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

The spring semester digital business course (official module name Business in a Digital Environment) has come to an end again. This was the 4th time the course was offered for business students at Laurea, Otaniemi campus. This time was however a bit different. Why?

To make a long story short, I'll just say - one teacher in charge of the whole module, over 50 students (including 12 exchange students) and 12 digital coaches. More about the beginning of the course I wrote in other post "Behind the scenes. What does it mean to lead a study module?"

This module included a lot of lectures, over 20 guest speakers, different workshops, projects, company visits and a two day E-commerce event in Messukeskus (Helsinki Fair Trade Center).

In order to be successful and creative in today's world you have to be ready to move out of your comfort zone. This is what we all practiced during the course. At the beginning students were quite reluctant to use English language, write a blog and speak in front of the class and or make a video, but after some time they did all those very naturally. Their presentation, language and digital skills developed a lot during the course.

This time the students didn't have a course exam. Their final "test" was a presentation for the SSM (Suomen Suoramainonta) they have done the biggest project for at the company premises in Helsinki. I think it was a big success. Both the company representatives and the students gave very positive feedback. The students had a feeling their work was meaningful and the company got new ideas on how to develop their social media strategy.

During 14 weeks of the course the students wrote blog-posts about what they learnt during every week. Each week one student was awarded a title of "Blog of the week" which was published in our course Facebook group.

Here's the list of some blogs:

• http://mansikka-maria.wixsite.com/digital-business/single-post/2017/02/19/Brand-yourself
• http://tiirabytes.blogspot.fi/
• http://anizamohamed7.wixsite.com/digitallyactive

Here are examples of nice feedback from the students. I will not publish less positive ones, obviously. ;-) Seriously, good feedback from the students is the best award for a hard work. This is why I love my job so much. It's challenging but so rewarding at the same time.

This course wouldn't be such a success without wonderful digital coaches (senior students who completed the course last year), who assisted me in this course. They had a very big part in course planning, guiding the students, reading the blogs and giving feedback to the course students. There were 8 groups of 5-7 students in a group and coaches kept a role of leaders and "my right hand".

Digi-coaches also wrote their blogs about their learnings.

For example Janne Tukkinen wrote in his blog "Do we need this course and digicoaches? My answer is absolutely YES! The course itself is very important because you will learn lots of digital skills which you will need and use in business life. Furthermore, you get acquainted with in real business life for example you get lots of opportunities to network with other people who can in the best case scenario take you to places which you can dream of. Nobody knows where just one conversation could take you. Students will also get perspective of real business, for example by visiting companies and taking part in all kinds of events and projects. This course needs Digi-coaches to assist to teacher and guest speakers. The workload of this course for me was over 400 hours of work. I was keeping a diary the whole course and I marked my working hours during the course which helped me to realize how much work this course offers for digi-coaches.  As a digi-coach I have seen this course in totally different perspective. First time I took part in this course as a student but now as a digi-coach. It’s been an excellent experience! I haven’t regretted my decision even once when I accepted the challenge to become a digi-coach. These last few weeks have flown so fast that I have lost track of them. Both my learning process and wisdoms of coaching have increased enormously during this awesome journey. The course was both fascinating and up-to-date to me because I need these skills in the future when I am working in business world.

In my opinion, this course is an unique diamond. Without taking part in this course, I wouldn’t be able to do a few things. First of all, I couldn’t both write and speak better English than I could at the moment. Secondly, I couldn’t know how to network in different kind of events. Thirdly, I couldn’t know the meaning of certain concepts such as SEO, SEM, Digital Tools and so on. Lastly, I couldn’t understand the importance of culture differences considering working life. We get more information in this course than from the projects such as Vitamins and Cheese projects. Students want to hear about new theories and not about the same theories such as SWOT, PESTLE and so on.

Business in Digital Environment is the best course that I have taken part in Laurea. The course should remain mandatory! Students learn more when they notice that studying is fun and interesting. I hope this course will exist many more years to come and I hope that this course offers many vital skills to students for the rest of their lives! I hope they will experience the same feeling that I had when I participated in this course." (Here's a link to Janne's blog, I strongly recommend to read it all).

Behind the scenes. What does it mean to lead a study module?

Have you ever wonder what a lecturer's work really looks like? 

My story began 2 years ago when I was introduced to my new colleague Ilkka Kurkela who was recruited to Laurea as a digital guru. :) 

Together with Ilkka we created a brand new Digital Business –study module (30 cr) from scratch. I still remember the days where we used a lot of post-in notes and drawings about the topics we should teach in the course. 

Believe me it wasn't an easy task but it felt so great to have an opportunity to create something new. I always liked challenges where I could use my skills and creativity. We at Laurea are the lucky people who have quite much freedom to do things the way we want as long as we keep the quality of teaching and meet objectives we promise in our curriculum. 

Our courses involved lecturers, workshops, projects with real companies and a lot of guest speakers. I had a feeling we are creating a big picture out of hundreds small pieces of puzzle. Every single piece has to be in place. The details are very important as each piece carries its own impact on the whole of the puzzle. Every piece must be in the right place in order to see the big picture. It was the most difficult yet the most amazing part of the job to get all the pieces where they belong so that the big picture can be revealed to everyone. I was so proud of the result. We made something new! :)

And the course started, some students were very enthusiastic, some very critic. Sometimes I felt hurt when I thought about the hours spent on planning the whole course. If they only knew how much effort it takes to get the whole picture ready with all those small pieces of puzzle. Every time we got a nice feedback from the students or the visitors I was happy. Positive words about my work motivates me the most. This way I feel appreciated and I want to get better and better so I can receive more positive feedback. 

After two years in Laurea my wonderful colleague Ilkka got opportunity to develop himself further and his career path led him to other university. I was really proud of him but at the same time very sad I would not work with him any longer. I am however very grateful for what he taught me while working with me. Even though at first it felt I would not manage myself I got super power from other colleagues, my boss, and the students who believed in me. 

The best part of the study module is working with senior students who act as digital coaches. Their task is to assist me in all possible way. This time I have 11 amazing coaches who are very committed to the success of the course. Together we are leading 8 groups of students who are doing practical projects for different companies. The biggest project is being done for Suomen Suoramainonta Oy where students are working on digital marketing strategy for the company.

Behind the scenes 

Being honest with you, planning a new study module on my own has been the biggest challenge in my whole career. Even starting a new degree programme in English in Otaniemi by myself didn't feel that hard. I don't know why. Maybe because I was informed about Ilkka's new job only one week before Christmas holiday and I knew the new course starts in January and nothing was planned yet. I had an empty piece of paper, 14 weeks, 2 times a week, 4 hours per lesson meaning 112 hours with a group of over 50 students (including new international students coming to Finland) to be planned. My first reaction was - PANIC! What should I do? How can I manage to plan the whole module in about 2 weeks when people leave for their Christmas holidays and nobody is answering their emails?! Even my digi-coaches didn't seem to understand what the situation was really like at that moment. I was terrified! Empty paper and no help. That's how it felt then. I don't need to say I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep, and couldn’t enjoy the Christmas time. I could only think about work and all undone tasks.  And then little by little I started to plan what I could do myself. I made everything I could: divided the students in 8 project groups, created Facebook group for the course, updated Facebook page I created earlier, started discussion with digital coaches and planned the main project and tasks for the students. Little by little I started to see the bigger picture, very blurred picture, but still something I was satisfied with. That's how I survived the Christmas time. :)

Now the course is going on and I'm positive it will be a success. Together with coaches we are working hard and only we know how many times we had to "put out a fire". For example last Sunday at 21:30 I got a message from my colleague who booked a guest speaker for us that the person would not come on the next day. What can you do in this situation? Either cancel the lecture or think of plan B. I never cancel my classes so I chose plan B and started to prepare the lecture of my own. Sunday night. On Monday quite tired but very glad I managed the situation I pretended everything was as it was planned. The biggest award is to see happy faces of my students who have no idea about what's going on behind the scenes. As I often say, being a professional teacher requires skills of an actor too. You simply have to go on stage whatever the situation may be, put a good attitude in it, and believe that you can succeed.

One of the tasks in the course is writing a blog. Each student is required to write a blog-post about our classes every week. The biggest award of my work is to read positive feedback from the students. Nothing makes me happier than nice words about my lectures or my work as a teacher. It means the world to me.

The course began on 16.1 and will end on 20.4 and I can only hope there will be no more "fires", I'm a teacher not a fire-fighter after all. :) 

Last but not least, now when I wrote a blog-post by myself I appreciate blogs of my students even more. Blogging is not an easy task if you are not a natural writer. Only those who tried themselves know the feeling. It also applies to making videos. It may just look easy, but making or rather editing a 2 minute video can take many hours or even days. Don't get me wrong I don't complain as I really love what I do. Being a teacher, mentor, guide, call me as you wish, is the best thing in my professional life.

If you are interested in our Business in a Digital Environment study module visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/digitalbusinesslaurea/

https://fi.linkedin.com/in/annaikonen1

This blogpost can also be found in LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/behind-scenes-what-does-mean-lead-study-module-anna-ikonen?trk=prof-post