Scrum Pedadgogy at Helsinki Business College

I met with Otto Burman who is an ICT lecturer and SCRUM master at Helsinki Business College. Otto is in the process of completing his doctoral research on the impact of the Agile Scrum tool as a pedagogical approach for students. He very generously let me visit for about 1/2 a day to discuss teaching methods.
I had a presentation from Otto then joined Otto and Harri for lunch and more discussions.

Discussion points:

The structure of the Finnish education system and the proportion of student movements between sectors. Interesting to note that there are no articulated or integrated agreements between VET and Uni's yet.

Compared old school lecture based teaching models to new project team based learning models

The role of Scrum to promote project team based learning and its impact as a pedagogical tool

The tool is simple yet scaleable to support small or complex projects.

Walls are covered with scrum planning sheets with sticky notes showing team status. Students seem very comfortable with the technique.

Finnish education places a very high value of the impact of entrepreneurial thinking at all ages.

Great results from the use of the scrum model

See summary slides below

Conclusion:

This is a simple, effective and very scaleable technique. Definitely worth trialing as it matches our project based learning style very well.