Project Number 09 – 1994

The Survival Strategy for Small
and/or Periferic Countries/Areas:
Internationalisation of Educational Institutions
Together With Small Enterprises

Project Number 09 – 1994

Ilpo Koskikallio
Biographical summary: Formerly I worked as a research scientist at the Social Research Institute of Alcohol Studies in Helsinki and in the University of Stockholm (for about 15 years). Nowadays I work as a teacher (Information Studies) and as a project leader of our project. The area of special interest: The fate of remote and periferic areas in the uniting Europe.

Abstract

The main goal of the project is to create a functioning network between the four institutions. By the help of that network we are going to carry out very concrete and practically oriented market studies. Each of the participating partners present possible exportable products from their area, and these products are taken into a closer market analysis.

Later, if the results of marketing studies are promising in some products, our purpose is to try to carry out the real export activity. For that purpose we are building up a joint stock company owned by students and teachers. We are now building up this company in Finland, but there has already been discussions about the possibility to transform the company into “multinational company” owned by all participating teachers, students and small firms with which we are working in cooperation.

The function of the network is going to rely mainly on the possibilities opened by the new electronical communication. That would be a very central part in our project.

We are going to combine the use of E-mail, News boards and IRC (Internet’s multi-user, multi-channel chat network). In my mind of these new methods especially the use of IRC is widely under-utilized or maybe misused. In spite of its huge potential possibilities it is nowadays mainly used as for a recreational purposes. We are trying to utilize it’s potential possibilities for the benefit for remote areas trying to vitalize the economy of remote areas by the help of new electronic communication possibilities.

We are now going to finetune our plans for the next semester. We still have some differecies in the availability of Internet in different schools but it seems to be that everything will be ready in August/September.

Project Criteria

I think that our project would suit very well to the central theme of your Conference. The bad thing is timing of our project and this Conference.

At that stage we don’t have results to present, only innovative and may be quite unorthodoxian ideas how to combine three important aspects: effective learning of business skills, utilisation of new communication technology and an effort to vitalize the economic development of periferic regions.

One of the main ideas in our project is also that by that way we could bring more students into real and active international cooperation. The most usual method for internationalisation between school is nowadays (in Europe) the student exchange programs. They are very good indeed, but the bad side of this kind of cooperation is that only a very small fraction of students are able to participate into this kind of programs. Our purpose is to give opportunities to quite many students. The plan of the project is that it could be a self expanding project. We can always form new market research groups (students, who already are used to system can create an own group from students which are not yet acquaited into the project.

I think that we could reach at least 15-20 students from each institution during the first semester.

We also have begun to include this project into our curriculum. In our school this is relavively easy, because our school is very small one (about 300 students) and we are able to be very flexible. Other participating schools are somewhat bigger and that task is not that easy, but each school in going to include project into their curriculum, each by their own way.