Exchange students from BusinessAcademy created a guide to Turku for other exchange students

Text: Veera Laaksonen

The guide offers almost everything an exchange student can hope for and need: local sights, sport opportunities, cities near Turku and local groceries price comparison. The guide also presents the best bars, nightclubs and second-hand shops.

Polish Mateusz Witkowski – one of the guide makers – tells that the course work originated from the shared opinion that exchange students had difficulty finding activities and information.

– Turku has a lot of good resources providing students with guidance and hints on how to spend free time, however we wanted to make something short and full of information, something that will help you “survive” and provide a fun day, full of activities without taking too much of your time for research and planning. Hopefully our guide fills the gap, portrays Mateusz.

The division of labour between students went smoothly and finding information was not difficult. In addition to their own experiences, the group used City of Turku’s and Study in Turku’s websites and social media as sources. Mateusz emphasizes that most of the information search was about hearing tips from other exchange students.

Some of the research work had to be done in a bit more persistent way.

– For instance, the groceries price comparison took around a week of research and gathering reliable data from different chain stores, then we analyzed and visualized the data in a user-friendly format. It took some time to get those places checked out but the findings are based on real-life exchange student experiences, tells Mateusz.

With Mateusz the guide was put together Tomke Florian, Jonathan Mathias, Brent van der Ven and Edoardo Eccher.