Today the focus of our visit was on the Student Counselling, Open Science and Research and Information Literacy and eResources. Many aspects of these services closely relate to the services provided by Staffordshire University.
Library and Information Services and Student Counselling Services are based in Higher Education Services, along with International Services, Study Services, Communication Services, Administration and Event Services and Sports Services. Digitisation of Education, the Finnish Online University of Applied Sciences and Vocational Training are based in Development and Quality Management.
The first service we met in our schedule was Student Counselling. Student Counselling provides signposting to online and face-to-face resources and support for students for the duration of their studies, rather than the provision of academic skills, which we thought was initially the purpose of this service. Students' relationship with counselling begins before they start their course, where they are directed to online information providing overviews of course content and how they will study. Student engagement with the service carries on through induction to the completion of the course, and links with student and teacher tutors. Academic skills development is integrated in the curriculum in the first year. Students with disabilities have learning plans similar to Staffordshire's Learning Support Agreements, these plans provide up to 20 hrs of extra help during every academic year.
The second half of the day focused Library and Information Services. Firstly Open Science and Research , where we were given an overview of Finland's strategic approach to encouraging open access publishing. Finland is endeavouring to articulate the benefits of engaging in an Open Culture and each year a questionnaire is circulate to institutions to feedback on their open access activities. The responses are used to situate Universities on the nation's open access hierarchy. The framework and open science activities can be found on Finland's Open Science and Research web site http://openscience.fi. This useful overview of Finland's approach to open access and the challenges of engagement reflects much of the work being undertaken internationally including that at Staffordshire, I said I would send our workflows and links to the guidance and support we are developing.
In the afternoon we met with TAMK Information Specialists responsible for information literacy and electronic resource access and discovery. Again the similarities between services provided at Staffordshire and those at TAMK were apparent, there is definitely a common professional practice language. The University offers up to 6hrs of information literacy workshops a year, for each level, for which uptake varies from subject to subject, nursing courses make the most use of this, which includes development in systematic review skills. The library is working towards improving electronic access to resources, although there are fewer ebooks in Finnish TAMK provides English ebooks and also makes use of open access publications. Details of their services can be found at http://www.tamk.fi/en/web/lib/home. Colleagues at TAMK were particularly interested in our Assigment Survival Kit and our online guides.
The day was concluded with a visit to the Amuri Museum of Workers Houses in Tampere. Blocks of wooden houses which, like the terraced house in Stoke-on-Trent, were built for factory workers. Eventually, again like many of our terraced houses, theser were replaced by newer homes, in Tampere these new homes were low rise apartment buildings. An apt conclusion to a day of sharing more common experiences with our colleagues at TAMK.
