Students say the best part of Turku Summer School was working life oriented learning

Text: Heta Laiho

This year, Turku Summer School received altogether more than 80 students from, for instance, Canada, Japan, China and Egypt. 23 of them chose the Sustainable Cities course in order to learn to define the concepts and trends of smart sustainable city development and to identify the techniques and materials that are of help in developing the future of cities.

“The best thing the course offered were field experiences. We learnt a lot about, for example, the Finnish recycling process and how many new things can be made out of recycled material", says Dirgh Patel from Canada.

The Finnish way of teaching offered a new experience for many participants, who found group work, company visits and the conversational study culture surprising.

Brad Shadlock, a Canadian student, is particularly happy with the course teachers and visiting speakers. “The professional competence of the people we met was first-rate. They not only had plans for the future but also proof for how they were going to execute their plans.”

The great weather and beautiful city also received positive feedback from the participants.

“I really liked the city of Turku and the people here. We visited extraordinary places and the teachers were happy to provide plenty of information on Finland and on Turku in general", says Nanami Suzuki from Japan.