Digital Learning Centre of Competence-based Excellence: Networking and Stakeholder Involvement

Traditional centers for teaching and learning are shifting away from introducing teaching personnel to technology and instead focusing on helping instructors improve their courses in a variety of ways. The Digital Learning Centre of Competence-based Excellence aims to operate beyond single university’s support services, although focused to solve the challenges faced in daily practices. Stakeholder engagement is the essential practice of interacting with, and influencing project stakeholders to the overall benefit of the project and its advocates. The successful completion of a project usually demands significant engagement of the different stakeholders. Our aim is to introduce a hub of digital pedagogical innovation, influenced by competence-based approach.

We seek to ponder new technological approaches and experiment with new formats of remotely-accessed and controlled machines and equipment. Established Centre also positions research and related activities to disseminate work-life related strategies and to actively pursue and encourage projects that improve students transitioning in working life and accelerate employability. The Digital Learning Centre forms a digital “hub”, an online community of experts to collaborate in an atmosphere of creativity and support in the vibrant environment that we have created. The Center will be opened by 2021 at the latest. The Digital Learning Centre’s online “hub” brings together various stakeholders in the field of research and education – not only to generate new multi- and inter-disciplinary research, but to share and disseminate research results and good practices.

The RDI activities are closely integrated with our education provision and learning, as well as the lifelong learning offerings and projects implemented in cooperation with businesses and industries. A deeply collaborative, problem solving -approach aims to enhance entrepreneurial mindset and innovation competence. Oamk has a great experience (see e.g. Business Kitchen) in bringing different stakeholders together to collaborate, co-create and promote customer-oriented service development as a meaningful competence.

Oamk desire to achieve impacts directs everything we do. We define a learning ecosystem as a system of people, content, technology, culture, and strategy, existing both within and outside of an educational institution, all of which has an impact on both the formal and informal learning that goes on in that organization and related networks.

Openness is based on comprehensiveness and is manifested in the transparency of all our activities. Openness is a way of building mutual trust. At Oamk, this means that we conduct influential cooperation, share information openly, maintain transparent infrastructures and ethical practices, promote an open organisational culture and monitor its realisation in our daily activities. Main principles to collaborate in OamkDigComp include various ways of cooperation and co-creation. A collaborative ecosystem breaks down and goes beyond geographic, industry and organizational boundaries. It lets enterprises use multiple technology solutions and services to collaborate with educational institutions. Diverse multidisciplinary networks provide a source of innovation and collaborating with them is often a revolutionary way to deliver and manage complex solutions. Design Thinking is a mindset and approach which describes our attitudes and actions towards learning, collaboration, and innovation oriented problem solving.

We work actively in various networks, and all of our network activities aim at supporting the implementation of our primary tasks. We are developing cooperation with universities with regard to education provision. We will particularly intensify our participation in international networks. Our most important network comprises local operators in the Oulu region: the City of Oulu, local universities and secondary education providers, sectoral research institutions, industries and public-sector employers. Oamk also has extensive national  and international pedagogical networks covering both secondary and tertiary education institutions. We offer research-based support for national development programs in cooperation with national ministries and agencies of education in different countries.