Erasmus+ project
BUDS
Call 2019 KA203 Strategic Partnerships for Higher Education
The project builds on an existing summer school on consulting on digital transformation projects in close cooperation with consultancy firms.
The core aim of the project is the design and delivery of a blended course on digital management consulting made of three self-standing e-learning modules and an experiential-based intensive training programme.
I am a former communications professional who currently holds the position of Senior Lecturer in Innovation Management. Additionally, I have been honored with the title of Docent in Organizational Communication by the University of Tampere. My doctoral degree, obtained in 2007, focused on Organizational Communication and Public Relations, and was awarded by the University of Jyväskylä. Following the completion of my PhD, I joined the faculty in 2010.
My research pursuits encompass various areas, including appreciative organizational renewal, the creation of value through communication consultancy, exploration of learning and communication within virtual communities, and innovative pedagogical approaches within business education. Within the realm of teaching, I cover subjects such as introductory marketing, organizational communication, change management (including instruction through Erasmus exchange programs), and qualitative research methods.
I was involved in the Flipped Classroom development project of the UEF since its beginning and I also lead the pedagogical development team at the Business School. My commitment to excellence in teaching was acknowledged in 2017 when I received the Excellent Teaching Practitioner Award from the University of Eastern Finland. Throughout 2021 and 2022, I played an integral role in advancing online and blended learning pedagogy at our university by serving as a member of the digital pedagogy facilitator team.
My major research fields are computational thinking, educational data mining, educational robotics, learning environments, technology education in K-12 settings, as well as ICT for development. I’m currently supervising four PhD research work in these fields, and teaching some of the related courses at the School of Computing. I was recently leading “ICT for Education in Eritrea” project, funded by Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the HEI-ICI capacity building program. I have been involved in several EU initiatives, for example CONSTRUIT! and TACCLE3 (Erasmus+ KA2), as well as in eCraft2Learn H2020 projects. I have been playing an active role in development of the annual SciFest science and technology festival at Joensuu. I was also leading the festival for three years at the beginning of 2010s. I have gained teaching, research, and project administration experience from several international collaboration initiatives from number of European and African countries, for example Eritrea, South Africa, Nepal, Tanzania, Zambia, and Mozambique.
Jenni Kankaanpää (M. A., Ed.) works as a doctoral researcher at University of Eastern Finland. Jenni is a trained teacher and has worked in various research projects on both primary and higher education for several years. Especially, she has gained experience on educational development in higher education and flipped classroom/learning during research tasks and when training teachers in implementing them. Her doctoral research is related to higher education teachers’ pedagogical development work in flipped and blended contexts.
Research groups and research projects
BA Joint Hons English and German 1997; MA Directed Research, Lenition in Scouse voiceless plosives, 2003; PhD, Lexical Priming in Spoken English, 2010 (University of Liverpool).
‘Assessment of scientific proposals expert’, for ANEP (the Ministry of Science, Spain). Assistant editor of Journal of Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (JCADS).
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5164-5242
Michael Pace-Sigge initially worked as university teacher at the University of Liverpool, UK from 2005 – 2012 and as university teacher at Liverpool Hope University 2007-08. In 2012 he was appointed Senior Lecturer at the University of Eastern Finland, where he continues to teach and do research. Beyond that, he has taught during Erasmus exchanges in Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, Spain, and Ukraine. Starting with an interest in Scouse (the accent of Liverpool) he moved from a phonetics MA to a corpus linguistics PhD. His particular interest lies in the Lexical Priming Theory (as can be seen by his 2013 and 2017 books). He also keeps finding further applications for corpus linguistics (as the 2015, 2018 and 2020 books attest). Of late, his interest has shifted to language applications in AI and Paul Hopper’s Emergent Grammar research.
Main publisher: Palgrave Macmillan. Also published with John Benjamins and Elsevier.
Link to the Pathways to Textuality, symposium in Honour of Michael Hoey Symposium: https://sites.uef.fi/pathwaystotextualitysymposium/
Select bibliography:
I work as a senior university lecturer in cultural geography, and my special area of responsibility is the development of subject teacher training, which is why I collaborate a lot with other faculties as well. Through the Erasmus projects, I have been doing international teaching development work for more than 20 years.
As the vice dean responsible for education at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, I lead the faculty’s education development committee, and I am responsible for many e.g. on matters related to student selection, curriculum work, development of the quality of teaching and monitoring the progress of studies.
My research keywords are: geography, landscape geography, social environmental research, didactic geography and development of higher education. In recent years, I have participated especially in the interdisciplinary research of the forest owners’ forest discourses.
Coordinator of the Master’s Degree Program in Photonics at the Center for Photonics Sciences and the Doctoral Programme in Science, Forestry and Technology (LUMETO) at the Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology at UEF. Local administrative coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree Program “Photonics for Security Reliability and Safety (PSRS)”.
I am also working with a wide range of other international activities, including international student recruitment, double degree programs, exchange students, student internships, international summer schools etc. and taking care of the practical issues and student support services for international students at the Department of Physics and Mathematics.
As a member of the Technologies for Learning and Development research group at the School of Computing, my PhD research was on developing a Technology Enhanced Knowledge Management Model for Higher Education and Research in Developing countries. It focused on a case study in the UbuntuNet Alliance Research and Education Network in the Eastern and Southern African Countries.
My research interest is in designing and developing technology-enhanced collaboration platforms for research and teaching-learning in developing countries’ higher education, which also addresses prevailing challenges in the local contexts beyond the technology tools and capabilities. Moreover, I am interested in research related to ICT engagement in teaching-learning in general and in technology integration in higher education pedagogy as well.
During my PhD study, I was working for the school of computing on a research project called ‘Vauhtia Uralle’ that aims to provide flexible paths to the skills needs of a working life, mainly for young graduates. I was also representing UEF in the Erasmus + project called ‘TRUE – Transparency of Learning Outcomes through Blockchain Technology’, a consortium project of 8 European Institutions from academia and technology industry.
Currently I am a postdoc researcher, teaching at the School of Computing and also engaged in a couple of new European consortium research projects of the department.
