A trip to Vierumaki and Jyvaskyla,

On Monday 21st May 2012, We had a trip to Vierumaki and Jyvaskyla. As soon as we arrived Veirumaki checked in cabins, after that we went to Haaga-Helia Vierumaki Campus to attend presentaion on innovative ways of doing Market Research by Mr. Kari Puronaho and Mr. Vili Nurmi. The focus of their lecture was in a sport business intelligence which based in real synergy of business research analysis and development projects, by conducting survey to collect data from the fans regarding customer values, brand perception, activities, quality and possitive circle. Therefore, to figure out the expectation and impression of customer then to have a chance to improve the image and perception for their business. This is sort of marketing research to improve, develop business and customer service through collecting data from the customers to see what they want and what they prefer. Then they analyze that data and come up with the solution and suggestions how to improve the services. As a matter of fact I'm familiar with Marketing Research, I teach the same topic and it's very interesting I learned some techniques from those guys which will I apply in my future classes.


The next day we went to Jyvaskyla to attend a presentation by Mrs. Kotro and Mr. Nikula about Entrepreneurship Education in Jyvaskyla college. The focus on the demand of entrepreneurship study is to highlight the entrepreneur a way of thinking, the importance of life, long learning and continuous self development. The idea is that students establish small companies. In that way they are able to get real income and also get credits for their diplomas, at the same time the role of the teachers work as a coach to encourage students to further education and benefiting themselves and interprise, the students relies that they have to do everything themselves and the possibility to learn by doing instead of theoritical learning. This method is really very effective to give the students the chance to practice in real life work to gain experience, knowledge and skills rather than just learning in theoritical way. Personally, I like the Entrepreneurship style of learning and I'm planning to convince my colleagues back home in our college to adopt that  kind of learning process to give the students a chance to practice how to run their own business and develop themselves with experience and skills in the real world.


On wednesday, we had a meeting with team academy model at University of applied science regarding the (Team Entrepreneurs Program) which is the same idea and concept as the one in Jyvaskyla college. I really like their approach and their experiment  as a team work taking a responsibility in earlier life work and encouraging each other to be independent, learning in their own way to develop themselves in practical and professional way.

Teaching Practice

This week was about Teaching Practice which gave everyone of us an opportunity to demonstrate his style, learning/teaching methods, tools, techniques and skills. Whether that from his teaching experience or pedagogical aspects that we have learned in this Program, which focus in many elements such as Introduction, planning, preparing, learning approach, style, content, learning resources, how the main theme visualize, students participation, assessment and the main point summary at the end of the session.

Therefore, I think the pedagogical roles are the base to keep in mind when it comes to learning/teaching outcome profession, rather than just to emphasize in one method or style and generalize it as the most effective way of learning/teaching. As we know, that's not fair since we are different as a human being, not only that, there are other factors that we have to take in consideration, as a subject, the education level of the students, content, education system as a whole, culture, education background of the students, presentation and communication skills.

Nevertheless, we can not adopt one or two style method and say these are the most useful and successful. In other word, I think the teaching practice is very important session of our training period. Unfortunately, it was just one week of the whole three months program, if I may suggest, it should be at least three weeks, one week at the end of each month so we can have a chance and enough time to practice every month and get constructive feedback to upgrade our learning/teaching style, techniques and improve presentation, communication skills rather than just once in the whole program. As a result of not having enough time to deliver our presentation, we were rushing and wrapping up so fast,  then the outcome was not what we aimed for. Especially in our group, we had three topics not like the others they just had one, in fact we didn't have time to show the whole presentation or to express our thoughts and ideas.

In addition to that, counseling was very helpful in many ways especially in learning/teaching program but there wasn't enough sessions, as we know it helps the trainee to acknowledge his strength and weaknesses, through a progress plan to follow and upgrade each individual's improvement, rather than just once a week during the whole seminar. I think, that wasn't good enough especially when it comes to learning/teaching practice. Anyway, I just want to express my ideas, personal experience, thoughts, opinion, and knowledge to share with you.

Performance Assessment and Educational Organization

Beginning of the week we had a chance to go over the Assessment and Evaluation, which we had the same topic with Dr. Merja and Dr. Katri, but this time it was from different angle, eventhough, there was a lot of similarity, as the evaluation is the key to enhance the quality of learning methodology. Nevertheless, we discussed the assessment subject in a broad way which related to many elements as follows:

As we see, this is the base or the foundation of the Assessment that rely on what we have to take on consideration when it comes to Performance Assessment. Then, we talked about the roles and responsibility of the Teachers towards the Students. The Teacher suppose to be advance and experts when it comes to help the students to formulate better questions and encourage them to reformulate questions at higher levels, also to encourage them to produce their own theories to account for facts and to criticize one another's theories by confronting them with facts, although Teachers pay close attention to how each students is doing day by day the focus is the progress toward collective goals of understanding. In other word, the Teacher should push, encourage the Students to expand themselves to think out of the box, to challenge them to be Independent learner and self assessment.

Then, we went through five dimensions of Autonomy

1. Self-Evaluative Deminsion which means the Individual rates the quality of his or her own work.

2. Extensional-Dimension is related to self evaluation and dependance on the clarity of once own manner of existing.

3. Context-critical means the Teacher is able to criticaly evaluate the practices at the workplace based on the value of the person.

4. Ethical Dimension refers to the ability of acting ethically and evaluating situation and make decision which improve student's learning.

5. Authentic Communal shared or participation in communities, in which the relationship with other people are dialogue.

In fact, the Basic idea of Dimensions Autonomy is to develop the skill, to evaluate ourselves also the capacity to see our own identity to develop consciousness of values and awareness about the context of surrounding life. As you see the Assessment performance topic is really very useful and interesting for me from the concepts and ideas that the teacher has responsibility not just only teaching but from ethical and moral point of view. These, in my opinion are very important and significant factors, also the teachers are suppose to be capable to evaluate themselves, to be advance, experts in their profession and well developed  as well as updated their knowledge, skills and techniques all the time through the Learning and Teaching Process. Finally, I really like the Philosophy of this topic.

Competence Demonstration

This week on Thursday we had a session on Competence Demonstration facilitated by Dr. Katri and Dr. Merja. We started as usual warming up, Dr. Katri asked each one of us what is the most important topic of Learning Theories, I picked Cognitive Theory, which focus on Internal Mental Process such as Processing, Perception, Memory and Information, also developed capacity and skills to learn better. After that we were divided into mixed groups of five to identify the premises of particular learning theory and so on in terms of Learning Culture to the Theory, Learning method pedagogical script, support students learning and how assessment is organized. At the end, we were asked what will be our first development task back home, what needs to be change in our teaching, then to write the topic and our name on a card and we put the cards on the poster and each one of us ellaborate about his topic. As a matter of fact, these subjects we had already discussed them before in a full extent, whether the learning theories, creating a learning invironment, culture, planning the pedagogical script, teaching methods supporting students, learning and providing guidance, counseling and assessing learning and giving feedback. What really attracted my attention was the method of the review and the tools you enhanced. In addition to that, I was also impressed by the technique that used in the class. Back home, I do review at the end of the session but, I think your way is very effective for refreshing the student's memory by using social and constructive teaching/learning methods which put the students in active role to understand and learning goals by emphasizing learning in context. Personally, I admired the review style that you had applied in the last session and I would adopt and implement it in the near future.

MOBILE LEARNING

Today, We attended Omnia Workshop Presentation by Mrs. Mervi Jansson and Satu Jarvinen which emphasize on Mobile Learning and any activity that allows individuals to be more productive.  Therefore, their focus are three combined elements such as Technology, Content and Pedagogy. Nevertheless, in their program they have multiple roles based on:

Which means their Program and Teaching Method have Multi-Learning channels to suit different student's needs, as we know every individual has different ability learning level, some prefer visualising, reading, writing or verbal, these learning techniques facilities are powerful ways of improving student's achievement and most useful development of understanding. Not only that the Program also take on consideration what the market needs of knowledge and skills. In that way the students will be ready, prepared and updated for the job requirements.


Personally, I really like their concept of Teaching and Learning Methods which combined Technology, Content and Pedagogy together to serve and to meet student's learning needs. Also, the atmosphere, outlet and the invironment are really supportive to Teaching and Learning Solution. In addition to that, they are aware of what the workplace demands. I wish that one day we will be able to have that kind of Teaching facility in the near future.

Assessment

The session started by Dr. Aaltonen asking what we had learned from the previous topic (Guidance and Counseling), so everyone of us wrote what we can remember. Personally, I like this way, it helps to refresh students memories. Then, she introduced the topic of the day which was assessment based on three questions.

1. How can we identify the negative and possitive nowadays about assessment practices?

2. How to be capable to have a suitable assessment process to support our students learning outcome?

3. How to be able to use a new assessment methods in our future teaching?


These questions are really the key to get into the assessment process. Nevertheless, we had brain storming and fishbowl exercise based on the main principles of good assessment. After that, she highlighted on traditional and the new pedagogical thinking of assessment. Personally, I don't really like the ancient method of assessment, I would rather use a new pedagogical thinking of assessment, I think that a new method will help students to learn more and to improve the learning outcome process. Assessment also in my opinion is just a tool to achive the main goal of teaching and learning. In this case we should always think in a friendly way to be sure the students absorb, benefit and learn the most of the topic, rather than to use hardship method which discourage the students. Therefore, I strongly believe in assessment method can be use during the entire teaching and learning process, which emphasise on understanding between learning and to encourge to a change in students thinking. I like also assessment to empower and motivate students challenges. After all, the diagram below explains really the main purpose of the assessment which in the end to improve the learning outcome process and teaching method.
                                 

At the end, we agreed that in order to have constructive, effective and fair judgement we should have assessment criteria and indicator such as, what we expect the students to achieve higher grades, what the acceptable standard to different levels of performance, also the students have to be aware of that criteria because they learn best and understand what they are trying to learn and what expected of them, especially when they are given a regular feedback about the quality of their work and what they can do to make it better. In addition, feedback is powerful to improve students achievement and useful also to support the development of deeper understanding, but in the reality to come up with solid criteria is not easy. After all, we are human beings make mistakes, and not perfect all the time. But we have to do our best as much as we can to be fair and supportive rather than to be judgemental.

Shadowing 3

Shadowing 3

Before the class started I meet Mrs. Suonpaa and Mr. Innanen. I introduced myself in brief, such as profession, field, education background and the purpose to attend their class. I was well prepared because I wanted to make a first impression. They told us this class is about Researching Target Markets and the students had assignment on project collecting data as a group, regarding how to establish business in Finland, what are the obstacles and the challenge that will face the investors. Then, they went on with several questions concerning if we want to get involve or to comment during the lecture. The students started to come, Mrs. Suonpaa had to introduce us to the students and also we had to give a little bit introduction about ourselves. Then, she started talking about the assignment that she gave them from the previous session and how they are going to present the outcome of their research. The students suggested to give little data that they had collected so far from the survey. Mrs. Suonpaa agreed, after that the students started their  presentation as a project team work. While the students are giving the presentation Mrs. Suonpaa and Mr. Innanen were elaborating and asking questions, at the end of the presentation they took the attendance.

My Personal observation point of view:

In the beginning of the session Mrs. Suonpaa set up a clear agenda for the lesson as well as the objective.

The Instructor related today subject to the previous one. Then, she outline the roles and structures of the class from the beginning such as the outcome of each group research has to be presented, also the evaluation will be based on the quality of the presentation and individual project assignment.

Mrs. Suonpaa and Mr. Innanen were very well prepared, planned and organized. Also, their teaching methods approach were based on social functional activities which means to help the students to interact in a group discussion and demonstrate their focus.

The participation of the students was encouraging very strong, well supervise by the instructor in constructive and protective way which to make sure their students understood the subject.

The atmospher in the class was very good, well organized such as the setting, supports the student interaction and help them to focus on learning.

The students seemed to be cooperative helping each other by working in their research as a group, sharing the data and learning from each other.

The main focus of this class is independent research as a project team work on collecting data about the investment future in Finland, through survey questionnaire. Therefore, the content was accurate and up-dated.

Conclusion:


The Objective of the session was really clear, through the students presentation by starting the questionnaire and the data they are getting.

The planning, preparation and organizing were on place. The method learning approach was effective, Mrs. Suonpaa focused on cognitive, social and constructive in these methods were a lot of participation engagement and the students were encourage to play active role on mental process as Thinking, Reasoning and Remembering. However, in the meantime Mrs. Suonpaa emphasize her role in the class by taking the attendance which means she is in control. After all, I really admire her teaching style and techniques which  she combined different methods approach. Therefore, I'll use this suitable effective method to achive the learning objective in some of my teaching class.