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This year, the School of Business summer program, Information Technology Program (ITP), organised for the first time the course Digital Business Master Class. The intense, two-week course focused on understanding and learning how technologies are transforming business and processes. The course covered concepts such as mobile technologies, service design, data analytics and business models, among others. Apart from lectures, the contact teaching period included several company visits also.

The course was attended by 29 students from around the world, who represented nine different universities and 13 different nationalities.

“We are really impressed by how much interest our new course attracted among the students of our foreign partner universities.” The course was also attended by two students from the University of Tel Aviv, whose students had never done exchange at the School of Business before”, says Master Class Project Manager Heini-Maari Kemppainen.

MBA student Noa Cafri was one of the two participants from Tel Aviv University’s Coller School of Management.

“This course was in my university’s list of available summer programs and I received more information from our exchange coordinator. A two-week intensive course like this fit well with my studies and, because I’m also very interested in Finland, it was easy to take the decision to apply for the Digital Business course”, Noa Cafri explained.

Challenge-based learning in focus

Course themes were approached through challenge-based learning. Challenge-based learning took place during the study period, when the students solved challenges posed by the partners. Also a variety of digital collaboration tools were explored during the course, including virtual team work and virtual lecture and presentation environments. In addition, this course experiment piloted higher education as a service export. The aim was to build a scalable concept for future exports built on challenge-based learning.

Course participant, MBA student Adrian Cullen from the University of Queensland, found the course very well organized and challenging.

"Everything on the course was very clear and straightforward, so I knew from the beginning what to expect. I’m also really excited about the flexible and challenging study method.  I’m accustomed to much more traditional methodology, but here one could and had to really give of oneself.“ Just like in Tel Aviv, also at the University of Adrian there was a lot of information available on the summer courses, and he had also heard about the advanced teaching practices in Finland. Both Noa and Adrian also praised the corporate visits, which allowed them to learn not only about technological solutions, but about the Finnish corporate culture as well.

6 ECTS credit were earned during the course. In addition to the two-week contact teaching period, students worked in virtual teams both before and after the face-to-face teaching period. The course was aimed at Master's students at Aalto University School of Business and its partner schools, and the application period for the course was last spring.

Learning Challenge Aalto is one of Aalto University’s four joint strategic development initiatives in the area of teaching and learning. The goal is to help teaching faculty at Aalto University to create and develop scalable educational concepts in the form of courses, which have integrated real life challenges involved. The initiative also aims to improve students’ work life capabilities and employability.

Further information on the course: