Finnish Researcher, Dr. Jani Ursin, Visiting USF

The Career and Workforce Education faculty welcomes Dr. Jani Ursin, Senior Researcher at the Finnish Institute for Educational Research (FIER), University of Jyväskylä in Finland. In the context of a global economy and the development of professional competence across diverse cultures, Dr. Ursin's research is concerned with the assessment of student performance in terms of what college graduates know and can do upon graduation. In this regard, he is one of the lead researchers contributing to the project Assessment of Higher Education Learning Outcomes (AHELO), sponsored by Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD). The project AHELO is a direct evaluation of student performance in 15 countries and will provide data on the relevance and quality of teaching and learning in higher education.

Leading to his work on the AHELO project, he studied the mergers of Finnish universities in 2008–2009 and was able to analyse and describe how a merger is understood from the perspective of education in four Finnish universities under merger operations. In another project conducted in 2005-2007, he examined the introduction of internal quality assurance systems into Finnish universities and described the process of implementing QA thinking and internal quality assurance systems in the Finnish universities. In 2006, he also contributed to the a comparative research project on the implementation of the Bologna Process in Finland and in Italy.

Dr. Ursin visit is scheduled on February 11-18.  Invited by Dr. Johanna Lasonen, the purpose of Dr. Ursin's visit is to explore shared interests and potential collaboration on comparative studies bridging career and workforce education and higher education issues in the context of a global economy. Given the nature of Dr. Ursin's interests and expertise, he will conduct a presentation entitled AHELO- a PISA study for higher education? open to faculty and graduate students on Wednesday, February 16 in Room EDU 155. He will also serve as a guest speaker in Dr. Don Dellow's class on Globalization  and Higher Education on February 17th with the topic AHELO: A PISA study for higher education and ideas for dissertation topics.

We welcome Dr. Jani Ursin and look forward to learning about recent developments in higher education and the evaluation of student competence in Europe.