EXTERNALLY FUNDED RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION PROJECTS AS LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

Multi-disciplinary Research, Development and Innovation (RDI) projects can be regarded as learning environments that create new skills and competencies for all stakeholders: students, teachers, researchers, companies and public organizations. This paper presents a RDI project model that builds academic knowledge and competencies for all partners by solving real problems in real-life situations. We describe the model through a case-study of the research project SATERISK (SATEllite positioning RISKs) that was initiated by two security management students of Laurea University of Applied Sciences (UAS) and that has evolved into a substantial 3-year-project (2008-2011) funded by the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovations (TEKES).

Finnish UAS students on adult degree programmes normally study alongside their work. A mandatory 3-year period of work experience after the Bachelor degree is required before a Master’s level programme can be commenced so that students can be regarded as experts because they have experience in the specific area they are studying. The start of SATERISK was user-driven: the two students were working as police officers during their studies when they realized that there was very little discussion about the risk of satellite positioning and tracking. “Satellite tracking services are used to improve the security of property and personnel but does the tracking involve new risks?” At first, the idea was developed in dialogue with lecturers and students; later on the dialogue was expanded to include a more extensive network with other students, teachers, researchers, companies (both device and service developers and end-users), public end-users and publicly-funded expert organisations for financing research, development and innovations. SATERISK has expanded not only to an academic multi-disciplinary collaboration with the University of Lapland, ITMO in St. Petersburg, Russia and the BORDERS network coordinated by University of Arizona, USA but also to a collaboration with four companies in the field of satellite tracking and government officials as customs and police.

SATERISK aims at a situation, where laws about positioning and tracking and the financial risks posed by their usage will not prevent the use of machine to machine tracking across state and union borders. The project is expected to bring new, international level know-how to the Finnish security field as well as to create new methods and development paths for the field of positioning and tracking systems development in Finland.

Our RDI project model has its theoretical background in the Learning by Developing (LbD) approach model that is used as a pedagogical model in Laurea UAS combined with the “Last mile in research” approach by Prof. Jay F. Nunamaker, Jr. The two approaches support each other and make the RDI project a unique learning environment. According to Nunamaker the IS research needs to be multi-disciplinary. Laurea UAS has 8000 students in e.g. the fields of business management, IT, security and service management. Our paper describes how the SATERISK project is integrated into the study units and studies in general, as well as providing a description of the roles of different stakeholders when creating a learning environment.

As the SATERISK project is still going on, a final evaluation cannot yet be made. However, we will present, besides the RDI project model, the lessons learned and insights for the future.