Students stand at the core of learning environment development at UEF. We are creating the best academic learning environment in Finland, one that is built around a high standard of education, inspirational teaching methods, open learning, comfortable facility solutions and modern technology. A team in online and blended learning pedagogy works to strengthen teachers’ digital skills and supports students’ wishes for studying flexibly, irrespective of place.
News about education and learning environments
Comfortable facilities
Our campuses in Joensuu and Kuopio are compact, with all the lecture rooms, facilities for independent study, and campus restaurants conveniently nearby. This makes it effortless for our students to move about on campus.
Our renovation projects are carried out with modifiability in mind, and our campus facilities are equipped with ergonomic and easily movable pieces of furniture. Our simulation rooms offer realistic settings for our students to practice the skills they need in their future professions. The newly renovated lobbies and corridors of our campus buildings offer opportunities for independent study, or simply for hanging out with fellow students.
Interaction between students and staff is smooth and characterised by a low hierarchy, and the university’s student associations collaborate across discipline boundaries.
Flexible studying
We are constantly developing flexible modes of study, open learning, and diverse opportunities for completing courses. We encourage open learning through openly accessible online courses, the Open University and other openly accessible learning materials. You can learn about our academic offering for example by completing one of our freely available Massive Open Online Courses, MOOCs.
We use the Flipped Classroom approach in our teaching. Flipped Classroom refers to inverted instruction: before coming to class, students familiarise themselves with the subject matter with the help of videos or other materials, and the actual class time is devoted to students’ insightful and challenging questions. This way, the focus is shifted from teacher-centred teaching employed on mass lectures to student-centred learning.
Online and blended learning pedagogy
What is high-quality online teaching like? What kind of pedagogical and technical skills are needed, and how should they be combined?
New and flexible modes of teaching and studying also require new kind of skills and expertise. We work together to develop our digital skills and to find new modes of teaching and student counselling that support learning and are interactive.
The University of Eastern Finland invests in online and blended learning pedagogy by appointing five experienced teacher to serve in the role of a Facilitator.
New technologies for learning
We are creating and developing a culture of technology that enables seamless collaboration between students’ own devices and the university’s technological solutions. The university's very own Team Ameba is tasked with brainstorming, developing and testing the best technological solutions for education.
Our Multilocation Classrooms (MLCs) enable a completely new type of distance teaching and learning between our campuses. Our Sm4rtLab, on the other hand, brings together science and education through augmented reality labs that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. These labs are used in, e.g., the fields of photonics and biology.
