when asking the students what kind of study or career counselling they would like to have, some of the students would like to have “personal trainer”-type counselling and some told that they do not need any counselling at all. Naturally personal trainers are not economically realistic, but by asking students opinion we got valuable information and some hints or tips how to arrange study and career

counselling so that the students feel it really helps them.

Career counselling as a concept has a different meaning for different students. Many of the students think that the word “career” refers to the working life after their studies. The students do not see the career planning as a continuum, as a lifelong project. To them career planning was a tool to receive the firstworkplacement. Theyowould like tohear the stories of other people: How they have startedtheir careers and how they have developed their skills since they graduated from university. 62 % of the respondents are not against of becoming an entrepreneur in the far future and over 50 % of the respondents would like to have more counselling for becoming an entreprereneur and for how to set up a business.

Focus-group interviews for student counsellors, career counsellors and teachersThe second data were collected by focus group discussions of student counsellors, career counsellors and entrepreneurship teachers. The data received from the focus group discussions were based upon the interviewees’ own experiences and opinions. The conversations in the focus group interviews were more spontaneous than in a theme-based interview with one person. The result of a focus group discussion is more a construction of several experts than a result of an interview. The focus group interviews took place in spring 2009, and there were about six experienced teachers or counsellors present at each group.

Table2:Themainpoints,thatemergedfromthefocusgroupdiscussions.

The following points should be taken into consideration in the holistic career and entrepreneurship counselling:

The following points should be taken into consideration in work placement and career counselling:

• Counselling in setting up the personal goals.

• Supporting students’ independent thinking from the beginning of their studies.

• Assisting students analyzing themselves.

• Assisting students to comprehend the meaning of the professional growth.

• Counselling how to manage one’s own life.

• Assisting students to put up their lives based on past, present and future.

• To help students learn to present their personality and skills.• Student counsellors, teachers and the representatives of the

employers support and guide students’ learning by doing processes during their practical training periods. Work placement periods also help students to realize the connection between the two ways of learning and the connection between theoretic studies and the practical work.

• Counselling does not aim to build a new society, but it will help students become the citizens who are able to build a new society.

• Student counselling, guiding during different courses, career planning and career counselling, and work placement establish an unbreakable process which aims to support a student in making up his or her own path.


Table3:SummaryofthecoretasksandcompetencesofthestudentcounsellorsattheUniversityofAppliedSciences HAAGA-HELIA according to DACUM-method.

Core tasks Core competencies

Support the students to advance in

their studies

Follow up the credits

Plan the personal

curriculum with the students

Support individual proceeding

Follow up the degree regulations

Interfere in time in

study delay

Support the students to move on to the working

life

Guide and counsel

Guide to learn - Counsel to

life-long learning and postgraduate

studies

Manage the different ways of

counselling

Refer to other

specialists, if necessary

Guide equally

Guide ethically

Solve problems

Consider different

backgrounds

Consider different culture

backgrounds of the

students

Manage the curriculum

Master own curricula

thoroughly

Accept personal curricula

Realize the connection

between curricula

and work-ing life

Know in general

the educational

levels in own field

Recognize and accept the earlier

gained skills

Know to some extent

other curricula

Manage regulations

and organization in adminis-tration of

the studies and students

Master communication

channels (extranet, BB,

Moodle, Winha etc.)

Manage degree

regulations and guiding principles

Manage laws and

rules

Communi-cate

Meet a human being Be a listener Make

questionsExpress oneself

Dispense information to students

Receive feed back

Give feed back

Dispense information and wishes

from the student

Beinterested in

students’ everyday life

supporting/ motivating

students

Be willing to help

learning students’ careers

developing student c

developing your ownlearning

environment and

community

Network Network with the members of

the working community

Comminicate with

companies and working

life

Attend to connections to alumni

Network with other

universities

Market HAAGA-HELIA to

new students

Attend to connections to students’

organizations

Attend to connections

to authorities

of education

Anticipate Understand wholenesses

Interfere in time

Prepare oneself for own work in short-

term

Prepare oneself for own work in long-

term

Recognize own limits

According to our informants also the employers of work placementsneed tools for counselling: counselling shouldbe convenient and useful for the students. Besides, the employers should have it possible to receive information of the students working in the companies, and the employers in their position should be able to submit the student with the company’s needs and supplies.

DACUM analysis We also collected data by using a Finnish adaptation of the Canadian DACUM (Developing a Curriculum) model (Westerholm, 2007). The DACUM, which is used to analyze the contents of the requirements of various occupations, provided a tool for the precise determination and recording

of the knowledge, skills and attitudes required in various occupations and it relates to either curriculum planning or human resources administration. The practical work of gathering the data in the DACUM sessions is performed by a facilitator and a recorder.

The practicality of the DACUM model functioned as a method for collecting empirical data consisting of a group of student counsellors. The student counsellors were given an opportunity to express their views in small focus groups of peer entrepreneurship teachers. Consensus opinions formulated by the groups were then meticulously documented. By this DACUM analysis we wanted to findanswer to the following research question:Which are thecore competences and attitudes that a student counsellor


should have and which elements do above mentioned core competences and attitudes consist of? The results expose the very core of student counsellors’ competence and attitudes by determining what study counsellors feel they must be able to do when counselling the students.

This was a good opportunity for the attended student counsellors to express themselves and have a conversation about their work and their core competences. They all have been teachers and student counsellors for many years. This study analyzes the skills of the student counsellors after their words and especially what they have to know to act as a student counsellor. The study counsellors’ expertise and career development can be divided into cognitive, affective and psychomotor competences and attitudes. The inspiration for the concept was derived from Bloom’s taxonomy (1956).

Table 3 presents the summary of the working of the student counsellors. The study counsellors told us what are the most important tasks in their work (the core targets are listed in the column to the left), and what kind of core competencies they need when aiming to reach these targets. For instance when the study counsellors want to support the students to advance in their studies, they should follow up how they augment their study credits.

This DACUM study indicates that the student counselling is holistic, when all forms of the counselling should work together in a concerted effort. The students should know whom to contact, if they need counselling, personal career counselling, counselling referring to work placement and employment, referring to international student exchange, referring to guidance in their thesis as well as entrepreneurship counselling – taking health-related points into account. According to the study counsellors the career is a comprehensive growth process.

Final results of the “Get a life” –project

Scientific and pedagogical outcome: Dynamic model for counselling Preliminary results of this project show that a distinct line should be drawn between how the student counsellor should meet the student, to be interested in students’ every -day life and how to teach entrepreneurial attitude and behaviour in the career path. The student counsellor must comprehend the concept and totality of the business along with the distinctive characteristics of each sector, i.e. they must possess a cognitive knowledge of business activities. Affective and psychomotor competence and attitudes are now highlighted in the expertise of student counsellors alongside the traditionally emphasised cognitive competence and attitudes.

We acknowledge that there are different students with different needs in different stages of studying and therefore also in career and entrepreneurship counselling there are some key principles that should be taken account: 1)It should be holistic (i.e. it takes into account a student’s whole situation in life), 2) It should be individual and student-oriented,and3)Itshouldbeflexibleandversatile.

According to our studies a student counsellor should understand both career and entrepreneurship as a holistic phenomenon. A student counsellor should also work like an entrepreneur being creative, dynamic, risk-taking, and initiative oriented, hard-working, responsible and action motivated. Secondly, a student counsellor should possess a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship. That means appreciating market economy, business life, business, enterprises, entrepreneurs and work. Thirdly, a student counsellor should understand entrepreneurship as a phenomenon giving it a holistic meaning. This approach means developing knowledge, skills and attitudes needed in business life and improving students to manage their own career lives. Fourthly, an ideal student counsellor must adopt modern learning paradigms. He or she should encourage students to the entrepreneurship and use methods appropriate for transferring entrepreneurial knowledge, skills and attitudes. Such appropriate methods activate students, favour student-orientation and emphasize social interaction.

Wecan talkaboutadynamiccounsellingmodel (figure2)which takes account on that the students life has at least three different dimensions: Education and studies (studycounselling), work life and career (career counselling and entrepreneurship counselling), and one’s own life (family, hobbies, experiences). This model also lies on Erikson’s (2003)threeprinciplesofentrepreneuriallearning:Welearnfrom our experience, we can learn from events (such as studied successes and failures of others – and here these other entrepreneurs, who may always remain strangers, are acting as indirect mentors), and networking and learning directly from the experiences of others who may be acting as mentors or coaches.

In the dynamic counselling model the career is not a linear or traditional but it can be parallel or explorative. The dynamic model takes account that life has several dimensions (i.e. work and career, education, private life concerning family life, hobbies and other interest areas), that are intertwined and all the dimensions together develop our competencies and skills.

The targets of dynamic model for counselling are to help university students to realize that they themselves can influencetheirfuture.Themodelaimstohelpthestudentstoforesee the future and to be pro-active. The futures scenarios in the model are constructed in the scenario workshops


where the experts from different firms and organizationshave together analyzed the possible future of working life.

Practical outcome: A virtual handbook and an online simulation tool for students and counsellorsThe dynamic model for counselling is implemented in practice in our online simulation tool. When using the simulation tool, there is no right answer or decision but the aim is also to train the students to challenge the troubles and learn from the mistakes. Dynamic career planning model means that by learning, developing, doing (= acting like an entreprenrus),challenging, reflectingandplanningwecanour selves build our future so that we have a meaningful career path and can make our own choices – and this brings us the quality of life. When the user of the simulation “clicks” the different “titles” in the model, he or she can read more theoretic and research based information about the title and about the phenomenon. For instance after clicking the topic

“future scenarios”, the user can read a wider description about the three main scenarios of future work life. If the user clicks the topic “I do”, the user can read more about what it means to be active, pre-active and about entrepreneurship.

The simulation tool is located in free networking environment andwhenstartingthesimulationtheusermustfirstlogintothe simulation tool. After logging in the user should continue asfollows:

•Chooseage,genderandthefuturescenarioinwhichyouwant to build your future

•Startthesimulation

•After that you will get the first simulation card with thedescription of the current “life” situation.

•Choosehowtoactamongoptionsgiven.

•Nextcardwillshowadescriptionofwherethischoicehasled you.

Figure2:Dynamicmodelforcounselling


•The idea is to trydifferent,alsounusualpaths, thepathsthatwouldnotfirstcometoyourmind.

•Theideaistoactivatethethinkingaroundthechoicesmadeon the future work, study and life paths.

•Youcanalsogetsometipswheretogetmoreinformationor more counselling to make your decisions.

•The simulation also reminds you that you can go to thecounsellingmodeland readmoreabout themodel: If you“clik” for instance “I learn”, you can read more about learning new skills etc.

•When finishing the test simulation, user’s path will besaved automatically and you can view the hole path and the decisions that you have made.

When re-entering the simulation, the user can continue or start a new simulation story with e.g. different status or new future oriented scenarios. Every simulation round is different with different decisions and with different life and career path. So by playing the simulation the user can “try” different kinds of life situations and different kind of futures without “harming” his or her real life.

Conclusions and some practical implicationsOur experiences and studies show that career and entrepreneurship education process in a school environment or in higher education is not a linear process. Rather, it is more like a spiral process in which the different levels of career and entrepreneurship education are more inter-dependent and co-existing. An essential prerequisite for career path and entrepreneurship education is that the teachers and career or entrepreneurship counsellors are skilledandenthusiasticinthefield.Boththepreviousstudiesand literature and our studies indicate that the career and entrepreneurship counselling services should be versatile, flexibleandaccessibletoallstudents.

The scientificoutcomeof our studiesand theproject is apedagogical model for counselling, whilst the practical outcome is a virtual handbook for counsellors. The project also predicts some long-term future scenarios on the development and changes in working life. As a finalproduct we develop an online simulation tool for students in the career-planning process. The simulation is designed to complement the existing guidance material and tools. With the simulation tool the students can safely map and test future scenarios and create various future paths for themselves. Career counsellors will be able to utilize the simulation in their counselling sessions with the pedagogical model developed in this project. The simulation tool is going to have built-in guidance elements and references so that

the students will also be able to use it independently.

Until now we have tested the simulation at least at seven testing-groups (university students, counselors, teachers, other personnel and also at our own courses). In these workshops an open feedback has been given from the user’s point of view. “Get a Life” -simulation pilot will be launched in the autumn 2011. We will have several Finnish universities inseveralfields thatare testing thepilotversionandafterthat we will also have some universities abroad that are interested to test the simulation. There is an online feedback tool inserted into the simulation and the development work will continue based to the information already gathered and the feedback from the forthcoming pilot sessions.

The results of our project and the simulation tool can be implemented when planning and developing the training programmes and curriculum from career and entrepreneurship point of view. Up-to-date and factually correct information along with positive attitudes towards entrepreneurship are prerequisites in helping young people to create their career and become entrepreneurs. It is vital that students get familiar with the entire process, knowing how to set up an enterprise, design a business plan and making it grow and succeed, but above all they must know what it means on a personal level and what kind of opportunity this career choice can offer them and their families. Risks should also be charted and understood, but as the objective is toencouragepeople toadopt theattitudeand thefield,entrepreneurship should be offered as a positive opportunity and challenge.

ReferencesBloom, B.S. (1956). Bloom’s taxonomy. http://faculty.

washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom.html. Read 14.12.2005.

Brousseau, K.R., Driver, M.J., Eneroth, K. & Larsson, R. (1996). Career Pandemonium: Realigning organizationsand individuals. Academy of Management Executive, 1996, Vol. 10, No. 4, 52-66.

Chirico, F. (2007a). An empirical examination of the FITS family-business Mode. The Management Case Study Journal Vol. 7 Issue 1 July 2007 pp 55-77.

Chirico, F. (2007b). The Value Creation Process in Family Firms. A Dynamic Capabilities Approach. Electronic Journal of Family Business Studies. (EJFBS). Issue 2. Volume 1.2007. pp.137-165.

Commission of the European Communities (2005). Proposal for a Recommendation of the European Parliament and of the Council on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning.

DeFillippi, R. J., and Arthur, M. B. (1994). ‘The boundaryless career: a competency-based perspective’. Journal of


Organizational Behavior, 15, 307-324.

Drexell, I. (2003). The Concept of Competence – An Instrument of Social and Political Change. Working Paper 26. Stein Rokkan Centre for Social Studies Unifob AS. December 2003.

Erikson, T. (2003). Towards a Taxonomy of Entrepreneurial Learning Experiences Among Potential Entrepreneurs. Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. Vol 10, Number 1.

Florin, J, Karri, R. & Rossiter, N. (2007). Fostering EntrepreneurialDriveinBusinessEducation:AnAttitudinalApproach. Journal of Management Education, Vol. 31, No. 1, 17-42 (2007).

Grant, A. M., Greene, J. (2001). Coach Yourself. Momentum.

http://www.cifs.dk/scripts/artikel.asp?id=912&lng=2. Read19.9.2005.

http://www.napier.ac.uk.Read19.9.2005.

http://www.ub.uib.no/elpub/rokkan/N/N26-03.pdf. Read19.9.2005.

Kupferberg, F. (2003). Future Education and Competence. The Institute for Educational Sociology at the University of Education. Astersk 11/2003.

Lampikoski, T. & Römer-Paakkanen, T. (2004). Guiding and Supporting Students’ Career Planning and EntrepreneurshipSpiritatHaagaInstitutePolytechnic.In:RENT XVIII 24-26 November 2004. Managing Complexity and Change in SMEs. Conference Proceedings. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Lumpkin, G.T. & Dess, G.G. (1996). Clarifying the Entrepreneurial Orientation Construct and Linking it to Performance. Academy of Management Review 21 (1). pp. 135 - 172.

Munch, B. & Jakobssen, A., (2005). The Concept of

Competence in Engineering Practice. Engineering and Product Design Education Conference. 15-16th September 2005. Napier University, Edingburg, UK.

Peavy, R.V. 1999. A SocioDynamic Document by R. Vance Peavy 1999-04-10

http://www.sociodynamic-constructivist-counselling.com/archives/lectures.html (Read 5.4.11)

Peavy, R.V. (2000). SocioDynamic Perspective and the Practice of Counselling. Natcon papers. http://www.contactpoint.ca/natcon-conat/2000/pdf/pdf-00-18.pdf (Read 5.4.11)

Sullivan, S. E. and M. B. Arthur, The evolution of the boundaryless career concept: Examining physical andpsychological mobility, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Vol, 69, Iss. 1, 2006, pp. 19-29.

Takanen-Körperich, P. (2008). Sama koulutus – eri urat. Tutkimus Mainzin yliopistossa soveltavaa kielitiedettä vuosina 1965-2001 opiskelleiden suomalaisten urakehityksestä palkkatyöhön, freelanceriksi ja yrittäjiksi. Jyväskylä Studies in Business and Economics. 66.

van den Born, J.A. 2009. The drivers of career success of the job-hopping professional in the new networked economy - The challenges of being an entrepreneur and an employee. Doctoral dissertation. Utrecht School of Economics Proefschriften.

h t t p : / / i g i t u r - a r c h i v e . l i b r a r y . u u . n l /dissertations/2009-0403-200902/born.pdf

Westerholm, H. (2007). Tutkimusmatka pienyrittäjän työvalmiuksien ytimeen. Kirjallisuuteen ja DACUM analyysiin perustuva kartoitus. Jyväskylä Studies in Business and Economics. 55.

www.jyu.fi/econ/ejfbs

About the authorTarja Römer-Paakkanen ([email protected]) Dr Römer-Paakkanen is an Adjunct Professor atJyväskylä University School of Business and Economics and Principal Lecturer at HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences. Her research areas are entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education, family business and business families. She is in-charge of a doctoral program of 40 teachers who write their doctoral dissertations on entrepreneurship, family business or entrepreneurship education. She is involved in a family enterprise with her husband.


Encounters11 through the eyes of the Teacher StudentsThis epilogue is “co-created”. We, the conference participants, decided to write this story on our experiences and thoughts on the Encounters11 by taking turns in writing thesametextusingthefirstpersonsingular.

When I was coming to attend the conference, I thought that Porvooissmallenoughformetofindthevenuewithoutaproblem. I was wrong. However, after being advised by a colleague (who had a hands-free and the directions) I found my way. This, to me is an example of how we can help each other in finding the novel – sometimes vanguardsare needed for us to find our path.We are all needed indiscovering our collective future.

This Encounters conference proved to be an interesting forum. I liked meeting similar-minded colleagues, having conversations with them and hearing their ideas.

The Porvoo Campus, of contemporary design and shared by two Universities of Applied Sciences Laurea and Haaga-Helia, creates an environment of co-creation with possibilities of building a new culture. The exterior of the house looked like any university building, however, the interior was an entirely different matter: innovative and inspiring. I foundmyselffillingwith(positive:-)envy–Iwouldindeedliketowork in a place like that.

To discover new levels in my own thinking I tried to immerse myself in presentations and discussions, linking them with my own view of the world... In accordance with the spirit of the song “Viisastun salaa” (I get secretly wise / by the Finnish band “Neljä Ruusua”), though not knowing how, I hoped to be affected by others.

Beinga first-time conferenceparticipant and coming frombusiness I admit that I did have my prejudices concerning the meeting. I was happy to stand corrected! I found most of the presentations interesting offering surprisingly broad viewpoints. Practical experiences in linking business partner

projects and learning were many and diverse.

Ifindthatcompaniesaregenuinelyinterestedindevelopingin-company learning and teaching of both today and for the future. With some minor changes in practical arrangements and focus, the Encounters 2013 could be made more interesting and valuable for business people. That would be co-creation, wouldn’t it?

Of course it was impossible to listen to all the presentations. I had to make choices and these choices guide my development and learning. I was impressed by the collective amount of work and effort put into all the work presented. I findmyself thinking..., hoping that all thiswork and thesematerials will be used and presented and developed further in many occasions to come. It would be a pity if it was all wasted.

The conference gave me many new thoughts on what the role of a teacher can be and how it may change in the future. AsateacherstudentatHaaga-Helia,Ifindmyselfthinkinghow to link this conference with the teachers’ study programs. On the other hand, one of the most appealing features of Encounters was that it was small and intimate. I would hate to spoil that by having a hundred teacher students crowd the proceedings.

“Campus Encounters – Bridging Learners Conference – Developing Competences for Next Generation Service Sectors”. The conference name has a futuristic feel to it. Still I found that many of the presentations were not looking onwards, but rather to the past or were anchored in the present at its best. In my opinion, more focus on the goals, visions and possibilities of the future could produce an even more fruitful discourse than what we now had.

The process of coming up with and sharing visionary thoughts requires getting used to this. The practice of supplementing research reports and results with bold new visions could well pay off in that we have a tendency to change our actions towards our visionary ideas.

Onerevelationhasbeenthatco-creativeorco-configurative

EPILOGUE

Flashes from the Encounters 2011

Edited by the Encounters11 Conference Chair Dr Tarja Kantola, Principal Lecturer, Laurea Otanniemi

The Third International Encounters Conference, Porvoo Encounters ’13, will be held on 19-21 March 2013 in Porvoo, Finland. More information tba at www.encounters11.org


(What is the difference? Is there a difference?) practices are certainly here to stay on all different levels of teaching. Many Encounters discussions have shown me that this will require listening, information sharing and an open and critical mind.

I liked the conference, thank you for having me.

Mr Mika Kortelainen, Mr Oskari Vesterinen, Ms Seija Tiainen, and Mr Harri Ruoslahti, Encounters11 conference participants

Principal Lecturer as a ‘Senior Participant’ in Encounters ConferencesThe previous Encounters Conference 2008 “Insightful Encounters - Regional Development and Practice–Based Learning. Conference on Regional Development and Innovation Processes” held in Porvoo, where I participated with my paper, was so successful that I decided to join this year´s conference as well. However, this time in a slightly different role.

At Haaga-Helia School of Vocational Teacher Education I encouraged my student teachers to participate in this conference as a part of their pedagogical studies. Harri, Mika, Oskari and Seija accepted the challenge being very innovative and courageous teacher students! Instead of preparing my own paper to the conference, I decided to guide the writing processes of my teacher students, which turned out tobevery rewarding tomeaswell.Atfirst thisgroupdecided to submit their abstract to the conference, and after a while to write the research description to the conference publication, which gradually turned into a full paper of their own initiative. The conference presentation itself was included to Harri’s teaching practice. Harri presented their joint paper excellently, and caused interesting discussion on projects, networking, and learning. After a session, we had lunch together with the entire teacher student group, where wereflectedthepresentationandthediscussion.

Although my actual participation in the conference was limited only to the session of Harri & co-authors, I was very happy to perceive the enormous learning potential of these teacher students. I could witness them expanding their teaching competences to the directions of researching and publishing.

Teacher student’ participation in this conference was also significant to the teacher education. Itwas a new idea toinclude the conference presentation evaluated by teacher educator and teacher students, into the teaching practice. New was also that the developmental project conducted in teacher education was now reported as various kinds of conference papers, instead of presenting a traditional project report.

Thank you Harri, Mika, Oskari and Seija for your contribution to this conference and the teacher education! I am convinced that we will continue the co-operation with Dr Tarja Kantola in order to develop the conference context as a new learning environment of vocational teacher education in the next Encounters13 Conference!

Dr Pirjo Lambert, Principal Lecturer, HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences

Encounters behind the scenes – The conference as a student experience As I have had the privilege of being a part of both Encounters conferences -firstasastudent inEncounters08andnowas a staff member working closely with the students in Encounters11 – I have experienced encounters behind the scenes, which often go without much attention, but are an essentialpartoftheconceptoftheEncountersconferences:The encounters between the students organising the Conference.

My memories from being a part of organising the Encounters08 Conference as a student revolve around memories of our student group evolving from a group of students initially unknown to each other into a team working closely together and finally into a group of closefriends with the memories of the Conference still bonding them to this day. These memories are some of the fondest memories I have from my time as a Haaga-Helia student and something I wanted for the students involved in organising the Encounters11 Conference also to gain. And just as during the previous Conference, it was amazing to see the student group involved in this year’s Conference working together just as well as we did and strengthen their friendship as each day passed by. It is always inspirational to see and experience, and perhaps, even something worth documenting during the next Encounters Conference?

I believe being a part of organising an Encounters Conference is not just another reference in the students’ CVs. It is an experience and a memory they will keep with them even after years of graduation. In my opinion the teamwork and friendship between the students involved is also one of the key aspects of each Encounters Conference and directly contributes to creating a unique atmosphere that makes it possible for the truly insightful encounters to happen.

Mr Jukka Malkamäki, Research Assistant, Laurea Porvoo


Encounters in a glass housePeople made of glass in a transparent glass building – this image of haunting beauty accompanying us throughout the conference week. Envisioning encounters between people made of wood, smoke, rubber, stone or soap bubbles… How would these people communicate? What would their language be like?

“Imagine a world where people were not made of fleshand blood but for instance of glass. This would affect the language and communication in that society. Your thoughts would for instance be visible to everybody, thus, the hatter would be the most important profession. On the other hand, what if you were not made of glass but of smoke, you might be blown away in the midst of your exchange of thoughts.” This alluring story was told to Haaga-Helia students by the Peruvian poet and linguist Renato Sandoval-Bacigalupo, one of the theme conveners of Encounters. His poetic vision of universes inhabited by all these different people made students understand the profound nature of communication and encounters between human beings.

Is this not exactly what happened during the Encounters conference? People of different nations and backgrounds embedded in a transparent space within the glass walls of a contemporary building. Some thoughts left tentatively floating in the air – others already solidly anchored to aframework. Ideas materializing as splendid foliage in a majestic tree – or as tender sprouts barely visible above the ground, yet to be discovered and developed.

All these glass people in a glass house – with no hats on – open to ideas. Tentative and transparent.

Ms Pia Kiviaho-Kallio, Encounters11 conference participant


Research notes




LbD in practice

Learning by Developing – A pedagogical innovation by LaureaLearning by Developing (LbD) means a development-based learning. It is a new way to obtain the competences required in working life. A student’s learning is based on development work, research, people skills, and producing new knowledge. In LbD, the student is considered as the junior colleague of the expert from the collaborating organisation and of the educator. Students will complete the majority of their studies in working life relating projects. Many of these projects are multidisciplinary. The projects can combine, for example, aspects of the welfare and business sector. Laurea R&D Labs as learning environments constitute a special feature of the LbD-model. The Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council appointed Laurea in its entirety as a Centre of Excellence for 2010-2012 for the student-centred R&D work integrated inlearning.Laureahasbeenaapointedasacentreofexcellencefivetimes,andisthusFinland’smostawardedhighereducation institution. (Partially adapted from Laurea – from education to innovation and Laurea’s Annual Review 2009)


Laurea Porvoo and Haaga-Helia moved to the newly completed Porvoo Campus in January 2011, but the planning of the Porvoo Campus International Week had already started in the autumn of 2010. The co-operation between ourtwoschoolsshotofflikearocket.AtfirstIthoughtthatstudents who study in such different degree programs would notnecessarilyhavesomuchtooffertoeachother.Atfirstit seemed to me as though the schools different experiences would work against us, since there had not been any co-operation like this between the two Universities of Applied Sciences in Porvoo before. But as time moved on and the co-operation got more intense, my earlier thoughts were proven wrong.

What do Haaga-Helia and Laurea students in Porvoo have in common?In the autumn of 2010, Jukka Malkamäki; the EducationServicesOfficerofLaureaPorvooapproachedmebyemailand asked me if I would be interested in being part of the groupwhowas toorganize thefirsteverPorvooCampusInternational Week in co-operation with Haaga-Helia. At that point the thought of being part of such a group seemed very distantbecauseourschoolshadnotmovedintogetheryet;thebigmovewasstillahead.AsIstudynursing;thethoughtof embarking on such a big project felt a bit overwhelming. In my mind I thought “How are we going to manage this?” and “What do we have in common?”

We had the luxury of planning something new and different for all the students of Porvoo Campus, so they would be able to learn something from it and have use of in their future studies. Our goal was to awaken interest towards internationality.

Formepersonally,thefirstbigshockcamebeforeourfirstmeeting to plan the International Week. The meetings would be held in English and being the secretary of the meeting and takingminuteswouldbeadifficult task.These thingswere so far away from my personal comfort zone and previous knowledge that I thought about leaving the project all together.

I decided to continue with the group and believed that I would manage somehow. In the first meeting we went throughsome programs of international weeks that had been held in different schools around the country previously. It was clear to everybody that guest lecturers and the themes

were going to be chosen as diversely as possible so that all the students would have something of interest. Through many discussions we found many common interests with Haaga-Helia and Laurea students and I got more excited about planning the week. I thought “This is going to go just fine.” Iwonderedwhy Ihadnot realized for instance, thattraveller vaccinations are closely related to nursing, as well as students who study tourism or go abroad during their studies. Many of these realizations came to me during our meetings and while I was at home.

Learning by DevelopingThe main task for a University of Applied Sciences is functionality and giving different kinds of experiences to its students;andthat is, inmyopinion,whattheInternationalWeekhasmostdefinitelybeen.ItisdefinedinthePolytechicsAct (351/2003) that the University of Applied Sciences’ task is to give its students professional expertise, support individual growth and to engage in polytechnic education of research and development (Ammattikorkeakoululaki 351/2003. 4§). The International Week –project has been a great example of Laurea’s pedagogical way of teaching LearningbyDeveloping(LbD).LbDisbasedonteamwork;and every team member has an equal responsibility of participating in the project. According to the LbD-model, the student works as an equal partner within the group of senior experts, and so gains experience of being a plenipotentiary expert (Pedagoginen toimintastrategia 2007. s. 11.).

TheLbD-model is built on competence in one’s own fieldof expertise and dealing with different kinds of work life situations and understanding the context of one’s profession. (Pedagoginen strategia 2007. s. 5) A project like this with people from very different degree programs working together has given us a chance to understand the differences and thus gave more insight to what one’s own degree program is all about. Even though planning the International Week has been very different from our usual nursing studies, there has been a lot of similarity to nursing. Nurses need to have skills to communicate in a group and express one’s opinions in meetings. Nurses must have skills to cope with unfamiliar circumstances and have the ability to adapt his/her plans and actions according to the situation. It is also crucially important to get experience of being an equal partner within a group.

International experiences at Porvoo Campus

Hanna- Mari Makkonen, Laurea University of Applied Sciences, Laurea Porvoo, Porvoo, Finland


In 2015 Laurea aims to be an internationally acknowledged University of Applied Sciences specializing in future expertise and regional development in the metropolitan area. (Laurean strategia 2010-2015. s. 15) During the International Week we have been able to increase students and teachers’ internationality and create new international relations.

LbD was visible in the planning and execution of the International WeekIt is true that we have become familiar with projects and plans during our studies in Laurea, but previously they have been initiated by the teachers and have been very structured. The co-operation with Haaga-Helia students and teachers has been very easygoing and I have received supportduringtheprojectfromallthedirections;bothfromstudents and teachers, who are more familiar for example with the task of getting sponsors and create internationality in general. Studying according to the LbD –model together with teachers and work life partners, in my opinion, has been emphasized in a very good way in this project. The students in the different degree programs have supported each other as instructors and as partners and the fellow students have acted as users of services. The teachers have been in an active role as the experts and researchers, by giving us students guidelines for the project.

Workinginthisproject;weasstudentshavehadthepossibilityto develop our skills of interaction, group communication and argumentation through this rich experience. We have

also had a great opportunity to enhance our leadership skills and work environment skills and to create new partnerships throughout the whole project. We have had the opportunity to work and learn just the way the Laurea University of Applied Sciences has intended us to do, Learning by Developing.

The nursing students from Laurea had a possibility to learn and experience many things that are not usually possible during nursing studies. We have applied for sponsorship, we have marketed the event and we have been secretaries for meetings and taken minutes, among other things. I have found such skills in myself and fellow students that I did not know existed. As a result of this co-operation, I am more confidentinspeakingEnglishandSwedishwhileinteractingwith different people. My mother tongue is Finnish and I study in Finnish so it has been a positive and educational experience for me.

Student based co-operation between Haaga-Helia and Laurea in futureLaurea’s pedagogical strategy also includes an objective to strengthen the work culture where, by emphasizing working together and creating new, is learned by using the LbD-model (Pedagoginen strategia 2007. s. 5) These kind of actions aiming to improve co-operation between HEIs and bring new content into degrees are very important when pursuing the desired strategic intent mentioned in Laurea’s strategy. I hope that in the future some classes could be held together with Haaga-Helia students, e.g. classes focused on wellness entrepreneurship. Sharing one’s own know-how


with others in such a way would be natural and co-operation would surely be fructuous for both parties.

I truly hope that this kind of inter-school studying and shared projects are possible to arrange in the future and these are done on regular basis from a student-centered point of view.

References:Laurean strategia 2010-2015, as available in English on 2

May at

http://www.laurea.fi/en/information_on_Laurea/Strategy/Pages/default.aspx

Pedagoginen strategia 2007, as available in English on 2 May at

http://www.laurea.fi/en/information_on_Laurea/Strategy/Pages/default.aspx

Ammattikorkeakoululaki 351/2003, as available in English on 2 May at

http://www.finlex.fi/en/laki/kaannokset/2003/en20030351?search%5Btype%5D=pika&search%5Bpika%5D=351

Written by student Ms Hanna-Mari Makkonen ([email protected]) who is studying nursing at LaureaPorvoo.


Forthcoming ISJ Calls

ISJ welcomes contributions from both academics and practitioners in the form of original papers and case studies in the subject areas indicated, and on similar topics. It may publish book reviews and commentaries on developments in interdisciplinarity as well as notes on research work in progress and reports of relevant conferences. The ISJ readership consists of academics and (post) graduate students together with executives and managers, policy makers and administrators from both public and private sector.

ISJ is a refereed quarterly journal and

• internationalallaspectsconsidering,i.e.quality,content,representation,anddissemination• isamajorscholarlypublicationdedicatedtotheadvancementofinterdisciplinarity• bridgesthegapbetweentheoryandpractice• servestheneedsofresearchersaswellaspractitionersandexecutives• challengesconventionalwisdom,exploresalternativesandoffersnewperspective• intendstobetheleadingforumforthepublicationofhighqualityinterdisciplinarymanuscripts

For the detailed submission guidelines, please refer to the next page.

Submissions are welcomed continuously (regardless of the special theme issue deadlines) and will be submitted under review without any delays.

Vol. 2, No. 1: Simulating Health, Business and Wellbeing Subject coverage of this theme issue includes, but is not limitedto:

•Serviceinnovations•Serviceprocessdevelopment•Studententrepreneurship•Projectmanagement•Socialresponsibilityandsustainability•Precautionaryprinciples•Methodsforpromotingsafetyandsecurity•Simulationpedagogy

Vol. 2, No. 2: Customer Focused ServicesSubject coverage of this theme issue includes, but is not limitedto:

•BusinessServices•Innovativeproductandservicedevelopment•Entrepreneurship•Leadership•Marketing•Logistics•Projectmanagement•Interactivemediaservices•User-centereddesign•Managementinformationsystems•Operations•Humanresourcesandmanagerialmanagement

Vol. 2, No. 3: Promoting WellbeingSubject coverage of this theme issue includes, but is not limitedto:

•Wellbeingservicesdevelopment•Healthservicesimprovement•Wellbeingentrepreneurship•Multiculturaleducation•Wellbeingandcareinnovations•Importanceofclinicalnursing•Necessityofspecialisededucation•Sustainablelearningprocess•Differencesinhealthcarebetweenprivateandpublicsectors

Vol. 2, No. 4: Creating Wellness Subject coverage of this theme issue includes, but is not limitedto:

•Co-operationinhealthcareonScandinavianlevel•Healthcareinnovations•Wellbeingresearchanddevelopment•Wellbeingentrepreneurship•Healthcareeducationinthefuture•Productandservicedevelopment


Articles submitted to the journal should be original contributions and should not be under consideration for any other publication at the same time. Authors submitting articles for publication warrant that the work is not an infringement of any existing copyright. Contributions become the legal copyright of the publisher unless otherwise agreed.

Each paper is reviewed by the editor and, if it is judged suitable for ISJ’s editorial scope, it is then sent to two referees for double blind peer review. Based on their recommendations, the editor decides whether the paper should be accepted as is, revised or rejected.

Submissionsshouldbesentviahttps://elomake3.laurea.fi/lomakkeet/1930/lomak.html. The author details including full name, affiliation, e-mail address and full internationalcontact details should be presented on a separate sheet. Author(s)shouldnotbeidentifiedinanywhereinthearticle.A brief autobiographical note of maximum of 5 lines in length should be supplied.

As a guide, articles should not exceed 25 double-spaced pages in length using Arial 10 pt. font. Depending on the type of the text, this measures apx. 450 words or apx. 3 000 characters per page. It is strongly prohibited to use any particular settings (such as special heading or varying font styles, special page or other distinctive paragraph layouts) in typing. A title of not more than seven words should be provided. An abstract totalling 150 words at most should be supplied and three keywords encapsulating the principal subject covered by the article should be included. Headings must be short, clearly defined and not numbered. Therecommended heading structure is Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Results, Conclusions. References to other publications must be in APA style. References must be carefully checked for accuracy. Notes and/or endnotes are not allowed. A one-page executive summary comprising of an introduction, main principles and key implications must be provided at the end of the paper.

Figures, charts and diagrams should be kept to a minimum and must be submitted individually via https://elomake3.laurea.fi/lomakkeet/1930/lomake.html as separate files. Inthetextthepositionofthefigure/chartshouldbeshownbytypingonaseparatelinethework“takeinfigure/chart1”.Asa

general guideline, the papers must be saved in .rtf format but the charts and images can also be in .jpeg or .xls format. No .doc/.docx is recommended due to potential incompatibility issues. The publication will be printed in black and white, so using of textures in graphics is recommendable. All the figures,chartsandtablesmustbeinblackandwhite.

Each accepted article for publication must be accompanied by a completed and signed Publication Agreement available from the Technical Editor or on the journal website. Theauthormustensurethatthefinalversionofthearticleis complete, grammatically correct and without spelling or typographical errors. Paper content may not be changed once submitted under review.

Author(s) are expected to submit a list of four experts for reviewing purposes including their names, full addresses and expertise in the subject of the submission. These experts must be personally unknown to the author(s) and at least two of them must be from a different country than the author(s).

[email protected]

www.laureavantaareview.com

Submission guidelines

ISJ aims to publish papers on diverse subjects related but not limited to business management, tourism, leadership and development of preventive welfare work, health promotion, social services, business information technology, regional development, beauty care, correctional services, and nursing. All the submissions are expected to contribute to raising awareness and rethinking interdisciplinarity. The submissions should also take into considerations that ISJ bridges the gap between theory and practice serving the needs of researchers as well as practitioners and executives.

Presenting Laurea PorvooCreating Wellness

Laurea Porvoo shares facilities with HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences on Porvoo Campus, which is a new kind of learning and competencies centre. Students graduating from Laurea Porvoo will be qualified to work as Public Health Nurses or Ordinary Nurses. Developing health care services in co-operation with both private and public sector actors is in the core of their studies.

Furthermore, Laurea Porvoo strives to advance the Nordic co-operation in the field of health care education. Inquiry learning and joint curriculum work between the six degree programmes offered on Porvoo campus by two UAS aim at implementing real life multidisciplinary projects. The meaningful learning tasks enhance the meta-skills needed in the job market: project management, research and development, coaching, creative problem solving and innovation.

Symbio Living Lab on Porvoo Campus aims to involve the end-users in the research and development processes. The campus will also be open daily to the public. The public will have the opportunity to enjoy a nice restaurant, a professional library and many comfortable meeting spots. Partner facilities are being offered in the use of collaborating companies and other organisations.

Creating Wellness

Contents

Interdisciplinary Studies Journal

PUBLISHERVantaa Regional Unit, Laurea UAS

Ratatie 22, FI-01300 Vantaa, Finland

Printed by Lönnberg Print & Promo

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23

29

38

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ISSN 1799-2702

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Double-blind peer reviewed Summaries and implications for managers and executives Service Design as a tool for regional innovations Soile Juujärvi, Kaija Pesso, Pekka Räsänen ‘Proyecto INTER-ES’: An experience applied to language teaching Ana M. Fernández Vallejo Supporting graduation with thesis intensive Altti Lagstedt, Raine Kauppinen Progressive inquiry in agile software development education Raine Kauppinen, Altti Lagstedt Case method as directed learning in professional ethics Leticia Bañares Parera Social media perceptions on Finnish tourism sector Johanna Heinonen Social Constructivist Approach to Multicultural Entrepreneurship Learning Ger Yucel, Evariste Habiyakare “Get a Life” -project – Holistic career and entrepreneurship counselling for university students Tarja Römer-PaakkanenEPILOGUE Flashes from the Encounters 2011 Edited by the Encounters11 Conference Chair Dr Tarja KantolaResearch notesLbD in practice International experiences at Porvoo Campus Hanna-Mari MakkonenForthcoming ISJ CallsSubmission guidelinesPresenting Laurea Porvoo

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