SeOppi Magazine 3/2012

The Association of Finnish eLearning CentrePromoter and Network-Builder in the Finnish eLearning Branch

03

| 2

012 eLEARNING IN FINLAND

Open Knowledge Festival...24–25

FUAS eCampus...21–22

Small and Medium-sized Companies Go Mobile...19

The AKTIIVI Programme...23

The Association of Finnish eLearning

Centre...10–11

The SeOppi Magazine is the only Finnish magazine in

the field of e-learning. It is a membership bulletin for the

members of, and published by, the Association of Finnish

eLearning Centre.

The SeOppi Magazine offers up-to-date information

about the latest phenomena, products and solutions of

e-learning and their use. The magazine promotes the use,

research and development of e-learning and digital education

solutions in companies, educational establishments and

other organizations with the help of the best experts.

The SeOppi magazine gathers professionals, companies,

communities and practitioners in the field together and leads

them to the sources offering information about e-learning.

CIRCULATION

3000 copies

ADVERTISING AND MATERIALS

Niina Kesämaa

Visamäentie 33, FI-13100 Hämeenlinna

e-mail | [email protected]

TRANSLATION

Tiina Lanas | TILA Communications


LAYOUT

Adverbi

PLACE OF PUBLICATION

Fram

COVER IMAGE

Timo Korhonen, Daniel Schildt &

Futureimagebank

SeOPPI-MAGAZINE 03 | 2012

PUBLISHER

The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre

Visamäentie 33, FI-13100 Hämeenlinna

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Titi Tamminen

Tel. | +358 40 869 6306


JOURNALISTS

Oili Salminen


Niina Kesämaa

Tel. | 040 827 6378


ISSN-NUMBER

1795-3251

26

24Contents

Editorial ............................................ 3

Augmented Reality Pilot Projects taken off to a good start .................... 4

In Online Education Users Create Value – Not Systems ............... 6

How Do We Kindle Internal Motivation for Understanding Learning Technologies? ...................... 8

Ten Years of Work – The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre is Promoter and Network-builder ........... 10

Fröken Senja and the Delights of Learning Swedish ...... 12

New Tool for Evaluating eSkills ..........14

Challenges, Risks and Approaches for Involving Business-to-Business Customers and Users in Innovation by Social Media ............................... 15

The Innovative, Progressive School Model is Designed to Help with the Pedagogical Use of ICT .........17

Visiting Association for Learning Technology ALT in England ................ 18

Small and Medium-sized Companies Go Mobile .......................19

“Future Learning” at LEARNTEC .................................. 20

FUAS eCampus Coming Soon ........... 21

The AKTIIVI Programme Is Now Productising Projects’ Outputs ............................ 23

Open Knowledge Festival Brought Open Knowledge Ambassadors to Helsinki ................. 24

Why Do Finns Prefer Mobile Learning in Vocational Education? .................. 26

3D Takes Us out of the Classroom and to the Far Side of the World .............. 28

What Is Mixed Reality? ..................... 29

Exploring the (Birth of the) CAVE ..................... 30

Members of the Association of Finnish eLearning Centre ................. 32

4

EDITORIAL

Dear Readers,

In recent years in Finland, the use of educational technologies has increased greatly. It seems that we are learning to use information and communication technologies more and more to practice our future skills. A question that poses a more extensive chal-

lenge for us is the one relating to whether or not students, teachers and organisations are interested in changing their operational and pedagogical methods to make the best use of the possibilities of ICT. We know that technologies applied in teaching today are well suited to supporting skills relating to critical thinking, working together and operating globally. But for many of us, electronic learning environments may cause stress or at least some degree of strain. On the one hand, students see the use of technology as motivating and supportive of mean-ingful learning. On the other hand, they seem to be stressed by the lack of support they receive when new methods are being introduced as well as the fact that teachers use these methods in many different ways. Students would appreciate coherent modes of operation that would allow them to focus their energies on learning and co-structuring of information instead of solving technical problems. The question arises whether educational applica-tions should actually be based on more standard systems. Or would we need more peda-gogical leadership? If so, what might be the role of technology and application developers? They say that the young people today form a generation born with telephones in their hands and with internet as their native locality. Statistics open our eyes to a different truth. A large number of young Finns do not know how to search for data even though most of them are handy with their devices and software. Guidance and support in information skills are required continuously – even adults need them – as the quick acquisition and applica-tion of new information is a key issue in learning and in the development of anything new. The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre is an organisation that has promoted the use of information and communication technologies in education for more than a dec-ade. The association is busy, even today, creating networks among the operators in this field, providing administrative services for open learning projects and promoting the use, research and development of digital materials. The experiences and best practices collected by the Association of Finnish eLearning Centre are needed in Finland as well as in international networks. Our association has been involved in many projects that have made use of the association’s skills, and we are searching constantly for new contacts and openings. The EDUCA conference in Berlin is one of the forums in which we share our expertise. As we all know, options abound but time and resources are restricted. In this situation, good practices provide us with the grounds for making meaningful choices. Therefore, let us all display our expertise. In addi-tion to the association’s web services, this magazine, SeOppi, is one of the channels avail-able for information distribution. l

Leena Vainio

Chairman of the Board

of the Association of Finnish eLearning Centre

Tel. | +358 3 6464 380

Mobile | +358 40 727 6601


Picture: Teemu K

orpi

Would we need more pedagogical

leadership?

03 | 2012 | 3

TEXT JOANNA KALALAHTI | University of Tampere & LEENA KOSKIMÄKI | HAMK University of Applied Sciences

PICTURES iSTOCKPHOTO

Augmented Reality Pilot Projects taken off to a good start

LEARNING DOMESTIC wORK wITH AUGMENTED REALITY“Cleaning the toilet is one of the least moti-vating topics in the studies of domestic and consumer services students. The use of an augmented reality application might make it more interesting”, said Ms. Tuula Rantanen, Special Needs Teacher and Ms. Leena Koivisto, Special Needs Assistant, in Orimattila unit of Sal-paus further

The AVO2 subproject “3D and mobile environments for learning and partici-pation” is piloting the use of augmented reality and Kinect, the motion-sens-ing input device, for education and improved participation. In autumn 2012, the project has taken off to a good start, and the first pilots are under way.

FURTHER INFORMATIONJoanna Kalalahti | University of Tampere


Leena Koskimäki | HAMK

University of Applied Sciences


Merja Salminen | HAMK

University of Applied Sciences


LINKwww | eoppimiskeskus.fi/avo2

education, when they were asked in spring 2012 about good learning contents to pilot. Just a moment earlier, the teachers and students had been introduced to aug-mented reality through a few demos, the viewing of which had brought astonished, yet delighted expressions on their faces.

4 | 03 | 2012

Causing the wow effect is not a sufficient reason to start making use of augmented reality in teaching. Any application that is implemented must be useful in real situa-tions and, first of all, it must help students learn the intended content at least as well as traditional methods do. There are several challenges in the Orimattila pilot. Students should have their hands free in these educational situations, and the adopted technology should work well enough to keep the students’ user experi-ence positive. In addition, students in special needs groups may have problems understand-ing instructions in textual form. It is possible to answer these challenges with a technology that enables the presentation of the required issues through several different media. The application that guides students in toilet care is going to be first tested in practice in autumn 2012, and further devel-opment is going to take place on the basis of the feedback received. It may be possible to make use of the application in another pilot site of this project, i.e. in Virvelinranta Development and Resource Centre for the Disabled.

GETTING EMPOwERED BY INTERACTION AND MOTION wITH MOTION-SENSING INPUT DEVICESThis autumn in Virvelinranta a group of stu-dents studying welfare at HAMK University of Applied Sciences have begun testing and familiarizing technologies that help the cli-ents’ activities and participation. As of this August, students in work placement at the Development and Resource Centre have been practicing how to conduct guidance sessions for their clients with Kinect sensor, a motion-sensing input device. These guided sessions have only a few participants at a time to ensure the fine experience. The participants have so far played one or both of two games: Kinect Sports and Kinectimals, in the latter of which the client obtains a pet in order to take care of it and to teach tricks to it. Even though the participants were not familiar with Kinect at first, they soon learned to use it. Virvelinranta clients eagerly wel-comed new experiences and, in particular, the cuddly animals in the Kinectimals game. Even the staff became enthusiastic about the new device. The beginning could not have been better even though the first times with the device presented challenges by finding the best practices for different clients. The virtual pet motivated many to intensive con-

centration. Clients are eager to play and at the same time getting rather considerable amounts of exercise. Their degree of mobility and control of bodily movements have been improved while playing. When they have been engaged in the activity, clients have experi-enced success and joy and have felt empow-ered as they have seen that they can control Kinect themselves. The students participat-ing in the pilot use of these new contents have felt positive about the success of the implementation. The guidance sessions are ongoing and observations are being collected. During the autumn, on the basis of these materi-als, IT students at HAMK will develop vari-ous applications for Virvelinranta clients to enjoy, make use of and learn with. These applications will also benefit HAMK students studying welfare as they will be able to use the applications for practice. The usability and features of Kinect are studied in order to create well-thought-out user experiences for as many clients as possible. The wishes of Virvelinranta staff, such as counsellors and physiotherapists, are carefully noted, and their feedback is valuable. Some staff members are now guiding game sessions themselves. Kinect seems to have come to Virvelinranta to stay.

FOREST LEARNING PATH IS FORMING IN TAMPEREThe 3DM subproject has quite literally been taken into the bushes. The Pirkanmaa unit of the Finnish Forestry Centre and its edu-cational partner, the 4H organisation, are involved in designing a forest learning path that could be operated on augmented reality browsers in smart phones and tablets. The target group will include pupils in comprehen-sive schools as well as everyone generally interested in forests. “In spring 2012, our Bittimetsä (Bit for-est) project implemented the Kauppi forest skills track in Tampere. The assignment points are marked with QR codes and are problematic in the sense that they easily attract vandalism and, therefore, they require constant maintenance. We also wanted to try out a new method for forestry education because this might work better in motivating modern children and young people to learn about forests”, says Ms. Ulla Konkarikoski from the Forestry Centre. The idea is to implement this forestry education path so that it will include 9–12 assignment points that can be found in the

terrain by the aid of GPS coordinates. These assignment points will present forest-related tasks that can be resolved using mobile devices. At an assignment point, you might be asked to view a video clip or to search for more information on the web. The tasks can involve rewarding, therefore motivating elements. The intention is to select a city forest for this path so that it can be easily reached by as many people as possible. On the other hand, all assignment points can be easily transferred to a different area by sim-ply changing the coordinates. The application will be ready for test use in spring 2013. In addition, the 3DM subproject hopes to implement a pilot in which an abstract issue is made more concrete with the help of augmented reality. Good examples of such applications are abundant already. l

To Learn More

3DM subproject blog at University of Tampere: http://avoimestitutkien. wordpress.com

Augmented reality group in SOMETU network http://sometu.ning.com/group/lisatty-todellisuus

03 | 2012 | 5

In Online Education Users Create Value – Not Systems

The background for studies in how value is created can be found in industrial and service-providing

enterprises. Since the 1980’s, the value creation in industrial operations has been described in terms of value chains, or, as interconnected production phases in which the value of the industrial product is always higher in a later phase than it was in a preceding one. As of the beginning of the current cen-tury, value in service production has been understood as being jointly produced; it is seen as the result of the close coopera-tion and interaction of the service provider and the client. In this context, value is not created in effective, consecutive produc-tion phases but in the cooperation of the service provider and the client/user of the service.

VALUE CHAINS IN INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTIONThe study of the creation of value was started in businesses that work to gain profits. These studies analyse and model companies’ operations that enable the add-ing of value. The best-known concept in the field is the value chain, introduced by Michael Porter in the mid-1980’s. Porter’s value chain model presents the manufacturing of industrial products phase by phase from raw material to refined products, their distribution, sales and various after-sales activities. The basic idea is that each phase in the value chain should add value

to the product – if not, then the phase is an unnecessary cost factor. This type of modelling is the most useful when applied to studying the opera-tions of a company from the viewpoint of the value added for the client. This type of modelling allows us to identify e.g. process phases that produce no value for the client. The value chain model has been the basis for the design and implementation of many services. Let us present fast food chains as our example: we consider them to belong to the service sector, but in practice, they operate strictly by the logic of indus-trial production. HOw DO THESE MODELS APPLY TO LEARNING?Many parties involved in education and learning have assumed a critical view to such operating principles and analytical methods originated in business life. How-ever, in their book “Distance Education – A System’s View”, the North Americans Michael Moore and Greg Kearsley pre-sented a modelling system that closely resembles the value chain model. In their view, distance learning, blended learning and online education should be studied as production systems. Moore and Kersley’s studies differ from the Porterian world in that they focus on the many-faceted interac-tive relations between learners and learning materials, learners and supervisors and among different learners. The value chain model provides us with good grounds for studying the plan-

ning and implementation of an effective online course, but it does not cover online teaching in a comprehensive way. Online learning does not necessarily take place in a linear chain, proceeding phase by phase. In modern online education, the imple-menting party does not manage all key items involved in the value creation, such as external learners and other web-based resources; instead, the implementing party offers structures and environments for learning. Could we find other possible ways to model value creation in online education? SERVICES DISPLAY CO-CREATION OF VALUEIn the early 2000’s, one of the most sig-nificant contributions to the discussion concerning service businesses was the opening by S.L. Vargo and R.B. Lusch: how does the logic of service production differ from that of industrial production (Service-Dominant Logic), and in which ways do ser-vices manifest characteristics and ways of working that cannot be reduced to the value chain models of industrial production? One important feature regarding ser-vices is found in the fact that clients are important parties in this value co-creation. Value is not created in a production system such as a value chain; value is the outcome

TEXT ARI-MATTI AUVINEN

PICTURE iSTOCKPHOTO

It is important to understand the creation of value in online education. Once we do so, we can develop our understanding of good practices that create value for our learners. But how does value formation take place in internet-based education?

wRITER INFORMATIONMr. Ari-Matti Auvinen is a researcher

at the Aalto University and a senior partner

in HCI Productions.

6 | 03 | 2012

of close, multi-faceted cooperation. Many services – such as WeightWatchers groups – base their service concept completely upon peer communication and their sense of community. Developers of value co-creation include C.K. Prahalad and V. Ramaswamy. Their key claim is that the most important fea-ture in value creation no longer relates to concrete goods (such as the development of product features) or solutions (such as combinations of products and services) but to the world of experiences (such as the personalisation of experiences and experi-ence networks). The marketplace, understood in a wide sense, is becoming the arena for interac-tion – in the case of online education, we might use the term operating environment. The key factor in this arena will be the mastery and management of the various dialogues as the marketplace changes from a supplier-client marketplace to one of co-creation. In short, the key issue is seeing the client/user as a functioning subject, not as the object of actions. Online education as it is today forms a good example of versatile co-creation of value. The active work of learners them-selves (portfolio work), the content produc-tion of peers and peer groups (wikis and team working), peer assessments (cross evaluations), and tutored discussions form examples of co-creation of value within the area of value creation. Clients participating in web-based education receive an interest-ing type of value from the interaction of the learner and teacher/supervisor, from the activities of other learners as well as from the sharing of the work and learning resources of others. DIFFERENT VIEwS OF VALUE CREATION COMPLEMENT ONE ANOTHERIt is important to understand how value is created in online education, because this understanding helps us improve our understanding of good practices that cre-ate value for learners. The traditional value chain model gives us a good basis so that we may design and implement the differ-ent phases efficiently. The starting point for the work is production: how can we design and implement a web-based learn-ing item effectively? But, unfortunately, effective design and implementation do not suffice.

In order to present active parties’ shar-ing and participation in the core of the value creation in web-based education, we should view value-chain thinking and the concept of value creation through co-crea-tion as complementary to one another. Co-

creation of value focuses on the continual interaction and dialogue of the providers of this education with the learners; the co-creation of value also means that the own-ership of and the commitment to actions agreed upon are stronger. l

Online education as it is today forms

a good example of ver-satile co-creation

of value.

03 | 2012 | 7

How Do We Kindle Internal Motivation for Understanding Learning Technologies?

TEXT KAISA HONKONEN-RATINEN & ANNE RONGAS

PICTURE iSTOCKPHOTO

“why are we still trying to herd these resisting cats?” asked a teacher with long work experience in information and communication technologies.

8 | 03 | 2012

What have we learned in our ICT training courses? How could we herd resisting cats – or should

we do so at all? Over the past year, the project members of AVO and Open Päivitys (Teacher Update) have trained more than 700 teachers and principals in various parts of Finland. The conclusions we present in this article are based on these training sessions. “We are only beginning with this.” Inquiries about training sessions often begin with these words. Electronic learning environments have been in use for more than ten years, but we are still fighting with the problems that occur with the introduc-tion of systems. Technology seems to be an extra, and other things do not allow the time for learning it. At the same time, some schools and pilot groups are proceeding into different worlds with augmented reality and social media, the talk of which alone is totally confusing for beginners. Our key observation concerning the suc-cessful cases is that even a little technology goes a long way if there are the will, the ideas and the culture of cooperation. Under-standing the essence is more important than technology: why are we doing this, how does this help learning, teaching and guiding? Devices and applications do not renew anything as such. There are even too many options available. What should we do first, how should we proceed? It seems the pieces are coming together at different rates in different places. The ope.fi skill level descriptions, recently updated, emphasise the joining of expertise at the level of the work commu-nity. Everyone does not have to know how to do everything. Pedagogical leadership is of prime importance: the work community as a whole should aim at using their learn-ing technologies and web resources so that they can join their forces, skills and knowledge, reducing redundant work. Even the most motivated teacher cannot alone change the working culture of a school. Not even one teacher should be left alone in this operation environment that is undergoing constant change. It is also note-worthy that the ICT skills of young people are uneven. We can clearly discern a long-ing to progress from fragmentary solutions to comprehensive, flexible systems that blend into everyday work. Best practices are wanted, but at the same time, many

of those involved hesitate to share their experiments and experiences with others. Solutions for the challenges schools are facing are offered in the form of train-ing, both in the short term and in the long term. Short-term education only slightly cracks the curtain to the world behind. It depends on the skills of the participants whether they find the point of contact bridg-ing the training with their own expertise. Short-term education may improve indi-vidual teachers’ expertise and motivate them to improve their teaching. On the other hand, how the skills acquired through short-term education are disseminated in the work community and how the long-term effect is created, depends on the working culture of that community. The communal way of working, open culture, peer work and sharing one’s exper-tise in the community are great changes in working cultures and can be created through long processes only. All learning is based on enthusiasm, pos-itive attitude, motivation and need. Roughly, motivation is seen to have two different aspects which have different effects: there is internal as well as external motivation. Exter-nal motivation originates from the goals and requirements of others as well as the associ-ated rewards and penalties. Internal motiva-tion, on the other hand, arises from personal objects of interest and rewards brought by personal actions. Externally motivated activ-ity may kindle internal motivation as well. Internal motivation is strengthened through active participation. Education based on long-term peer learning forces everyone to participate in person, and that enables the group, if it is active, to tackle problems as they arise and find the way forward. It would be good to remember in the whirls of our daily lives that motivation often is bound to the specific situation and the particular time. Someone’s life situation may be such that no matter how interested

and motivated the person is, there just simply is not enough time for him or her to develop new skills at this point. How can we renew ICT-related work culture and improve skill levels in work communities in the long term? Several edu-cational institutions have been involved in the creation of systematic peer work meth-ods. We have seen practices that work: pedagogical cafés of work communities, e-learning and social media teams, regular study circles, social media seminars, and resource-specific teachers. Networked learning will be a key skill for future learners. In their article published in 2006, Hanna Järvenoja and Sanna Järvelä state: “Those who succeed in the future may not be those who know the most but those who have good self-regulatory skills in learning and who can adapt to changing learning situations. It is also central that the learner has the will and the skill to func-tion in a group.” Networked learning has been consid-ered to involve a good maintenance of moti-vation and the sharing of responsibility. It is also noteworthy how group members can interactively regulate their learning. Shared regulation reduces the tedium of struggling alone, or, as Järvenoja and Järvelä encour-age us: “Group members feel that they are all doing something together to resolve their situation.” What have we as trainers gained from this training? The most important item we learned is, perhaps, that goal-setting and working accordingly form the frame of all training arrangements. The culture of hav-ing to manage on one’s own is strong in teaching, and there are also many good results from teachers’ independence, but many opportunities are missed in this way. The Administration of Education Services in Hämeenlinna has chosen the motto “no need to manage alone any longer any more”. Shared activities are fuel to learning, and our task as educators and renewers is to feed more fuel into the fire. This is not a rev-olution, but we are facing a time of change. We must help one another forward. l

LINKSAVO

www | eoppimiskeskus.fi/avo

Open Päivitys

www | eoppimiskeskus.fi/open-paeivitys

Educational managers’ LUOTI

www | eoppimiskeskus.fi/luoti

ope.fi-skill levels

http://opefi.wikispaces.com

Source: Järvenoja, H. & Järvelä, S. (2006). Motivaation

ja emootioiden säätely oppimisprosessin aikana. (Title

translated: Regulation of motivation and emotions

during the learning process.) In Järvelä, S. & Häkkinen,

P. & Lehtinen, E. Ed. Oppimisen teoria ja teknologian

opetuskäyttö. (Title translated: Theory of learning and

the educational use of technologies.) Helsinki: WSOY.

03 | 2012 | 9

More than ten years ago, people active in web learning met at what is now HAMK University of Applied

Sciences in order to establish an associa-tion to promote the interests of their field. This event formed the beginning of the Association of Finnish eLearning Centre, an association that has since reached the position of an expert in the area of digital education. The operation of the associa-tion has been significantly extended to new fields, and the present participants include the leading experts in digital education in Finland. The current members include more than 50 organisations and approximately 200 individual persons. To honour the 10 years of the asso-ciation, the annual meeting on 27 March 2012 was held in a more festive venue than usually: the Hämeenlinna City Hall. A cel-ebratory seminar was held in connection with the annual meeting. The speakers included

Professor Kai Hakkarainen of the University of Turku, Senior Partner Ari-Matti Auvinen of HCI Productions and Professor Marko Niem-inen of Aalto University. The lecture record-ings are available in www.eoppimiskeskus.fi. The annual meeting elected a new Board for the association. The Board con-sists of eight members and eight deputy members. Ms. Leena Vainio of HAMK Uni-versity of Applied Sciences continues as the Chairman of the Board, and the Deputy Chair is Mr. Ville Availa of Ambientia Oyj. The members of the new Board are Ms. Leena Vainio, Chairman (HAMK), Mr. Ville Availa, (Ambientia Oyj), Ms. Maarit Hyn-ninen-Ojala (Metropolia AMK), Mr. Tuomas Kuusivaara (Discendum Oy), Mr. Ari-Matti Auvinen, Mr. Jarmo Tanskanen, Mr. Tarmo Toikkanen and Mr. Ville Venäläinen. Their deputy members are Mr. Timo Väliharju (Mediamaisteri Oy), Ms. Hanna Nordlund (Teknologiakeskus Innopark Oy), Mr. Risto

A Bit of History

The association was founded in Hämeen-linna at the end of January 2002; Hämeenlinna is still the location of the office. The Finnish eLearning Centre has pro-moted e-learning and the use, research and development of digital solutions for education in businesses, educational institutions and various organisations. The core of operations is found in the establishment of networks for purposes that promote successful cooperation in the field of digital education. During its years of operation in the field, the Association of Finnish eLearn-

FURTHER INFORMATIONChairman of the Board | Research Manager

Ms. Leena Vainio

Tel. | +358 3 646 4380, +358 40 727 6601


Development Manager

Ms. Titi Tamminen

The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre

Tel. | +358 40 869 6306


ONLINEThe Association of Finnish eLearning Centre

www | eoppimiskeskus.fi

AVO projects

www | eoppimiskeskus.fi/avo

Korhonen (Ilona IT Oy), Mr. Harto Pönkä (Innowise), Ms. Irma Mänty, Mr. Jarmo Viteli, Mr. Mika Kantola, and Mr. Juha Särestöniemi. Ms Hynninen-Ojala and Mr. Särestöniemi are new in their positions. l

ing Centre has become influential as an expert organisation. Throughout its his-tory, the objective of the association has been the increase in cooperation among educational institutions, companies, ser-vice providers, users and other parties. The association keeps its members, other parties in the field and its interest groups up-to-date with seminars, the most international of which is the annual DCL (Digital Competence and Learning) seminar, held in Hämeenlinna. The eEemeli quality competition was started almost at the same time that the association was first established. The most recent eEemeli first prize, the elev-enth one, was awarded at the ITK 2012

conference at Aulanko in Hämeenlinna in April of this year. The most significant projects of the past few years have dealt with promoting open ways of working and open contents. With its extensive operative network, the association implemented the AVO1 – Open Networks for Learning project in 2008–2012, funded by the European Social Fund ESF. A new project, dubbed AVO2, was established at the beginning of the current year. This project, Open-ness Accelerating Learning Networks, will focus on the establishment of a working culture among the participants that is participatory and involves networking and the sense of community.

Ten Years of work– The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre is Promoter and Network-builder

TEXT OILI SALMINEN

PICTURE iSTOCKPHOTO

10 | 03 | 2012

Our purpose is to develop and increase the skills and knowl-edge of e-learning in education,

teaching and business operations. We organise annual events such as meetings, seminars and briefings for our members. The largest national event is the Digital Competence and Learning -conference, which is organized traditionally in Novem-ber in Hämeenlinna. The Association is a national meeting point which provides networking links for the Finnish e-learning projects and regional clusters and helps to create contacts between companies, organisations and individuals. Since 2012 we have been coordinating a significant Finnish national project “Openness Accelerating Learn-ing Networks – (AVO2)” which promotes open learning resources and open content production, virtual and online learning environments and social media tools, peer-production and open source solutions for schools. Operating through a national network, there are eleven organisations and tens of experts involved in the AVO2 project. The Association of Finnish eLearn-ing Centre organises also annually the eEemeli e-learning competition for domes-tic e-learning products, services or poli-cies produced or owned by the company itself. The competition seeks for domestic e-learning solutions and enhances innova-tion and quality of e-learning products. The Association serves as a co-oper-ation forum for e-learning interest groups, provides expert services and spreads information on e-learning. We assist e-learning professionals and other stake-holders in achieving common goals and

bringing out their know-how and promote research and usabil-ity of results achieved in the branches of e-learning and e-studying. We co-operate with the best experts and provide up-to-date information about research, development, trends and experiences from e-learning. We promote sharing of knowledge, best practices and quality in e-learning. We also distribute information and per-form as a contact surface for finding part-ners, such as experts and service provid-ers, on the Finnish e-learning market. Our networks offer contacts to the producers and users of the e-learning services. We provide leading speakers in the field of e-learning in a variety of seminars and workshops. We participate in national e-learning policy making and in the work of the Finnish Digibusiness Cluster programme. Our expertise is based on the knowledge of our members and asso-ciates. The goal of our data service is dispersing existing, well-working practices and creating fresh informa-tion. Theme group activities promote networking and learning from one another. Discussion, learning and education seminars deliver expertise and promote networking. l

CONTACT INFORMATIONAssociation of Finnish eLearning Centre


www | eoppimiskeskus.fi

We promote sharing of knowledge,

best practices and quality in e-learning.

The Association of Finnish eLearning Centre is an independent, national non-profit organisation that promotes the use of e-learning and digital education solutions in Finnish companies and organisations. It was established in 2002.

03 | 2012 | 11

Fröken Senja and the Delights of Learning Swedish

Senja Larsen tells us that the idea is to practise the Swedish language, culture and structures as well as the

exceptions that form the proof of them. This is a completely new way of learning and interacting in social media. It started in Facebook. Ms. Senja Larsen, a very busy person, created a site she would have been interested in following herself. Suddenly, a great number of people were interested in the method of learning one or two new Swedish words per day. “I do not know Swedish all that well myself, even though I had promised to teach it to others, and when we suddenly had thousands of

The highly popular, highly praised and often awarded project “Senja Teaches You Swedish (and Finnish)” took the next step in autumn 2012 and published a book. The study book, composed of Facebook postings, forms an exam-ple of a new way of working and a new type of book: the producers crowd-sourced the contents to create this bilingual study book. Fröken (Miss) Senja still teaches gleeful Swedish (riemuruotsi, älsklingssvenska) in Facebook.

members, I asked other members – highly skilled verbally, and fun and liberal-minded – to help with the texts, and the language school got wind under its wings!” From then on, “Senja Teaches You Swedish (and Finnish)” pages have been maintained by about twenty people in Senja’s office. With more than 16 000 people liking it, this website is one of the most popular social media communities in Finland. The popularity is at least partly explained by the fact that in Senja’s language school, learning is a shared hobby seasoned with humour.

The operation of the language school relies on the text to be studied and the comments posted about it. The texts in Senja’s school are written in accordance with a precisely specified concept regard-

ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONSenja Larsen


Tel. | +358 50 551 1377

LINKSwww | facebook.com/senjaopettaa

Publication of the book in YouTube

www | youtube.com/watch?v=DzH0SwkSBh0

www.facebook.com/senjaopettaa

TEXT OILI SALMINEN

PICTURES iSTOCKPHOTO

12 | 03 | 2012

less of the fact that they approach their subject with hilarity. The texts to be stud-ied form the basis which the commenta-tors may increment with their expertise. The basic text is presented in Finnish, and Swedish translations are mixed into it. A person who speaks only Finnish can first read the text without looking at the Swedish words, and it works well, says Fröken Senja. The Swedish translations are always given in upper case letters MED VERSALER in the form in which they would occur if the complete sentence were given in Swedish. Finnish words are always written in lower case letters. “In our texts, we mix modern and old-fashioned language and the form of Swed-ish spoken in Sweden as well as the form spoken in Finland. The comments often give dialectal forms of Swedish. Occasion-ally, hilarious curses and other not-so-proper words get slipped in. We delight in this diversity. Languages are not static – they assume their form according to their use”, Senja Larsen tells us. POSTINGS BECOME A BOOKA voluntary work force compiled the book from the daily texts (about 300 of them, each no longer than 420 characters), and the more than 16 000 comments given to them. Comments from hundreds of people were included. In addition to the texts, the book contains more than 2500 comments from the community members. The most eager commentators were 42 in number, and more than 10 of their wisecracks were published in the book. Nadja Andersson was selected out of a large group of appli-cants to illustrate the book.

This book presents a combination of the traditional book with the hectic pace of social media in which topics rise and fall within days. Both of these aspects are found within this one volume. “We left some mistakes in the book, because we like them. Making mistakes is necessary for learning. So much the better, if you are having fun too. If you can push a little and learn even one new thing a day, you are quite well set a year from now. You can read the book so that you deal with one topic per day,” Fröken Senja recommends. The heaviest task after compiling and illustrating the book was proofreading it. Social media often use relaxed language and skip capitalisation and punctuation, and no spell-checkers understand two languages. Proofreading was completed by the members in Senja’s office together with seven volun-teers who included translators and teachers. “Our goal was to make sure of the correctness of the language so that the book can be used in education. But we still wanted to respect our commentators’ approaches and wanted to find a good balance between their personal touches and the meanings that they most likely intended," Fröken Senja explains. THE CROwDSOURCED FUNDING ATTEMPT REMAINED – AN ATTEMPTCompiling and publishing a book is not free of costs. Illustrations, layout design and administration required funding, and fund-raising was attempted with one of the first ever crowdsourced funding projects in Finland. In July 2012, the community started their project to find out if the book would sell. In 30 days, they received 345 advance orders for the book and its spin-offs. This project

was carried out in Kickstarter, the largest crowdsourced funding platform in the world, that has funded more than 23 000 projects with approximately 200 million euros. The crowdsourced funding project was a greater success than expected, but before the book was published, this funding had to be cancelled. Under the Finnish law accord-ing to Finnish police administration, crowd-sourcing in this type of case is not legal, and therefore, all funds already collected for the Senja book were returned to the contribu-tors; their copies of the book were delivered to them nevertheless. Fröken Senja believes that voluntary work is the only way with which a book that involves this much work could have been put together. The crowdsourcing attempt raised a dis-cussion that may have its effects on future decisions. Many members of parliament and ministers have expressed their views con-cerning the issue, and there is a web group established that works on renewing the Money Collection Act. The book publication event was trans-mitted direct online via GoogleHangout with minor technological requirements, and saved in YouTube at the same time. SENJA RECEIVED A PRICE EVEN IN THE eEEMELI COMPETITIONThis language instruction project has been widely acknowledged. This project has received the Vuoden kieliteko 2011 prize (Linguistic Act of the Year) from the Federation of Foreign Language Teachers in Finland, the Parasta Parasta (Best of the Best) prize from the Finn-ish eLearning Centre, the community award from Kulturfonden, and the Språksporre 2012 award from the Hugo Bergroth Society. l

03 | 2012 | 13

New Tool for Evaluating eSkills

MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE PROJECTHeikki Laaksamo

Tel. | +358 40 835 0032


Working, modern information society and spare time activities set ex-pectations concerning the informa-

tion and communication technology (ICT) user skills of every citizen. One can wonder if his or her eSkills are on an appropriate level. In organizations there may be considerations regarding the real eSkills level of employees and what kind of training they really need.

THE LEVEL OF ESKILLS CAN BE FOUND OUTTIEKE The Finnish Information Society Devel-opment Centre is creating a new Internet-based competence evaluation tool by which the level of ICT skills can be measured. The tool will include areas like information society citizen skills, basic and advanced eSkills and knowledge work skills. As a result of evalua-tion, one obtains a personal profile of his or her skills. These test results can also be com-pared to the average skill level of others who have taken the test. Testing is not bound to any certain application programs and the tool will give a consistent and unbiased environ-ment for testing in Finland.

USEFUL TOOL FOR ORGANIZATIONSEducational organizations can utilize the tool in their planning, evaluation and development work. Training organizations can test students to find out their starting level. The contents of the course can then be modified according to the results to better meet the needs of that particular group. After the course the stu-dents can be tested again to gain information on whether the course improved their skills. Organizations can also test their employ-ees to find out the level of their ICT skills. These test results can beused as reference points in performance appraisals. Employ-ers can also obtain information on what sort

of training or other development processes employees would need to improve their eSkills. In addition, hidden talents may be found which can be very important for mod-ern organizations. The tool can be of help in recruitment processes.

A NECESSARY TOOLTIEKE conducted a survey to learn how neces-sary the tool would be for the potential user organiza-tions. According to the survey, two thirds of the respondents said that they would use the tool immediately or within a year. Three quarters told TIEKE that they would start using the tool within two years. The survey also made it obvious that Finnish organizations do not have this kind of tool for use.

DEVELOPED IN AN EXPERT NETwORKTIEKE’s competence evaluation tool project is a part of the Systemic Learn-ing Solutions (SysTech) project organized by the University of Jyväskylä and financed partly by Tekes (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation). Partners in the project are Centria University of Applied Sciences, The Viikki Teacher Training School of University of Helsinki, Aamos Oy, The Tax Administration of Finland, North Karelia Municipal Education and Training Consor-tium, and Etnoteam Finland Oy. The project will be completed by the end of June 2013.

TIEKE-DEVELOPER OF THE MODERN INFORMATION SOCIETY OF FINLANDTIEKE The Finnish Information Society Devel-opment Centre has an important role as a neutral non-profit organization in creating viable tools and expertise for the information society. The main focus of work at TIEKE is on the development of eSkills, networking and interoperability. l

TEXT HEIKKI LAAKSAMO

PICTURE FUTUREIMAGEBANK

One can wonder if his or her eSkills

are on an appropriate level.

14 | 03 | 2012

Challenges, Risks and Approaches for

Involving Business-to-Business Customers and Users in Innovation by Social Media

The model of innovation is changing from closed to open, by which we mean that organizations are now

making extensive use of external ideas and technologies in their innovation activities. Social media is becoming an increasingly important means of involving customers and users in innovation processes. Social media enables the emergence of user com-munities. It potentially increases collabora-tion and enables more efficient utilization of distributed knowledge resources inside and outside a company. Social media tools, such as wikis, blogs, social networking sites and online communities also create new ways and means of interacting with customers and users. These new ways include using social media facilitated innovation competitions, events, communi-ties and marketplaces to involve users and customers in innovation. There are also various challenges and risks relating to using social media in B2B innovation processes. Reliable customer and user information may be hard to recog-nize and utilize. Also, companies often fail to incorporate this information into decision making processes, or they often under-invest in understanding and making sense of the information.The central idea of free-revealing in user communities might not take place in the B2B context where the users often compete against each other. Furthermore, the number of users is often smaller and the emergence of communities might lack criti-cal mass. Finally, IPR rights and questions of information security present challenges particularly in the B2B context. According to a social media poll con-ducted by Symantec (2011), the top three social media incidents experienced by the typical enterprises in this study were employees sharing too much information in public forums, the loss or exposure of confidential information, and increased

exposure to litigation. Employees may for instance unintentionally expose individual pieces of information that, when aggre-gated to other data by competitors for pur-poses of business intelligence, may reveal sensitive information because they can be stored online indefinitely, and can be easily searchable. In counterbalance to the above chal-lenges and risks, there are also various useful ways to overcome them. First, inno-vation intermediaries such as InnoCentive can be used to minimize the risk of free-revealing of ideas and knowledge. By using an intermediary, a company can in some cases remain anonymous in requesting external ideas. It is also possible to split the development of new product or service into smaller parts that can be outsourced or crowdsourced relatively safely to various

external actors while maintaining the own-ership of the individual product parts and exposing only minimal amount of the larger entity. Second, at least some part of the risks of the traditional innovation process can be outsourced to customers and users. Companies may for instance provide users with toolkits that enable them to design just the kind of products they wish to have. However, more research is needed to under-stand the best practices to tackle these risks and challenges. Our SOITA -research project focuses especially on how B2B companies can better interact with and learn from their customers and users to create better prod-uct and service innovations. Stay tuned for research and best practices on how these issues can be solved and join us for discus-sion at http://www.tut.fi/soita. l

TEXT JARI JUSSILA | TTY & HANNA NORDLUND | Innopark & HANNU KÄRKKÄINEN | TTY

PICTURE iSTOCKPHOTO

www.tut.fi/ soita

03 | 2012 | 15

More information at http://21stcenturyeducators.tamk.fi

The key to the success of Finnish education are highly qualified teachers, top-end professional development and collaboration. Now all this has become easily available for teaching faculty worldwide!

Unique and innovative teachers’ certificate program developed in Finland

• Fullyonline• 30Europeancredits(ECTS)• 3modules• Alongsideworkin3semesters• Authentic,collaborativee-Learning• Fullyfacilitatedlearningprocess• Languageofeducation:English

Admissionrequirements:MinimumBachelor’sdegree,proficiencyinEnglish.Startingdate:January2013.

LANGUAGE & CULTURELEARNING FREE OF CHARGE AT ANY TIME

NO REGISTRATION

NO PASSWORD

Go and look www.becult.org

Go and look

www.becult.org

16 | 03 | 2012

TEXT LIISA ILOMÄKI & MINNA LAKKALA | Technology in Education Research Group (TEdu) | Institute of Behavioural Sciences | University of Helsinki

PICTURE LIISA MYYRY

The Innovative, Progressive School Model is Designed to Help with the

Pedagogical Use of ICTIn principle, Finnish schools have excellent possibilities for making use of the new digital technologies, but only some schools test and use new methods and new equipment in any diversity of ways or with any success. A great number of schools seem to be stuck in their old ways. Some reasons for the differences in the pace of development can be found in the ways of working in these schools.

At the beginning of the current millen-nium, we studied schools in the city of Espoo and developed our first

model in which we presented the factors that seem to influence the development of schools via technology. The theoretical background consisted of three parts: stud-ies on the development of schools, e.g. the ideas of Dr. Michael Fullan, well-known in Finland; the ideas concerning Computer Supported Collaborative Learning as repre-sented by e.g. Carl Bereiter and Marlene Scardamalia; and studies on the use of ICT and the respective skills, which we had also conducted ourselves. In 2008–2011, we participated in the project Educational Technology At School’s Everyday Life, funded by the Finnish Fund-ing Agency for Technology and Innovation TEKES, in which we collected data on new schools. Our school model was made more precise and simple, and we also studied the phenomena from the point of view of innovation research. The model was given the name Innovative, Progressive School.

PRINCIPALS LEAD SCHOOL COMMUNITIES TO COMMON GOALSSuccess factors for innovation are easy to find. The role of the principal should not be underestimated: the principal is the primus motor that eventually will make the commu-nity proceed in one direction. Visions and goals common to all of the teacher community are necessary for the

school community to develop as a whole. The culture of working together must be embedded into the school structures – it should not depend on voluntary efforts. Similarly, every teacher must carry the responsibility of the way of working and be involved in teams that carry responsibility. No teacher can play the game alone any-more! Common practices and models help everyone, as solutions already agreed upon save the teachers’ and pupils’ time and help them concentrate on the essential issue. The essential issue is pedagogy: learner-centred education in which students work together, dealing with phenomena and problems in a goal-oriented manner.

INADEqUATE DIGITAL SKILLS ABOUNDDigital technology is a tool with which we may achieve more autonomy and, at the same time, more sense of community in working. Many studies show us that students’ digital skills are uneven and do not always suffice as far as using informa-tion sources or searching for information. Good pedagogical practices supported by appropriate digital technologies provide students with technological skills that they could not reach through web surfing with friends. At school as easily as elsewhere, we might become enthusiastic about all sorts of new technical bells and whistles, but

Researchers Liisa Ilomäki (left) and Minna Lakkala

would like to explore development of secondary

education.

it is more difficult to use these technolo-gies with good pedagogical sense. Those schools and teachers are successful that plan the way forward together and then sys-tematically proceed in the direction agreed upon. l

03 | 2012 | 17

LINKSInformation concerning ALT

www | alt.ac.uk

The annual ALT conference

www | bit.ly/ALT-C-2012

Visiting Association for Learning Technology

ALT in England

This ALT conference was very similar to our traditional Interactive Technol-ogy in Education conference (ITK),

but the number of participants was lower than in our conference – perhaps a quarter of ITK visitors. The keynote speakers were highly esteemed users of learning technolo-gies. I was thrilled, in particular, with Eric Mazur’s presentation about peer learning. Mr. Mazur is the professor of physics and applied physics at Harvard University, and he has developed peer learning methods for physics. He does not give traditional lectures to students at all anymore, but has

I had quite a challenge in September as I was invited to the UK to be a Guest Speaker in a con-ference hosted by ALT Association for Learning Technology. One of the most interesting aspects of the conference was seeing and experiencing how our sister organisation in the UK arranges a conference. Of course, it was also great to be given the possibility to familiarise myself with the workings of the association.

them all on video. Students use their peer groups to study the issues he discusses in his lectures, and his duty as their teacher is to pose questions for them to resolve so that students may co-create knowledge as peers. Learning outcomes have been excellent and students have had excellent motivation for learning. There was a large number of interesting presentations at the conference, including Pecha Kuchas nonstop in a conference hall. There were about 50 companies with exhi-bitions, and conference participants eagerly visited their stalls.

ALT FEELS FAMILIARALT as an association and in spirit is very similar to our eLearning Centre. It was good to see that our sister association has issues similar to ours on its agenda so that cooperation definitely will pay off in the form of increased energy in our own work.

ALT Association for Learning Technol-ogy promotes research into learning technologies, improves practice and influences educational policies with the following objectives:l The association uses a strong

voice to ensure that learning technologies are in the core of modern learning.

l The Association supports all mem-ber organisations in their efforts to reach their goals in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

l The association identifies and recognises excellent professional accomplishments, research and practices.

l The association brings together parties in the sectors of technology and pedagogy in their diverse work roles, producing solutions for com-mon problems through research.

l The organisation is flexible and transparent, able to respond quickly and efficiently to challeng-ing development requirements, spreading open processes and working methods.

The exhibition stalls were on the sides of the large

lobby. The centre of the lobby was reserved for par-

ticipants to visit with one another and have coffee.

TEXT LEENA VAINIO

PICTURE LEENA VAINIO

The objective of ALT is to boost discus-sion and to disseminate information concerning diverse learning technolo-gies that support learning, teaching, and assessment. The fact that the last of these items is quite heavily focused upon is interestingly different from our own key objectives. The association focuses on people who wish to understand, lead, research, support and enable learning with the aid of learning technologies. The members include approxi-mately 900 individuals and 200 organisa-tions, most of which are schools and higher education institutions of various kinds. The association cooperates closely with researchers and publishes the magazine Research in Learning Technology. The edito-rial board of this thrice-yearly magazine con-sists of significant international experts in learning technologies. The screening for pub-lication is stringent, and only 20% of articles received for consideration are published. l

18 | 03 | 2012

Small and Medium-sized Companies Go Mobile

The VIDICO subproject “Tacit Knowl-edge in Companies” has implement-ed as many as 15 pilots for small

and medium-sized enterprises in a diversity of fields. The pilots have shown us that the participating companies have started to consider more extensive renewals and en-hancements to their operations in addition to the sharing of their expertise.

TABLETS IMPROVE COMMUNICATION IN THE CONSTRUCTION COMPANY The Trendikoti construction sites require mobile management and supervision in order to keep the work progressing on schedule. “We intend to decrease the number of mis-takes and unnecessary complications, and create a good atmosphere in the work com-

In a short time, tablets have proven their worth as the communication media on construction sites. TL Sippola, the company constructing trendy homes called Trendikoti, is using tablets in their VIDICO project to pilot effective mobile communications among their widely dispersed construc-tion sites and the office. “One would not let go of this device so very easily”, says Mr. Mikko Kautto, the contractor, in view of his experiences.

munity. Our site supervisors started to use tablets so that they would always have access to the most recent information and the option to, for example, check the blueprints.” The conditions on construction sites offer certain challenges for the use of com-munications technologies. “You cannot take tablets to the dirtiest places, but you are well able to use them in your car or in the break room.”

PAPER AND MILEAGES DROPIn no longer than three months, the company noticed a reduction in the amount of paper used and miles driven. Now they can search for viable solutions on site with their mobile devices. In addition, the designer in charge of intranet updates does not receive so many inquiries anymore because he can enter all data and clarifications in the system immedi-ately so that sites can make use of them. You cannot cook an omelette without breaking eggs, they say. But the errors in the construction company pilot have been harmless – such as pictures from people’s homes and vacations being accidentally published in photo stream. “They have actu-ally created a warm sense of community”, Kautto remarks. The pilot succeeded even more than expected, and the construction company intends to continue the use of these new tools and methods even after the pilot.

THE PILOT IMPLEMENTED UNDER VIDICOThe tablet device pilot in Trendikoti was implemented under the VIDICO project coor-

FURTHER INFORMATIONwww | vidico.fi

VIDICO – Visible Digital Com-petence is a cross-boundary project funded by the Regional Council of Päijät-Häme with the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), implemented jointly by Innopark Programmes Oy, the Porvoo unit of Haaga-Helia Uni-versity of Applied Sciences and Finland Futures Research Centre of the University of Turku.

dinated by Innopark Programmes. VIDICO searches for operative models, products and methods that make the competences of various parties visible and available for effective, high-quality utilisation. The VIDICO members have helped the public sector as well as the private sector in the southern parts of Finland digitalise opera-tions and make competence visible. l

TEXT OILI SALMINEN

PICTURE TRENDIKOTI

When there is a tight spot, it would be good to know

who would be able to solve the problem! Mobile

information from the intranet helps in this Trendikoti

construction site where Obaid Ahmadyar (left), site

manager Pekka Linnanmäki and Juho Kokkoniemi

together plan the next jobs to tackle.

03 | 2012 | 19

LEARNTEC is the leading international trade fair and convention for vocational education, learning and information tech-nology and is scheduled to take place between 29 and 31 January 2013 at the Karlsruhe Trade Fair Center. It has been established for many years as the sector meeting place for e-learning providers and players in the field of vocational education and the focus of next year’s event will be on “Future Learning”. Consulting company owner Sünne Eichler, who is also a member of the LEARNTEC Convention Committee, explains: “In 2013, LEARNTEC will once again be zoning in on real-life and forward-looking trends such as management short-ages, employer marketing, media conver-gence and augmented reality as well as on mobile, social and game-based learning”. “Future Learning” – a fitting motto for LEARNTEC in more ways than one. On the one hand, it refers to the future of learning; on the other, it indicates that lifelong learn-ing is vital to the future of any career. The

“Future Learning” at LEARNTECsuccess of the trade fair shows the true importance of “modern learning”: 75 per-cent of exhibitors from 2012 have already signed up to showcase their know-how at LEARNTEC in Karlsruhe again next year. The trade fair and convention focus on both current solutions and future learning methods. LEARNTEC offers its exhibitors and visitors over 20 years of experience in “learning with IT”. In 2012, over 6,100 visitors once again took advantage of the opportunity to find out about the latest trends in the sector. Next year’s event will also focus on the trends for e-learning and vocational training. Visitors find out all the latest information on mobile learning, blended learning, serious games, social media and other areas that are of relevance to the sector. These range from virtual classrooms to e-coaching management training sessions. Whether learning or voca-tional training, LEARNTEC shows the latest software, hardware and coaching concepts for the entire educational spectrum.

The convention gives extensive insight into the future of the e-learning and educa-tion sector. It presents successful training projects implemented in business, school and university environments, and links this programme with the products and services offered by exhibitors at the trade fair. In its lecture programme, the LEARNTEC Convention focuses on future-oriented questions and pio-neering development trends. The prominent keynote speakers and high-calibre lecturers are experts from the realms of business and academia. The latest topics and solutions are featured in five parallel areas – Technology, Management, Specials, Didactics and Work-shop – together with fundamental questions and future perspectives. Established topics include “Mobile Learning in Technology and Didactics”, “Serious Games” and new innova-tive interfaces and 3-D technologies. Here, the focus is always on the human element – i.e. users and their learning requirements.

www | learntec.de

21st Leading International Trade Fair and Convention for Vocational Education, Learning and IT

Future Learning.

29 – 31 January 2013Karlsruhe Trade Fair Center

ww

w.l

earn

tec.

de

• Please register online at www.learntec.de/ticketshop prior to the event.

• Enter the promotion code SeOppi2013

• Get your free entrance ticket for the LEARNTEC exhibition!

20 | 03 | 2012

The online campus will combine physical and virtual learning

environments.

FUAS eCampus Coming Soon

TEXT LEENA VAINIO | Chairman of FUAS Virtual Campus work group & ANTTI KAUPPI | Project Leader of the FUAS Alliance

PICTURE FUTUREIMAGEBANK

In 2015, the FUAS eCampus will form a shared learning environment and a developer community for the students, staff and partners of the FUAS Alliance (consisting of the HAMK, Lahti and Laurea Universities of Applied Sciences). This online campus will provide new shared services, national and international, to support studies as well as research, development and innovation in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.

The shared online campus has been in planning for two years. Summer studies and staff training organised

thus far have provided good experiences of the tentative working model. At this point in time, the work has proceeded to a concrete phase. The FUAS eCampus will form a shared function for the alliance as of January 1st 2013. Its roll-out will take place in phases catering to the needs of the various parties and making use of their experiences.

A COMBINATION OF wORK, LEARNING AND ENTREPRENEURSHIPThe online campus will form a learning and working environment for the students, staff and partners of the Universities of Applied Sciences (UAS) in the FUAS Alliance. The online campus will provide students with the opportunity to study in different sorts of learning environments, and also enable them to learn through developer communi-ties formed of FUAS UAS students, staff and partners. Web access to many services will also be made available to them. The basic idea is to include students in the development of the eCampus and the related applications so that the best solutions eventually form the foundation for student entre-preneurship in the global mar-ketplace. For the staff, the eCampus will offer a cooperative plat-

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE FROM wORK GROUP MEMBERS

HAMK

Leena Vainio | Chair


LAMK

Harri Kuusela | Deputy Chair


LAUREA

Irma Mänty


03 | 2012 | 21

form as well as a developer community to advance teaching and RDI work. They will also be able to offer students and various local parties flexible learning opportunities and services across organisational bounda-ries. The eCampus will form the framework for the co-development of study counselling and virtual courses, drawing on the strong points of the various participants. The result will be a flexible study path for stu-dents, enabling higher-quality learning and a quicker transition to working life. The online campus will combine physical and virtual learning environments, forming operating environments in which students, teachers and experts may encounter actual working life. The design will pay particular attention to the fact that interaction is a standard requirement; therefore, the enabling of interaction is seen as the key concept in the develop-ment of the campus’s operational models and tools.

THE eCAMPUS CONSISTS OF SEVERAL DIFFERENT FUNCTIONALITIES

STARTING POINT: SOLUTIONS TO SUPPORT LEARNINGThe eCampus will offer students a course supply independent of either the place or time of year, improving their possibili-ties for structuring personal study paths across the boundaries of universities of applied sciences and educational fields. The campus will also provide all students with an international learning environment. Shared electronic services and support will allow the implementation of projects and development activities in extensive networks. Campus services, developed in cooper-ation with students, will allow students and staff alike to display their expertise in order to find partners and networks. Developer communities formed of students, teachers and partners will produce and pilot new digital applications to form the future core of student entrepreneurship. Guidance for learning and support for expertise form particular focus areas. The campus development will focus on methods of web mentoring and web tutoring as well as on how these can constantly be made good use of when developing the skills of both students and staff. International cooperation in research, development and innovation is in regular use in the development of this virtual cam-pus. This cooperation is even now produc-ing information concerning successful solu-tions that work well, user needs and also new development requirements. Research and development cooperation will also improve the possibilities of making student entrepreneurship competitive.

FUAS eCAMPUS ROLL-OUT 2013–2015Cooperation will not start from ground zero. Even today, staff training and stu-dents’ summer studies have been jointly arranged and the testing of web-based educational tools and methods has been a shared effort. The basis for the integra-tion and selection of information systems is provided by a general software architec-ture model. The first part of the work has already been started, consisting of the integration of student administration sys-tems so that all required information is now transmitted through a shared hub from one system to another. The specification of the key concepts of the FUAS eCampus and the concrete action plan will be finalised by June 2013. The

operational model will be structured on the basis of current good practices as well as new, innovative solutions. The developers and researchers of web-based education in the FUAS universities of applied sciences will combine their forces to build the FUAS eCampus. As of the beginning of 2013, the building of the FUAS eCampus will be coor-dinated and led by a full-time development manager. The campus will be in full opera-tion in 2015. FUAS eCampus will provide students with a versatile course offering and the pos-sibility of participating in diverse develop-ment and research projects while they may avail themselves of many different guidance and support services. Common training and service products will be collected in one place and a portal will be created to make access to them simpler. Various learning platforms will be made available for co-creation of knowledge and the maintenance of networks. eCampus will offer new oppor-tunities for international cooperation and educational exports. The campus will have a collection of support technologies and electronic ser-vices that all aim to support studying and cooperation. The starting point will be the development of work methods to support community-based knowledge building; the technologies will be selected so that they answer the needs of users in the best pos-sible way. The objective is to form active developer communities, consisting of stu-dents, teachers and partners, that working life will find easy to approach with problems that require solutions. l

FUASFederation of Universities of Applied Sciences

FUAS is the largest strategic alliance in Finland with its approximately 21 000 students and approximately 1 700 employees. It is the second largest higher education body in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. FUAS works together with many parties to promote the well being and competi-tiveness of its areas.

The eCampus supports the implementation of

working-life related projects and the development of

entrepreneurial operations.

22 | 03 | 2012

The AKTIIVI Programme Is Now Productising Projects’ Outputs

The projects under the AKTIIVI pro-gramme (The Active Citizen of the Open Learning Environment) are tak-

ing on the challenge of productisation sup-ported by their coordinating project and lead by Research Professor Ms. Marja Toivonen of VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland. Work has been ongoing for almost a year. The method involves the systematisation of project outputs using the concept of produc-tisation which is familiar to us from the field of service development. Project members have accepted the challenge with enthusi-asm, and all projects are now creating pro-ductised services and modes of operation.

PRODUCTISATION MAKES VISIBLE wHAT wAS HIDDENMany people working in projects and in the public sector consider productisation a strange, commercial idea. They feel it means standardisation that would prevent attention to citizens’ individual needs while shrivelling the personal expertise of employees. However, productisation today does not mean standardisation; more than anything else, productisation means making tacit knowledge explicit. In the context of project work, this refers to the systematic descrip-tion of project results for the benefit of oth-ers who might apply them. The objective of such work is the creation of a learning plat-form on which individual experiences and insights can be presented and which can be used for the creation of common under-standing on the basis of discussion. This allows us to avoid the instinctive, sporadic mode; in other words, we can avoid the situ-

For the past couple of decades, projects have formed one of the most com-mon development methods in the public sector. A great deal of expertise has been created, but a significant part of it exists as tacit knowledge in the minds of individuals. It is a great challenge to learn to productise project outputs so that they can be disseminated in and among organisations and rooted in daily work. The point of productisation is to spread information and methods so that others do not need to reinvent the wheel.

ation in which every client meeting starts from ground zero, producing uneven quality, unprofitability and loss of what already had been learned. Systematic descriptions often give us ideas of how services or modes of opera-tion can be enhanced. Therefore, productis-ing and innovating are not opposites, as some may believe; instead, the concepts complement one another. (Valminen and Toivonen, 2011)

THE CITIZEN’S BENEFIT SHOULD BE THE STARTING POINTProductisation involves important questions such as why and for whom is the project carried out, what is the need that the ser-vice/operative mode/product is expected to fulfil, and how will users benefit from the service? Obviously, these questions were answered when the project plans were writ-ten, but we often lose our hold of the key idea in the midst of the turmoil of our pro-ject implementation phases. Products created in projects are, most often, immaterial and they involve process-form services and modes of opera-tion. Value and benefits are accrued even through the interaction of the service pro-vider and the client, not only through the final project output. The clients/users/citi-zens participate in this interactive process – i.e. the production of the service – by provid-ing information about themselves and their needs, often by performing certain tasks. Process-related issues often occupy the key position considering the service experi-ence. They are critical in the sense that a

process gone awry cannot be repealed even if its end result could be corrected. The success of the process is also influenced by facts such as whether the service was easy to find, whether the service promise was fulfilled and whether the service staff showed genuine interest towards the client.

PRODUCTISATION IN PROJECT CONTEXTSProductisation brings the best benefits if it takes place throughout the project life cycle. When project plans are written, the target groups and their needs should be rather clear, which helps the limiting of pro-ject objectives. When projects are initiated, require-ments are made more specific and service promises take their first shapes. The ser-vice promise is the core around which the structure, processes and resources of the service/mode of operation are specified. As projects progress and interact with their target groups, it becomes clear which parts of the intended services should be standard and to what degree they should be so; on the other hand, it also becomes clear which parts should allow user-specific tailoring. Descriptions of services or modes of opera-tion should be so clear and attractive that they motivate users to introduce these prod-ucts for their use. End reports of projects will not suffice as product descriptions. l

TEXT MARJA TOIVONEN &

LEENA VAINIO

Valminen, K. and Toivonen, M. (2012): ’Seeking effi-

ciency through productisation: a case study of small

KIBS participating in a productisation project’, The

Service Industries Journal, 32 (2), 273–289.

03 | 2012 | 23

TEXT OILI SALMINEN

PICTURES DANIEL SCHILDT

Open Knowledge Festival Brought

Open Knowledge Ambassadors to Helsinki

During the festival, the participants examined the benefits of open knowledge as well as the pos-

sibilities of organising for the purpose of sharing opened data for various purposes in a transparent manner. The idea of this global festival was to find good solutions with which all parties win and new innova-

Mid-September this year, the first Open Knowledge Festival (OKf) caused more than one thousand people to come to Aalto University, Helsinki, for a full week to take action to advance the openness of societally significant knowledge. The programme included participation in brainstorming ideas for practical applications as well as learning through workshops, events and lectures. You could join festival week events – for which tickets soon sold out – through satellite events and webcasts as well.

tions can be made to benefit everyone on our globe.

THE HELSINKI FESTIVAL COMBINED TwO EVENTSThere are coincidences and plans in the background of the Helsinki Open Knowl-edge Festival. Open Knowledge Foundation,

LINKSwww | okfestival.org

Twitter | #OKfest

Antti Poikola enjoying the festival with Juho Salminen

from Suomen Kuvalehti.

Mining of election data with the modern tools of

Leo Lahti and Joona Lehtomäki.

originated in Britain, has worked with good success towards opening data, and it is currently active in several countries through local networks. The Open Government Data

24 | 03 | 2012

Master data visualiser Hans Rosling showed

the development of world population with the

aid of toilet paper rolls.

Open Knowledge Foundation key figure

Rufus Pollock.

Thanks to its global topics, OKFestival was a very

multicultural gathering.

February 2013 – the next meeting

Sign up for the OKF Convention in February 2013: http://bit.ly/OKFC2013

Camp and the annual conference organised by Open Knowledge Foundation were com-bined in the Helsinki festival, because vari-ous parties who had met in these events and started networking specifically wanted this combination. The OKf programme was plentiful. There were 13 key topic streams, all encouraging participation and stressing the use of openly available, refinable data as an aid to people’s societal activities. The key idea is to use open data and new applications to bring about low-cost, tai-lored solutions so that information can be spread more easily than it is today from data owners’ systems and storage bins so that it may benefit others. “The supply at the festival seemed to match the demand rather well, because not one of the topic streams was marginal-

ised”, says Mr. Antti Poikola. Poikola was one of the designers of the event and also took part in its implementation, represent-ing, in addition to his many other roles, the AVO project “The Netfolks – Web-age civil society network”. The topic streams provided a wide view across societal data and its possible uses. The discussions ranged from the opening of company and government data to research, education, software, data journalism and visualisation, sustainable development, geodata, our cultural herit-age, open development and many other similar topics. “The meeting in Helsinki was one step in the development of international net-works; the important aspects include, for example, the fact that people were able to meet one another, different approaches to openness were cross-pollinated, and the themes involved issues that, on a general level at least, people feel important.”

POwER OF CROwDSOURCINGThe planning and implementation phases of the Open Knowledge Festival involved genuine crowdsourcing. The festival was arranged mainly through voluntary efforts; only one employee held a full-time job for a period of a few months. The festival had an overarching group of sponsors that consisted of companies and

The OKf programme was

plentiful.

other interested parties. Poikola highlights the fact that everyone’s contributions have been extremely important. The main organ-isers of the festival were Open Knowledge Foundation, Aalto Media Factory and the Finnish Institute in London. The core team implementing the fes-tival consisted of six persons during a period of half a year, but more than one hundred volunteers participated in the vari-ous phases of the work, self-organising and functioning in a state of creative chaos. Due to their extensive contacts, the group dealing with the preparations and implementation succeeded in combining and enhancing ideas so that at the end, the speakers invited represented topmost expertise and attracted a very large number of participants. l

03 | 2012 | 25

Learning takes place best when instructions are given at just the right time, i.e. when they are needed.

Moreover, learning takes place best in au-thentic environments – not in classrooms. Finns are used to developing and adjust-ing tools and practices in order to make them suitable for our northern conditions. Everything must be of the highest qual-ity. Innovations are a normal part of our lives. Development work takes time and perseverance – Finns are also known for their Finnish SISU (guts). We are practical, talk little but work much. Our demanding climate has taught us to cooperate with

Why Do Finns Prefer Mobile Learning in Vocational Education?High quality vocational learning and skills in using mobile devices are a natural part of our daily life in Finland. In our sparsely populated country we have long geographical distances between educational institutions and students. The harsh Finnish climate requires good, sustainable solutions and tools.

each other – many processes, especially in winter, can be carried out only with the help of friends and neighbours. Mobile devices are tools that meet our needs in vocational education. By using mobile tools we are not dependent on time or place. Teachers and students have the right to choose tools and practices that best meet their needs in various learning situations. At HAMK Bioeconomy Educa-tion and Research Centre (BERC), we carry out regular surveys concerning the use of mobile devices. In 2011, smartphones were used by 41% of students whereas in autumn 2012 as much as 61% of students

used them. Mobinatives, the 2000-century C-generation, are mobile and learn in a mobile way. Many learning situations can be managed with geographically and tech-nically well-developed digital and wireless networks. HAMK University of Applied Sciences has developed eLearning for several years; mobile learning pilots were started in 2007. MobileSummer school, a new way of learn-ing, is an innovative result of the develop-ment work. In Finland, there are several pilot projects concerning the use of mobiles in education, MobiLearn (Mobiilisti) coordi-nated by HAMK BERC being the largest.

Learning together is fun! The 3D-virtual harvester offers an educational environment with practical training,

meeting facilities, connection to Twitter and internet pages on boards.

TEXT Senior Lecturer ANNIKA MICHELSON &

Project Manager JOHANNA SALMIA | HAMK, MobiLearn project

PICTURES TEEMU KORPI & JOHANNA SALMIA | HAMK University of Applied Sciences &

iSTOCKPHOTO

26 | 03 | 2012

LEARNING PLANTS THROUGH THE USE OF MOBILESHorticulture and Landscape Design degree students acquire their plant skills with mobile devices. Recognizing plants, plant characteristics and habitats are very important among the professional skills of these degree students. Pilots have been carried out on mobile plant routes that were built with Google maps. Students use their mobile devices to follow the route cre-ated in a park and learn about perennials, bushes and trees practicing in an authentic environment. QR-codes are attached to plants, and students are able to find more information by scanning them.

MOBILE DEVICES IN COMMUNICATIONS The students in a communication course participated in the mobile workshops organ-ized by the MobiLearn project during spring 2012. The students learnt to use smart-phones and tablet devices in teams. The course objective was practical: to design and build a stand for a garden fair. Stu-dents created a common Facebook group to communicate and share information. They used Facebook to share their drafts of stand design proposals and then developed them further. Mobile devices were used for taking photos and videos. Information about both the design phase and the fair

was distributed by using the Facebook application. The personnel of HAMK use mobile devices in communication. Newsletters are produced, blogs and Facebook sites are updated, and photos and videos are distrib-uted in both internal and external communi-cation channels.

UTILIZING MOBILES IN PRACTICAL TRAININGHAMK BERC students carry out their practi-cal training on different farms all over Fin-land in summer, and some travel abroad. To manage this extensive practical training, a Mobile Center was introduced in connection with the Moodle learning environment for the supervision of students. Supervising messages were constructed in the Moodle Mobile Center and programmed to be sent to the students at regular intervals over the summer. Students received the mes-sages and could answer them through their mobiles. This made the supervision work much easier for the teacher.

MOBILESUMMER SCHOOL – AN INNOVATIVE LEARNING APPROACHMobileSummer School is a new, innovative, open educational approach and training model to support practical training, the sharing of mobile innovations and the “use of mobility in learning and education. The

1) HAMK Bioeconomy Education and Research Cen-

tre. Student questionnaire on use of mobile devices

2011 and 2012.

2) MobiLearn project. www.mobiilisti.com

2-day school gathers together development-minded teachers and enterprises so that they may learn together. In MobileSummer School, learning takes place outside with the aid of modern mobile technology, not in a classroom with traditional educational technology. This model boosts the innova-tive use of mobiles in education. The Mobile-Summer school is based on five principles:l mobile work principle and open social communication modell beginning with a practical case, briefing the participants l testing and doing together, learning and helping each otherl sharing outputs via social medial learning through social activities.

OUR MOBILE FUTUREMobility combined with social media services is the next step in eLearning. Students have real possibilities for being active and influencing their study process. A new perspective is developed by the augmented reality and virtual environments that combine with mobility. Augmented real-ity will be tested in Lepaa smartpark that is being built in HAMK Lepaa park environ-ment. A 3D-virtual harvester has already been developed based on the HAMK Mus-tiala educational farm environment. Mobile devices not only save time for all partners involved in the learning process but they also help us decrease our carbon footprint. Instead of driving to our educa-tional institutions we can just log into social media and different learning environments through our mobile devices. l

Finns are also known for their Finnish SISU

(guts).

03 | 2012 | 27

3D Takes Us out of

the Classroom and to the Far Side of the World

The pilot implementations and projects form the basis on which learning environments with solid pedagogi-

cal foundations and game-like contents are developed and on which technology will be further improved.

ENTHUSIASM AND MOTIVATION TO LEARN wITH GAME-LIKE qUALITIESDevelopment projects implemented in Oulu have brought a 3D learning environment with game reality to pupils in basic education. The environment contains a community lobby, a theme classroom and some more private room for each student to study and practise. The results obtained through the use of this environment are put to use in a training pro-ject that produces learning and training con-tents for the virtual world for general upper secondary schools and vocational schools. The environment was developed and

Development projects of future learning environments aim at pedagogical, architectural and technological innovations. They are cooperatively designed by users to make them meet the daily needs of students and teachers. 3D learn-ing environments have been introduced for use in Oulu and Hämeenlinna.

piloted in the ERDF-funded project Tulevai-suuden oppimisympäristöt (TOY, Future Learning Environments). The educational use of the environment and the development of models for general upper secondary schools and vocational schools will continue on the national level under the ESF-funded project School Innovation and Learning Center (SILC). In vocational education, we are accus-tomed to the use of simulators. Simulators provide students with the opportunity of performing authentic learning tasks, virtually, under the appropriate training conditions. Simulators today are highly effective aids for learning to drive and to manage the con-trols of machines. The most recent trials have aimed at modelling other aspects of the work. University of applied sciences students and teachers have an environment with the model of the Mustiala Natural Resources Unit, com-plete with buildings and a harvester learning

module. The idea is to model the situations that occur before driving, after driving and when the harvester receives its annual ser-vice. In the future, the idea is to use this envi-ronment for practising operations in various situations such as thrashing different kinds of grain under different conditions. In addition, the environment provides the regular commu-nication and presentation options, i.e. it can be furnished as a virtual learning environment for thirty simultaneous users. In addition to the harvester learning mod-ule, it is possible to design other things in

Will the future learning

environment look like

this? The walls of the

classroom are change-

able, and the traditional

seating order is forgot-

ten in this innovative

learning environment.

LINKSwww | cie.fi

www | realxtend.org

www | europe.immersiveeducation.org

www | tulevaisuudenkoulu.fi

www | intelligentcommunity.org

www | oamk.fi/hankkeet/mixedreality

TEXT PASI MATTILA

PICTURES PASI MATTILA & TIMO KORHONEN

28 | 03 | 2012

the environment – animal care or plant-related items, for example. The Virtual Mustiala environment was implemented for the needs of HAMK Mustiala Natural Resources Unit in the ESF-funded MobiLearn project (“Harvester”).

REALXTEND TECHNOLOGY BASED ON OPEN SOURCE CODEThe development of this 3D learning and train-ing environment took place with the realXtend technology. RealXtend is not another world, rather it is an extension to this reality. RealXtend involves the basic technology platform on the background and the user envi-ronments built on it. User-specified operational environments and the respective functionali-ties and tools are built on the basic technology platform. With the basic technology, users get a wide variety of handy tools such as chat and voice connections and basic presentation technologies. They are able to develop their own worlds or services and to integrate previ-ously developed electronic applications and contents through the interfaces. It is not sensible for educational institu-tions to invest in technologies; instead, they should invest in contents and usability. Closed educational environments do not require age limits because users can be specified for each environment. The innovative development of virtual learning environments is in its early phases. In addition to learning, 3D environments present versatile possibilities related to area planning, landscape design, social welfare and health care, and even tourism. The centre of Oulu is presented in a 3D city model consisting of nine city blocks. The

University of applied

sciences Natural

Resources students

have a model of a farm

environment in which a

harvester is serviced.

what Is Mixed Reality?

Interfacing with digital information belongs to our daily routines, creating a new type of reality, Mixed Reality, combining the physical and the digital. Location-aware terminals, three dimen-sions, global services connected to geographic information and real-time geodata will all influence our observa-tions of the surrounding world, offering a new layer of information available for all. FROM wAR-MAKING INDUSTRY TO wOw EFFECTS AND BENEFICIAL USEThe technology applied in mixed real-ity was originally developed after World War II for the needs of defence industries. Later, it has been applied in the architectural design of buildings, machine design, and research. Mixed reality applications are only now making their way to consumer markets. People look for wow-effects in their leisure time, and virtual envi-ronments and mixed reality are able to supply an almost limitless amount of those. At present, such effects have been in use in e.g. web shops in which customers may try on clothes in clothing stores virtually, sharing the experience in Facebook. The sharing of observations and objects of interest in social media forms an important part of user experiences. The supply of applications is shift-ing from entertainment to utilities. The possibilities they offer may help and accelerate many tasks at work, promot-ing economical growth. We will see the use of the opportunities brought to us by mixed reality for making informa-tion visual in educational situations as well; a good example is the social and health sector. This technology could be used in education for e.g. presenting accident sites in a visual manner to add authenticity to the situation.

“Education services will be the next crown jewel in Finland when rich learn-ing solutions and virtual learning envi-ronments become more common in education. Oulu has put in hard work in order to advance new types of educa-tion. This is also indicated by the rise of this city, as the first city in Europe, to be among the seven finalists in the selec-tion of the smartest city in the world.”

extension of the area continues while more input is given to its usability and contents. The city model makes it possible to integrate the services of the inhabitants into the daily environment.

STUDIES IN THE 3D wORLD HAVE NO LIMITSAuthentic 3D learning environments must form a natural part of the learning situation. The possibilities are limitless, because – in contrast to the traditional school environment – almost anything can be modelled in a virtual world. In Berlin, for example, there was an art gallery weekend organised during which the virtual world participants could go through the art exhibitions in 51 different art museums. A zoo has also been modelled in a virtual world. Imagine how the biology class changes when students can enter a 3D world and meet, say, a white-tailed deer, or take part in a role play as birds or fish in the habitat that the lesson deals with. Future language learning will move into global training environments. Before long, it will be possible to be present, for example, in Japanese language learning situations taking place in Japan. l

TEXT JUSSI KANGASOJA

PICTURE KAISA TIRI

03 | 2012 | 29

Such virtual reality environments, familiarly dubbed “cave systems”, were first introduced at the beginning of the

1990’s to serve as visualisation tools. The first CAVE was demonstrated by the University of Illinois in the 1992 SIGRAPH conference. It was designed to immerse the user in the vir-tual world. Similar installations are still used and they are available from certain suppliers. Research and other activities in virtual environments typically focus on interactivity. This approach is designed for engineering and other pragmatic fields. The original system has diversified, and we now have variations such as asymmetrical screens, mobile two-wall CAVEs and arched-projection solutions.

MORE TOOLS FOR 3D MODELLINGIn twenty years, we have seen software solu-tions for the virtual environment develop into effective tools quite unlike the early tailored, unique pieces of software that could not display graphics in the correct picture ratio or high-quality video. The applications we see today are able to manage high-quality 3D modelling as well as use multicore and multi-processor architectures and clustering. They have interfaces that enable the use of other virtual reality components. When required, these systems can also be connected to different types of goggles for video and 3D, many controls and different types of sensors (e.g. temperature and pressure). The quick progress in the development of modern technologies makes it possible for us to use and integrate new types of interfaces, interactive devices and GPS systems in virtual reality and augmented reality environ-ments. Research groups such as Liarokapis have suggested the use of interactive visual user interfaces to build virtual museums. Generally speaking, CAVE-type installa-tions are expensive. There are many reasons

Exploring the (Birth of the) CAVE The CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) is a virtual reality envi-ronment that makes use of large projec-tion surfaces around the user. A CAVE immersive space will be ready at Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OAMK) during autumn 2012, and the school is also setting up a project to design an integrated learning and production pro-cess for virtual construction.

for this in addition to the fact that such sys-tems require several projectors and comput-ers. On top of the system hardware, changes may be required to the respective facilities to meet the increased needs of air conditioning and refrigeration. The complexity of these installations together with the steep cost of the required investments has speeded up research projects that search for cost-effec-tive low-budget CAVE-type solutions and simi-lar immersive environments. These solutions aim at cost management through the use of inexpensive, common components and the coding of the required software in-house, or tailoring software using open source code. Developer communities and networks form an important element in the cost manage-ment of such ventures. CAVE-type environments are not used for purposes of universities and research institu-tions alone. Jaguar Landrover presents an example of an industrial company that is cur-rently making use of a CAVE-type design envi-ronment. Their designers and other engineers work in a virtual design environment that enables interaction through 3D components.

VALO MAKES INFORMATION FLOw FROM USERS TO DESIGNERSAn architecture office that has significantly contributed to the development of the CAVE environment in the Oulu University of Applied Sciences has developed a participatory design process, VALO, that has already been introduced for use in building design. VALO has made user-orientation concrete through the use of a virtual environment. During the design process, the plans, as they are in the various project phases, are studied with the relevant user groups in a controlled manner in a 3D simulation of almost photographic precision. To create the best possible reality effect, the simulation is run full-scale. This method ensures the transfer of all relevant information from the users to the designers, and engages the users in the design and building processes. The design process yields better solutions than before and also reduces costs for the entire lifes-pan of the building, thereby contributing to sustainable development. In addition to ensuring the functioning and barrierlessness of the virtually mod-elled building, various other inspections and

simulations can be run in this environment in their appropriate phases. The range of applications is more extensive than building alone. Under certain conditions, the same process can be applied in, at least, ship-building, the automotive industry and the mechanical engineering industry.

USER-ORIENTATION HAS BEEN TAKEN INTO THE CORE OF DESIGNINGThe participation of users in design pro-cesses is manifesting the beginning of a new paradigm. For example, Tim Brown and many other experts think that prior to the begin-ning of this millennium, designing took place with users in view. It was design for people. At the turn of the millennium, the key con-cept was participation, design with people. The most recent phenomenon in the field is design by people, in which users move still closer to the core of designing work. The underlying concept is the overcoming of bar-riers in order to build a better future. In addition to studying user-oriented methods and various impacts on physical buildings, educational institutions must, naturally, also consider learning and learn-ing processes. We can claim that the share of co-learning in technical education should be increased. At best, co-learning may be a process, structured according to the needs of working life, that produces collaborative-skilled experts for various fields. During studies, the most concrete learning for students cannot take place on actual build-ing sites because the required resources, whether financial or time-related, do not exist so that real buildings could be constructed. Instead, there is the opportunity to facilitate students’ work and closely interconnect e.g. their practical training assignments so that the results can be studied in CAVE-type envi-ronments in commensurable forms. l

Testing a virtual model in the CAVE environ-

ment in OAMK.

TEXT JUSSI KANGASOJA

PICTURE PASI MATTILA

30 | 03 | 2012

18TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTED

LEARNING & TRAINING

ORGANISERS

NOV 28 – 30, 2012HOTEL INTERCONTINENTAL BERLIN

www.online-educa.com

Platinum Sponsor Gold Sponsors®®

Silver Sponsors

Conference Sponsors Media Partner

WORKFORCE ENABLEMENT

MOOCINFORMAL LEARNING

MOVING IMAGEPERSONAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTSAUGMENTED REALITY

LEARNING DESIGN

FLIPPED LEARNING

THE CREATIVE CLASSROOM

CLOUD-BASED LEARNING

OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES

ASSESSMENT

COLLABORATIVE PRACTICES

INNOVATION

TRANSFORMATIONAL TOOLS

SoLoMo

CHANGE

DIGITAL IDENTITY

WEB 3.0

VIDEO IMMERSIVE LEARNING

LEARNING APPS

MOBILE LEARNING

SERIOUS GAMES

BUSINESS AGILITY

LEARNING PLATFORM

LEARNING ANALYTICS

Members of the Association of Finnish eLearning Centre

Organization members

Supporting members

DIGIBUSINESS cluster programmewww | digibusiness.fi

Digital Lessons Finland Oywww | digitallessons.com

Dikaios Oywww | dikaios.fi

Economic Information Officewww | tat.fi

Festo Oy, Didacticwww | festo.fi

3T Results Ltd.www | 3tratkaisut.fi

A1 Media Oywww | A1Media.fi

Aalto Proaaltopro.aalto.fi

AEL Oywww | ael.fi

Ambientia Ltd.www | ambientia.net

City of Hämeenlinnawww | hameenlinna.fi

Consulo Oywww | consulo.fi

Discendum Oywww | discendum.com

e-Oppi Oywww | e-Oppi.fi

Eximo5 Oywww | eximo5.fi

Fronter Oywww | fronter.fi

HCI Productions Oywww | hci.fi

HAMK University of Applied Scienceswww | hamk.fi

Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Scienceswww | metropolia.fi

Ilona IT Oywww | ilonaIT.fi

Innowisewww | innowise.fi

JAMK University of Applied Scienceswww | jamk.fi

Kinda Oywww | kinda.fi

Kopiostowww | kopiosto.fi

Laurea University of Applied Scienceswww | laurea.fi

Markkinointiviestintä 42 Oywww | 42.fi

Mediamaisteri Groupwww | mediamaisteri.com

Metaverstas Oywww | metaverstas.fi

Mikrolinna Oywww | mikrolinna.fi

Mobiletools International Oywww | mobiletools.fi

Nethunt Oy

Palmenia Center for Continuing Educationwww | palmenia.fi

Pedapoint Oywww | pedapoint.fi

Open Trainers Oywww | opentrainers.fi

Oy Orxter Ltd.www | orxter.com

Otava Publishing Company Ltd.www | otava.fi

Otava Folk High School, Internetixwww | internetix.fi

Sanoma Pro Ltd.www | SanomaPro.fi

Somea Oywww | somea.org

Suomen oppimispelit rywww | suomenoppimispelit.fi

Technology Centre Innopark Ltd.www | innopark.fi

TIEKE Finnish Information Society Development Centrewww | tieke.fi

Tmi NewTECwww | newtec.fi

Typing Master Finland Oywww | TypingMaster.com

Valopi Oywww | valopi.fi

Velis & Remis Oywww | velisetremis.com

wordDivewww | worddive.com

IMC AG c/o Genergia Kywww | genergia.fi

Kymenlaakson ammattikorkeakoulu, University of Applied Scienceswww | kyamk.fi

MJK Institutewww | mjk.fi

MKFC Helsinki College www | helsinkicollege.fi

OK Study Centrewww | ok-opintokeskus.fi

Siikaranta Institute, Espoowww | siikaranta.fi

Tampere Vocational Adult Education Centre TAKKwww | takk.fi

Vero-opistowww | vero.fi

VR Koulutuskeskuswww | VRkoulutuskeskus.fi

winNova west Coast Education Ltdwww | winnova.fi