Learning at SeAMK

A SeAMK student

SeAMK students are active builders of knowledge and creators of their own learning, and they are responsible for their learning. They are learners who create and develop new things and are able to improve their methods and tools to become competent experts in applying knowledge. Students learn in different workplace-oriented contexts and networks and develop into lifelong learners in their professional growth. SeAMK students have the right to a learning environment that develops expertise and to receive regular feedback on their professional development.

A SeAMK teacher

Teachers at SeAMK work in a way that creates new ideas and is innovating, and they understand their role as coaches and instructors of competence. The teacher is student-oriented and knows what competence is needed in the workplace in the future. The teacher utilises the changing digital tools and has the right and obligation to develop their own pedagogical competence.

Above all, the teacher is the director of the processing of the student’s knowledge and focuses on supporting the student’s learning process in a competence-oriented manner. The teacher knows how their pedagogical choices affect competence development and results, and how the choices are part of the pedagogical development of teaching.  What is my goal? Why do I choose what I choose? What do I solve with my choices? How do I promote learning?

SeAMK teachers have access to many tools for shaping learning, such as course feedback systems, student barometers, national student feedback surveys, SeAMK student forums and internal degree programme audits. At best, learning means that the student and the teacher together create different learning environments that allow them both to learn. The teacher creates an equal and inspiring learning atmosphere.

The SeAMK learning environment

SeAMK’s diverse learning environments support and promote new creative learning. They highlight the following features, which can be emphasised differently in different learning environments:

• Student-orientation
• Working life orientation, authenticity and simulation possibilities
• Project learning
• Digital tools

Learning environments facilitate the building of multidisciplinary and multiprofessional applied competence and enable both individual and communal learning methods. It is essential that the learning environment enables the learner to take part actively. SeAMK’s learning environments take individual learning methods and different types of learners into account.

SeAMK’s learning environments enable internationalisation and entrepreneurship education in different forms.

Starting points for learning at SeAMK

SeAMK’s current strategy is implemented in SeAMK’s learning. Learning aims at developing applied competence in expertise, and information is produced from reliable sources based on research data, both from practical contexts and from theoretical starting points. Competence can be demonstrated in many ways, and the competence-based approach is applied in the assessment of competence. The curricula take into account the students’ different capabilities as well as the proportionality of knowledge and its variability.

Effective and development-oriented cooperation in a multidisciplinary learning environment requires a shared view of what is central to learning as decided by the people at SeAMK.  The shared understanding of the learning objective by the people at SeAMK enables different pedagogical solutions to achieve it. A shared view of the learning objective clarifies the development of learning and communicates to the surrounding stakeholders why we exist.

The learning takes into account the learner’s prior knowledge and interpretations and helps them link the new learning material to their previous knowledge and experiences (socio-constructivism). This learning vision emphasises social interaction and the importance of authentic tasks and environments in building knowledge. According to it, it is important and essential to develop the student’s understanding of their learning skills and self-assessment skills (metacognitive skills).  SeAMK builds students’ knowledge (theoretical knowledge), activities (practical knowledge) and being (identity work) through reflection. Suitable learning methods help the student to reflect on and see the links between the three areas.

Various digital network environments and social media are utilised in connectivist learning based on socio-constructionist learning. It focuses on continuous updating of knowledge and learners’ awareness that reality and knowledge are constantly changing.