Tikissä

Tutkimus-, kehitys- ja innovaatiotoiminnan sydämessä

Avainsana: higher education

The Harmful Nature of Informed Assumptions
http://Black%20and%20white%20photo%20of%20audience%20from%20the%20back,%20one%20hand%20raised,%20speaker%20on%20stage%20facing%20the%20camera
27.1.2023
Pamela Spokes

Bad services are always created on a foundation of bad design, whether these are services in a private company, a public service, or an educational institution. Often times this bad design is based on individuals or groups using their own anecdotal experience or knowledge as the basis of creating their services. It is not a malicious desire to create services that don’t fulfill the end users needs. But it can happen often when services are created in a vacuum or only with the people who provide them. Service designers, on the other hand, are constantly talking about and using co-creation and looking at the world from the viewpoint of the end-user for whatever service that is being created or improved. The best way to embody this user viewpoint is to gather data, both qualitative and quantitative, from the (future) users themselves using all the means at your disposal. This is how you can build better outcomes that meet the user’s needs. This doesn’t mean that there is no place for assumptions in this kind of research. Two things need to happen to be able to use them though. You need to openly acknowledge that they are assumptions and everyone on the team needs to acknowledge that they are assumptions. The team needs to be willing and able to test these assumptions and be open to be proven wrong. This can be a big ask for experienced professionals. While being tested, these assumptions can be employed alongside other research that you have done to plug gaps in knowledge so that you can move your work forward through prototyping and testing and back to research and iteration again. Along the way discarding what is proven to be a false flag and keeping what you are able to verify. The wrong path It is human nature to think that, through your long experience, you “know” what is wrong. These are what can be called informed assumptions. There are two differences between the assumptions that we mentioned in the previous paragraph (useful or usable) and informed assumptions: The level of willingness to accept these as assumptions rather than verified data The openness to be proven wrong. These unexamined informed assumptions (basically guessing) hinder the process and will lead you down the wrong path if not properly acknowledged and tested. Unfortunately, many professional experts succumb to informed assumptions. There are a few standard reasons that especially middle and senior managers use to justify why they made crucial decisions purely on what they know or think they know about user needs. These are almost always a form of informed assumptions and include recognizable examples such as: We know who our users are We know what ‘they’ want from our service or product I know I’m right I know my users My part of this process is not broken, it’s others in the process that need to change and the ultimate shutdown — “This is how we do things around here” Moving from instinct to information How to help professionals to shift from "I know what the problem is and how we can solve it" to "I have a general idea what or where the problem might be but let’s test it and discover the real problem". These are two very different mindsets. In addition to mindset, this shift can be hindered for other reasons: The professional may well believe that they truly have the answer. They could be working to specific targets, which can often force to focus on something that will be measured, rather than the what will provide quality and value to the user. They may be nervous to show vulnerability — ‘I don’t know’ is a difficult sentence in an organisation that encourages a competitive leadership environment. It’s also not easy to be agile and responsive if your next pay rise is dependent on you reaching departmental or personal targets that are set outside of knowing what you will need to be agile and responsive to. Often, these are agreed with your boss at your annual personal development review in the previous year. Employing the entrepreneurial mindset is key So how can we tackle the affliction of informed assumptions in experts? One important way to tackle this insidious affliction is to encourage and use an entrepreneurial mindset or entrepreneurial approach. This is vital to creating a team and work environment that is productive, responsive, and most importantly, focused on creating value. It is through developing and utilising the tools of the Entrepreneurial Mindset or the Entrepreneurial Approach, important lifewide skills, that experts can truly begin to allow the real answers to unfold according to the research. These skills include: creativity tolerance of uncertainty openness to learning seeing value in failure pro-activeness networking intrinsic motivation and confidence that what we do matters. Luckily for the next generations, education in the 21st-century has a foundation that includes the recognition of these above skills and the entrepreneurial mindset in general. Now we need to help the organisational leadership in higher education to support the value of being open to being wrong, valuing the discovery process, and that "failure" (in reality learning) is really part of the process of creating valuable services. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences.

Lue lisää

Embedding Service Design in Higher Education
22.2.2022
Pamela Spokes

Shortly, service design is a method of purposefully designing services through a set process that emphasises co-creation through deep customer research, prototyping, and testing. It is an iterative process that puts the user(s) at the centre at each stage of the process. This is a shift in not only mindset but procedure of how an organisation works. So how does an organisation begin to shift how it designs services and solves problems. In order for service design to really help an organisation, it must be embedded which, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, means “functioning as part of a larger device rather than as an independent unit or system”. That means that there must be a shared understanding, language, and ability throughout the organisation. This allows people and units to come together when they need to tackle challenges. But how do you get this critical mass of people working and talking in the same direction? A core team to start First, an organisation needs to start with a dedicated core team whose job it is to be experts in the process of service design. Ideally, this is more than one service design experts although this is, depending on the size of the organisation, where many start. The core team’s role is to disseminate through facilitating, training, and consulting about service design t22ls and processes throughout the organisation. This does not mean that this core group of people will be “service designing” or participating in the content of the work. This means that when a challenge arises, they can either help by facilitating the process or to advise on how the process should look. This is a guiding role and those people who are involved in the content of the problem, would lead and work through the service challenge using the tools, methods, and expertise available. Discover who the champions are After the core team is in place, their role, in addition to facilitating, training, and consulting, is to look for champions. Within any organisation there will be people here and there that have an understanding and an interest in service design and human-centered design. Many times, higher education institutions are big and unwieldy organisations. This can lead to people feeling alone or unable to pursue meaningful change through these methods alone. Part of the role of the core team is to identify people throughout the organisation that are interested to understand more and to practice the method more in their everyday work. Once you start looking, it will probably be a surprise as to how many and where you find them! Training is the key Training throughout the organisation is also a key feature of embedding service design. There is a need for service design capacity building within all organisations and within all units. What would this look like? It would be internal training on how to use service design to move challenges forward. It would show how to do customer/user research in a more qualitative way, as well as how to properly ideate, prototype, and test various solutions. The aim is to have a critical mass of employees understand the process involved in problem-solving with service design. This means that no matter where the problem lies, there is the interest and understanding of how to move from point A to point B then to point C, etc. Where different people can come together from different areas to work on one project using the same, familiar, process. Bespoke project groups The situation of having a core team, champions, and wider training allows project groups to come together and understand how to work together to solve problems. Each problem will require a distinct group of people to gather – a bespoke approach. But once you have built the capacity of enough people in the organisation to work in a similar way, it will not matter who is needed for the project as they will all be using the same method to move forward. The appropriate tools to be chosen by the group on an ad hoc basis. These bespoke teams for projects are exactly the kind of flexibility that will make an organisation more efficient and, ultimately, more successful. Simple but not easy The process set out above is fairly simple in its structure but this does not mean that it is an easy task at all. What we are talking about is wide organisational change. A change that requires a shift in many parts of a complex structure. But it is also worth it. Using user-centred methods and common processes while including more people in the process, helps everyone to work in an understandable way. It also makes a complex organisation a better place to work by being more flexible and proactive with changes. But most importantly, it allows organisation to be more impactful for both the staff and the students. One example of deep change that would need to take place is that of how Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are created. Currently, in most organisations in the world, KPIs are set for individuals or units. But this can lead to conflicting outcomes between teams and even colleagues. Whereby one team meeting their KPIs actually leads to another team not meeting theirs or making it difficult to meet theirs. This is because many services are not bound by team boundaries. Usually, many teams are involved in the lifecycle of a service. If you use, as an example, a student starting to study at a higher education institution, that person (even before arriving on campus) touches many different services – marketing, admissions, teaching, etc. So, some of this change would include creating KPIs that go across units rather than within one unit. Embedding service design methods and mindset is necessary in the pursuit of excellence in service provision in higher education institutions and other organisations alike. Author Pamela Spokes works as a Service Designer in Metropolia’s RDI team. Originally from Canada, Pamela has years of experience in university admin focusing on international recruitment, marketing, and the international student/staff experience. With a Bachelor’s from Canada, a Master’s degree from Sweden, an MBA in Service Innovation & Design from Laurea, and her AmO from Haaga-Helia, she is interested in purposefully designed experiences that are centred around the user. Don’t be surprised if she knocks on your door to talk about learning co-creation methods through intensive learning experiences.

Lue lisää

Interprofessional Approach for Transversal Skills in Higher Education
9.11.2021
Raatikainen, Eija & Rantala-Nenonen, Katriina

Current and future challenges of societies need multi- and interdisciplinary, but also interprofessional approaches for us to adapt to and solve unpredictable situations and problems. The support needs of clients in social and health services can be very diverse. Thus, currently also social and health care legislation in Finland requires professionals to cooperate in a multidisciplinary manner whenever necessary.  Therefore, working in social and health care services requires not only professional competences but also transversal skills. According to World Health Organization (2010, p.7), interprofessional work is defined as follows: “When two or more health professions learn about, from, and with each other to foster effective collaboration and improve the outcomes and quality of care”. Interprofessional work is positively associated with job satisfaction, autonomy and engagement (2). Additionally, interprofessional work is needed to alleviate employees’ workload and prevent burnout (3).  At best, the power of interprofessional work is that each professional can offer help and support to each other.  In other words, interprofessional work is beneficial for clients, but also for employees. However, even if every professional has their own specific core skills and demands, transversal skills are needed. Transversal skills are also often called ‘soft skills’, ‘key skills', ‘core skills’ or ‘transferable skills’ (Gogging et al. 2019) and ‘generic skills’ (5, 6). Educating interprofessional work professionals and transversal skills While educating students, in interprofessional education practice, students of different health professions learn ‘from, with and about each other’(7). During the educational process, interprofessional relationships between identity, knowledge, and professional power can be explored together (8). There are demands for all professions for collaboration because interprofessional work professionals need each other to achieve the best solutions and results for clients (see for example Social Welfare Act 2014). The best results can only be achieved with professionals' strong collaboration skills and open-minded attitudes. Furthermore, education in social and health care rarely provides opportunities for practicing and developing interprofessional collaboration skills before students’ transition to working life, and it mostly focuses on technical and substantive aspects of work (Saarinen 2020). Therefore, general skills, like transversal skills, are important. Transversal skills are one suggestion to; build a bridge between social and health care professionals and support flexible collaboration between different professions. For example, OECD has pointed out that social and emotional skills (empathy, respect, self-efficacy, responsibility and collaboration) are becoming essential at workplaces (OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030). Transversal skills in higher education In many EU countries, national education policies have highlighted the relationship between education and work, and the importance of students’ generic competencies connected to them. For example, social and emotional skills have been rising in importance in education policy and in the public debate (OECD). Transversal skills can be seen as part of the idea of lifelong learning, “all learning activity undertaken throughout life, with the aim of improving knowledge, skills and competences within a personal, civic, social and/or employment-related perspective” (European Commission 2001, 9). They are not just the ‘best image of flexible employability in the labor market’ (6), but also transferable skills to improve personal flexibility and to increase possibilities on unpredictable labor markets. Transversal skills are quite a new phenomenon in the higher education context. There has been more discussion of generic skills in primary and secondary schools. Now, Metropolia has launched an ITSHEC (Integration of transversal skills into healthcare and social care higher education and curriculum) project concentrating on three transversal skills: a) Critical and Creative Thinking b) Interpersonal and Socioemotional Skills c) Learning to Learn Our definitions and limitations are based on project applications. In the project, we have had a preliminary data collection of participants', university students, experiences of learning transversal skills in their studies. The data was collected in spring 2021. Students from Finland, Spain and Croatia took part in the focus group interview. Collected and analyzed data will be used to produce a Methodological Guide, an outcome of the project to be released in January 2022. In this article we present some results derived from the results of the interviews in Metropolia. According to the data, Master students (10) listed different examples of situations in their study field where they need to take transversal skills into account.  In this text, we present two questions and their results. One of the questions was “In which situations do you believe that transversal skills are important?” Students’ experiences of transversal skills According to the students' answers, transversal skills are touched upon in all work-life encounters, in service user interface situations, in all decisions where different situations are evaluated and in working community interactions, where one has to regulate oneself or control someone else’s emotional regulation. All of these can thus be combined with working life interactions, development and self-development. “Need to think how to act as a supervisor if you are critical of something in your work with service users: can I completely disagree with the service users? How do I feel about it and how do I take the matter forward, even if I disagree with them?” “Interaction and emotional skills and social influence are emphasized in working life and client work.” Some pedagogical tips for teaching and learning transversal skills The second question was focused on teaching and learning strategies. The question was, “What do you think are the most useful strategies for developing the following skills: critical and creative thinking, interpersonal/socio-emotional and citizen-oriented skills and learning to learn?” As a result of the interviews, students pointed out that studying in groups and discussions together are useful strategies for developing both critical and creative thinking and interpersonal/socio-emotional skills. Teacher supervising the discussion and reflecting with students was felt very important and relevant pedagogical way to improve transversal skills, especially while developing critical and creative thinking. "Self-assessment and peer review after collaborative learning is a useful strategy for developing transversal skills." (One student in the group interview) According to one student, a useful strategy for developing creative thinking is that student has to use some new method in solving a given problem. Students listed different kind of teaching and learning strategies to develop transversal skills, such as: Group discussions, collaborative learning Oral exams in groups and informal discussions with other students Self-assessment and peer review of students’ papers Essays: a student has to use source literature as well as reflect one's own experiences in the field Group discussions based on work experience/internships of students Creating safe learning environment to practice transversal skills Case work Using virtual reality, case simulation To sum up, there are many different possibilities to teach transversal skills. Still, the intended learning outcomes and pedagogical approach in teaching specify and define teaching and learning strategies. After all, reflection is a key for deeper learning outcomes, regardless of learning content. Conclusion Transversal skills and competences are recognized in general in upper secondary schools (Finnish National Agency for Education), but not so much yet in higher education. According to Finnish National Agency for Education (2021), they are an interpretation of values, attitudes, skills and will. They are formulated into the core curriculum. In higher education, these competences are missing even though, for example, the social services curriculum is based on national (ARENE, the Rectors’ Conference of Finnish Universities of Applied Sciences) and international (EQF, European Qualifications Framework) competences. There has not been much attention to transversal competences. However, a complex world with unpredictable challenges and regulation concerning multidisciplinary between different fields require flexible professionals who can work in changing interdisciplinary and interprofessional groups. In other words, we need to pay more attention to higher education students’ transversal skills and to develop them during their studies (e.g. Isacsson 2016; Raatikainen & Rantala-Nenonen 2021). References World Health Organization. (2010) Framework for Action on Interprofessional Education & Collaborative practice. Kaiser, S., Patras, J. & Martinussen, M. (2018) Linking interprofessional work to outcomes for employees: A meta-analysis, 41 (3), 265-280. McCarthy, L.P. (2021) Social Work Burnout in the Context of Interprofessional Collaboration, Social Work Research, 45 (2), 129–139. Goggin D., Sheridan I, Lárusdóttir, F. & Guðmundsdóttir G. (2019) Towards the Identification and assessment of Transversal skills. Conference Paper. DOI: 10.21125/inted.2019.0686. Jääskelä, P., Nykänen, S., & Tynjälä, P. (2018) Models for the development of generic skills in Finnish higher education. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 42 (1), 130-142. Tynjälä, P., Virtanen, A., Klemola, U., Kostiainen, E., & Rasku-Puttonen, H. (2016) Developing social competence and other generic skills in teacher education: applying the model of integrative pedagogy. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(3), 368-387. Freeth et al., 2005 Olson & Brosnon 2017 in Loura e.g. 2021, p. 62. Loura, D., Arriscado, A.E., Kerkstra, A., Nascimento, C., Félix, I., Guerreiro M.P. & Baixinho, C. (2021) Interprofessional Competency Frameworks in Health to Inform Curricula Development: Integrative Review. New Trends in Qualitative Research, 6, 63–71. https://doi.org/10.36367/ntqr.6.2021.63-71 Social Welfare Act 1301/2014. Saaranen, T. (2020) Interprofessional learning in social and healthcare - learning experiences from large group simulation in Finland. OECD. 2021. Future of Education and Skills 2030. SKILLS FOR 2030 (PDF). European Commission (EC) (2001) Making a European area of lifelong learning a reality. Brussels: European Commission. Freeth, D., Hammick, M., Reeves, S., Koppel, I &. Barr, H (2005). Effective Interprofessional Education: Development, Delivery and Evaluation. Miettinen, R., Pehkonen, L., Lang, T. ja Pihlainen, K. (2021) Euroopan Unionin elinikäisen oppimisen avaintaidot, Eurooppalainen tutkinto viitekehys ja oppilaitosten opetussuunnitelmien kehittäminen.  Ammattikasvatuksen aikakauskirja, 23 (2), 13-31. OECD. OECD Survey on Social and Emotional Skills Finnish National Agency for Education (2021) ARENE (2010) Suositus tutkintojen kansallisen viitekehyksen (NQF) ja tutkintojen yhteisten kompetenssien soveltamisesta ammattikorkeakouluissa. The European Qualifications Framework for Lifelong Learning (EQF) (2008) Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities (PDF) Isacsson, A., Salonen, A. O., & Guilland, A. (2016) Transversaaliset taidot tulevaisuuden ammattikorkeakoulun mahdollisuutena. Ammattikasvatuksen Aikakauskirja, 18(4), 61–67. Raatikainen, Eija & Rantala-Nenonen, Katriina (2021) Transversaalit taidot ammatillisen kasvun jäsentäjänä. Teoksessa Mikko Jakonen, Pia Houni, Arto Mutanen ja Ilpo Halonen (toim). ”Työorganisaation ja yksilön välisiä järjestyksiä” (YFI -julkaisuja, 2021). (painossa) Authors Eija Raatikainen (PhD) is a Principal lecturer in Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. Her academic focus is "Trust” and “Empathy”, as phenomenon in different fields; like in Social Work, multiprofessional co-creation and project work, as well as educational practice and pedagogy. Additionally, she has a long track record as a project manager in various projects. Katriina Rantala-Nenonen (M.Soc.Sc.) is a senior lecturer at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences. She teaches social sciences and works in national and international projects of social services and education. In ITSHEC project she works as a developing lecturer. More about ITSHEC on UPF's website.

Lue lisää