Digipoint develops working-life and digital skills for young jobseekers

According to the Finnish National Agency for Education, almost 20,000 new employees will be needed for telecommunications, software and information services by 2035. The need is particularly high in companies in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. 43% of these tasks require education at a university of applied sciences level. The Digipoint project aims to address this need.

As part of the ESF-funded Digipoint project, Laurea University of Applied Sciences is involved in developing tailored teaching of working-life skills and information processing in co-operation with the cities of Espoo and Vantaa and employers in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. Digipoint aims to develop learning content based on digital skills for the unemployed whose learning capabilities enable studying at a university of applied sciences. The aim is that the participants in the project will be able to find employment in software and information services after the studies.

In the Espoo sub-project, the training packages of 25–30 credits on information processing and working-life skills, jointly developed by Laurea and businesses, are targeted at jobseekers aged over 25 who already have a previous master’s or bachelor’s degree from a university and are interested in tasks that use digitalisation. In Vantaa, the target group is young people under the age of 29 who have completed upper secondary studies and who, in addition to their tailored working-life skills studies, optionally complete open university of applied sciences information-processing studies.

In addition to digital skills, the emphasis is on working-life skills

In addition to IT capabilities, working-life skills and knowledge of working life. The studies include a module in which competence already acquired is identified and verbalised, the future prospects attractive to the students are considered, and tools are built to lead oneself to the desired goals. In addition, both cities support participants in progressing in their studies by providing them with a group space and personal guidance as part of the project.

Both sub-projects involve close co-operation with Laurea’s key partner companies and the cities’ corporate networks. The studies aimed at the participants must cater to the competence needs of businesses in order to meet the service promise on the relevance for working life and employment. In the Espoo case, the students’ multidisciplinary teams solve actual assignments assigned to them by business partners. For the challenge, the teams study service design and project work, and the progress of the assignment is guided by company representatives. In the Espoo and Vantaa sub-projects, the students participate in a group mentoring programme to be developed with the business partners.

New teaching content also for bachelor’s and open university of applied sciences students

As part of the Digipoint project, Laurea develops its own modular, competence-based online teaching to better meet the needs of working life and companies. In addition to studies directly related to data processing, the aim is to produce a fully automated study module that supports the students’ self-knowledge, identification of their own competence, goal-setting and self-management. After the project, all the teaching content and modules created can also be offered to Laurea’s bachelor’s and open university of applied sciences students.

The Digipoint project began in April 2020 and ends on 31 December 2021. The aim of the project is to develop operating models for the challenges of employment, to provide opportunities for education in the digital sector and to meet the competence requirements of digitalisation. In addition to Laurea, the project involves Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, the City of Vantaa, the City of Espoo, the City of Helsinki/Helsinki Vocational College and Adult Institute. The main implementer is the City of Turku.

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