Hacking Higher Education
Higher education enthusiasts, this one's for you!
Have you created a solution that has taken services aimed at students, alumni, staff or partners to the next level? Or maybe you know of such solution?
We want to hear about it - and tell others, too!
Have you created a solution that has taken services aimed at students, alumni, staff or partners to the next level? Or maybe you know of such solution?
We want to hear about it - and tell others, too!
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HHE Finland is a competition to reward initiatives that have improved the operations of a higher education institution. It is a chance for anyone contributing to the field to not only strengthen their image but also learn from others.
Tell us about a solution, which challenge it tackles and win a place in one of the most innovative ecosystems in the country!
The competition culminates on stage at Dare to Learn on Friday 20.9.2019.
HHE Finland has already received initiatives from the following institutions:
WE HAVE THE FINALISTS!
Here are the ones that earned their spots as the 12 finalists of the first ever Hacking Higher Education race!
Familiarize yourself with the solutions and vote:
Familiarize yourself with the solutions and vote:
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Intoa! Ohjelma
Challenge / need: New products and services are created to enhance entrepreneurship both within the University and business community, specifically via forms of cooperation that enable mutual learning in the areas of business development, new work skills and innovation. Identified challenges among the multiple target groups include: 1) Lack of scientific knowledge and flexibility in traditional student projects organized within the academic curriculum. 2) Lack of opportunities for researchers to work in startup-like environments alongside academic work. 3) Scarcity of efficient solutions to tackle the complex and open-ended problems the companies face. 4) Existing methods of collaboration tend to be rigid and focused on limited results between universities and companies. Solution: A multidisciplinary product and business development team ideates, conceptulizes and tests new business concepts for the client company or organisation. The client - gets a chance to develop solutions for their current or future business challenges, which it defines for the team. The University is responsible for composing a tailored multi-disciplinary team for the programme in order to address the challenge posed by the client. The team consists of Master’s and Doctoral level students and University researchers, who work as a startup-like agile product and business development team, independent of the product development processes of the client. The team is provided with mentors among University experts on a case-by-case basis to support its work, especially in the areas of business development and entrepreneurial skills development. In addition, together with the client, a steering group is formed to acts as Board of directors for the team. Projects typically last between 3 and 12 months. A Service and Support Need Indicator
Challenge / need: Problems connected to students’ mental or social resilience or poor agency can be difficult to recognize. This project will help teachers and counsellors to find students with troubles in their studies. The goal of the project is to develop and disseminate new approaches to prevent students’ dropouts and to support study progress and the transition to education or working life. Solution: A digital tool that measures students‘ needs for services and support. We call this tool A Service and Support Need Indicator. The tool produces information about problems that are connected with study progress (learning ability, resilience and agency) and the transition to further education or working life (career management and employability skills). Next steps: Distribution through Finnish Agency of Education DIGest
Challenge / need: On large courses in mathematics and statistics (the size of 200 - 700 students) the need for evaluating and getting feedback from exercises is a huge undertaking with limited resources. Another challenge is that typically, mathematics and statistics exercises are solved with “pen and paper” or they are computer based (like programming) and in statistics also short essays. Traditionally there have been weekly exercise group meetings where the students present their solutions to other students and an instructor controls activities. However, this is not time efficient for the students and not cost efficient for the institutions. The campus structure of UH comprises four campuses, several kilometers apart from each other which causes lot of travelling for students between campuses. Solution: DIGest - A Moodle based collaborative e-learning environment providing peer- and self-assessment for large courses together with supervised efficient verification and grading. The students self-assess their own solutions and peer assess solutions of two other anonymous students using model solutions provided and precise grading instructions. The scoring system gives points on the basis of the quality of solutions, and also from the process of performing the assessment process. In case that the three scores differ more than a certain criterium, the instructor makes an assessment too. This way the verification and grading process is finally strictly supervised by course teachers. DIGest guarantees that every student receives feedback from his/her all exercise solutions providing a simple tool for formative assessment. Time devoted to the rechecking process has been considerably diminished by implementing scripts. Next steps: In the future, we plan to use the methodology on more courses, also in other discipline. Nordic Rebels
Challenge / need: How could we take the university to where the students are? As it is now, universities treat students as number instead of individuals, and the way universities operate is institution-centric. That is to say, learning happens because institutions want to reach certain KPIs, although learning in itself should have tremendous value. Having said that, universities are changing slowly, and with this rather provocative standpoint Nordic Rebels wishes to enact positive organizational transformation by goosebumpifying learning. Students: how could we ensure the students feel they are provided with engaging learning experiences? How could we ensure what they learn in universities helps them become active agents in the society and equips them with future-proof skills? Also, how could we ensure a healthier balance between studies, work, and private life? Future employers: by breaking the boundaries, how could we engage future employers to co-create knowledge with our students in a way that would also help them to learn? Teachers and program heads: how could we help program heads and other teachers to develop their curricula by openly disseminating our methods, knowledge, and experiences? How could we ensure teachers have the necessary tools at their disposal to easily transform their curricula to be more student-centric? Learning materials: How could we rethink the kind of learning material we expose our students to by drawing on design-driven tools and methodologies? Solution: Nordic Rebels is a collaborative movement between Student & Innovation House in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Aalto University’s International Design Business Management graduate program in Espoo, Finland. The movement involves
Next steps: We're going to places! As our team is now located in Finland, Denmark, Singapore, and UAE, we are currently refining our tools and methodologies by testing them in new contexts. At the same time, we are looking into creating digital tools that would enable learners to go through our content without facilitation. Also, we are currently looking into other organizational forms to complement our connection to universities by ensuring we can serve companies and those who are not currently enrolled at any university. European Short Learning Programmes
Challenge / Need: Working life demands new kinds of knowledge. It is important that workers update their knowledge and degrees regularly during their career. Studying while working is highly demanding. Studies that are available are long, theoretical and wide. These studies are not the best solution for those people who study while their work. There is a need for a scalable and flexible solution. Solution: European Short Learning Programmes (E-SLP) is a project about European Short Learning Programmes (SLPs) for continuous professional development and lifelong learning. SLPs consist of courses with a common subject focusing on specific needs in society and which can be part of larger degrees. Three key elements:
Next steps: Lobbying for national and EU level decisions in the development of the Short Learning Programmes. Short Learning Programmes need to be part of Bologna Process and follow the regulations concerning the degree Programmes. When these decision are available, SLPs will solve the massive need of retraining and be normal part of lifelong learning. Dream Apply
Challenge / need: We have several innovative solutions for various issues. For example robot interviewing system for helping universities interview candidates automatically. Most of the solutions are conveniently bundled together into the DreamApply.com application management platform. Solution: DreamApply is a student admission management platform on top of which universities or even countries can build their student admission management systems. The system automatises a significant share of manual labor. The universities have reported 60% decrease in admin work after implementing the system and 50-100% increase in international candidates numbers. Also the students have given very positive feedback to the experience of applying with DreamApply system as it has been designed considering the students pathway to the university. An international student often has to go though to 27 contact points with the university to go to study, DreamApply facilitates this process in a smooth manner. Next steps: Concretely with DreamApply our next target is to grow to start serving 2000 university offices globally. We are also planning to bridge other great solutions provider startups to universities to improve the overall experience of all university stakeholders. |
Bazaar
Challenge / need: What if we would embrace the competence and potential value of our partners, stakeholders and community more, and take the collaboration to a whole new level? What if we would turn the versatile data, information and competence base of our university community and our external society into richer, more sustainable and more impactful learning and collaboration opportunities? What if we would offer a digital platform to support all this, and even more? Solution: Bazaar concept integrates the alumni to the university community, enables more streamlined and automated connection making and team formation to create new business opportunities and innovation work, and it enables enriching the university’s learning offering and keeping it up to date through enabling trusted 3rd parties to offer their competence as a seamless part of the university’s digital campus. The platform includes the following features:
Next steps: This solution is in the first stage of development and we will continue to build one block at a time. First, we will complete the proof of concept, then, create a minimum viable product. This is an agile and iterative design product that includes much testing, validation, and engagement of all relative stakeholders. Skills diploma
Challenge / need: Students experienced difficulties in explaining to potential employers what skills they have. Topics of completed courses on the degree certificate reflect only substance skills and knowledge, ignoring transferable skills relevant in working life. Solution: Teachers and students designed together a skills diploma, which lists transferable skills: general working life skills, communication skills, IT skills, biochemical skills learned as part of the various activities and exercises on the courses of the curriculum. The diploma is now given as a supplement with the degree certificate. Next steps: There is interest in the University to develop it so that students could get a skills diploma anytime based on the courses they have done and registered, instead of only when completing the degree. This needs a computational solution for accessing study records and outputting then relevant learned skills. UniOulu Self-Hack
Challenge/need: It is painfully clear to students that the job market is constantly changing. This makes their future seem insecure and thus choosing a career can be a daunting task. As well as having job security, they are also expected to choose a vocation they will enjoy. This can be an impossible equation for a university student to solve, especially with little experience of working life. Students hesitate to make decisions about what courses they should take and what kind of experience they should gain in order to end up with a position that is aligned with their interests and values. Solution: The world’s biggest one day life-design event for nearly 2000 students. UniOulu Self-Hack is a day long life-design workshop that is organized for all the freshmen and master program students of University of Oulu. In Self-Hack design thinking is applied to your own life. Through reflecting on personal history and current life, participants identify a challenge and then prototype solutions for it. During the day they think and discuss in groups about their strengths, hopes, and uncertainties until ultimately learning to view their life as a path with no single “right” destination, instead with many equally realistic and “good” directions. What’s next: We are planning to take UniOulu Self-Hack from a pilot project to a continuous practice for our university. We are also planning to make this possible for all the students who would like to attend. We are also willing to share the process and concept we have developed with other higher education institutes first in Finland and then internationally. For the next year we also wish to create an app version of the current printed UniOulu Self-Hack playbook to make the solution more scalable. Aalto Online Learning
Challenge / need: The big challenge is how, and by whom to design learning to match great needs by learners. How to prepare lecturers and professors to teach in the era of online everything, where learning still happens in some actual place and time? How to listen to our educators' ideas, and help them to reach out their dreams and create better courses? How to allow for co-creation and co-design of learning across disciplines and silos? How to get from the super traditional lecture/exam focus to engaging blended learning designs that learners expect and deserve as of year 2019 and beyond? We cannot let our educators to be alone in their departments wishing to change their courses, and we cannot let our learners to wait for better learning designs in courses. Solution: Aalto Online Learning is a strategic initiative to create engaging blended learning designs and approaches for Aalto University's programmes and courses. Aalto People use our solution, Aalto Online Learning by sending an idea proposal to our bi-annual calls in Spring or Fall. Our call for idea proposals has a set of questions - think of it as an learning design canvas - to guide thinking of design aspects (like the target group of teaching, approach, people involved). They are also invited to our call for idea proposal clinics where answer burning questions about the process, schedules and practicalities. We openly share what we have done, to help being inspired by our existing pilots (onlinelearning.aalto.fi/pilots). Best ideas (like in terms of scalability, number of students affected, or the identified gap in learning) receive funding and support to bring the idea to reality. Next steps: Aalto Online Learning is already a community and network, and as such will continue to live and extend. We dream of establishing our Aalto Online Learning machinery as a continuous activity, and as a production mode, to gather ideas from the Aalto People and beyond, organise Learning@Aalto events, and help bringing magnificent educational ideas to reality to hack the education further. A clear next step is also to bring the solution to a wide public and international discussion. The Map of Learning
Challenge / need: The Map of Learning is a leap towards unifying the best in institutional higher education and studying independently and non-formally without institutional support. We live in an abundance of high quality study materials for higher education, but utilizing them effectively and systematically is currently difficult for both the independent student and the student studying at an institution. For a beginner to higher education, when left alone without a quality map, it is easy to get lost in the woods and stick to easy - or too difficult - terrain. Solution: The Map of Learning is an online platform for students and educators. It provides structure and realistic learning goals to independent students as well as flexibility and support to students enrolled in a higher education study program. It gives a clear overview of the study domain by providing an open-access curriculum and most importantly showing the relationships between courses, concepts, skills, societal goals, and job market requirements. The Map works as a tool for lateral study planning across disciplines. It is an index of higher education level concepts and skills, structured hierarchically by discipline, education level, and prior skill requirements. It thus resembles a university study curriculum with a course structure, but differs in explicit precision and by not being tied to any particular university faculty model, and courses or other learning content. The Map acts as a recommendation system to particular learning contents from each precise learning goal, concept, or skill. Learning content includes, but is not limited to, online lectures, study books and research articles, online and university courses, and workshops and practical work experience. Next steps: The project is currently in a stage of conceptual development. This is an ambitious project with plenty of room for further add-ons. To realize the idea even halfway it needs to be split into minimally viable components. These components are then piloted in real life circumstances to assess their plausibility and usability. TradeAway
Challenge / need: Finland’s economy is highly dependent on exports and SME companies represent more than 90% of the Finnish companies but their share of exports of goods is about 15%, which is considerably less than in other similar countries. Every third company feels that the biggest obstacle to starting exports is the fear of credit loss. According to the recent studies, Finnish exports are hampered by the bottlenecks associated with the lack of financial expertise and understanding of international customers and their possible obstacles related to international trade. Solution:TradeAway is a solution that tackles Small Medium Enterprises’ (SMEs’) fear of credit loss in exports. It is a gamified learning environment including a mobile learning game co-created by students, entrepreneurs, trade finance experts and teachers. TradeAway is a hands-on learning model for SMEs’ and practical people who want to learn by doing. An indirect impact is that through the use of TradeAway in educational institutions it helps to introduce export finance concepts to students with potential to be future employees. Next steps: Governmental agencies promoting exports are considered future potential parnters since they have vested interest in helping SMEs and they already have the information about SMEs’ needs. TradeAway could serve as a pathway to complex governmental databases/portals. While playing SMEs also provide functional information and knowledge of what is being sought and what are the constraints that they face in their export efforts. This functional info would enable agencies to provide SMEs with relevant help and advice. |
VOTE HERE
Hear more about the people behind the solutions and find out the winner at Dare to Learn 2019 on Friday 20th.
Who can take part?
Anyone can take part, as long as your solution is targeted to develop higher education. You can for example be a professor or a party of teachers, a board of a university, a work group or simply a gang of students. Joint projects in the field of higher education are also allowed.
You can announce someone else to the race, too!
You can announce someone else to the race, too!
The solutions submitted to the competition can be any type of initiatives or projects as long as they are aimed to tackle a specified challenge that a group of stakeholders face. The possible stakeholder groups are students, alumni, staff or companies.
COMPETITION CRITERIA FOR HHE
The initiatives will be judged based on the following criteria:
1. Identifying a valid challenge in higher education services
2. Effectiveness of the solution
3. Novelty of the solution
4. Scalability of the solution
1. Identifying a valid challenge in higher education services
2. Effectiveness of the solution
3. Novelty of the solution
4. Scalability of the solution
What does the winner get?
The winner of Hacking Higher Education is announced as the Higher Education Developer of the Year. But that's no all! The winner also gets to present their solution at DigiEduHack on October 3rd as well as choose their favourite to join.
The institution out of which the winning solution comes from gets the HHE Finland membership for a school year. This membership comes with chances for development, trainings, webinars and networking events around the year as well as other potential perks.
We reward also those companies and other parties who have successfully been part of developing and enabling the winning solution. You will get not only fame and glory but to join one of the most innovative ecosystems in the country!
The institution out of which the winning solution comes from gets the HHE Finland membership for a school year. This membership comes with chances for development, trainings, webinars and networking events around the year as well as other potential perks.
We reward also those companies and other parties who have successfully been part of developing and enabling the winning solution. You will get not only fame and glory but to join one of the most innovative ecosystems in the country!
In case you have any questions regarding HHE, please contact our HHE coordinator:
Solja Sulkunen
solja.sulkunen@daretolearn.fi
+358 44 265 6426
Solja Sulkunen
solja.sulkunen@daretolearn.fi
+358 44 265 6426