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Keväällä 2020 yliopistot joutuivat siirtämään suurimman osan opetuksesta verkkoon koronapandemian vuoksi. Opiskeluolosuhteiden äkillinen muutos sekä pandemian pitkittyminen ovat aiheuttaneet huolta opiskelijoiden hyvinvoinnin heikkenemisestä ja sen myötä opintojen etenemisestä. Tässä artikkelissa tutkimme perheellisten ja lapsettomien opiskelijoiden opintoihin kiinnittymistä koronapandemian aikana syksyllä 2021. Tutkimus toteutettiin verkkokyselynä hyödyntäen University student engagement inventory (USEI) -mittaria, joka mittaa opintoihin kiinnittymistä kolmessa ulottuvuudessa: kognitiivinen, emotionaalinen ja behavioraalinen. Tutkimusaineisto sisälsi vastaukset 392 Jyväskylän yliopiston opiskelijalta, joista 44 oli perheellisiä ja 348 lapsettomia. Kerätty aineisto analysoitiin rakenneyhtälömallinnuksella, jonka mittamalli testattiin ensin konfirmatorisella faktorianalyysilla. Tuloksiemme mukaan perheelliset opiskelijat olivat emotionaalisesti vahvemmin opintoihinsa kiinnittyneitä kuin lapsettomat opiskelija. Muita kiinnittymiseen vaikuttaneita tekijöitä olivat opiskelijan ikä ja aloitusvuosi. Vahva emotionaalinen kiinnittyminen oli myös yhteydessä matalampaan opintojen keskeyttämisaikomukseen. Tuloksemme korostavat sitä, että yliopistojen henkilökunnan on tärkeää tarjota opiskelijoille emotionaalista tukea erilaisten kriisiaikojen aikana.

An international need exists for effective programmes that will enhance learners’ interest in studies and careers related to science, technology, engineering and mathematics, i.e. STEM. When considering the impact of STEM programmes, it is important to identify what can enable or constrain effective programme implementation. As such, enablers can be systematically supported and constraints tackled to maximise a programme’s impact. This study considers a nationwide STEM programme in Finland that involved 450 teachers and their learning communities. The study followed an interpretative paradigm, collecting data through semi-structured interviews and analysed with data-driven thematic analysis. The study participants were 14 external change agents operating between participating learning communities and the national programme administration and, thus, had a valuable overview on how the programme evolved. The most important enablers of effective programme implementation were versatile support, programme flexibility and long-term vision. Two major constraints were limited resources and collaboration challenges. Considering the findings of this study can help design effective STEM programmes by providing various support mechanisms for educators, particularly scaffolding; peer and school administrator support; flexibility to enable embedding activities and adapting programme objectives to participants’ everyday work; long-term vision to support both lifelong learning and a continuum between different STEM programmes; sufficient time and economic resources to achieve a long-term impact; and collaboration and networking opportunities at the local, regional, national and international levels.

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When employees become accustomed to everyday working habits it can prevent them from generating creative ideas. This familiarity takes the forms of mainly collaborating with familiar colleagues, playing roles that develop over years, and solving encountered problems with proven strategies. This chapter considers how a virtual enterprise simulation game (RealGame) can potentially foster digital creativity and collaborative learning. The game simulates a situation where team members take responsibility for managing a virtual manufacturing company and its supply chain. Theoretically, we consider RealGame a facilitating environment for people to collaborate by offering a safe environment for playful exploration and artificial conflict, which can result in new ideas and learning. To demonstrate this idea, we derive empirical evidence from reflective essays that were written by business school students after experimenting with the game.

This paper considers the direct involvement of students in degree programme curricula design, specifically four computer science teacher students designing new curricula for the Faculty of Information Technology of the University of Jyväskylä. They participated in a project to make recommendations for the 2017–2020 master’s and bachelor’s programme curricula. We examined how these recommendations were implemented in the new curricula and what hindered student voice. The project led to major changes: making basic studies in mathematics optional, adding three new courses, and defining new learning goal descriptions for two master’s programmes. Several factors hindered student voice: insufficient perceived expertise, doubts about project significance, negative attitudes towards student involvement, and lack of personal interest. Hence, despite the project leading to considerable changes, the students themselves expressed rather critical attitudes towards student involvement in curriculum design. Consequently, promoting student voice in higher education curricula design is a more tensioned phenomenon than has been discussed in earlier research. peerReviewed

Our study contributes to the research on computer-mediated communication in higher education by experimenting a modern communication tool called Slack. In particular, we consider using Slack to support students’ peer interactions during Master’s thesis work. For this purpose, we designed a case study that was executed in a Master’s thesis seminar course. During the course, all out-of-class communication was carried out by using Slack, instead of e-mails or learning management systems. After the course, we used a questionnaire to investigate how the students perceived Slack for asking for assistance, their intention to use Slack, and Slack’s ease of use. Furthermore, the questionnaire asked feedback about challenges that the students found in slack. To examine the students’ peer support in Slack, we analysed the messages in the course’s public discussion channels. We investigated opportunities and challenges of Slack from instructional perspective by conducting an auto-ethnographic data collection. Our analysis revealed that the students perceived Slack as an easy-to-use communication tool with a low threshold of asking questions. The students also expressed high intentions to use Slack in the future. However, the students were worried of information overload in Slack, frustrated with decentralisation of communication tools in higher education, and cautious of using communication tools that are not officially supported by the university. The students’ interactions were assigned to three categories: practical, technical, and thesis-related. Analysis of these categories revealed that the students were able to explicate and solve issues in Slack, but the issues were only related to practical and technical problems, instead of actual Master’s thesis writing. The teacher perceived that Slack enhanced bi-directional communication with the students, but faced issues related to file management and user authentication. The results implicate that developing an alternative for Slack from educational premises could be more useful than a product that is not originally developed for pedagogical needs. Finally, we present recommendations that help educators to use Slack in their educational practices. peerReviewed

A classroom with a blackboard and some rows of desks is obsolete in special education. Depending on the needs, some students may need more tactile and inspiring surroundings with various pedagogical accessories while others benefit from a simplified environment without unnecessary stimuli. This understanding is applied to a new Finnish special education school building with open and adaptable learning spaces. We have joined the initiative creation process by developing software support for these new spaces in the form of a learning space management system. Participatory design and value-focused thinking were implemented to elicit the actual values of all the stakeholders involved and transform them into software implementation objectives. This paper reports interesting insights about the elicitation process of the objectives. peerReviewed