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Dean of the School of Business Timo Korkeamäki has appointed Associate Professor of Management Science Juuso Liesiö as Director of the Bachelor's Programme at the School of Business (hereafter Bachelor's Programme) and Senior University Lecturer Johanna Bragge and University Lecturer Christa Uusi-Rauva as Associate Directors.Their three-year term runs from 1 March 2020 to 28 February 2023.

Juuso Liesiö defended his doctoral dissertation at the Systems Analysis Laboratory of the Helsinki University of Technology in 2008 and started work as an assistant professor on the tenure track of the School of Business in 2015. He was tenured in summer 2018. Aalto ISM, the student association for information and service management, named him as Teacher of the Year in 2017 and 2018.

Finnish-taught Bachelor's programme to be developed

The School of Business offers three bachelor-level programmes, of which the newly appointed management team will start developing the Finnish-taught Bachelor's Programme in Business offered at the Otaniemi Campus. The other two bachelor's programmes are the Economics programme, also taught at Otaniemi, and the International Business programme offered at the Mikkeli unit. Both of these are taught in English.  

The new management team will continue the development process based on the work carried out by the working group in 2019. This working group made plans for the future of the Bachelor's programme and updated the learning objectives of the programme based on these plans.

‘I am delighted with the recognition of my teaching work and I am enthusiastic to continue developing the bachelor's programme in my new position at the School of Business,’ says Professor Juuso Liesiö.

‘I was also very happy to hear who else will be in the team that I will be working with. Johanna Bragge is a distinguished teaching developer and advocate of digital teaching methods, and Christa Uusi-Rauva has received recognition for her pedagogical abilities in coaching students to develop their working life skills. My own strength is in the teaching of analytics,’ Liesiö adds.

Developing teaching that supports learning objectives and uses appropriate teaching methods

The three-person management team is beginning its work by examining how well the current curriculum lines up with the recently updated learning objectives.

‘Our goal is to develop the programme so that it fits with the recently updated learning objectives that have been shaped to respond to societal changes and the skills required of graduates in the future. Development ideas received from teachers and students are of course also taken into account in the development work. For instance, we have just received the results from a digital brainstorming session on this topic carried out by 70 students.’

‘There are many possible areas for development. For example, the teaching of working life skills could be better linked to basic courses in different subjects. The opportunities offered by the new campus could be even better utilised in the provision of multidisciplinary teaching. The study and teaching methods made possible by digitalisation could be implementing more extensively in the search for a suitable balance between traditional lecture room teaching and online teaching. This type of blended learning and, for example, the use of electronic exams will all help our programme to respond to future growth in student numbers without compromising on teaching quality,’ Juuso Liesiö explains.

According to Professor Liesiö, what makes teaching rewarding is simply the moments when you see that the students have learned something new. The ultimate purpose is that students find new ways of thinking.

‘I want to offer challenge-based teaching and to involve the students in the teaching itself. This Bachelor's Programme is, after all, the first contact the students have with the teaching and courses of the School of Business, and it is also the most popular among applicants out of all bachelor's degree programmes offered by Finnish universities, so I want to plan and organise the teaching we offer as well as possible,’ Juuso Liesiö concludes.

Juuso Liesiö was interviewed by Terhi Ollikainen.