development work (educational institution, student and the workplace) is user-based planning, implementation and development of the activity. In contrast to this approach is school-centered thinking, planning of work and collaborative activity between business, teachers and students. In the school-centered approach, the inflexible curriculum determines the type of activity. This situation affects the roles of teachers, students and workplace representatives in collaborative activities.
Plans, action models, various solutions and work environments are shaped in response to school needs and objectives. If the interests of schools do not successfully mesh with those of students and workplace representatives, potential projects break away from the actual teaching and guidance work that schools are meant to provide. As such, these projects turn into isolated, one-shot undertakings that teachers and students carry out for the business community.
User-driven is a concept bound to the present time that denotes a certain kind of collaboration. It has been used extensively in conjunction with innovation policy and processes describing the generation of innovations. Broadly defined, user-led can signify customer integration that manifests itself in various ways and on various levels. The user-led, need-related approach seeks to meet end-user needs of products and services and the creation of new needs. The justification of exploiting end-users in a collaborative activity is based on the assumption that users have the relevant knowledge and skills for the development of a product or service that cannot be had elsewhere. The tools for user innovation are most effective and successful when they are made ‗user-friendly‘ and enable the users to use their skills and work in their language. (von Hippel & Katz 2002.)
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The significance of end-user knowledge in various stages of innovation processes varies according to the environment and the field of activity. Determining and understanding the true end-users of the activity in question is important for its success. The users can include various professionals, enthusiasts, light end-users or even so-called non-end-users. In user-led activity, traditional work roles also tend to become blurred. The roles of product and service developer, producer, supplier and consumer can vary from one to another or become mixed during the work processes. (von Hippel & Katz 2002.)
The logic of user-led activity should also give direction to the development of workplace-driven learning environments in practice-oriented higher education. In the initial phase, the objectives of the true end-users, that is, business representatives and students, need to be clarified and mapped out, and their objectives should match with those of the prospective work environment.
Once the end-user groups have been determined, it is of primary importance to establish a tripartite user-led working group already at the planning stage of the operational environment. Success factors for the establishment of an authentic learning environment are user-led planning, user-led activity and the user-led development of activity. This necessitates the scrapping of teacher-centered and school-centered thinking and activity. In accordance with user-led thinking, every actor is expected to work across different disciplines and levels throughout the duration of an activity, which naturally presupposes that traditional roles become blurred. In the workplace-driven learning environment all actors might at times shift roles to become advisors, developers, idea generators and implementers.
Assessment of activity is also carried out collaboratively the whole time, not only conducted by teachers at the end of the process.
Emphasis on collaboration with the business community and the necessity to predict workplace competence requirements and workforce needs as well as the training of a competent and expert workforce are traits that are to be taken into account in the planning and implementation of teaching and learning at UASs.
Teachers have to be able to bring together three broad content areas in their work, each of which demands a different competence. The content areas are substance competence, pedagogical expertise and development work. The combination of these three elements results in challenges: teachers have to be simultaneously skilled in teaching, be experts in their own field as well as being researchers and developers. (Mäki 2012)
Furthermore, the requirement that teaching and learning should have relevance in the work context brings on additional pedagogical challenges, and also the need to tighten collaboration towards partnership between education and work (Häggman-Laitila & Rekola 2011). In order to facilitate and diversify co-operation, the acting partners should create and build up learning in which individual and collective expertise, along with aspects emphasising communality, are joined together (Tynjälä 2008).
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Traditional teaching methods alone are not enough if learning is to take place at the interface between work and education. Novel, non-traditional pedagogical solutions that contribute to research and development in learning are needed.
(Tynjälä, Kekäle & Heikkilä 2004, 10.)
Acknowledgments
The authors thank HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences and School of Vocational Teacher education for the funding the study. We are also grateful for the teachers and project managers who participated the study.
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