Exchange students' opinions: "The best country to study"

"Finnish people are open, and nature is beautiful", "Prices are too high", "The best country to study"

These were some of the answers when the students from Ylöjärvi Upper Secondary School did a small survey of exchange students' experiences. The survey was a part of their English language studies and around 20 TAMK exchange students were interviewed. The answers are presented in greater detail below.

Local students got a good opportunity to practice English language when interviewing Oanh Hoang and Bram Cooreman (behind).

Why did you choose Finland / TAMK?

• Finnish people have good English skills
• Likes cold climate
• Finland was the most interesting option
• A Friend was in Finland 5 years ago
• Change to home country (2 answers)
• Likes drinking alcohol and sauna
• Finland was the best country to study IT engineering
• Nature
• Never been in Finland
• Had been previously in an exchange in southern Europe and wanted to go to a different kind of country
• Tampere was the biggest city in the alternatives

Have you found any positive sides about TAMK?

• Good equipment
• Good organizing
• Food (x 3)
• Library (x 2)
• New friends
• Modern
• Good opportunities
• Good team spirit
• Cheap
• Teaching is good
• Studying is relaxed
• Classrooms are nice
• Good transportation probabilities
• People are open minded (x 3)
• Good apartments

What negative sides have you found about TAMK?

• Everyone isn’t ready to talk with exchange students (x 3)
• School is unclear
• Library gets closed too early
• Food
• Not yet (x 6)
• Some of the teachers don’t understand everything

What is the most valuable thing about studying abroad?

• Experiencing other cultures
• Learn to live on one’s own
• More choices to major in
• Culture
• New people
• Now I can compare my own country to other countries
• Gets more motivation on studying

What kind of differences there are between Finnish culture and your own?

• Almost the same
• You have to stop the bus to get off
• Finnish people are friendlier
• Finnish people need more space of their own

Could you consider working in Finland?

• Yes if it wouldn’t be so cold
• Yes
• Yes, but darkness scares

How would you compare the Finnish education to your own?

• In Finland it’s more independent and more comfortable
• Can’t compare
• Doesn’t study so much because she is on-the-job learning
• Studying in Greece is different because of the economy crisis
• In Finland studying is more practical
• In Finland studying is economically supported
• Much smaller studying groups in Finland

TAMK's 2nd International Week in RDI

It's our pleasure to welcome you to attend TAMK’s 2nd International Week in Research, Development and Innovation which will take place in Tampere, Finland on 22-26 April, 2013.

The theme of the week is "Future Calls for Funding – Living Labs in Horizon 2020".

The international week is aimed at RDI staff of TAMK’s partner universities as well as for other partner organisations involved in RDI activities with TAMK.

The programme of the week will include interesting study visits as well as sessions and workshops on focus areas of EU’s future RDI agenda based on the interests of the participants, e.g.

• health and demographic change, senior services
• resource efficiency and sustainability
• intelligent industrial vehicles and machines
• inclusive, innovative society, including ICT, media and culture
• entrepreneurship, including wellbeing entrepreneurship.

The registration is still open until 15 March 2013.

Warmly welcome!

R&D and Education Services at TAMK
Contact person: Ms Ursula Helsky-Lehtola, ursula.helsky-lehtola(at)tamk.fi

How to improve study success - Dutch students benchmarking in Tampere

The TAMK Kuntokatu Campus was like asleep during the holiday week, but the vibrant discussions started immediately when the group of Student Council members from Delft University of Technology arrived here yesterday morning. The Dutch engineering students were on a benchmarking trip in the Nordic countries in three destinations: Copenhagen, Trondheim and Tampere. The core question of their visit was how to improve the study success.

The President of Central Student Counsil - ORAS, Enne Hekma, explaining the aims of their research during the trip

 

In the Netherlands the current demands for reforming the higher education are similar to ours in Finland. Decreasing average study duration and changing the student state funding system are hot topics in both countries. Also the governmental budget for Dutch universities is more and more performance based, measuring education quality and study success. 

However, in the discussion with Student Union Tamko representatives, Henri Mäntysaari and Kristian Staack, we noticed also differences in the students’ situations. Students have different attitudes towards the study loans and the costs of studies also vary between the countries. 

The sunshine and lovely scenery over the Lake Näsijärvi made our guests to smile

The other important topic of the day was the working life connections. TAMK Student Recruitment Services presented what kind of support and options TAMK offers for the students. Also the concept of New Factory with Demola and Protomo environments was introduced. Our guests seemed to be thrilled with this unique combination of multidisplinary team work, creativity and working life contacts. Hopefully they got some new ideas to bring back home! Best of all, sharing experiences helps the hosts to see the own system from a new perspective as well.

During the week in Tampere the group visits also University of Tampere, Tampere University of Technology, Nokia and enjoys the winter activities.

Stylish way to promote Student Council's theme colors

Text: Kaisa Merilahti, International Services

Photos: Tuula Härkönen & Kaisa Merilahti

TAMK International Week for Engineering 2013

The 3rd International Week for Engineering took place at the Main Campus of TAMK on 11-14 February. The week comprised classes given by the visiting professors, company visits, a Project Workshop, outdoor activities and social programme in the evening.

The Degree Programmes of Engineering, Technology and Natural Resources hosted 16 guest lecturers from ten partner universities of TAMK. The visitors came from Austria, Belgium, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. Many of the visitors attended the TAMK International Week for Engineering for the 2nd or the 3rd time, and we were happy to welcome also several new colleagues to the event.

                                                     International Week for Engineering 2013 participants and main hosts

The visiting lecturers gave 24 lectures in English to the students and staff of TAMK, and some 600 engineering students participated in the teaching sessions. 

The thread of the week was to highlight the different learning environments of TAMK. On Monday, the round-tour took the guests to the labs, classrooms and the new library of TAMK which was followed by a visit to Demola later that same day. The Demola open learning environment for the local university students aroused a lot of interest among the visiting professors.

                                                             Bernard Garvey presenting Demola

Fastems, another off-campus engineering learning environment of TAMK, was visited on Wednesday. Product Manager, Mr Janne Konttila hosted the guests and told about Fastems and its long-standing cooperation with TAMK. Senior Lecturer, Mr Tomi-Pekka Nieminen from TAMK presented the training centre of Fastems and the facilities that it offers to the TAMK students in Mechanical and Production Engineering.

                                                            Janne Konttila telling about Fastems

The guests had a chance to experience the Finnish winter by attending outdoor activities organised by Mr Esko Tirkkonen. Many of the visitors tried Nordic walking and skiing in the snowy landscape of Kauppi sports park and its surrounding forests.

                                  Joan, Jan-Philipp, Pamela, Hans, Sophie and Franz admiring the Finnish winter scenery

Meeting new people and professional networking are an important part of International Weeks. What could be a better way to get to know a new colleague than to cook and dine together? Senior Lecturer, Mr Petteri Tikkanen and his brilliant team of 1st-year students in Hospitality Management steered the group of visitors in their preparation of a three-course meal at the Åkerlundinkatu Campus of TAMK. The dinner menu featured some Finnish delicacies like zucchini soup, marinated perch filet and local cheeses.

                               Inter-university cooperation at its best: Hedda, Mike and Jan-Philipp cooking and having fun 

It's already a tradition of the TAMK International Week for Engineering that the Wednesday evening is spent at Hangaslahti. The guests enjoyed the smoke sauna and ice-swimming as if that was a part of their daily life! Many dipped into the lake more than once. The evening was concluded with a multi-national sing-along in Flemish, German, Russian and Finnish.

                                                                What shall we sing next?

All in all, the week was a success, and the guests' first impressions very positive. The ideas for the further development of the TAMK International Week for Engineering were much appreciated by the hosts. The feedback will be taken into account when planning a similar event for the next year. See you back at TAMK for the International Week for Engineering 2014!

Text: Riku-Matti Kinnunen
Pics: Tuomas Mikola & R-M. Kinnunen

Business Innovation Intensive Course in Estonia

Teambuilding activities with Aurelija from Lithuania

We spent almost one week in a Business Innovation Intensive Course Estonia in autumn 2012. 

Director of Academic Affairs Maris Sagar and Project Manager Annelis Tomingas from Tallinn College of Tallinn University of Technology organised for us an intensive course of the Nordic and Baltic Business Innovation Network, together with the coordinator of the network Pirkko Varis from TAMK. Altogether 28 students and 8 staff members from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania and Norway joined the intensive week. From TAMK, two students from Degree Programme in Tourism, Arja Niemi and Sauli Mamia and eight students from TAMK entrepreneurship programme Proacademy, Nina Granqvist, Joona Kapanen, Tommi Keränen, Joel Ojala, Saara-Kaisa Tenhunen, Juuso Uusitalo, Johanna Vuorenmaa and Pekka Äijälä took part in the intensive course “Business Innovation Focused on Experience-based Products/Services”. Veijo Hämäläinen was the staff member from Proacademy.

The following institutions are members of the Nordplus Nordic and Baltic Business Innovation Network:

- Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), Business, Finland 

- University of Southern Denmark, Faculty of Engineering, Denmark

- Tallinn College of Tallinn University of Technology, Business, Estonia

- University of Tromsø, Business School, Norway

- Vytautas Magnus University, Faculty of Economics and Management, Lithuania

On Saturday, we travelled to Tallinn where we met other Nordic and Baltic students. We had a welcoming party at St. Patrick’s Pub, where we could get acquainted with each other and spend some time in not-so-official atmosphere. The next day, we had presentations of all the countries and study programmes taking part in this course. Afterwards, we had several team building activities in order to break the ice between us and learn something new about each other.

A country presentation of the team from Denmark

On Sunday, we were divided into teams with a representative from each country and two representatives from Finland. We were given an assignment to observe the Old Town of Tallinn on our own and re-enact legends connected to the spots on a map we got for our tour. We had fun during this assignment and had to work as a team. This way we had more time to get to know members of our teams. We took pictures from every spot and had to come up with a creative idea how to show a legend in one picture. It was interesting!

A team working on the assignment

Presentation of a team

From Monday on, we concentrated on the assignment from the company Tallinna Vesi (Tallinn Water). First, we visited the company, where we had a tour around the premises and were given the assignment to work on. The same day, we had two lectures: one was about innovations by Rünno Lumiste from Estonia and another about presentation skills by Vidar Alvarstein from Norway. We knew that over the next two days we had to work hard, so we used our free time to relax and gather strength.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we worked in our teams in separate rooms as there was a competition which team would propose the best marketing solutions for the company. I think we were all stressed, as we had only two days and we had to work with people we met for the first time. We stayed late in the evening at the college and did some preparation in the hostel, too.

On Thursday, our presentations took place. We were nervous and excited. All the teams did a great job: we presented our results and the judges visited each team to ask some questions about the process and how do we felt after all the work. 

Judges Jane Libe from Tallinna Vesi, Aurelija  

Ganusauskaitė from Lithuania and Leif Henriksen

 from Denmark discussing with teams

On Thursday evening, we had a wonderful closing ceremony with several appetizers and refreshments, offered by Tallinn College. We congratulated the winners, thanked the organisers and students, took a lot of pictures of each other and headed to Old Town to continue our last evening together. 

Refreshments...

...awards...

...and fun!

We had a great time! It was like a small exchange in a short period: we met a lot of new people, worked and celebrated together. On Friday, our Finnish team was the first one to leave Tallinn – with a lot of great memories.

Text: Arja Niemi, student of TAMK Degree Programme in Tourism

Photos: Maris Sagar, Director of Academic Affairs & Annelis Tomingas, Project manager

Tallinn College of Tallinn University of Technology