Epävarmuudesta huolimatta EU:n tutkimus- ja innovaatiotoiminta on hyvässä vauhdissa. Erilaisten rahoituskanavien kautta on ohjelmakaudella 2014–2020 jaossa noin 960 miljardia euroa. Brysselin vierailulla suomalaisten ammattikorkeakoulujen TKI-väki tutustui EU:n päätöksentekomekanismeihin ja tutkimus- ja innovaatiotoiminnan eri tahoihin.

Alueilta Eurooppaan

Helsinki EU Officessa mieleen painui toimiston päällikön, Janne Tammisen lause ”jos katsoo kartalle, eihän meitä kukaan edes muista”, joka kertoo oivallisesti verkottumisen ja näkyvyyden tärkeydestä Suomen näkökulmasta.

Miten ja mitä kautta suomalaiset voivat Brysselissä sitten verkottua? Yksi hyvä kanava ovat aluetoimistot. Suomella on Brysselissä viisi aluetoimistoa, joiden toimenkuvaan kuuluvat alueiden toimijoiden edunvalvonta, alueiden välisen yhteistyön edistäminen, verkostoyhteistyö, tiedonvälitys sekä EU:n rahoituskanavista tiedottaminen. Aluetoimistoissa on myös tiloja, joita voi varata esimerkiksi kansainvälisten hankepartnereiden kanssa järjestettäviin hankeneuvotteluihin tai yhteistyökokouksiin. (Ks. REaDissä aiemmin ilmestynyt juttu Itä- ja Pohjois-Suomen EU toimistosta ja sen johtajasta Kari Aallosta.)

Ammattikorkeakoulut kilvoittelevat Horisontti 2020 -rahoituksesta

Suomalaiset ammattikorkeakoulut ovat olleet mukana yhteensä 82 Horisontti 2020 -hakemuksessa. Näistä rahoituksen saaneita hankkeita on kahdeksan, joista yksi osuma on tullut Mamkille (ks. juttu Smart Ground Horisontti-hankkeesta). Innokkuus rahoituksen hakemiseen on lisääntynyt, mutta kilpailu on kovaa.

Matkan aikana kuultiin siitä, millaisia puutteita suomalaisten Horisontti-hakemuksissa on. Esille nousivat ainakin loppukäyttäjien ja muiden tulosten hyödyntäjien puuttuminen sekä ongelmat partnereiden osaamisen tasossa. Myös resurssit toteuttamiseen on usein aliarvioitu, ja vaikuttavuudessa sekä tulosten hyödyntämissuunnitelmissa on puutteita. Parantamista on myös teollisuuspartnereiden määrän lisäämisessä, riskienhallinnassa sekä innovatiivisissa tavoissa levittää tietoa.

Mitä siis tulisi tehdä? Enemmän yhteistyötä tutkimusorganisaatioiden ja loppukäyttäjien välillä, riittävästi resursseja hankevalmisteluun, lisää tarkkuutta ja konkretiaa – laatu ratkaisee!

Kansainvälinen EU-tutkimusrahoitus tarjoaa monia mahdollisuuksia

EU-tutkimusrahoitus tarjoaa monia mahdollisuuksia, eikä Horisontti-rahoitus ei suinkaan ole se ainoa vaihtoehto. Alueellisen yhteistyön ohjelmista esimerkiksi Itämeren alueen ohjelma tai Pohjoisen periferian ja arktisen ohjelma tarjoavat rahoitusta mm. innovaatiotoiminnan kehittämiseen, energiatehokkuuden lisäämiseen ja pk-yrittäjyyden kehittämiseen.

Rohkeasti kohti uusia verkostoja

Selvää on, että kansainvälinen tutkimus- ja innovaatiotoiminta ei onnistu yksin, vaan vaatii verkottumista. Verkottumiseen on tarjolla mahdollisuuksia esimerkiksi Brysselissä ERRIN-verkoston järjestämissä tilaisuuksissa ja työpajoissa.

Matkan aikana puhuttiin myös lobbausosaamisen tärkeydestä ja oikeiden verkostojen merkitys on tässäkin olennaista. Olisiko tässä jotain sellaista, missä ammattikorkeakoulut voisivat toimia myös yhdessä?

Academic institutions in Europe and beyond are nowadays expected to become key players in a global knowledge network (Guri-Rosenblit 2015). In the last two decades, this has led to a dramatic expansion of their international activities, both in volume and scope, as well as in complexity (Altbach and Knight, 2007).

International activities include for instance traditional study-abroad programs, using English as the lingua franca for scientific communication, and the growing international labour market for scholars and scientists (Altbach and Knight, 2007).

An important source, and at the same time, mechanism, which provides the necessary intelligence leading to internationalization is networking. Such concept refers both to the skill, and to the art of building useful linkages within and among a variety of institutions, societies, and communities.

The creation of these links aims at mobilizing resources, achieving various goals, building collaborative strategies, and accessing information and tools. This is especially important in the research environment, not only at the national level, but also at the international level.

Growing, living, and researching in an international environment

A concrete example of that is given by my doctoral studies, where the topic of my research has focused on an international comparison. The goal of my doctoral research has been to elaborate new insights on the co-evolutionary role of agriculture and rural development in different regional institutional contexts, namely in North Karelia, Finland, and South Tyrol, Italy. Comparing Italian and Finnish rural areas, cultures and practices has involved the building of collaborative networks with experts with international experience.

Also at the Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences (Mamk), my work has been dealing with the building and strengthening of international connections, with the specific goal of accessing new information, planning common projects, and creating cross-border collaborative arrangements.

Experiencing higher education abroad

Internationalisation and globalisation require mobility of people and labour, which causes more competition of competent and educated people (ARENE 2007). Within this context, at the EU level, an important role is played by the ERASMUS + Programme, which allows higher education (HE) staff to teach at HE partners abroad.

The opportunity to participate at the ERASMUS + Programme at Charles University, Czech Republic, in November 2014 has strengthened my research and development skills, especially my portfolio of hard knowledge and soft skills. I gave lectures and seminars on multi-level governance of rural development and policy in the EU and on multifunctionality in agriculture.

In addition, I had the opportunity to participate in a field trip where I familiarized with the different types of land uses that characterize the Czech countryside. My experience from this ERASMUS + Programme has created solid networks with experts from Charles University.

Amazing view of Czech countryside.

Promoting entrepreneurial culture: the International Association of Science Parks (IASP)

Since promoting entrepreneurial culture is one of the key assets of the universities of applied sciences, it is highly relevant to create links with science parks, whose role include the combination of business and research in order to create new innovations.

The participation as a speaker at the International Association of Science Parks’ workshop “Regional specialization and Green Growth” (held in Joensuu in May 2015) has given me the opportunity to increase my knowledge and contacts on the role of science parks’ in Europe and beyond by a variety of national and international case studies.

Conference in Aberdeen: platform for international networking and development projects

The European Society for Rural Sociology Congress, held in Aberdeen, Scotland, in August 2015 has also represented an important platform to strengthen the R&D activities of the Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences. Such activities have focused on expanding research networks, and at the same time on planning a future research proposal within the Horizon 2020 Programme.

At the same venue, the conference proceeding “Identifying Social Innovations in Local Rural Development Initiatives” was presented and discussed. In a meeting with other university colleagues, we discussed on developing such proceeding into to a full scientific article. Last but not least, this conference has been an important setting for strengthening national collaborations on how to bring forward ongoing project plans at the international level.

This picture was taken during an agritourism field trip during my conference in Aberdeen.

Concluding remarks

“Operating in an international higher education setting has a crucial impact on shaping the missions, strategic planning and operational practices of higher education institutions in the current global society” (Guri-Rosenblit 2015, 13).

My international involvement at Mamk has been developing my skills in teaching, in building new international collaborations, and in developing research projects.

On the other hand, such international activities have brought to the forefront the cutting-edge research, development, and innovation activities of Mamk. By being increasingly involved in the international arena, Mamk will become a strong competitor in the global knowledge network, by attracting young talents, and strengthening its innate entrepreneurial culture.

References

Altbach, P.G., and J. Knight, (2007). The Internationalization of Higher Education: motivation and realities. Journal of Studies in International Education, Vol. 11, No. 3/4, 290-305.

ARENE (2007). The Bologna Process and Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences. Participation of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences in the European Higher Education Area. The Final Report of the Project. Helsinki: Edita Prima Oy.

Guri-Rosenblit (2015). Internationalization of higher education: navigating between contrasting trends. In Curaj, A., Matei, L., Pricopie, R., Salmi, J., and P. Scott (eds). The European Higher Education Area. Between critical reflections and future policies, 13-26, Springer, UK.

There are around 370 international students in the degree programmes of Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences (Mamk) and approximately 150 exchange students this year.

In official matters, such as application and exams, they are served well in English, but there is obviously a lot we could do to serve them better in terms of student communication during their studies.

Everyone belongs to our community

In general, almost all written student communication in our UAS should and could be provided in English as well. It would be much easier, if we would remember this right from the beginning – when planning the content and communication channels. Usually the instructions, forms, pieces of news, event advertisements etc. at our UAS are produced in Finnish.

It is considered only after that if the information is also needed in English. For example, can a non-Finnish speaker participate in the event we are organizing?

Our UAS finds it important that everyone belongs to our community and no one is left outside. Therefore, it is important to inform and invite everyone to our activities, let it be a soccer tournament or a visit by the Finnish prime minister.

The needs are various

People often tend to think that foreign students need less information than Finnish students. Often the truth is vice versa. Finnish students can easily find information about housing, public transport etc. on the internet, but this is not the case with foreign students.

Many pieces of news, guides etc. that are published by another party but involve our students are only in Finnish. In order to get the students to feel welcome and to join the local community the information needs to be translated and adapted to their needs.

For example, in the degree programme of business management almost all students come from abroad. The staff wants to give a cosy feeling for everyone and there is a special person, a study councellor, who ensures that they get all the information they need – in English and precisely explained.

This is one of the improvements the business management degree programme has made on the basis of the feedback given by previous students. Therefore, it is important that also international students can give feedback and this way improve the quality of both studies and support services. The system was also praised by the Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (FINEEC) in the audit made in 2013.

The student intranet of Mamk and Kyamk was published in the beginning of 2015. There are separate front pages in Finnish and in English, but the event calendar and flea market are common.

Social media can be a powerful tool

Also the activities for international alumni need to be adjusted according to their needs. Bachelor of Business Administration, Meri Honkaniemi, explored this in her bachelor’s thesis in 2014 and found that social media is a powerful tool to reach alumni who live around the world. But the services and channels have to be studied and carefully chosen – Facebook is not enough, though it is popular among Finns.

Honkaniemi suggests that Mamk could provide communication in English also on YouTube, LinkedIn and Pinterest. Also for those members of the alumni network who still live in Finland, the topics of interest are different from those of the originally Finnish alumni. For example, they want to hear fellow stories about what is it like to find a job and work in Finland as a foreigner.

Students are involved in improving student communication at Mamk and Kyamk

At the moment we have a year-long project in improving student communication at Mamk and Kymenlaakso University of Applied Sciences (Kyamk). All the first year student had a possibility to answer an enquiry about their experiences so far, and the results gave us important information on the viewpoint of international students.

In addition, there is a project group of international students helping us. They collect feedback and suggestions for our student intranet service from both the international degree programmes and exchange students. The fact is that the intranet in English is more limited than in Finnish.

Still, the international students have rated it better than the Finnish students in the previous enquiries. Could this be due to different expectations of students coming from different cultures? In any case, it is valuable to get more concrete feedback from international students. It will form the basis for developing our daily work and also a common language and translation guidelines for our new, common university of applied sciences in 2017.

Sources:

The audit report of Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences (in Finnish) http://karvi.fi/publication/mikkelin-ammattikorkeakoulun-auditointi-2013/

Meri Honkaniemi: Developing international alumni activities in Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences : Case Business Management degree programme. http://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-201402192444

Marianne Forstner is an art therapist and a teacher at Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences for social pedagogy. She uses artistic and creative methods in working with groups and individuals.

Kati Vapalahti uses expressive methods with groups and in teaching at Mik-keli University of Applied Sciences in the degree program of social work. We both also stud-ied these methods in our PhD dissertations.

A lot in common

We started our cooperation 2013, when Marianne enrolled in the International week of Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences as a visiting lecturer. When she informed us about her topic, we observed that we have a lot in common.

However, we also have an interesting way to look at the artistic and expressive methods from different angles: from the therapeutic viewpoint and from the viewpoint of social change. Both the viewpoints support empowering human beings.

After realizing this, we decided to work together as workshop teachers and started to plan co-teaching via emails.

Empowering group processes through colors, painting and image theatre

The aims of the workshops were to introduce the additional values of creative methods in working with groups. A grounded hypothesis implies that an artistic creative design can obtain an educational function and offer possibilities to experience and broaden creative power and creativity especially in group processes.

Furthermore, getting to know each other in a ‘colorful and creative way’ helps in establishing contacts, because of the assumption that we all are symbolic thinking creatures. The core contents of the workshops is working with colors and painting as well as with image theatre.

Creative work in an art museum: This makes me think.

Image theatre is one technique of Augusto Boal’s Thea-tre of Oppressed. It is a dialogue game for investigating human life situations for achieving multidimensional understanding and social change. It is a language – often without words, but through making images by using bodies in human sculpture.

In our workshop, the participants created human sculpture based on the given themes, for example, in the first workshop on the theme of “Rich living or poor living? What is poverty today?”

Continuous cooperation

So far we have cooperated as workshop teachers for five times, three times in Finland and two times in Austria. We have worked with wonderful students and developed our working meth-ods. Lately, the workshops have also been transferred to an art museum, and last summer to Working World Museum where we used creative methods when dealing with the topic of work-life-balance.

In addition to the development of the teaching methods, we also plan to implement cultural social work and educational projects. At the moment one topic under dis-cussion is creative and artistic methods in the human rights work with refugees. Artistic meth-ods can be used for supporting human dignity and to increase consciousness of oppressive structures and of the need for social change.

One of our professional expectations is, that if refugees are empowered to be creative and artistic, to have a forum to show their expressions and pieces of art, to be able to consume artistic and cultural events and activities, it can help to establish a consciousness of solidarity and humanity in our society, which at the moment seems to be full of fears and reservations.

Image theatre in Workin World Museum: unbalanced working life – What to do?