Activating instruction: How to foster study and thinking skills in higher education

New instructional procedures have been developed and applied at the University of Helsinki, Department of Psychology since 1986. The aim of these procedures has been to enhance effective study skills. The idea is to stimulate active learning in students by so called activating instruction, which is theoretically based on a combination of Vygotsky’s ideas, applied cognitive science, and process-oriented instruction. In many courses, students have been able to choose a preferred form of instruction among the new and the traditional methods. A six-year longitudinal study was conducted in order to see, what kinds of choices psychology students (N=114) made and how these choices were connected with their academic progress. On the basis of student’s evaluations, the new methods differed significantly from traditional methods. Students associated the development of study skills and understanding more often with activating instruction than with traditional courses. The number of activating courses taken was related to success in final exam and thesis writing. Those who participated in activating instruction studied slower during the first three years of their studying, but were more successful in the long term.     

National Evaluation of Bologna Implementation in Finland: Procedures and outcomes

Finland has performed, as one of the first Bologna countries, a national evaluation of the outcomes of the implementation of the Bologna process. The evaluation was organized by the Finnish Higher Education Evaluation Council and performed by an independent expert group during 2010. In general, the reform was conceived as a significant development project which was carried out in a well-organized manner in a relatively short period of time. A closer look at the details show, however, that many of the objectives of the reform were not achieved. This article describes the background and procedures of the evaluation and discusses the main results and conclusions for Finnish higher education policy. The reception, success and implications of the evaluation will also be discussed.

     

Higher education as human risk capital

Both the rhetoric of human capital and the information society are based on the idea of continuous progress. The politics of European governments rest on a simplified presumption that to produce more and higher educational credentials is the same as to produce more human capital. The information society rhetoric is saying that the expanding human capital serves both societies, firms and individuals as a direct route to economic growth, since people are living and working in the conditions of more knowledge-intensive production in the so-called information society. In this article we will concentrate on analysing the gap between the reborn human capital ideology, represented in current labour market rhetoric, and the everyday realities of human risk capital faced by graduates. We discuss the changing labour markets, presenting an extended model describing the various social mechanisms which affect graduate employment. Information society implies also the 'information State', since especially in the Nordic countries, the State still has a firm grip on higher education and the labour market, in spite of the popular market rhetoric. We also ask to what extent, instead of traditional organizational careers and permanent jobs, the future of higher education graduates can be described in terms of boundaryless careers or entrepreneurial work.