The Transformation Challenge of IT Education and Training in

Higher Education and Industry

Anne-Maarit Majanoja, Ville Taajamaa, Ville Leppänen and Erkki Sutinen

Department of Information Technology, University of Turku, Turku, Finland

Keywords: Learning, Expectations, Transformation, Teaching Methods, Communication and Interaction, Skills and

Capabilities.

Abstract: Globally, several self-organized training arrangements are implemented in industry with varying outcomes.

The target of these training initiatives is to achieve transformation. The practices and teaching methods during

higher or academic education (HE) can impact on the industry training situations. However, few studies have

dealt with the possible impact of academic technical and IT education and training practices on industry based

training arrangements. We analysed two independent sets of interviews, one on industry-based global

selective outsourcing environment (GSOE) training arrangements and another on IT education at a Finnish

university. We found that the GSOE training arrangements heavily relied on the lecturing-based methods

instead of hands-on practicing. Similarly, the IT education at the university also relied on theory-based

lecturing. There is also a need to transform passive interaction to active where students and actors are

responsible for their own learning and building their own skills and capabilities to succeed in working life.

1 INTRODUCTION

Nowadays it is difficult to ignore the impact of

Information Technology (IT) on our daily life. We

have entered the era of digitalization where industry

is increasingly information-intensive. The rapid

development of new technologies and the online

world change the way we work and also where we

work from. Yet, IT system and information-centric

operations can cause risk situations, such as

jeopardized patient safety in hospitals. The new

information-sensitive world sets new demands to

individuals, organizations, and societies. Therefore,

IT education and training have to develop and meet

the needs of the society.

Transformation means changing (something)

completely and usually in a good way (Merriam-

Webster dictionary, 2016). Change and education

have been widely studied by several researchers (e.g.,

Graham 2012, Crawley et al., 2014, and Englund et

al. 2016). The topics include practical

implementation elements, and therefore, a bottomless

pit to several consultancy-books and enterprises.

Now, education is becoming a global service

(Pucciarelli and Kaplan, 2016).

Education (i.e. aims to a certain degree) and other

types of training situations (e.g., short courses and

personnel development activities without degree

targets) need to incorporate the expected changes into

the schemes of thinking and acting. The challenge is

that typically we build our transformation based on

specifications describing existing systems or way-of-

working approaches, thus the old approaches are

implemented into new IT solutions. Therefore,

nothing truly changes and the expected

transformation and holistic understanding are not

achieved.

Despite of the extensive knowledge of change and

education (e.g., Froyd, 2012), IT education still

includes traditional post-positivistic natural science

based approaches that do not always promote the true

level of on-going transformation in society and

working environments. IT operations and education

include also human-centered elements. It already has

been found that, for example, organizational learning

can be enhanced by systems thinking (e.g., Senge,

1996). Still, emotional motivation is needed to ensure

successful and sustainable transformation.

Despite of the new activating teaching methods,

previous studies have found that lecturing is still one

of the primary teaching methods for example in

universities (Petrović and Pale, 2015). It is notable

240

Majanoja, A-M., Taajamaa, V., Leppänen, V. and Sutinen, E.

The Transformation Challenge of IT Education and Training in Higher Education and Industry.

DOI: 10.5220/0006257302400247

In Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2017) - Volume 2, pages 240-247

ISBN: 978-989-758-240-0

that lecturing includes also positive aspects that

increase social and formal learning settings. Also,

various activating and phenomenon-based teaching

approaches are used in Finnish primary and

secondary schools. However, current working

population has not yet been fully familiarized to apply

these new activating approaches in industry.

Unlike the mainstream of outsourcing training

and personnel development activities (e.g., Gainey

and Klaas, 2003, Galanaki et al., 2008 and Chaudhury

and Bartlett, 2014), this paper focuses on analysing

self-organized training arrangements in a global

selective outsourcing situation. The operational level

problem studied in this paper originates from

insufficient self-organized IT service training

outcomes in industry case. The target is to analyse can

similar kind of challenges be identified already from

university studies.

In this paper, we study what kind training,

competences and skills the IT unit (one of the Nokia

Devices’ IT units) expected from its supplier in the

global selective outsourcing environment (GSOE).

We also analyse what kind of training method is

applied during the self-organized training sessions:

practical-focused or dominated by lecturing types of

methods. We identify potential similarities in

challenges and teaching methods used in IT and

engineering education in university studies (e.g.,

computer science and software engineering). This is

examined by analysing two sets of independent

theme-based interviews from the service purchasing

company and a Finnish university.

The rest of the paper has been divided into four

parts. Section 2 deals with existing research and the

theoretical dimensions of systems thinking and

education. Section 3 describes the research design.

Section 4 presents the findings. Section 5 includes the

conclusions and introduces a few tasks for further

research.

2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In the IT field we are used to the idea of continuous

improvements and providing new solutions and

services to users and business representatives.

Reacting to various changes is considered to be part

of IT development and service activities. As a

consequence, it seems like there are no sustainability

in the middle of endless changes or time to evaluate

whether the implemented changes truly have the

expected effects. Based on Boron et al., (2016) and

Graham (2012), this situation applies to education as

well. Senge (1996) wrote that most people have

grown up in an authoritarian environment, and they

expect that people above them give answers, know

what is going on, and what is expected in the future.

However, when systems and challenges became

increasingly complex and wicked, no-one has the

correct answers and uncertainty is part of life (Senge,

1996, Weber and Khademian, 2008). Instead of

paralyzing, it should lead to enthusiasm to experiment

(Emerson and English, 2016). Senge (1996) wrote

that the current mind-set needs to be changed. Making

failures should not be scary, because mistakes are part

of experimental life. People need to be active,

experimental and be responsible for their own

activities.

Earlier studies found that a majority of the change

projects fail (e.g., Beer et al., 1990, Kotter, 1995,

Kotter, 2008, Senturia et al., 2008, Keller and Aiken,

2009). Based on Graham (2012) there is a proven

tendency of returning to the way things were before.

Smith (2002) reported that only 33% of major

organizational change activities succeed. However,

cultural change (19%) was more challenging than a

strategy deployment (58%) (Smith, 2002). Both in-

house and external training activities are needed in

successful change implementation and

transformation. Chen and Huang (2009) and Shipton

et al., (2005) wrote that participating in training and

education programs stimulates employees to become

learning oriented, and the employees produce greater

innovative outcomes (Birdi et al., 2007).

Systems thinking is a method to define problems,

raise questions, and make proficient decisions

(Arnold and Wade, 2015). Systems thinking is the

approach to understand how different things

influence on one another within a complete entity or

ecosystem. Systems thinking has also been applied in

education during the past decade. Based on five

studies of Ayers (2002), Córdoba and Midgley

(2006), Houston et al., (2008), Samanakoopt et al.,

(2015), and Rakbamrung et al., (2015), the five main

findings were: 1) The desired outcome needs to be

inclusive, promote participatory and reach consensus

among the members. 2) The boundaries need to be

expanded to include a wider range of knowledge and

take stakeholders’ needs into account. 3) Success

requires inter-disciplinary skills and competences. 4)

Various interdependencies, impact factors,

distinctions, boundaries, and concerns need to be

identified and acknowledged. 5) Efficient feedback

loops are needed to systematically solve and prevent

problems by identifying the root-cause elements. As

an outcome, these elements should also be part of

education and training targets.

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241

3 RESEARCH DESIGN

The target of this case study is to get insights into the

training structures, practices, and non-conformances

in the GSOE based self-organized training situation.

The phenomenon is studied by analysing and

comparing the findings with the teachers’ perception

of technical fields’ training in a Finnish university at

the department of Information Technology. This

research is based on two sets of interviews done

independently in 2012.

From the university’s side, six audio recorded and

transcribed semi-structured interviews were selected

for closer analysis. These six teachers were selected

as they taught Master of Science Engineering (M.Sc.

Eng.) students, and therefore, they were able to

analyse the curricula and courses. The interview

transcriptions were coded based on the following

themes: 1) IT/engineering education demands,

characters, and skills, 2) teaching methods, courses

and capabilities, and 3) potentials and challenges.

At Nokia Devices, the internal IT unit and the

supplier jointly operated in the GSOE based on

jointly designed 30 ITIL (Information Technology

Infrastructure Library) processes and way-of-

working practices to ensure successful cooperation

and service deliveries. The IT unit’s roles included,

e.g., team leaders, contract managers, product and

service managers, and other internal IT specialists

responsible for databases, networks, solutions, etc.

The IT supplier’s onsite and offshore specialists were

responsible for service development and maintenance

activities, such as, project management, coding,

testing, documenting, end-user support, etc. The

supplier was also responsible for operational level

training activities.

The industry case included interviews and several

discussions with the service purchasing company’s

and the supplier’s representatives. At Nokia Devices,

some interviewees did not want their interviews

recorded (especially the representatives in Asia), and

it was decided together with the IT unit’s leaders that

the interviews would not be recorded. After this

decision, all IT unit members globally agreed to

participate in the interviews, and they freely shared

their perceptions. The interview notes were written

down by the interviewer (one of the authors of this

paper) during the interviews by capturing the main

message and idea. The interviews in Europe were

conducted face-to-face, and phone interviews were

used with the representatives working in Asia and

Americas. It is notable that Nokia Devices (later

acquired by Microsoft) and the IT supplier restrictive

in making public their successes and failures. For

confidentiality reasons, it is not possible to present all

results in full detail.

In this paper, we used existing interview

materials. First, we analysed and theme-based coded

GSOE interview notes (competence development,

level of competences, and expectations). Second, the

six teachers’ interviews were analysed and coded.

Third, the findings were analysed and compared. In

Section 4, Tables 1-4 have the following structure:

first field provides the category Id, category name,

and identified terms. The examples field provides

citations.

It is notable that both interviews targeted at

identifying improvements and development focus

areas. Therefore, the interviewees focused on

highlighting challenges instead of success, which can

reflect to the findings of this study.

4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

4.1 The GSOE Training Outcomes

The supplier was responsible for the operational level

GSOE training activities, which were held at the

supplier’s premises. Based on the observations and

discussions with the IT unit’s and the supplier’s

representatives, the in-house based self-organized

training followed the trainer-centered teaching

approach in a meeting-room type of premises.

The trainers introduced the jointly defined GSOE

mode-of-operation practices, provided a quick

introduction to the business environment, and trained

the common ITIL processes and tooling. The

approach was theory-orientated by sharing ‘what’ and

‘how’ elements (e.g., daily activities, tooling, and

ITIL process). Less focus was given on practical

adaptation, activating people, sharing operational

level knowledge and experiences, and how to interact

with customers and stakeholders.

The IT specialists joined the IT services after the

training session. It was found that the IT specialists

did not have the needed practical knowledge to

operate based on the GSOE practices or solve various

non-conformance situations. Instead, the supplier

expected the IT unit to provide detailed lists of tasks,

activities, and instructions how to solve the cases, and

then the IT specialists in offshore centers would

follow the lists step-by-step. Providing these kinds of

lists was not possible. The basic idea of the global IT

services was to continuously improve the operation

and to react various, unforeseeable change needs and

non-conformances coming from customers and other

stakeholders. Following pre-defined lists would

not be sufficient. Instead, success would require

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proactive approach and taking responsibility.

The IT unit’s representatives were dissatisfied

with the training outcomes. Eventually, the IT unit’s

representatives had to re-train the new IT specialists

one-by-one. This time, the training was practical

hands-on training and the IT unit’s representatives

explained the ‘why’ elements of the operation,

process, customer interaction, and business

environment.

Analysis of the GSOE Training Outcomes. Based

on the interviews, the IT unit’s members highlighted

the insufficient level of the supplier’s training and

knowledge transfer activities (Table 1). “The

transition time is not long enough” and “They are

trained, but still lacking of knowledge.” It was found

that training did not provide the needed operational

level knowledge and skills to succeed in

implementing the IT services’ activities.

The IT unit’s members were interested in

knowing how the supplier developed their IT

specialists’ competences. “We don’t know how

suppliers develop their competencies and we would

like to know how we could support them.” The IT unit

wanted to support and increase motivation, because it

would improve service outcomes.

The supplier’s IT specialists worked hard and

possessed good technical competences: “Very

technical people, working very hard when we tell

exactly what to do“; Still, the level of practical

competences depended heavily on the specialists’

prior working life experience. The specialists who

came directly from schools (such as, universities) had

gaps in their technical skills and practical know-how.

The IT specialists also needed a lot of guidance and

direct instructions from the IT unit’s members to

succeed in operational level activities.

There were challenges in communication and

interaction (Table 1). Typically, there were

communication gaps between the onsite and offshore

teams, and the IT specialists used too technical terms

and language with non-technical end-users and

stakeholders. It seemed that the IT unit’s members

maintained the IT services’ communication and

interaction, not the supplier.

The IT unit’s members expected proactive and

interactive approach from the supplier to provide

added value by sharing ideas, improvement

proposals, feedback, and innovation (Table 1). The

supplier was expected to focus more on outcome and

ensuring requirements deliveries. The supplier’s

specialists were expected to be more open-minded

and thinking out-of-the-box instead of waiting for the

IT unit to tell them what needs to be done. The

supplier should also take the ownership of their

activities and provide consultancy services, and share

ideas how to develop the IT services further.

Table 1: The IT unit’s expectations of the non-technical

competences after the supplier’s training.

C1.1 Communication and interaction: Consulting

services, Communication, Technical terms, End-users,

Stakeholders, Business-like, Follow-up

Examples

- They do not to provide real consulting services

- End-users are confused when communication is not

clear enough or includes too many technical terms

- Communication is business-like

- Challenges in follow-up or replying proactively

C1.2 Proactivity: Proactive, Value, Comments,

Feedback,

Examples

- They could be more proactive and provide added

value

- They are really passive

- Be proactive, and say if something could be

improved, give comments. This could be a cultural

issue

C1.3 Outcomes: Expectations, Delivery, Innovative,

Open-minded, Responsibility

Examples

- They should think what is expected from them based

on the requirements and then deliver it

- More innovativeness, open-mindedness ideas,

seeing the whole service packet, taking the

responsibility

- Seeing the big picture, bring their ideas to the

playground

4.2 The University’s Findings and

Challenges

4.2.1 Skills to be Learned During Studies

Based on the theme-based analysis of the IT

department’s teachers, three main justifications for

offering M.Sc. (Eng.) degree in Information

Technology were identified: 1) The need and demand

comes from industry. 2) It is the university’s demand

and decision. 3) The M.Sc. (Eng.) is valued as a

professional degree, and the degree provides good

working life possibilities.

The teachers perceived that IT education was

characterized by technology and natural sciences,

especially mathematics and physics. However, it

would be important to teach technical topics in a

broader scale. The teachers perceived the profession

profile and image of the M.Sc. (Eng.) degree to be

better than the M.Sc. degree, because the M.Sc.

(Eng.) was seen more professionally oriented.

The teachers highlighted the engineering-like

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way-of-thinking and acting approaches (Table 2).

The teachers considered life-long learning,

critical thinking, and working-life readiness

capabilities (Table 2) as necessities to succeed in

working life. Especially communication and

interaction skills were considered as important, but

practicing those skills were in a minor role during the

courses. The main focus was still on technical and

theory-based aspects.

Table 2: The characteristics and working life necessities of

M.Sc. (Eng.) education.

C2.1 Professional culture: Engineering-like, Attitude,

Way-of-Thinking, Way-of-Acting

Examples

- Teaching the engineering-like thinking and attitude

- The way of thinking is different (because of

mathematical base)

- Engineering-like/technical way of thinking, being an

engineer, and being proud of it

- Engineers must understand what they are doing

- Rational-based thinking

- Engineers have a lack of understanding what other

way-of-thinking “worlds” means

- Engineers have a more systematical problem-solving

approach, which is the engineering-type of thinking

C2.2 Life-long learning: Learning, Development

Examples

- Life-long learning skills to learn new things

- Learning to learn

- Taking responsibility of one’s own learning

C2.3 Critical thinking: Responsibility, Self-guidance,

Criticality, Evaluative, Critical thinking

Examples

- Critical thinking, assessing and evaluating skills

- Students need to take responsibility of their own

thinking and evaluate information

- Ability to evaluate own actions, see development and

changes, and being self-guided

C2.4 Working-life readiness: Social skills,

Communication, Roles, Presenting skills, Interaction

Examples

- Social skills/Communication skills

- Working-life readiness skills and competencies

- Interaction skills: how people interact in different

roles, and how to present things (verbal/written)

- Ability to act together

4.2.2 Used Teaching Methods

The teachers used different kinds of teaching methods

during their courses. Quite many times the teaching

approaches were teacher-centered lecturing due to the

need to share extensive amounts of substance related

knowledge and information to the students. Lecturing

was considered as the most cost-effective approach

since the amount of students was not limited. Some

of the teachers recognized the challenge to combine

theory and practical work during their courses. Other

typical methods were group-assignments or practical

work, such as capstone projects, problem-based

learning, project-based courses, essays, course

diaries, self-study courses and guiding sessions. The

teachers wanted more contact-based (i.e. meeting the

students) teaching to support and mentor students,

which would also develop the students’

communication and interaction skills (Table 3).

The teachers identified that pedagogical skills and

capabilities would give them more tools to implement

courses (Table 3). Pedagogical skills combined with

practical knowledge and know-how would provide

better outcomes and motivated students (Table 3).

Table 3: The teachers’ perceptions of the teaching

approaches and competences.

C3.1 Teaching methods and focus: Lecturing,

Teaching method, Substance, Theories, Practice

Examples

- Mainly lecturing-based methods

- Using old-fashioned teaching methods

- Focus is on substance based knowledge

- Focus is on enduring knowledge and theories

- Topics have been narrowed during the years

- Challenge to combine both theories and practical

- Not enough focus on communication (verbal/written),

not practiced during courses

- More contact-based teaching to support and mentor

students, and to develop communication skills to avoid

tongue-tied graduates

C3.2 Pedagogical skills: Pedagogical, Competences

Examples

- Teachers’ pedagogical competences should be valued

- Having knowledge what you can do during courses

- How to teach and manage the courses

- Students need to participate, teacher needs to be up-

to-date, and have good lecturing skills

4.2.3 Enablers and Challenges

The teachers proposed that the IT department could

have a bigger role in training the entire university, for

example in technical topics and competences. Having

this kind of role increases the university’s image. In

addition, a multidisciplinary university would have

better possibilities to provide professionals with

different kinds of profiles and skills, and thereby

efficiently answer to the demands of society and

industry.

Challenges were identified that impacted on

working and teaching. One major challenge came

from resources, mainly financial and human

resources. Cost cuttings had negatively impacted on

the courses and resources. As an example,

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demonstration-sessions were reduced, which

decreased students’ motivation to acquire sufficient

technical and working-life skills. The teachers also

identified challenges that originated from the students

(Table 4). They perceived that some students had

gaps in preliminary skills to succeed, such as the lack

of mathematical skills. In addition, some students did

not want to work towards a degree, for instance to

read course materials and books. Instead, the students

expected ready-made solutions from the teachers and

were passive during the courses. Some even refused

to participate in group works, which caused

frustration among the teachers.

One major challenge was the lack of active

feedback-loop and connection to industry

representatives (Table 4). Also various quality system

related aspects were not in place, and better

descriptions, guidance, and documentation were

needed (Table 4).

Table 4: The teachers’ perception of the challenges.

C4.1 Resources: Financial, Human resources

Resources

Examples

- Not able to make hands-on learning based elements

- Not able to have both demonstrations and lectures

- Not able to guide or mentor students

- Not able to show what students really know and are

able to do, lectures are boring as the focus is on

theoretical aspects

4.2 Students: Way-of-studying, Broad overview,

Readiness, Resistance, Preliminary skills

Examples

- Students are not ready to read anymore, they want fast

and prepared solutions

- Students know how to use tools, but not the broader

overview and connections of things

- Working-life readiness capabilities are insufficient

- Some students refuse to participate in group-works

- Inadequate level of mathematical skills (some

students)

C4.3 Quality and process: Metrics, Quality system,

Process, Documentation

Examples

- Unclear/lack of metrics and measuring practices

- Quality handbook/Quality system not in place

- Description of what and how (e.g., content, process,

and methods)

- Clear documentation of the courses and materials, and

overview of the education/degree (quality)

C4.4 Industry connections: Feedback, Updating-

education, Needs, Demands

Examples

- We do not have active feedback loops from industry

- We could have a bigger role in industry, but we do not

know what they want (weak feedback-loops)

- No-one knows future competence needs in industry

4.3 Analysis

Technical and substance knowledge. It was identified

that the IT specialists were technically skilled with

good substance level knowledge (i.e. hard skills) to

succeed. These findings correspond with the findings

from the university’s teachers. The main focus during

studies was on substance level knowledge (Table 3).

In technical fields the current and future problem is

the enormous amount of substance knowledge that

needs to be shared during studies. The amount of

topics will not decrease in future. Instead, new topics

and fields should be included. Therefore, teachers and

universities face a dilemma how to share a great

number of topics within a limited amount of time and

courses.

Communication and interaction skills. One major

challenge originated from soft skills: communication,

proactivity, responsibility, and consultancy-type of

approach and mind-set (Table 1). The IT unit

expected successful deliveries, open-minded ideas,

and proactively taking responsibility. Instead, the IT

unit felt that the supplier failed on its operational level

responsibility, which decreased the service

purchasing company’s satisfaction.

The university’s teachers identified similar kind

of working-life skill needs as the IT unit (Table 2).

Various critical thinking and working-life readiness

skills need to be learned during studies, such as social

skills, communication (verbal/written), interaction,

and taking responsibility and being self-guided. Some

of the identified challenges (Table 4) originated from

the students, such as being passive, waiting for ready-

made solutions or not being responsible for their

studies.

Training methods and approaches. The GSOE

training outcomes were inadequate to be able to

succeed in operational level activities. The GSOE

training mainly focused on familiarizing the new

practices and working culture. The main teaching

approach was teacher-focused approach instead of

using practical and hands-on methods. As an

example, there was a lack of connection between the

training topics (such as processes) and real-life daily

activities and situations with end-customers and

stakeholders. Therefore, the training did not build

proactive way-of-working approach although it was

needed to succeed (Table 1).

The university teachers also identified challenges

to combine theory and hands-on practicing during

courses (Table 3). The main focus was on ensuring

substance related competences instead of practical

adaptation and enhancing communication skills. Due

to cost savings, various group-works and

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demonstrations were decreased were students could

practice the needed competences and interaction

skills (Table 4).

Pedagogical skills and experience. We identified

gaps in pedagogical skills and teaching experience in

the GSOE training situation. More focus was needed

on training methods, arrangements, targets, content,

and pedagogical competences. It is possible that the

GSOE trainers used teacher-centred lecturing

method, because they were accustomed to it during

their own studies. It is notable activating teaching

methods and approaches have increased in

universities significantly during the past few years.

However, the GSOE trainers had not adopted

activating teaching methods.

Similarly, the university teachers also brought

forth the need for pedagogical skills to support their

teaching arrangements (Table 3). The pedagogical

skills would provide competences to use a wider scale

of methods instead of relying only on lecturing types

of solutions. It is notable that in university,

pedagogical qualification is not required in addition

to substance level knowledge.

Measuring effectiveness. In the IT unit’s case,

measuring the training effectiveness and conducting

follow-up practices were missing. Clearly, in this

kind of situation the service purchasing company

should be an integral part of the training

implementation, because they have the business,

practical, and tacit knowledge of the operation.

Similar challenges were identified in the

university’s case, because the university did not have

a clear idea of how useful and effective the courses

were at working life (Table 4). Also an active

feedback-loop to industry was lacking.

Overall summary. More focus was needed on

building communication and interaction

competences. The passive communication and

interaction challenge was visible in both of the cases.

However, the challenge is not only on developing

communication and interaction skills, because the

passive approach needs to be transformed into active

approach, and students and actors need to be

responsible for their own learning and willingness to

take responsibility to learn. Teachers are not anymore

leading the learning situation, instead they operate as

coaches and facilitators and students and actors are

responsible for their own learning and skills. In recent

years, universities have implemented activating

teaching methods, which have not yet been

transferred to business environments. The situation is

changing in a near future when students move to

working life and apply these activating practices also

in industry.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The purpose of this paper was to identify and analyse

factors in self-organized training arrangements in a

global selective outsourcing situation and the

correspondence of those on a university’s findings.

This was examined by analysing two sets of

independent interviews. In this case research we

found similarities with the industry and the university

findings.

Providing good technical and substance level

knowledge is one of the main requirements for IT

education. Also, communication and interaction

skills are considered as fundamental. Both industry

and education require proactivity. Therefore, passive

approach needs to be transformed into active, and

people need to be responsible for their own learning

and actions. It was found that lecturing was the

primary teaching method and lecturing method

includes also several good aspects. Practical hands-on

knowledge and pedagogical skills were identified as

critical to ensure successful knowledge transfer.

Activating methods would provide better operational

level skills and mind-set in the industry case.

We acknowledge the limitations of this study as

the results come from only one university and one

industrial training case. At the same time, however,

the results are well aligned with the existing research

and discourse, especially in the university case. Also

the case industry company and its IT supplier were

global companies and familiar with outsourcing

arrangements and training activities. Therefore, this

case study can provide valuable findings from in-

house based training situations.

Future research should be reflected to a larger set

of educational innovations, in terms of structure and

methods. One of the arising hypotheses for future

research is to study and design educational

interventions and methods to be used in-house and

self-organized training arrangements in industry. We

argue that university education could play a bigger

role in this than it does now. There is also a need to

develop training practices to become more

transformative. This would enable more active

feedback-loops between university level education

and the industry. Higher education could have a

significant role in transformations. One future

research area could be to study how universities can

provide education and training solutions to industry

needs, and how universities could arrange more

advanced studies and carry out project type studies in

cooperation with companies.

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