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During this spring`s project course the students of the Bachelor's Degree Programme in Science and Technology practiced cooperation between the different majors by solving complicated real-life problems.

‘The course is an idea workshop where we can present students with very different questions and problems and see how they tackle them,’ says Stina Giesecke who is the teacher in charge of the course.

For the students the course offers an important learning experience in which the students themselves have a lot of responsibility for selecting, specifying and solving the problem.

‘The course gave us the chance to work in a truly multidisciplinary project group, which allowed the synthesis of very different viewpoints and approaches. I believe that everyone has learned something about working with technology students from different backgrounds. The majority of the course projects are also really interesting and it’s been fascinating to follow their development,’ say the members of the Carbon Nanobud team.

‘It was interesting to work on a project that’s quite different from most others. It was also motivating to notice that people are really interested in our project. For example, we got to meet a Marimekko representative and present our program to him,’ explain the students of Symmetr.io team.

‘The best part of the course was the great team spirit and team work. The meetings were always very positive and we got a lot done too,’ concludes the Learn in Nature team.

Here are some examples of the projects:

Taival application takes you to learn in nature
 

‘Our challenge was to increase people’s interest and activity in Finland’s nature. The topic is both socially important and sufficiently concrete. The end result was the ‘Taival’ prototype of an application to support being active in nature and a variety of business plans. Our commissioner was the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, and they are very excited about further development of our product.’ Read more from the (in Finnish).

Symmetr.io application to sketch symmetries
 

‘Our group’s challenge was to make it possible to utilise mathematics – and symmetries in particular – when planning different types of surfaces. Our idea is that, for example, the textile designers who design different patterns could utilise plane symmetries. Our solution is a prototype, which makes it easier to sketch all the 17 plane symmetries from any image as a basic area. The program is easy to use even if a user doesn’t have a mathematics background. We are currently investigating how to continue developing the program.’ See also the (> Materiaaleja) (in Finnish).

A smart glove, electronic flute and piano
 

‘Our challenge was to produce a demo and prototype for a product for Canatu, which manufactures touch surfaces from carbon nanobuds. The topic was extremely interesting because of its ‘futuristic’ element and we got to work with a completely new kind of high technology. We produced three different prototypes. One of these is a ‘smart glove’ that can be used to control electronics. The glove has a touch surface integrated into the fingertips and a gyroscope that is able to follow hand movements. The other prototypes are an electronic flute and an electronic piano, in which Canatu films were used to create touch surfaces to activate the chords. See also the .

Photos Alisa Javits, Tomi Suomela