Abstract:

Working life is changing faster than ever, and the expectations of working life are not often being met by the present higher education. The future working life is expected to emphasize skills such as learning capability, problem solving, leadership, social influencing and emotional intelligence. Currently higher educational institutions are looking for ways to provide their students with the needed competence to meet the demands of modern, rapidly changing working life.

This paper examines the ways that the LbD (Learning by Developing) -strategy based P2P (Peer to Peer) project learning model generates working life skills and whether it can be used to bridge the gap the working life and education. LbD is the pedagogical strategy of Laurea University of Applied Sciences (LUAS) and P2P is the project learning model used in bachelor studies of business administration.

The P2P projects are based on collaborative work between three parties: Lecturers working as project instructors, a P2P student team and a working life partner. The P2P model enables students to complete their degree in curriculum compatible research and development projects for real working life partners.

The discussion in this article is based on a study that was carried out to learn more about three themes around the working life skills generated by the P2P project learning model: soft skills (transferrable skills), hard skills (concrete skills) and general benefits such as ready networks or work experience. The study was executed with semi-structured focused interviews of 10 P2P graduates working in different phases of their early careers. The interviews were analyzed, and the findings were then categorized into the three earlier mentioned themes.

The purpose of the study was to examine whether the P2P project learning model generates the competences that are expected to have an increasing demand in the future working life.

The results can be utilized in developing educational models and as material for further studies. The study offers insight to the effectiveness of the P2P project learning model for producing future working life skills.

Keywords:

Project learning, learning by developing, peer to peer learning, future working life skills.