Digital Guidance Application Experiments

The significance of guidance in teaching continues to increase. Pedagogy leans increasingly strongly on digitalisation, analytics seeks to find weak signals of potential problems, and the boundary between studies and free time gradually becomes blurred through project-based studies, for example. Students take more responsibility for their studies as the amount of classroom teaching decreases.

Digital guidance applications seek to open a dialogue between the provider and receiver of guidance. For example, they can be used solely for communication between the counsellor and the student or group of students, but they can also be used to plan, agree upon and monitor goals or visualise various guidance structures. The potential applications are almost endless.

The driving idea behind the application experiments was to approach the experiments primarily from the perspective of guidance, i.e. with the intention of finding a tool that was suitable for guidance and the student, rather than half forcibly try and use the application for a specific type of guidance.

Participation in the application experiments was open to everyone involved in guidance work, either in the eAMK project or outside it. A survey was prepared for teachers/counsellors for the purpose of sharing experiences. There was also a separate survey for students. The gathering of experiences was communicated via several channels, such as via Arene to all universities of applied sciences.

There were no criteria for the duration of the application experiment; it could be completed either during a single guidance session, over the course of an entire course or as part of a course, for example. As the experiment sought guidance tools that are suitable for various guidance needs, the respondent could complete more than one application experiment. Because of this, respondents could answer the survey more than once, each time from the perspective of an individual application or guidance situation. Two question times related to the surveys were held via Zoom to give people the opportunity to ask for advice and tips.

The experiences shared through the survey were presented in a webinar held on 25 April 2019: Digisovellukset erilaisissa ohjaustilanteissa (Digital applications in different counselling situations, in Finnish). Inspired by the experiments, the working group also prepared three podcasts that were released in PedaCast podcast series (in Finnish).

Below are some of the wishes presented to the working group and thoughts to be considered regarding the applications that were tried out

• Tools that support career planning? What tools besides a portfolio? PLE tools? Games? Is something already available? cf. viva-tamk.fi. Digital tools for career counselling, a digital map?
• Is there a way to compile or retrieve several tools on one platform?
• Wide adoption of basic tools
• Teacher tutors could use existing tools more extensively
• Systems supported by universities of applied sciences vs. experiments?
• NEETs, tasks undone – what to do when e-mail is not enough?