Nordicum - Real Estate Annual Finland 2016 | Page 43

Photo: Andreas Meichsner

Photo: Huan Wang and Shiyang Shao

Centralized
School as a Product

Distributed
School as a Service

design and customise them according to
their needs, the students are able to develop
user-oriented learning environments.

Fauna, Flora, Phenomena
The modern Puu2 building will be used as
the “home base” for the new school, but students are likely to roam around the campus
as need arises.
“For instance, Start Up Sauna and
Design Factory – both located on campus – are available for the students,” says
Suominen, adding that concept is very much
rooted on “phenomenon-based learning”
which takes place in appropriate communities.
Kristiina Erkkilä, Director of Development in Education and Cultural Services,
says that the high school students will benefit from the academic environment that Otaniemi campus can provide:

“There is multipurpose space available
that will challenge, support and inspire in
the development of new kind of education,”
she says.

Welcome to the Future
Jarmo Suominen points out that the perspective of “social learning” is key here:
the school of the future is integrated into
various learning communities and educational value is created together with others.
“The SaaS concept creates the circumstances where the participants feel they are
a part of a learning community; they create joint histories of development as well
as common meanings and practices,” he
envisions.
Suominen and Erkkilä explain that
the concept is “anchored down” by three
themes: Flexibility, Ownership and Accessibility. Put these three things successfully

together, and the new concept has a chance
to go far.
“Take ownership, for instance. When
you have a chance to shape your learning
environment, your sense of ownership of
your own learning strengthens,” Erkkilä
says.

Going Global?
Kristiina Erkkilä reports that the concept
– while still in its formative stages – has
already peaked some international interest:
for example, Unesco’s Learning Cities and
Eurocities are keen to learn more about the
Espoo innovation.
”The City is eager to push the concept,
too,” says Erkkilä. “We are committed to
School as a Service, starting from the students and teachers and the officials responsible for the premises, and reaching all the
way to the City’s top leadership.”
Thanks to Espoo’s considerable education volume, scalability can be achieved
very easily, if the results from the pilot are
positive.
“The Otaniemi pilot is planned to run
for two years and we will develop the concept further based on the feedback from the
project,” Erkkilä says. O
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