Experience of blended intensive learning – CC Art Festival Finland edition

CC Art Festival is a multi-cultural and multidisciplinary blended intensive learning program (BIP) for business and design students from LAB University of Applied Sciences, University of Applied Sciences BFI Vienna, UCLL University of Applied Sciences, and Heilbronn University. Short-term exchange study program is funded by European Union Erasmus+. Overall objective of BIP is to build a positive international experience in blended learning context.

Original idea of the intensive program was created in 2021 and executed for the first time at Leuven, Belgium 2022 (Orpana & Saros 2022). Participating organizations rotate hosting turns yearly. In 2023 BIP was hosted by LAB University of Applied Sciences in Lahti.

Objective of the course is to create, plan and execute an artistic event as a part of multidisciplinary and multinational team. The course is consisted of a three-week online phase which is followed by a contact week. In total the course involves 40 students, 7 teams, and 6 teachers.

Transform online into contact

Online sessions were constructed to support students and their teams on multicultural team building, idea generation, and planning and implementation phases of the events. Previous year alumni carried out an idea generation workshop where they acted as facilitators with a mentoring aspect.

Theory-based tools for the event planning were introduced in parallel sessions focusing on project management, marketing, and art and design themes. Teams work independently from the idea generation to planning and later implementing the event. Teams were given allocated time between the workshops to be able to work in given tasks together.

During the contact week teams were carried out an art event which was based on teams’ collectively created idea that was refined into project and marketing plans as well as visitor journey canvas. First two days were hectic and culminated to zero hour when events were set on motion.

[Alt text: a young person spraying paint to canvas.] — Image 1. Student painting graffiti at graffiti art event on campus yard. (Jaatinen 2023a)

After events students were given a task to evaluate their teamwork as well as implementation of their project goals in a team presentation. Program for the rest of the week was unformal and included a field trip.

Overall experience was superb

Students were asked to self-evaluate themselves and their team members after the intensive week. Comments strongly underline importance of careful planning, but also international relationships and teamwork were highly valued. Students appraised the experience of executing events even though it involved a lot of work.

[Alt text: persons sitting and working by a table in a big hall.] — Image 2. Drawing workshop at the restaurant world. (Jaatinen 2023b)

Generic feedback was gathered via Hostel Momentum application (Orpana 2023) from the vising students. LAB students’ feedback was collected from Spark. Visiting students scored CC Art Festival course 4,8/5 whereas LAB students gave the course 4,5/5.

Entire experience in Finland was rated 4,9/5 by visiting students. Results can be concluded as a success in both of objective angles. The CC Art Festival will continue its path in spring 2024 in Vienna, Austria.

Author

Taina Orpana works as a Senior Lecturer at LAB University of Applied Sciences and is actively involved of developing CC Art Festival as a part of multi-cultural and multidisciplinary teacher cohort.