eduaction in finnish

-In Finnish education there are 4 important bases: quality, equality, efficiency, internationalization.

Prosperity, competitiveness, security are the result of good education.-

-The hard things to change is culture. How can I try to change my counter's culture to be like Finnish education.

Some skills that I have learnt in this program , collaboration, Team group work, personalization, flexibility of change.

Human being   have  learnt  from childhood until  the death.

The great mouthed that I have learnt is  as " guidance"

There are a lot of things  we have to do them to get what the Finnish has gotten. For instance,  there are mismatch between job and training. Also, we have missed dialog, good curriculum, and good education system.   We have to set and draw  the road map to our education. I hope that we can bring some a new ideas to be apply there.  

First Shadowing

First Session Shadowing

Introduction:

        We visited Metropolia University of Applied Science in an electrical course at noon in the 17th of April 2012. The members of our group are Othman Fallatah, Khalid Alfaris and I Nawaf Almzaini, Othman Amin.   Then we went to classroom where the session was held. We didn't have enough time to meet the teacher before the session started because he came five minutes late. It was a computer based electrical engineering lab. Unfortunately, the subject for this class was project, so, there weren’t regular lecture.That means, the attend for the students weren’t obligatory. The teacher started directly with explaining some electrical designing code. He wasn’t introduction in the beginning of the session. The outcomes of the subject were unclear to our group the beginning since it wasn't clear to us what the lesson is. We tried to figure everything out, but there was only some explanation for a code of an electrical design about 35 minutes. After that, he finished and asked the students to complete their work. So it seemed to us in the beginning that the session was typically a social.

     In fact, the lab is well organized and has almost all the technological and learning materials the teacher and students may need.

      After having enough time discussing the session's documentation with the professor, I noticed that he prepared well for the course in general. One of the things I liked about it is the grading system he used to evaluate each student.

      The students have a project to accomplish by the end of the semester. They work as group of four students. There will be a grade of 40 for the group when they finish. So each student will have a grade of 10 if they get the full mark. But if one of them doesn't work or help the group at all they have to tell the professor before the grading takes place, so they would not lose the grade of the fourth member. But instead the full grade would by divided by three.

     I want to add important notes. We surprised when we see lady that translated to special needs.    

   In general I have enjoyed the shadowing session and I think  it’s not far from what we are doing in my home.

Third Shadowing

  Monday, April 23, 2012

Third Shadowing Session

      First of all, we met the instructor of the" Data Structure and Algorithms "course Dr. Jarkko about 15 minutes before the lecture started. The session started at 10:00 am in Metropolia university. The professor was very cooperative and well prepared. He provided us with useful handouts explaining the course outline in general, the first lecture slides, and this lecture slides. Also he provided us with a handout of the advanced course of course he is teaching.

   As understood from the professor and the handouts, the course consists of theory lectures and lab. Because the method of learning  in this class was in one way, the methodology that was used in this class is behaviorism. The professor had to do all of the work of teaching, preparing, and explaining to the students. I  noticed that no any kind of interaction between the professor and the students.

    What I  was wondering for me and it have never seen in my life is no one from the students were following their teacher, and most of them play games or puzzle. Also, I noted that no books or notebooks or papers were in their disks.  Maybe the reason behind this is the attendance is not a must for the lecture part, but it is for the lab section.

A student has to finish all the labs and to take a final exam in the period of exam time which is at the end of the semester. The handouts are available to them through the university system.

Finally, in  my opinion, I think there are a gap between the theories of teaching, and the real work, is it right?

Fourth Shadowing

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Fourth Shadowing Session

      We met Mr. Timo Salin- the instructor of the course- before class starting. The  session started at 10:00. The course is called "Introduction to calculus". He  was very friendly and has welcomed us and introduced us to the class. He started the class explaining to us the structure of the course and the grade systematic. The text book that the professor has been teaching is showed below.

      The professor prepared and provided a good introduction. He started explaining the today's lesson by relating it to a previous one.

As my colleague Nawaf  wrote"  The first half the lecture was a normal behavioral learning method. The professor explained the lesson and the students were just taking notes". I agree with my colleague . however, I disagree with him when he wrote "  But the second part of the lecture changed somehow to a social interacting method when the professor passed out an exercise hand out to the students to solve. Then he solved it on the board with some explanation, and after that moved to the next part of the lecture".  I think, the name of method that the professor used was constructivist ( this what I disagree with my colleague).

In my opinion, this class was the best class that I have attended in the shadowing.

Fifth Shadowing

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Fifth Shadowing Session

        The session started at 8:00 Am. It was the earliest class  that I have attend since I got here. First, we had a little meeting with Professor Timo Leinonen, the lecturer of the class. He was very nice and funny. The class that  we attended is called an ENG. Electronics lab.. He started introducing to us the course structure and passed out to us some handouts. The course consists of 6 lab experiments and a final exam. After each lab experiment there is a tutorial class to explain the experiment as the session that we attended. What was wandering us is the professor asked each  student came late to class about  the reason of being late in a funny way.

           I think the class is a mixed of different learning theories. One of the methods followed in this course is behavioral method. He explains and simplifies issues and matters. Then, the students have been examined. As we attended in  the tutorial session that was substituted with the lab, the teacher  gave us the method that he uses in the lab. The students interact with each other where the professor has only a role of an assistant when they do their experiments in the lab section of the course. So, in this cases  the teacher  may be considered to be a social gathering where students learn by working as groups a partially absence of the professor.

Finally, as my colleague Nawaf wrote" When we finished shadowing the lecture, we went with the professor to the teaching faculty lounge to have some coffee and discuss more issues regarding learning methodology. There we many professors sitting there having a short break. We talked about who and how curriculum may be chosen and designed. One of the interesting things the professor told us was that once a while the department professors and director meet in the sauna and have an informal discussion. Then when they meet in the department they discuss those issues again in a formal meeting. It sounded funny when he told us that, but I think it is kind of an ice breaking in the way of managing the department and working as close as it could be in the sauna. I really liked today's shadowing since I have added something new to my experience."

Team Academy

 

Ohhhhhhhhh, what should I say, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for give me this opportunity to visit the " Team Academy model at University of Applied Sciences". It was very exciting  when I see this kind of university. There are 215 students and just 6 coaches in it, do you believe it?. All teams work as independent companies. Each team has to do real life projects which they cover all the expenses of company. Dialogue and reading are the tools that teams use to share knowledge. As the policy of this kind of university, no students ,no classroom, no teaching, no teacher, no simulation, no control. However, there are entrepreneurs, open plan office, learning, coaches, real life business, self-organizing. This idea has been established in 1993 in Finland. Now, there are7 counters have the same this university. I hope, my country will open Team Academy as fast as possible to help the people who like this kind of study.      



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