Pretty productive week!

This week we met three times, on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On Tuesday we discussed for long about our solutions which the project partners wanted us to develop further. It took some time to make everyone of us to understand the approaches the same way and to agree about the contents of different solutions in detail. However, we managed it well enough and furthermore we got some new ideas for the possible details of the solutions.

The Facebook page which we published last week didn't turn out to be very successful as we haven't got any comments so far. Probably people are afraid of sharing their opinions and stories in public. Therefore we decided to make questionnaire to find out how the students feel like about different issues related to the campuses. The aim of the questionnaire was to get some new ideas and especially to understand what are the reasons for why people get excluded from the campus community. We hope that we will get many answer to our questions as the questionnaire will be send through university email lists next week.

On Thursday there was Demola Pitching Event which took a place at New Factory. Aku and Andrés were the brave ones to pitch about our project. It went very well and hopefully it gave a clearer idea of our project to our peers at Demola. It also helped us to realize which issues we should focus on while we pitch about our project in the future.

On Friday we had a meeting with the project partners. We presented them what we had come up with this week and discussed the ideas. The discussion was fruitful and very beneficial for us as now we know better in which solution we should focus on. Hence next week we will work on marketing campagn and think about how we could get the tutors more involved in the future.

The cumulative time consumption for each of us after this week is following. Andrés: 37,5, Aku: 41,5, Helen: 36, Johanna; 32, Tatiana: 34,5. Let's see what we will come up with next week!

Easter emitting encounter

We had a short, but rather fruitous meeting yesterday (wednesday), which was the april fool's day. The special day meant nothing however, because we certainly weren't fooling around! Firstly we masterfully implemented the idea we got in the last meeting (if my memory serves me right) and opened up a Facebook-page for asking questions from our dear fellows students and gathering information that way. You can see this work of art below.

The Q&A Facebook page

It's been a whole completely full day, but not a single soul has answered even one of our opening question, which means more promotion is bound to ensue... I won't go into detail about it that much, so let's just hope we'll get at least something out of our dear followers by the time next week's blog hits the stores (keeping fingers crossed)!

Beside doing the page thingy we also started developing some of the ideas that received green light from our project partner last week. We made no significant progress, but eveything something! Next week we'll have more time to focus on the ideas and I'm sure we'll come up with something golden, because if we don't the Demola pitching event next thursday is going to be semi-sucky for us, but I doubt it will come to that, because we are the dream team and when we say woo-woo the train goes like umm... choo-chooo!!!!!!!! (We forgot to take a group photo this week, but hopefully my excitement comes through in the form of this text!)

Our excel sheet says that our cumulated time consumption thus far has been 30.5 hours for Aku, 25.5 hours for Helen, 28.5 hours for Johanna, 27 hours for Andrés and 27 hours for Tatiana. That is like over 100 man hours, pretty nice huh?

Brainstorming session and initial ideas

This week we met on Wednesday to have a brainstorming session, combine all the ideas and concentrate on the best ideas that we were going to present to the project partner on Friday. Our facilitator Aino helped us a lot by introducing a brilliant way to generate the ideas quickly. She prepared five questions related to our project for five members of our team and cards that inspire creative thinking and brainstorms. Every card has a name and a textual definition of the category, for example, “Challenge: Testing abilities in a demanding task”. In addition, all cards have images illustrating the main idea for the category they represent. Each of us randomly picked one card from the deck and tried to come up with some ideas on the basis of the card. After one minute of thinking and writing ideas to the piece of paper, each of us picked another card to get more inspiration and look at the question from another perspective. We repeated this process several times and then exchanged the questions to elaborate further on the ideas of our teammates and develop our own. After several rounds we had the papers full of different thoughts and solutions. Also, this approach helped us come up with ideas that, at first, seemed a bit crazy. After analyzing and developing them further, they turned into the excellent ones. At the end of the session we evaluated our ideas and picked the best ones that we were going to present to the project partners.

Brainstorming

Inspirational cards

On Friday we had a meeting with the project partners where we demonstrated our initial ideas. The meeting was very productive as we got the feedback to our solutions and discussed which of them are realistic. We came up with three ideas that should be developed further, and also agreed on conducting some interviews and questionnaires to involve students, staff and stakeholders to our project. Last week we came up with the idea of creating an open Facebook-page where people can influence our project. This week after the meeting with the project partners we formulated the initial questions for students and staff related to their opinions and thoughts on how we can improve the sense of community at our campuses. It will help our project to go in the right direction and get as many ideas as possible.

The power of community

Last week Tuesday was the day chosen for all of us to meet, but due to unforeseen circumstances we have to change the day. The team will meet next time on Wednesday and try to fix the schedule for the future meetings again. At the meeting we are going to develop the chosen ideas further according to the responses received. The next meeting with the project partner will be in two weeks as it has been planned.

This week’s working hours: Aku 4,5, Johanna 4,5, Helen 2, Tatiana 4,5, Andres 4,5.

JAM 2!

After the “Ok” from our Project partner's part, we wanted to meet this week to finally make a plan and to brainstorm for the project but it was impossible to fix a date because of our different schedules. So, we decided to meet up on Jam's day and make a team schedule then. 

On the second Jam’s day (Saturday) we all gathered in the new Demola factory. After breakfast, we started doing different activities. One of the activities was "speed date pitching".  On this occasion the pitching more than receiving detailed feedback from the other colleagues. This helped us in the way that we could build a better communicative capacity when it comes to presenting our project. It was interesting to observe how after pitching people were feeling more and more comfortable talking about their own project. This speed pitching was very interesting because it helped us to learn about how to introduce our project in a short period of time. 

"Speed Date Pitching"

One important thing that we learned during this jam session was the importance of using meters. Meters are tools for feedback by users that use our products. Because in our case the project is something more theoretical-social, it would reflect in the use of methods such as interviews or questionnaires to find out the opinions of the employees and students of the university campus, where they will tell their story and experiences and how they think how a community campus spirit would be created without leaving anyone behind. After several more activities, the lunch time arrived. Don't know what it is but the food of Demola is just perfect, and generous :D

Snack time

During the afternoon we had another activity which was super useful for getting feedback from others. One interesting things that we found out in these feedbacks was that many of the them suggested that maybe we should create some app or website which would help us to promote the sense of community in the student life. In this feedback-task each of us were in different groups so we could see other projects and other approaches.

At the end of the day we fixed our schedules for our future meetings. Tuesday have been the day chosen for all of us to meet and do our project even though we are going to do individual work as well. As exception, this week we are going to meet on Wednesday and we are going to bring our brainstorming to the meeting and put all of them together. This brainstorm would be based of possible ways to increase the social cohesion on the campus area and try to find some mechanism which could help us to do this. At the end of this session we will present our ideas to our project partner on Friday. We also came up with an idea how to collect information and ideas from students. We will create a Facebook website where we can invite our friends and friends of our friends and make some questions through which they can give us information on how they e.g experience community and what are the barriers keeping them from experiencing the sense of community etc. This idea is still on progress but we think it could be a good way to pick up information.

This weeks working hours: Aku 8, Johanna 8, Helen 8, Tatiana 8, Andres 8.

Houston, we don't have a problem and we are all good to go!

We finally got the confirmation that the project will happen and the finances have been sorted out. Though we had a strong belief on this, it was nice to know for sure that the project will actualize. Now we can all start really working and planning for the execution.

This week on Wednesday we met with those of us who were available to plan our initial meeting with the project partner. We went through the basics of what we know of the project and based on that formed some questions we wanted to ask our project partner. We also discussed the material about social marketing that we got from FSHS. Our main goal for the project partner meeting was to get a clearer picture of the project and what is expected from us, mainly if it's more research on the matter or practical solutions that is wanted.

On Thursday we had the initial project partner meeting and it was very nice to finally meet with the people who we are working for and with. In the meeting we went through the Demola practices and how the project goes onward. Then we heard what are FSHS's thoughts on the project and lastly we had a good conversation on the topic where we all got to share a little of our own opinions and thoughts on the matter.

The main line on FSHS's part was that we would think outside the box and be innovative with what ever ideas we come up with. The focus should be on finding out what are the structures that prevent people from experiencing communality and on the other hand what are the structures that promote communality. We want to find out what things lead to people meeting each others or not meeting each others. Also a point was made that it's not only the social aspect that can create the sense of communality but it can form also by a person realizing something in himself/herself. Maybe we can brand our campus community in some way and create a mindset where people can straight away feel they are a part of something?

We also watched a little video of  how social marketing could work and with that in mind we were instructed to go for even the craziest of ideas and be bold in our thinking!

We planned to meet our project partner every 2 weeks and we also set the dates already until the end of May. Our plan with the team is to also meet weekly as we think face to face meetings are necessary in order to make a succesful project and of course we all do independent work as well. The team will meet next time on Tuesday to brief in the other team members who couldn't participate this week and to get the project fully going.
This weeks working hours: Aku 3,5, Johanna 6,5, Helen 3,5, Tatiana -, Andres -.

Supportive Campus Leaves No One Behind

The Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS) has a commitment to promote the health and wellbeing of students and help them maintain their ability to cope with the demands of studying at the university. The majority of first-year students adjust to their new environment with relative ease, but research results have demonstrated that one third of students do not feel that they are a part of any peer group. A lack of social relationships may not only cause emotional distress but also hinder academic progress in the long run. Supportive Campus Community -project was started in February 2015 with a goal of promoting community spirit among students.

The project kicked off at the New Factory premises on February 10th where we were informed about the process of carrying out this project and also met with the team for the first time. The team consists of 5 students and is international with Finnish, Russian and Spanish nationalities represented. Our working language is English, which brings on the challenge of communicating and getting our points and knowledge across. But I have to say that so far there has been no problems in understanding each others and everyone's in with an awesome attitude and really wanting to make a difference and obtaining some concrete results from the project.

The Dream Team

Next we met with the team the following week just to hang out and getting to know each others, talk about the project and to do some brainstorming. We wanted to be ready for our first meeting with our project partner, which unfortunately then had to be cancelled due to financial challenges and postponed to the near future. Despite of the unexpected changes, we kept our spirit high and went on with the planning. We all believe this project is important enough to get the funding and it will happen, so we are moving forward with full speed.

Brainstorming

The next step was to participate in Demola Jam on 21st of February. The purpose of the Jam was to give the project a push forward with some planning, pitching, demonstrations and feedback. Despite the fact that we hadn't met with our project partner, we wanted to get most out of the long day and designed a prototype of the Supportive Campus.

Building in progress

Supportive Campus - prototype

We had so much fun designing, building and spending time in a very international and warm atmosphere. The idea was to create the prototype and pitch the project in small teams. We got really good feedback from the demonstrations, mostly in a form of very good questions. Questions like: What kind of community we want to build? Define communality. What is the difference to what is already there? How can one find a peer?

The questions led us eventually to a conclusion that at the moment maybe we shouldn't concentrate so much on the end result than to research communality and how to build it, find out what are the problems we are facing at our campuses, what are the reasons some students are not integrating, how to bring so many different kinds of people together etc. So we decided our next step is to get as much information on the subject as possible and trust that eventually it will lead us to the best solutions and practices and activities to build a Supportive Campus that leaves No One behind.

This weeks working hours: Aku 12,5, Johanna 12, Helen 12, Tatiana 12, Andres 12.