Key research activities

Follow our current key projects. The common denominator - creating smart solutions for the future.

Through our transdisciplinary efforts we conduct research programes that study future challenges in society and working life, sustainability, the delivery of social and welfare services, health promotion and technical solutions that support an ageing populations wellbeing.

Laboratory for Trustworthy AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents new opportunities and challenges for our societies. To understand what AI means, we must go beyond innovation to apprehend how to employ decision-making technology in an ethical, mindful, and sustainable way. It is crucial to increase understanding of practices for Trustworthy AI.

CP - North

CP-North: Living life with cerebral palsy in the Nordic countries is a research project involving all five Nordic countries.

Comprehending Compassion

There is an increasing interest towards examining compassion within organisations, but we still know little about how organisational work includes compassion in practice. This crucial issue is linked to fundamental assumptions concerning the nature of business and organisations. The starting point for this project is that it is time to take compassion seriously by reconsidering the role of it in organisations.

DITEPRACT: Digital and hybrid teaching and learning

There is a need to develop high quality innovative hybrid and digital teaching strategies to support learning of practical skills in higher education and to support teacher competence in practically oriented distance teaching and learning.

MEDA

Media and Education in the Digital Age (MEDA) is a programme that addresses the challenges, risks and opportunities associated to the use of media in the great variety of social practices that are usually included in the broader definition of educational practices.

Research Programme: AI driven Nordic Health and Welfare

AI driven Nordic Health and Welfare is a research programme where AI solutions are applied to social and health care within the Nordic welfare and social design framework, using a transdisciplinary and user driven approach.

Research

Teaching and learning of practical skills in social and health care in challenging times

When communities worldwide were closed in the spring of 2020 as the COVID-19 disease pandemic hit the world, the consequences for higher education in Europe were extensive. In a flash, higher education activities were moved online without enough time for neither preparation nor planning. Both students and the universities' staff had to adapt to major changes in daily life. Follow-ups and evaluations showed that the universities coped with the change surprisingly well, but also that the challenges in teaching and learning were many, both for students and staff – this shows the newly Arcada and Ditepract published Best Practice Guide on the topic.

Pedagogical development work

Can Machine Learning aid in finding key factors to improve the Finnish healthcare system?

Finland is in the process of change in our health care system. The Nordic well-fare system is challenged in Finland, for instance, due to difficulties in attracting nurses, changing demographics in Finland, and a general pressure to reduce costs in the whole public sector. This poses severe challenges for the entire healthcare sector. Can Machine Learning (i.e., the subfield of Artificial Intelligence, which focuses on having a machine imitate intelligent human behavior) be used to understand relationships between different critical properties of our healthcare system? Yes, it can! An excellent example of how this can be done is found in a scientific paper by Hu et al. (2020), where the authors investigated nurses' willingness to report errors in a specific geographical area of the US.

Publication