Thank you for your participation!

Hello!
Thank you for having participated in this blog! I think it quite unique. You have shared pictures and decsriptions of you different VET practices and it has been very interesting and fun to take part om your communication! I wish you all lovely holidays! Kind regards from Ingrid Henning Loeb

Hello again!
Last week the garden-students also have a lesson in cabbage processing. Our teacher Stewen instruct them how to easy make more maney from a cheap cabbage to a expensive frech sallat. The price could rises about 500 - 700%

Is Friday the 13th an unlucky day?

In my last blog I promised to tell you more about my students learning process.

I am responsible for a group that is studying Sales Management and Marketing. All students are working fulltime, and almost half of the group is working within banking and finance. Then there are entrepreneurs and those who work in retail (food). Their exam is divided in three parts/courses, two mandatory and one optional.

Last summer I started to plan for their optional part/course – marketing. I also chose to practice as VET-teacher within this course.

 I estimated that four days is maximum for the group to attend classroom studies. This mean that their learning process to a large extent should be based on didactic methods suitable for distance/ /blended/digital learning.

To this date I have been teaching and meeting the group for three full days here at Campus Kungsgården in Vasa. I have coached the group in many different ways to support their learning processes since September. I have noticed very positive results and my estimate is that the group has reached about 80 % of the learning goal for this course

This I why I rather describe my students as professionals in the middle of the Ostrobothnian business life, rather than pupils in a classroom. And my role I describe as the facilitator for the learning process.

It´s the first time for both me and YA! to plan and give this course. This mean that I had start from scratch. I`ve had a lot of fun although I spent o lot of hours planning, developing, teaching and coaching.

Last Wednesday morning before my students arrived, I brought coffee and tea from the Campus main building. Not until it was too late I recognised that the teapot was leaking water all over my trousers. My right leg was soaking wet and I had a good story to tell when we started at 09:00 am.

The second picture shows the classroom and me trying to teach how the Deming circle should be used in marketing planning.

I had to edit my blogpost , - These last lines i write on Saturday, when we have heard about the terrible things that has happened i Paris, France. Lets pray for all victims and I wish strenght to everybody that is concerned in any way.

/kim

EnergyVasa in Ostrobothnia

Although the surroundings of our Campus in Vasa is quite rural, we have the leading energy cluster in the Nordic countries bordering to the campus area (More than 140 businesses – 11,000 number of employees). I took the picture driving through on Tuesday.

We (me and my colleagues) established the Leadershipforum (Ledarskapsforum in Swedish) some years ago, and the forum has grown very popular recently. This year we arrange a series of 15 days were we focus on different themes within Leadership. The unique thing this year is that 4 of these days are arranged on site at key companies in the area.

The Leadershipforum visited Wärtsilä on Tuesday. The theme was HR and wellbeing as part of a companys strategy. In the morning we listened to the Wärtsila way of handling this theme. After lunch we had the well-known professor Guy Ahonen participating, and we learned a lot from his research. His visit to Vasa hit the headlines in our local newspaper Vasabladet – link below.

To conclude – my students are all working fulltime, and I`m not meeting them face to face very often. More about their studies and their learning process to come.

http://online.vasabladet.fi/Artikel/Visa/81847

The classroom

Basic principles

I like how the school works with the well-being and respect for each other. For example there are signs on the walls around the school with words or quotes picked from the basic principles. I think it affects you when you see the written words everyday.

The Restaurant and Food program

Above you can see the practice room for the chef students, the bakery and the restaurant kitchen. The last two pictures shows the hall outside the restaurant where the bakery students sells different kinds of pastries every week. It´s almost impossible to pass by without bying anything. Yummi!

Serving

The school has an à la carte restaurant in connection to the lunch restaurant. Here the students learn and practice their skills in serving. The students in the Hotel and Tourism program learn the basics of serving, but it´s the students at the Restaurant and Food program that serves guests in the à la carte restaurant. Both the à la carte and the lunch room is open for the public.