The objective of the project is to respond to the know-how needs of sectors facing growth and restructuring with the open university education. The project promotes the working life oriented education of the open university and develops a sustainable operations model suitable for it with the help of three field-specific pilots and their evaluation. The pilots are carried out in the fields of ICT, social services and health care, and bioeconomy-environmental field.

The project partners include three universities of applied sciences, five universities and one enterprise, but during the project all the universities that arrange open university education in Finland are in collaboration. Central organisations like Akava, EK, KT, SAK, STTK, Suomen yrittäjät and local companies together with organisations of public sector are important partners in collaboration. It is a question of accelerating the already existing education system accordingly with the know-how needs for sectors subject to growth and structure changes.

The objective of the open university education is, during the project, to network better with the working life, to profile the strengths of universities and of universities of applied sciences and to arrange guidance and teaching in a more customer-oriented way. The launch of the pilots will be graded, which allows the operations model to be developed iteratively.

The result of the project is an operations model in which the open universities and universities of applied sciences will work as a cooperation network carrying out working life oriented open university education and also in which the know-how modules of different fields are defined and reformed regularly with central organisations of working life.

Contact:

Saarinen, Majlen

MSSc, Education Manager

The Open University

Fabriksgatan/Tehtaankatu 2, 20500 ÅBO/TURKU

+3582 215 4500

majlen.saarinen(a)abo.fi