Today I would like to tell about the concept of Open University at Aalto University.
Open University gives an opportunity to non-students to attend interesting courses, learn something new, and gain valuable skills. Courses are open to everyone regardless of their background or age, and you can participate in online courses even if you are abroad and not in Finland.
Human Impacts on Marine Species (Waste Dumped in Ocean)
How do we design for both human and non-human stakeholders?
This course was one of the most thought-provoking courses that I have taken in Aalto. The course offers an opportunity for students from multiple disciplines to work together, to study and develop new products, services, and businesses based on blue economy principles.
The course began from 10 days of field research in collaboration with the Kristineberg Marine Research in Lysekil, Sweden.
International tutors in CoID
Hello, my name is Senciria Chou, and I am a second-year master student in Collaborative and Industrial Design. I would like to introduce my study experience as an international student at Aalto University. Especially the CoID program.
There is a lot of different profession program under ARTS school, like fashion, contemporary, film and photography, also architecture and interior design. You can find more information on the Aalto website to find out more detailed descriptions.
https://www.aalto.fi/en/school-of-arts-design-and-architecture
Unlike many master studies in other countries, the study structure in Aalto is very open. It allows students to choose courses they would like to take from other programs. The school also encourages us to have multipipeline collaboration, so there are also quite many courses cooperated with cross-department. Students have various chances to team up with others from different departments, like engineering and business school, …etc.
Anna smiles at all her students through her webcam as if it would be the single greatest event that no one showed up at her classroom in Otakaari 1 this week. Our Spanish teacher seems as surprised as we are that almost the entire class is absent but yet digitally united on one screen.
Empty University. ©Hsiao-Pei Liao
I didn’t expect anyone to show up to this premier of the zoom class Basic Spanish for Professional Needs 1. Curiosity was my main reason to sign in to this remote lecture, although I was doubting the efficiency of online learning. But then fifteen other students started to tune in and a wave of “HOLA QUÉ TAL” roared through my headphones. After a clumsy beginning of rearranging webcams and crackling microphones the course quickly turned into one of the funniest sessions we had in this period and it ended with a class of Finnish and international students dancing in front of their computers to a Gente De Zona song. We had to raise our hands every time a Latin American country or region was mentioned. It was quite an exercise since the lyrics went something like this for about four minutes: “Uruguay con Paraguay, hermano con Costa Rica – Bolivia viene llegando, Brasil ya esta en camino”
Örö Island Workshop 2019 (Course: DOM-E3042)
You leave behind Helsinki and the metro stations, the bus stops and highways, the train station in Salo and the harbor in Kasnäs. You try to count the black rocks rising from sea in this maze of islets, while another grey wave mirrors another grey sky. On a Monday in October you arrive on an island called Örö at the edge of the Finnish archipelago where the Baltic Sea swallows the horizon. The equipment in your backpack outweighs your food supplies by far and you carry more films than underpants as you start the walk to your cottage with the other lens based creatures that will be your roommates for the next five days and your partners in crime for the next two years.
This past month I was involved in a mandatory course as part of my major in Strategy & Venturing. The course was called Advanced Case Seminar in Strategy and if I had any doubts about the intensity the course would require, they were cleared during the first introductory session. The Assistant Professor Timo Vuori didn’t hold back while describing what was to come for us (the course participants) in the coming weeks, and mentioning it as a lot of PAIN.
The course was structured in a way that we had company cases each week, for one month, with a break of one week after the second or third week, depending upon which group you were in. The cases were related to real challenges and the students were divided into teams to work on solving the cases and presenting the solutions in front of the consulting companies as a group. Within these cases were some that had been going on for months but as part of the course, we were expected to come up with a well-thought analyzes and well-structured solution for the concerned company within a week. This made the course super intense but at the same time, it was quite exciting to work in teams to come up with solutions for the problems as well. Moreover, the course also had individual assignments related to the same cases where the structure was a little different then the group ones but essentially the idea was that all the students would contribute in the group cases if they had done the individual assignments beforehand.
NoVA students attending symposium in Konstfack University, Stockholm
Nordic Visual Studies and Art Education (NoVA) is a joint programme with 3 universities: Aalto University in Helsinki, Aalborg University in Copenhagen and Konstfack University in Stockholm. Each semester, all NoVA students from the 3 universities attend a symposium that lasts for a week in one partner university. We attended the symposium between 23/9/2019 and 27/9/2019 in Konstfack University in Stockholm.
Nordic Startup Summer Program is organized by Aalto Ventures Program from July 15-19 in 2019.
30 Chinese students from 5 top universities in China participated, including Xidian University, Fudan University, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shantou University and South China University of Technology. The main purpose of this program is to explore Aalto University’s innovation and student-led startup ecosystem, top Finnish innovation companies, Nordic culture, mindset of public speaking and design thinking.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHMyMu7ocgA[/embedyt]
The student from Fudan university shared his experience in the summer program.
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4quIp5OPh8[/embedyt]
Rasmus Viitala was my project teammate in the course Energy Business and Innovation, who is major in master’s program of Industrial Engineering and Management and CEMS. It’s a great pleasure working on the project with him. In fact, It’s very rare in my life to meet someone whose personality lights up the atmosphere wherever he or she goes. Rasmus is one of this unique kind, he is always fun, cheerful, upbeat, smart but also hardworking. Continue reading
[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHSCCobgcBs[/embedyt]
Aalto VR Hub is the best place to experience VR in Finland. – Eero Tiainen.
