Towards individual study paths

Proceedings of ‏The 2nd World Conference on Research in Teaching and Education

Year: 2020

DOI:

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Towards individual study paths

Maarit Tihinen, Merja Koikkalainen, Outi Mattila, and Soili Mäkimurto-Koivumaa

ABSTRACT: 

Digitalisation, global networking and work tasks are becoming increasingly complex and diversified. Thus, there should be investment in the development of wide-ranging capabilities at work. The change also sets a challenge to education providers to develop their offerings in an increasingly personalised way. In addition, adaptability, desire for lifelong learning and continuous acquisition of new skills are are prominent issues in today’s working life.This paper aims to introduce introduce how higher education can be developed to enable individual study paths for students. The development work has been carried out under the ‘Lapland UAS Master School’ project from August 2018. We have piloted our solutions with Master’s degree students in Service Management in Digital Era. Based on the pilot, we have developed an educational framework that we are now extending to all training programmes of our Master’s School at Lapland University of Applied Sciences. This paper introduces our educational framework from the point where students can choose their combination of studies depending on their individual competence needs based on lifelong learning and the specific skills required for their career. According to their background studies and work experience, students have to choose 25 or 55 credits worth of specialisation studies and 5 credits worth of optional studies as well as complete a work-oriented and multidisciplinary thesis worth of 30 credits.

Keywords: lifelong learning; educational framework; Master‘s studies, individual study paths.