Learning business competence online – Aalto involved in cooperation between universities

Aalto University is involved in the joint online study module in basic business studies (LITO) between ten Finnish universities. The study package offers students an overall picture of business operations, supports entrepreneurs and develops working life skills. The education is targeted to other than business students. The studies are implemented in collaboration between universities fully online in the https://www.lito.fi environment.

The study package will be launched on 2 October 2017, when the first study module, the basics of management and organisations, begins. From that day on, new courses will start at the beginning of almost every month. The registration for the training is currently under way. In the pilot academic year 2017‒2018, a maximum of 30 students can enrol on each course per university. In the future, the number of students that can be admitted to each module will multiply.

An enthusiastic and competent group of 20 teachers involved

The study package offers university students a total of eight 5-credit study modules in various fields of business studies. The students can choose the modules freely and combine them into a package that best suits their own competence needs.

In most of the modules, the responsibility for teaching has been divided between various universities. There are 20 teachers involved in implementing the LITO courses.

‘In Finnish university education, cooperation models in this scale have not existed before. All Finnish business schools have joined their forces, and we share the responsibility for the various parts of the study package. By doing this together, we are capable of offering study modules to larger quantities of students better than we were before in network-based entities,’ says Taina Eriksson from Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, who serves as training manager for the LITO project.

The Ministry of Education and Culture has granted funding amounting to approximately one million euros for the online study module coordinated by the University of Turku for 2017–2019 as part of the Finnish Government's knowledge and education key project no. 3. The planning of the digital study module began at the initiative of the Association of Business Schools Finland (ABS) at the beginning of 2016 with the support of the KAUTE Foundation. The Finnish Business School Graduates has also been supporting the project from the very beginning.

Further information:
Markus Granlund, Chairman of ABS and Dean, Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, markus.granlund@utu.fi, tel. +358 50 411 8588
Taina Eriksson, Training Manager, Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku, taina.eriksson@utu.fi, tel. +358 40 728 6196