Blog – Eduix

Empowering Supervisors’ Autonomy in Thesis Advising

Posted on July 13, 2023July 13, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

In the realm of academia, writing a Bachelor or Master thesis is a core task that students need to go through in higher education institutions. And effective thesis advising plays a crucial role in guiding students towards successful graduation completion and education outcomes. The advent of digital platforms, such as Wihi, streamlines the supervision and management of academic projects. However, some university supervisors harbor concerns that adopting such platforms might infringe upon their autonomy in advising work. In this blog post, we will debunk this misconception and highlight how Wihi, instead of limiting supervisors’ independence, empowers them in their crucial role as mentors and guides.

Preserving Supervisors’ Autonomy

One of the main concerns expressed by supervisors is the fear that a digital platform centralizing communication between them and their students will result in undue interference by other faculty members who also have access to it, such as thesis coordinators and students’ counsellors. This misconception stems from the assumption that the platform would enable “external parties” to exert control over the advising process. However, it is essential to clarify that Wihi acts as a facilitator of the supervision process, providing tools and resources to streamline the student writing process while preserving supervisors’ autonomy.

Digitalizing thesis work does not reduce supervisor-student interaction – on the contrary!

Posted on June 22, 2023July 13, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

In today’s increasingly digital world, the adoption of technology has transformed various aspects of our lives. One area that has seen a significant shift is education, particularly in the management of learning and teaching processes. However, despite increased education digitalization, supervision and management of thesis work has been one core task that is still lagging behind.

In our recent work developed in the international market, when we start having meaningful and open conversations with potential customers about Wihi, our platform for the management and supervision of thesis work, many academic staff bring us a concern, derived from digitalization misconceptions, that Wihi may decrease face-to-face (f2f) interactions between students and supervisors. In this blog post, we will debunk this assumption and explore how thesis work digitalization with Wihi actually enhances and fosters supervisor-student interactions, both f2f and remotely.

Dispelling the Misconception

Contrary to popular belief, the introduction of a platform for thesis supervision does not inherently imply that students and supervisors will limit their interactions solely to the digital interface. It is essential to understand that the platform serves as a supportive tool rather than a replacement for personal engagement. By embracing digitalization, we can address existing challenges and facilitate more effective communication and collaboration.

Eduix supports Karelian thesis management process

Posted on May 17, 2023June 2, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Eduix cares deeply about how our solutions are helping our customers to address their challenges and how we can improve our services. In this interview, Tarja Kuppiainen, a principal lecturer in tourism and hospitality management at the Karelia University of Applied Sciences (UAS), shared with us how Wihi has supported the university to manage thesis work.

She told us how thesis work used to be before the adoption of Wihi at Karelia, the training process of teaching supervisors how to use Wihi and the workflow change management at the university deployed during Wihi implementaiton. She also underlined the main benefits that Wihi brought to her daily work, considering the way that Wihi structures thesis phases and facilitates thesis management data analysis for decision making, as featured in the image below.

“A key feature of a good software developer: to be able to ask the right questions.”

Posted on April 26, 2023April 27, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Customer satisfaction is key to the success of any business or organization. In today’s fast-paced world, where customer expectations are high, it is important to develop systems that can handle their needs efficiently and improve their work processes. This is particularly important in work fields such as financial project management, where data accuracy is critical to make sure that the financial situation of a project is under control. In this blog post, we explore the story of Thomas Hyllested, a service and contract manager at NORDUnet, who needed a system that could handle refined data required to report monthly project cost from several Nordic organizations.

International efforts in 2022

Posted on December 13, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

The year 2022 is almost over and we decided to wrap up our main efforts on supporting education digital transformation around the world.

Wihi truly supports students’ personalized learning

Posted on November 30, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Although “personalized learning” has been a buzz term in the education field, there are not many concrete examples of holistic edtech approaches to the change in teachers’ work that actually supports personalized learning for their students.

A team of Finnish researchers, in collaboration with Eduix, have addressed this problem within the core task of university’s students: thesis writing and project management. For that, they developed Wihi to support the supervision and management of thesis work, considering the needs of the three players involved in such academic projects : the students, their supervisors, and the faculty coordinators – who need to monitor the progress of such work.

“On one hand, Wihi is a tool for teachers to supervise thesis processes, but on the other hand, it is a tool helping the thesis-writing students to organize their work in individual level.”
Lindstedt et al. (2021)

Information center about the Edupreneurs project

Posted on October 28, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

In March 2021, Glowdom, in partnership with Eduix and the Namibian Business Innovation Institute (NBII) launched a digital platform for regional strategic partnership called Edupreneurs. The Edupreneurs project was funded by the Southern African Innovation Support Programme 2.

This blog post works as an information center and gathers materials about the Edupreneurs project with the purpose of disseminating our lessons learned.

Building partnership in Ghana for digitalizing thesis work in higher education institutions

Posted on October 13, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

During 25th and 30th September, Eduix and Haaga-Helia went to Ghana to visit and support our pilot projects in two universities: the Ghana Institute of Journalism and the University of Ghana.

Dr. Altti Lagstedt, principal lecturer at the Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, wrote his impressions about the trip at the university blog:

What is remarkable for all these meetings and sessions was the clearly positive attitude towards education digitalization. The information gathered from focus group sessions and interviews show, that there clearly is a readiness for education digital transformation.
Dr. Altti Lagstedt

Such visits and pilots are part of the research project Eduditra, funded by Eduix.

Find out more about his conclusions on the trip in his blog post here.

Eduix supports productive student-teacher research collaborations by digitalizing academic project and thesis processes

Posted on August 3, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

I was lucky in getting the right supervisor for my research

Finding and building a good relationship with the right research supervisor cannot be taken for granted in universities. Since I started my postgraduate studies in Finland, I’ve been constantly confronted with my colleagues’ quest on finding the right supervisor for their studies and research work. When I was accepted to do my Master Degree at the University of Eastern Finland, I wasn’t assigned any supervisor at that moment and I wasn’t assigned with the task of finding one for my Master thesis either. Just a few months after the Master Degree Program started, I was told who would be my supervisor and that was it. Back then, I didn’t question this decision for any moment because the supervisor I was assigned fit very well my research goals and expectations. Also, our previous class experiences gave us a good taste that we would work together as a student-supervisor very well. Since then I’ve had the same supervisor for my PhD studies as well. Later I realized that I was lucky.

Eduix takes corporate and social responsibility seriously

Posted on June 16, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Written by Sirpa Pajula and Laís Leite

Social responsibility encompasses all the company’s and employees’ activities towards people. From the closest co-worker to the farthest partner.
Sirpa Pajula

The foregoing description is the author’s own definition, Eduix’s manager of corporate responsibility. In order for it to “really work” in practice, it requires that a responsible mindset be built into the company’s operating culture.

Closeup of a woman's hands typing on a laptop that is on a wooden desk with a mobile smartphone and mouse computer