A Leap Towards Solar Energy

There is a growing interest in solar energy in Finland. The systems are becoming more common and it is easier to get the information. As a result, the threshold of producing your own energy has become lower.

Households have become more interested in solar energy systems due to the considerable decline of solar energy system prices during the past few years. In addition, several people think that it is important to increase the use of renewable energy forms in order to reduce the impact of climate change.

SOLARLEAP Satakunta is a joint project of SAMK and vocational education institute WinNova which started at the beginning of the year and will continue until end of 2016. The aim is to remove barriers from using solar energy. These include, e.g. the small amount of companies in the business, shortage of experts and the complexity of permission and agreement practices.

The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Synergy is provided by SOLARLEAP Varsinais-Suomi project, which is a similar project going on in the neighboring region Varsinais-Suomi in co-operation of Turku University of Applied Sciences and Vocational Institute of Turku.

Over 130 households signed up for SOLARLEAP Satakunta pilot survey. In this survey the possibilities for these households to utilize solar energy are mapped. Ten households are selected as pilot sites. These households purchase with the help of SAMK’s students a solar energy system, which is installed by WinNova’s students in the project.

Solar energy system performances of these pilot sites will be monitored during the following five years providing concrete follow-up information open for the public. This helps all interested people to see how solar energy systems work in ordinary Finnish residential houses.

Training for entrepreneurship

In order to make use of the demand for solar energy by the households the companies need to develop their services. The staff of SOLARLEAP Satakunta arranged solar training for project partner companies. Some of these companies are already working in the field and other aim for the solar energy markets along with the project.

The purpose of this training was to provide them with the basic information of solar energy technologies, marketing and system design. The aim was to promote the competitiveness of the companies and to improve the processes inside the companies. The training also had participants from the municipal construction authorities.

New competences through practical project learning

Students are involved in designing and installing the solar energy systems in the pilot sites. As a result, new competent professionals are trained to the field.

During the summer 2015 SAMK’s students together with the SAMK project engineers carried out operation where solar energy utilization possibilities were mapped for each household signed for the pilot survey.

During autumn 2015 and spring 2016 SAMK students will plan a solar energy system for the selected households. Students are in charge of the overall process from design and of acquisition of the solar energy system to installation and commissioning.

Text: Meri Olenius & Teemu Heikkinen
The writers are project engineer and project manager of the project. Cover photo by Katri Väkiparta: A part of the SAMK Solar Energy Lab.

More information on www.solarforum.fi
Teemu Heikkinen, project manager, teemu.heikkinen(a)samk.fi

Adapted physical activity: Ready – set – go!

SAMK physiotherapy students have a variety of fascinating ideas in promoting physical activity among their future clients – whether they start to work in the field of rehabilitation, recreation or education.

Students collect ideas from various courses during the studies. Particularly, first part of the course in adapted physical activity (APA) focuses on modifications of various sports.

Introduction

The course is implemented in four phases. During the introduction the lecturer focuses on marketing interesting tasks for the students. The task selection is based on student’s interests. In the planning phase the individual students or a group of students familiarize themselves with the game of boccia, wheelchair rugby, wheelchair dancing, goalball for persons with visual impairment, multi competition for persons with physical impairment, or bowling. Information is acquired through a variety of means: through internet searches, watching You Tube links, through contacts with athletes or sports organizations.

Planning continues with thorough analyses of best didactic principles, of the modifications in the use of equipment and safety considerations. From what kind of a physical activity session will the classmates get the ideas and learn in the most motivating and effective way?

The final implementation phase is carried out through teaching practices. In the sessions, the students have the possibility to try out various techniques in throwing the boccia ball and the bowling ball – even with ramps and other assistive devices. They use simulating lenses when bowling, as well as balls with handles.

 

Boccia

Boccia

Bowling

Bowling

 

Nothing beats wheelchair rugby, which has also been called ”Murder Ball”. Interestingly, it was developed for persons with severe physical problems. Instruction requires good skills in the content of the game, but also organizing skills, skills in time management, and safety concerns as well as motivational skills. It works well – with Iron Maiden & The Trooper adding adrenalin to the players’ bodies. Young and fit SAMK students join the evaluation discussions with red faces and arms burning with lactic acid. Rugby seems to be an exhausting exercise even for them.

Rugby

Evaluation is carried out in a natural and positive atmosphere. Thoughts are exchanged in group discussions between students and the teacher. The teacher gives her feedback based on long experience. However, the students with experience of participation in the session share their precious ideas as well.

Students have appreciated the course highly, demonstrated by very good official course feedback. The mean for feedback has sometimes nearly reached the maximum.

Evaluation: Group discussions

Good learning results will evidently be implemented in the working life after graduation. However, there are many options for further use of ideas even during the studies. Final phase of APA studies include small-scale practical projects with clients. Moreover, during clinical training – often abroad – students can use their creative ideas in APA. Students in the English Degree Programme organized a dance course for the clients with severe learning and physical disabilities in Ojantie stimulation unit in Pori.

Last year, two students took the idea of multi competition to the Spanish Rehabilitation Centre for persons with severe disabilities. Finnish material was translated to Spanish. This semester two students – one Finnish female student and one male from Israel – are planning to do the same idea in Tel Aviv. Translation will be even easier because of the Israeli student. Ideas from SAMK will turn to reality worldwide with students.

Furthermore, international exchange students have actively participated in the course. SAMK education seems to be one of the frontrunners in the field of APA in Europe. This is how one of the exchange students expressed her experience in APA: ”I discovered a New World – and that is what I wanted!”

Text: Tarja Javanainen-Levonen, Head of Well-being and health through physical activity -research group & Toni Mujunen, physiotherapy student

Photos: Eero Hammais & Tarja Javanainen-Levonen

 

A firm touch not a light stroke: The student wants to be noticed

Marja Flinck was voted as the best teacher by the students in 2014.

Flinck teaches clinical psychology and substance abuse work in the Degree Programme in Nursing. She also supervises the students’ Bachelor’s theses. She makes things in a way which some consider old-fashioned: “I call the students by name in every class. I think it is important to be called by the name.”

“I have a motto: the best thing you can do to another person is to tell them, what they mean. The students feel that I respect them and they are important. In addition, I enjoy my work. The students develop their professional identity by growing into it. You can’t just teach it, but you have to learn it in the same way you grow into parenthood.

Flinck encourages students to use their own self as a measure to see whether the things are as they are claimed to be. According to Flinck theory has no meaning, if the student can’t understand it and use it. When the students use their own self as a measure, they also develop empathy and understanding which is wider than their own experiences.

At the moment, Flick mainly supervises Bachelor’s theses. She says that it is great to see, when a student surpasses the threshold to creativity and invents something new. She also has a support group for those students whose thesis has been delayed for some reason.  This means a lot of positive feedback and dividing the work into small pieces.  Flinck says: “I ask them, for example, to write the introduction first and send it to me, when they have completed it.  This can be the beginning for some students and then they can move forward. Next I can ask them to write three sentences about the topic of the thesis and so on. “

The research problem is usually constructed in a group. The students guide each other and Flinck helps them. When the students present their thesis to the group, the students give big applause to each other and say: “I should have done this earlier.”

Photo: Veera Korhonen

Original article in Finnish by Anne Sankari,  translation by Tuija Huokkola.

Erja Kuurila – doctoral dissertation in career counselling

SAMK’s Quality Manager Erja Kuurila’s doctoral dissertation was examined on 29 August 2014 in University of Turku. According to Kuurila effective career counselling would reduce interruption of studies at universities of applied sciences. The students start their studies with different abilities for career planning. In order to better target career counselling, the counsellor should identify the insecure career planners already at the beginning of the studies.

“Students who have selected their field of studies accidentally should not be regarded as potential interrupters of studies. On the contrary, young people should be trained in detecting the opportunities for different choices which appear accidentally and to provide them with skills which they can use to benefit from these opportunities,” Kuurila concludes.

Kuurila’s dissertation Career planning and counselling at a university of applied sciences, abstract in English

Photo: Veera Korhonen

SAMK in figures

SAMK in figures: new students and exchange students

SAMK has

– over 1200 new Bachelor’s degree students in autumn 2014.
– 89 new Master’s degree students
– 41 international degree students in the Degree Programme in Business Administration in Rauma and 8 in the Degree Programme in Physiotherapy.
– 80 exchange students in Tiilimäki, Tiedepuisto and Kanali campuses in the autumn.

Engineering students’ sauna trailer will be presented at SuomiAreena

– It is wonderful to craft something at last!

Both Ilkka Ala-Luopa and Harry Vuorinen, who are Mechanical and Production Engineering students, agree with this statement. In their opinion learning by doing is so important that it is worth spending their free time in this kind of projects.

They are now concentrating on making a sauna trailer for a national discussion event which takes place in Pori in July. Last year the students presented an electric car, so the tradition goes on. The sauna trailer really is a trailer with a sauna, which is attached to a car. However, the plan is that in the future it could move independently and it would be steered by a mobile phone.

The trailer is made from a caravan from the 1970’s and it has a colourful life behind it. Therefore, it will take a long time and many phases before a sauna stove will hiss and sizzle in the trailer. The Finns love saunas and they are always interested in all kinds of saunas.

In spring 2014 the Mechanical Engineering students have renovated the frame and made shafts for the trailer. The old interior decoration was demolished completely and the frame was built again with all necessary facilities for a sauna. The students from Automation Engineering will be involved, when it is time to build the remote control system.

“In the future, the students can use the trailer freely. However, before that we will travel around Finland”, Ilkka Ala-Luopa says.

 

Photo: Engineering students Ilkka Ala-Luopa, Harry Vuorinen and Jaakko Nieminen are excited about the cooperation in building a sauna trailer. Photo by Hanna Valtokivi.

SAMK in figures

The third best! This place was achieved by SAMK, when the students who graduated last year, evaluated the expertise and quality in their own institution. The survey was answered by 97 per cent of the graduates from SAMK.

In 2013, as many as 1053 degrees were completed at SAMK

A record number of 82 of them were Master’s degrees.

Soteekki: a student-centered perspective on well-being services

“Students working in a multidisciplinary team, planning, implementing and evaluating on various health projects, like the firemen training: that’s Soteekki!” says Toni, physiotherapy student. Soteekki is indeed an innovative educational facility within Satakunta University of Applied Sciences.

Soteekki aims to produce and supply student guided services that support and promote overall well-being within the Satakunta area. Target clients are public and private organizations, as well as third sector services and private individuals.

Since April 2008, when it started, more than 350 students every year join Soteekki as part of their required studies. Thanks to this partnership, SAMK can provide them with a reliable clinical practice and an adequate professional and personal growth. In particular, international and exchange students find a remarkable environment where they can work and familiarize with a new approach to their fields of study.

Students of the faculties of Health and Welfare are able to develop a wide range of skills that will be useful in their future career in the world of rehabilitation, health and social care. Furthermore, Soteekki can be suitable also for other degree program students giving them the possibility to take part in the marketing, product management and service divisions of the organization.

Ordinary tasks are group activities, home visits and evaluation of physical working order and practicing. Moreover, Soteekki promotes the entrepreneurship in the region helping students developing their skills in management and supporting them in creation of new companies during their studies.

“You have a lot of freedom in choosing your tasks and the way to fulfill them. But you always know that you can rely on teachers and colleagues: teamwork is a crucial feature of Soteekki. And that’s great!”, states Marina, exchange student from Italy. Soteekki has its’ headquarter both in Tiilimäki campus (Pori) and in Kanali Campus (Rauma).

Text: Alberto Lanzanova, intern from Italy
Photo: Katri Väkiparta, SAMK Communications

To contact Soteekki please use the e-mail addresses: for Soteekki Pori: soteekki.pori(at)samk.fi or Soteekki Rauma: soteekki.rauma(at) samk.fi.

Unique learning lab for mobile networks used in educating experts

Are you interested in learning mobile network technology? SAMK has got a unique New Generation Networks (NGN) laboratory. It is a learning environment for mobile networks and networks based on IP protocol. The laboratory has been created by SAMK in deep collaboration with vendors and teleoperators during the last 15 years.  At the moment, the core of the NGN laboratory consists of 3G technology, precisely as in the commercial networks of teleoperators.

The laboratory is a learning environment for the students at SAMK as well as for students abroad, and of course also for students coming to SAMK as exchange students and interns, the latest examples being Zsombor Feher from Óbuda University, Budapest,  and Zagroz Aziz, who studies in Czech Technical University in Prague.

Zsombor Feher came to SAMK for the autumn semester 2013 as Erasmus exchange student.
– I came here, because I wanted to study something new, not because I was interested in Finland. I began to like the country after I came here, says Zsombor Feher.

Both Zsombor himself and his faculty wanted to prolong his stay in Pori for spring as intern in the NGN lab. He has been refreshing the connection between a remote site GSM network base station (”antenna station”) in Budapest, and the NGN laboratory core network. The connection was originally constructed by another intern two years ago. Similarly to SAMK, Óbuda is willing to use the lab resources for teaching and education by enriching the tuition by live lab exercises.  Besides, NGN lab is not the only good thing at SAMK.
– We can study the same Cisco module at home, too, but not in the degree programme. We need to apply for that. I’m happy that I could study it here. You are in a really good situation because you have it in your own degree programme, Zsombor adds to Finnish students.

Zagroz Aziz is working with the same kind of cooperation between SAMK and Czech Technical University in Prague, and is writing his master’s thesis on the subject, staying one month at SAMK in Pori.
– Building network is very expensive. It’s easier to connect to an existing network, as we can use it as if we were here.
– My professor offered this chance to me. It was a chance to come from an academic university to a more practical one which has respected laboratories. This way I can get more familiar with the laboratory, says Zagroz Aziz.

This is collaboration and partnership. One aim is expanding mobility between universities.
– This is made for learning purposes, senior lecture Juha Aromaa from SAMK emphasizes.

Zsombor Feher also encourages Finnish engineering students to have an exchange period abroad.
– You are going to learn more outside the classroom than in the classroom. Give yourself the chance to know more about the world.

Text: Anne Sankari and Juha Aromaa. Photo by Anne Sankari. In photo (from left to right) student from Prague Zagroz Aziz , Juha Aromaa from SAMK and student from Budapest Zsombor Feher.

Interest for collaboration:
Contact Juha Aromaa, senior lecturer of telecommunications in SAMK, juha.aromaa(a)samk.fi

Construction and HPAC fair in Pori arranged by SAMK students

SAMK students will arrange the Construction and HPAC fair in Pori once more. This year there will be panel discussions on building of wood and the house fair in Pori in 2018.

In addition, information is given of renovation, interior design and accessibility. There will be work demonstrations, lectures and exhibitors. Traditionally, the fair is arranged by the fourth year students of the Degree Programme in Construction Engineering.
The fair will take place in Karhuhalli, in Pori 22-23 March 2014.

Photo: The Fair organizers. Photo by Ville Uusitalo