research Archives

Open Science Schooling and the Project: Young Students as Critical Science Detectives

Posted on July 27, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

The current disengagement of science education at school

Students have been constantly reporting cognitive and affective disengagement with science learning (Cowie et al., 2011; Murray et al., 2004) due, among other factors, to a disconnection between school learning activities and young people lived experience.

At the same time, there is an increasing demand for science related professionals in Europe (CEDEFOP, 2016). Such unbalance between industry demand and school supply of youths pursuing scientific careers calls for innovative ways to re-engage students in science learning.

The Open Science Schooling Approach

To tackle the above mentioned issue, a consortium of educators, researchers, and students around Europe have deployed from January 2020 until March 2022 a transnational school project in Greece, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. The project was built upon previous experiences developed through the Open Science Schooling (OSS) approach, in which …

students are active agents at the heart of inquiry-oriented science learning. In the OSS project, students identify and frame the research problems that they are intrigued and interested in tackling, and they lead the discovery of solutions and innovations, helping situate science in every-day life.
Leite & Montero, 2022, p. 5

The Edupreneurs Recommendation Paper is out!

Posted on April 19, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Our goal with this recommendation paper is to share the lessons learned from the project Edupreneurs: Networking and Empowering Education Entrepreneurs Towards a Resilient EdTech Ecosystem. The project was undertaked in Southern Africa, funded by the Southern Africa Innovation Support (SAIS 2) programme.

Technology implementation in your school

Posted on February 11, 2022January 11, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Academic peer reviewing is one of the best ways there is to boost learning: although it is hard sometimes, when you are lucky, you get to read a lot of rich, useful, informative, instructive, mind changing literature that your supervisors and peers failed to recommend for you before. And I’ve been learning so much with the recommendations of one of the reviewers from a manuscript recently submitted.

The reviewer suggested guidelines, models, and plans developed by the pioneers in the field of technology implementation in schools, back in the 1990s. Although the technology has changed in so many levels, their recommendations are still as relevant as before. In addition, it’s a great pleasure to go back in memory when we read references to CD players and digital encyclopedias that people could purchase with CDs and floppy disks. Ah those times…

Meanwhile in Namibia

Posted on March 11, 2020March 14, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

The co-operation project with Haaga-Helia, Eduix Ltd. and Glowdom has progressed to first concrete pilot tests.

During February, Altti Lagstedt had a very busy time in Namibia, together with Sebulon David of Glowdom. They met interesting groups, refined the Ahaa ecosystem model and planned the pilot tests of both Formjack and Wihi products with education representatives. They also attended the Python conference “PyCon Namibia 2020”, where Altti was a keynote speaker and Sebulon had a “light talk” presentation.

Read Sebulon’s blog post on Ahaa! blog.

Photo by Mickael Tournier on Unsplash

Greetings from Mindtrek

Posted on February 27, 2020September 8, 2022 by Altti Lagstedt

I held a presentation at the Smart City Mindtrek, where I talked about “Digitalizing teaching and learning processes in emerging markets”. There I discussed our innovative expert-oriented approach to develop meaningful information systems.

An exciting cooperation agreement

Posted on February 26, 2020March 14, 2023 by Altti Lagstedt

On the 17th of January 2020, Eduix Ltd. and Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences (UAS) started a very special cooperation. From the Eduix-business point of view, partnering with a research institution is a new approach towards software development. From the Haaga-Helia higher education point of view, this cooperation opens new possibilities to conduct economically effective research.

This kind of privately funded research concept with clear business objectives is not typical among Finnish universities. As a result, the cooperation concept itself has aroused interest and eagerness from observers, potential partners, and clients.

The main target of this innovative partnership is quite exciting: finding sustainable ways to digitize education processes in emerging markets. Such an ambitious target aims at addressing two main challenges.

Haaga-Helia and Eduix commission research on the digitalization of education processes

Posted on February 7, 2020March 14, 2023 by Lais Oliveira Leite

Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences and Eduix have started a two-year partnership regarding a commissioned study that aims to develop new ways to digitize education. Read more about the project on Haaga-Helia’s website.