Shared Work Load and Team Spirit : Correlations between University Students and University Personnel

The felt load of life is often mirrored to well-being and how people feel. Typically organizations are looking the workload of their staff because that is the thing which organizations can affect and made adjustments. Organization´s culture often starts to change people to be alike and large tendencies and trends are carving people to feel and act as same. In this research we are looking how university students and personnel feel about heir workload and how they feel their team spirit and mood. This research will be conducted by utilizing two different questionnaire tools called Eezy Spirit and Student barometer. Eezy spirit is a questionnaire, which has been developed to study employee experience and it is widely used in Finland in different industries. It was chosen to be the one for studying the staff experience since it has questions about felt justice and personnel´s feelings towards management. Student barometer is a questionnaire for higher education students in Finland. It´s objectives are to provide data and information for researchers, research institutes education developers and decision makers in the institutes. Student barometer handles a variety of different matters from student life by asking students´ opinions from quality of studies to their civil life activities and their expectations of the future. This research will be based on material from Turku University of Applied Sciences (TUAS). Data will be gathered from Eezy spirit employee experience questionnaires done annually 2016-2020. The study was done to whole personnel in TUAS and number of respondents varied from 598 to 633 in different years. Respondents answered to propositions in Likert scale 1-4 and “I don´t know”. Number of propositions varied between years from 63 to 65. Respondents were grouped to units which were responsible for specific degree programs. Student barometer data consists of 2165 individual students as respondents in year 2019. They answered at most to 201 different questions and propositions. As the questionnaire was dynamic and depended partly on the previous answers, not all the questions and propositions were targeted to all of the students. Also the students’ responses were grouped by their degree programs, which makes it possible to compare the felt justice of the staff members to that of the students per each degree program. We utilize data sets between years 2016-2020. Data is analyzed with Excel and SPSS. Samples were taken from the data mass and were composed to a statistical model with excel spreadsheet. Staff members as well as students were grouped under schools and arithmetic averages and standard deviations were calculated to each proposition. After calculating the arithmetic averages further analysis was done with SPSS statistical analysis program. In SPSS proposition’s correlations were analyzed by single tailed Pearson correlation.The overall research question is: Is there a correlation between 1) workload for university students and staff 2) team spirit and relationships in organization? If so, how can this correlation be interpreted and what conclusions can be made? Future research aspects and practical recommendations will also be issued in the paper.© 2022. Published by AHFE Open Access. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Student Satisfaction Towards Studies : Disciplinary, Demographic or Situation Related Variable?

Students´ satisfaction towards studies is one of the most interesting information for universities in student questionnaires. How satisfied our students are and how we could enhance the satisfaction or guarantee that it will be high also in future. The reasons why some students are more satisfied towards their studies than others are always crucial to develop organization and studies. Sometimes the reasons can be explained more easier way than others and sometimes the reasons are more critical to organizations future than others. We have already shown in our last article that student satisfaction is correlating with personnel´s felt justice. In this research we are scrutinizing things which are affecting to students´ satisfaction deeper. We are studying how if and how the available demographic variables are affecting to the results of felt satisfaction. It will also be interesting to note if there are some demographic variables that do not have an effect on the felt justice.This research will be conducted by utilizing two different questionnaire tool Student barometer. Student barometer is a questionnaire for higher education students in Finland. It´s objectives are to provide data and information for researchers, research institutes education developers and decision makers in the institutes. Student barometer handles a variety of different matters from student life by asking students´ opinions from quality of studies to their civil life activities and their expectations of the future. Student barometer data consists of 2165 individual students as respondents in year 2019. They answered at most to 201 different questions and propositions. As the questionnaire was dynamic and depended partly on the previous answers, not all the questions and propositions were targeted to all of the students. Also the students’ responses were grouped by their degree programs, which makes it possible to compare the felt justice of the staff members to that of the students per each degree program. We are studying data sets from year 2016 to 2021. Data is analyzed with Excel and SPSS. Samples were taken from the data mass and were composed to a statistical model with excel spreadsheet. Students were grouped under schools and arithmetic averages and standard deviations were calculated to each proposition. After calculating the arithmetic averages further analysis was done with SPSS statistical analysis program. In SPSS proposition’s correlations were analyzed by single tailed Pearson correlation.The overall research question is: Is there a correlation between student satisfaction and available demographic variables. If so, how can this/these correlations be interpreted and what conclusions can be made? Future research aspects and practical recommendations will also be issued in the paper.© 2022. Published by AHFE Open Access. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Riitta Rissasen sähköpostihaastattelu

Riitta Rissanen KT, rehtori Lapin yliopisto [email protected]

Individual Innovation Competence: A Systematic Review and Future Research Agenda

Learning for innovation is a central element in European policymaking in developing higher education. Students often learn in project settings together with work organizations developing new solutions, products and services. These authentic creative, social and collaborative settings offer an attractive learning environment. The aim of this study was to determine the factors involved in individual innovation competence to be able to design, tutor and assess the pedagogical processes where authentic open-ended tasks are being solved transforming novel ideas into usable products or services. After defining the extraction criteria using a limited sample of articles, a bias-assessed systematic review was conducted of empirical research articles published in 2006–2015. Twenty-eight journal articles were ultimately included in the review. Despite the volume of academic literature in this field, comparatively few studies providing findings addressing the review objectives could be found. There was, however a reasonable weight of research evidence to support the result. The findings suggest that personal characteristics, such as flexibility, achievement orientation, motivation and engagement, self-esteem and self-management, future orientation, creative thinking skills, social skills, project management skills, and content knowledge and making skills can be needed incollaborative innovation process. These findings have implications for pedagogical innovation processes and for competency-based assessment.</p

Yhteistoiminnallinen oppiminen suomalaisyritysten innovaatioprosesseissa

Tutkimuksen kohteena oli yritysten innovaatioprosessien yhteydessä havaittava yhteistoiminnallinen oppiminen. Tutkimuksessa haastateltiin riippumattomien asiantuntijoiden (N = 13) nimeämiä innovatiivisten yritysten avainhenkilöitä (N = 16). Yhteistoiminnallista oppimista ei voida pitää selkeästi yhtenäisenä tapana työskennellä, tiettynä opetustapana tai joukkona kasvatuksellisia ratkaisuja. Yhteistoiminnallinen oppiminen on hedelmällisintä nähdä filosofisena suuntauksena, jossa taustalla vaikuttavat erilaiset oppimis- ja tiedonkäsitykset. Tutkimuksen perusteella yhteistoiminnallisen oppimisen ajatukset palvelevat käyttökelpoisesti myös yrityksen innovaatioprosessia tarkasteltaessa. Innovaatioprosesseista oli löydettävissä selkeästi yhteistoiminnallisen oppimisen perusajatuksia, erityisesti positiivista riippuvuutta ja yksilön vastuuta sekä sosiaalisten taitojen merkityksen korostumista ja yhdessäoppimisen toimintakulttuuria. Tutkimuksen perusteella toimivissa, yritykselle tuottoisissa innovaatioissa taustalla on usein jaettua tietämystä, vastuunottoa ja ymmärrystä ja edelleen ryhmätyötaitojen kehittämisen tärkeyden tunnistamista

Default Mode and Executive Networks Areas : Association with the Serial Order in Divergent Thinking

Scientific findings have suggested a two-fold structure of the cognitive process. By using the heuristic thinking mode, people automatically process information that tends to be invariant across days, whereas by using the explicit thinking mode people explicitly process information that tends to be variant compared to typical previously learned information patterns. Previous studies on creativity found an association between creativity and the brain regions in the prefrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the default mode network and the executive network. However, which neural networks contribute to the explicit mode of thinking during idea generation remains an open question. We employed an fMRI paradigm to examine which brain regions were activated when participants (n = 16) mentally generated alternative uses for everyday objects. Most previous creativity studies required participants to verbalize responses during idea generation, whereas in this study participants produced mental alternatives without verbalizing. This study found activation in the left anterior insula when contrasting idea generation and object identification. This finding suggests that the insula (part of the brain's salience network) plays a role in facilitating both the central executive and default mode networks to activate idea generation. We also investigated closely the effect of the serial order of idea being generated on brain responses: The amplitude of fMRI responses correlated positively with the serial order of idea being generated in the anterior cingulate cortex, which is part of the central executive network. Positive correlation with the serial order was also observed in the regions typically assigned to the default mode network: the precuneus/ cuneus, inferior parietal lobule and posterior cingulate cortex. These networks support the explicit mode of thinking and help the individual to convert conventional mental models to new ones. The serial order correlated negatively with the BOLD responses in the posterior presupplementarymotor area, left premotor cortex, right cerebellum and left inferior frontal gyrus. This finding might imply that idea generation without a verbal processing demand reflecting lack of need for new object identification in idea generation events. The results of the study are consistent with recent creativity studies, which emphasize that the creativity process involves working memory capacity to spontaneously shift between different kinds of thinking modes according to the context.Peer reviewe

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Korkeakoulutuksesta on kehittynyt tällä vuosituhannella globaali kilpa-areena. Miljoonat hakijat etsivät itselleen joka vuosi paikkaa lähteä rakentamaan unelmaansa. Kouluttautuminen nähdään tärkeänä investointina tulevaisuuteen; siihen ollaan valmiita satsaamaan merkittäviä taloudellisia ja henkisiä panostuksia

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Turun ammattikorkeakoulu saavutti vuosikymmenen lopun kunniaksi ennätyksen melkein kaikilla mittareilla. Meiltä valmistui 2036 uutta osaajaa Varsinais-Suomen työelämään. Opiskelijamme olivat valmistuessaan tyytyväisempiä ja työllistyivät paremmin kuin aiemmin