What it is about

INTRODUCTION

Learning goals

Digital Business –study module in Laurea is a combination of lectures, individual learning and blogging, group work and company projects. In this module the students will become familiar with today’s digital tools.  The aim is to bring students and working life closer together. Therefore we will have several guest lecturers from different businesses and partner companies included in the program.

Lecturers and mentors

Ilkka Kurkela, Ilkka.kurkela@laurea.fi | 040 661 9851

Mr. Ilkka Kurkela, M.A., eMBA, FRSA, works as a Senior Business Economics Lecturer at Laurea University of Applied Sciences. He is a professional digitalist and popular lecturer with real-life marketing & social media experience from New York, Manhattan.

Ilkka Kurkela has finished his professional teacher education as online education. He has international experience from world’s best ranked business schools such as IMD (Switzerland), Berkeley (USA, California), Ashridge Business School (UK), Columbia University and New York University (USA). He orchestrated the international MIF eMBA Creative Leadership –program as the program director in 2012-2014.

In March 2014 Ilkka Kurkela was awarded Fellowship of the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). RSA is a British organisation committed to finding practical solutions to today’s social challenges. The Society was founded in 1754. Charles Dickens, Adam Smith, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx and Stephen Hawking are some of the notable past and present members. RSA characterises itself as “an enlightenment organisation committed to finding innovative practical solutions to today’s social challenges”.

In his personal life Ilkka Kurkela is a husband and proud dad of a 3-year-old daughter and a profound lover of drum’n’bass music. Please visit at Ilkka Kurkela’s LinkedIn-page for more information.

Anna Ikonen, anna.ikonen@laurea.fi | 040 016 4482

Mrs. Anna Ikonen holds a Master's Degree in Entrepreneurship and Business Administration and she completed both pedagogical and psychological studies. She has taken different teacher courses abroad in schools such as EDHEC Business School in Nice, Warsaw University and University of Cambridge and Oxford.

Anna works as a Senior Lecturer in business management study programme in Laurea.

She has led many international projects with different colleges, companies and organizations such as British Council. She has over 10 years of work experience as an entrepreneur and therefore she has been successfully leading and guiding groups of students doing practical business projects in Laurea.

Anna has had many big event management projects such as Finland's AIESEC National Conference or Youth to Business Forum, where she guided a group of students responsible for organizing the events. Finland Youth to Business event brought together business representatives and students for a close and open dialogue on relevant topics such as entrepreneurial leadership, corporate social responsibility and service design thinking. Another important goal of the forum was the generation of new, actionable ideas and thoughts about the future to both the business and the student community. The basic idea of the forum was to create a space to express youth opinion on key subjects that the world faces today. Anna has been actively participating in organizing events for students and Laurea staff, such as Christmas parties and International week.

Anna Ikonen attended many International teacher exchange programmes where she taught subjects such as communication, cross-cultural skills or social media marketing, to mention a few. She has worked on developing new international projects with other partner universities.  Anna has participated in an International Innovation Lab in Leuven, Belgium with a group of business students who worked with Belgian students on different innovation practical projects for Belgian companies. She has also organized an Entrepreneurship Camp in Nice and with other professors from Business School guided a group of students working on developing new business ideas who then presented their business plans to Business Angels in France.

Social media, digital marketing, communication, cross-culture management, psychology are the areas of her interest.  In her personal life Anna is a mother of two teenagers and she loves dancing and Zumba. 

Please visit Anna Ikonen’s LinkedIn page https://fi.linkedin.com/in/annaikonen1 for more information. 

Studying platforms: Facebook & Google Drive

The formal communication platform for the whole module is in Facebook. Please see all the latest information at the Facebook-page.

The platform to return group tasks is Google Drive.

Students are required to have active accounts on these platforms: Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Selected Blogging platform, and possible other requirements given during the course. After the course is completed and evaluated, students are free to delete the accounts if they wish to do so. However, it is recommended that the accounts are used as learning platforms after the course as well.

Timetable and location

MONDAY & THURSDAY: Lectures starting at 10 AM (usually ends at 14 latest)
MONDAY AFTERNOON, TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY: Group work
FRIDAY & WEEKENDS: individual working, reading, writing blogs

EXCEPTIONS:
- no teaching during 12.10.-18.10. (this work is individual work and reading for exams)
- no teaching on Thursday 3.9., instead Friday 4.9. starting 12.00.

PLACE: Otaniemi, Metsänpojankuja 3, Small/Big Auditorium + meeting rooms for group work

DEADLINES FOR TASKS

WEDNESDAYS by 23.59 – return your Group’s finalized task to Google Drive
SUNDAYS by 23.59 – publish your personal blogposts as individual tasks to your blog

Photographing, videos and social media during the courses

The students are allowed and encouraged to take photos and video during the classes. The teachers and digital coaches will actively take photos and video from the class and these will be used online to enrich the learning experience.

This is a big part of the learning experience in the course and will be a concrete way to learn how to use visual content online on different environments.

Hashtag #DigiSmallTalk is selected as the official hashtag for the study module. Please use it!

Small Talk –video sessions

Each Thursday we will have a “Small Talk” session with some of the students. The idea is to reflect student’s thinking and personal learning experiences. During the session students will record their personal thoughts to camera individually. More info will be given during the lessons.