The workshop was an activity of the Arctic Five Education project where the University of Lapland leads the pilot of a 3-module Arctic Inlusive Education study course. In the workshop, associate professor Gregor Maxwell from UiT The Arctic University of Norway told about the pilot implementation of the module 1 “Educational Challenges in the Arctic – Education for all” (5 ECTS), where Maxwell acted as a coordinating teacher. After his presentation, the workshop continued with discussions about the content, ideas about the technical and pedagogical implementation and teachers and students perspectives. The project group also identified the development needs for implementing the module next year.

After that, Janette Peltokorpi and Päivi Martin from University of Lapland gave a presentation of Service blueprint visualisation of the Arctic Five project. The service blueprint introduced the multidimensional and simultaneous processes of the execution of the administrative and management procedures, taking e.g. faculty processes, academic coordination and student’s path points of views into account.

Finally, there was a conversation regarding the future prospects. The project group agreed that the project has been successful and we have learnt a lot about developing joint study course. It has been an unique experience, as this is a new way of doing shared teaching activities in our universities, and we have solved many nonadministrative and academic questions during the process. All partners are willing to continue the collaboration, and there are several possible future activities to be planned.

The pilot of the second study module of the ‘Arctic Inclusive Education’, titled “Inclusive Education and Pedagogy”, was completed and will be analysed in the next project workshop in May. Teaching in the third study module “Sámi Presence in Educational Settings” (2.5 ECTS) will start tomorrow, on 15 April and will finish in the week 19.

There’s information about the all the 3 modules on our website. The Arctic Five Education project aims to develop a joint Nordic master’s program and the we are enthusiastic about the evolution of the cooperation and new achievements!

Text written by Titta Myllyniemi