Erkki Sutinen

Serious storytelling --- a first definition and review

In human culture, storytelling is a long-established tradition. The reasons people tell stories are manifold: to entertain, to transfer knowledge between generations, to maintain cultural heritage, or to warn others of dangers. With the emergence of the digitisation of media, many new possibilities to tell stories in serious and non-entertainment contexts emerged. A very simple example is the idea of serious gaming, as in, digital games without the primary purpose of entertainment. In this paper, we introduce the term serious storytelling as a new potential media genre – defining serious storytelling as storytelling with a purpose beyond entertainment. We also put forward a review of existing potential application areas, and develop a framework for serious storytelling. We foresee several application areas for this fundamental concept, including wellbeing and health, medicine, psychology, education, ethical problem solving, e-leadership and management, qualitative journalism, serious digital games, simulations and virtual training, user experience studies, and online communication.

Technology for street traders in Tanzania: A design science research approach

The informal sector employs the major part of workers in developing countries. Street trading is a common form of informal work. Despite its huge economic value in developing countries, little research is being done to improve street traders’ empowerment and entrepreneurship. Also, development informatics is over-focused on social development and under-focused on economic development. This study takes a design science research (DSR) approach in order to identify barriers for street traders in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, that can be addressed with technology. As a follow-up to our previous qualitative study, a questionnaire was administered to a sample of (N = 285) street traders. The data was analysed using mixed methods. The results show that street traders operate in a challenging environment, and make most of their decisions based on tacit knowledge. Traders are restrained by unreliable business information, weak business strategies, and access to capital. A variety of technology innovations, such as customer-client matchmaking, and record keeping are proposed to directly address the daily challenges of street traders. Future technology projects form exciting possibilities for technology experts, students, and scholars globally. The expected future implications of this project are increased STI capacities, economic growth, and human development.

Design, development, and evaluation of a mobile learning application for computing education

The study focused on the application of the design science research approach in the course of developing a mobile learning application, MobileEdu, for computing education in the Nigerian higher education context. MobileEdu facilitates the learning of computer science courses on mobile devices. The application supports ubiquitous, collaborative, and social aspects of learning among higher education students. Moreover, the application eases access to learning resources. The paper first describes analysis, design, and implementation activities related to the development of MobileEdu. Also, the paper deliberated on the characteristics and scope of the adherence of MobileEdu to the traits and ideas of design science research. To evaluate MobileEdu in a real-life learning setting, experiment was conducted with 142 third-year undergraduate students in a Nigerian university. Besides the learning achievement of the students using MobileEdu, the study examined the impact of MobileEdu on students’ attitudes toward studying in a system analysis and design course. Experimental data were collected from pre- and post quizzes, interviews, and a questionnaire administered to students. The results of the evaluation are encouraging and showed that the MobileEdu application has a potential to improve students’ learning achievements. In addition, the pedagogical experiences of students were mostly positive and students’ attitudes toward the system analysis and design course through MobileEdu was better than those of students who studied the course via traditional methods. Finally, the study offered suggestions for how to implement effectively a mobile learning-supported course in computing curriculum.

Pilgrims in the Digital Age: a research manifesto

This article explores the concept of the Eventization of faith (Pfadenhauer, 2010) through application of three case studies, to identify learning that might be applied to a traditional pilgrimage destination, such as Jerusalem. This Holy City is held sacred by the three Abrahamic religions, and faith-based tourism is central both to the Holy Land and to the city of Jerusalem (Leppakari & Griffin, 2017). This paper builds on research that identifies processes and models that provide insight into the developing concept of the eventization of faith. The work examines outcomes from three different perspectives: - The impact of traditional church-led pilgrimages to places in the Holy Land, on participants and their local church communities. - The successful eventization of the Lindisfarne Gospels as part of their release to Durham University in 2013, and the impact on local historical, cultural and religious identity and heritage (Dowson, 2019). - The shared pilgrimage experience of thousands of Christian women participating in the annual Cherish Conference in Leeds, Yorkshire, held in a secular event venue (Dowson, 2016). In analysing these three case study examples, this paper aims to identify factors that might enhance our understanding of the concept of eventization of faith. Utilising face to face interviews and online survey results, the research focuses on the aspects of community, identity and authenticity. Events enable shared experiences in a faith context (Lee et al., 2015), and so this research develops a model that captures and expresses approaches that might encourage pilgrimages to traditional destinations, through the medium of events, adding insight into the development of the academic concept of Eventization of Faith.COVID-19 is devastating the religious tourism industry in terms of economic, social, food, employment and faith related impacts. Pilgrimages are being stopped, and mass gatherings are halted. We are in middle of a very difficult time for the religious tourism industry and this has become a major concern for governments around the world. The leading nations such as USA, UK, Italy, Spain, Japan, Russia, Germany and China are struggling to control the COVID-19 pandemic. We are facing the biggest test of the tourism industry in over half a century, one which has exceeded the downturn of the 9/11 terrorism attacks. In the last 6-9 months, COVID-19 has had major ramifications for the religious tourism industry and impacted on other related industries like hotels, transport, travel agents and tour organisers, tour guides and all tourism service industries. The calamity of the COVID-19 pandemic is a new biological war that is being experienced by the whole world and the tourism industry is one of the major victim of this pandemic outbreak. Academics, politicians, scientists, theologians, in fact all people are discussing the impact of COVID-19 on all aspects of life. The pandemic impact is being experienced by all people regardless of state, religion, race, age or status. It is not first time, nor the last time that the world has been struck by a pandemic, but commentators suggest that a new world will emerge from this, and this new reality will offer new opportunities for the provision of experience by the tourism industry. The implication of COVID-19 for pilgrimage to religious sites has been enormous, and has altered the thinking and beliefs of visitors. Due to limitations and controls imposed by governments, new forms to spirituality and worship have been introduced, and these lead to the development of alternative religious thinking. This paper seeks to clarify the impact of COVID-19 on the religious tourism industry and discusses the challenges experienced by travellers to religious destinations.

Theater robotics for human technology education

Theater robotics allows its users to learn by transforming a story into a theatrical performance acted out by robots. A preliminary implementation uses affordable robotics kits controlled by a scripting environment that was designed iteratively by observing the users from the viewpoint of a given set of criteria. The end result facilitates a truly interdisciplinary learning experience that combines two types of artifacts: robots built with technology and engineering, and stories founded on humanities. Theater robotics can be applied not only in technology or robotics education, but also in computing education to teach specific skills such as computational thinking or basic concepts of programming with robots.

The Human Resources Debt in Software Business

This conceptual-analytical paper presents and defines the concept of ‘human resource debt’ (i.e., HR debt). The presented concept draws from the software engineering field’s recent work in the technical debt management, yet it departures from the existing conceptualizations by focusing on skills and competences of individual employees as well as emphasizing the need to manage the skill pool with conscious decisions. As with its paragons, this novel concept aims to help to understand, control and utilize better the phenomenon by using a simple metaphor. In addition, the metaphor, borrowed from the economics, also emphasizes the potential price that has to be paid back later. In the discussion, the ever-changing software industry is used as an example industrial domain; however, the concept should be generalizable to other fields. Finally, the paper lays foundations for future work and proposes initial actions needed for forming a proper research agenda.

How Engineers Perceive the Importance of Ethics in Finland.

ABSTRACT Success in complex and holistic engineering practices requires more than problem-solving abilities and technical competencies. Engineering education must offer proficient technical competences and also train engineers to think and act ethically. A technical ‘engineering-like’ focus and demand have made educators and students overlook the importance of ethical awareness and transversal competences. Using two Finnish surveys, conducted in 2014 and 2016, we examine how engineers perceive working life needs regarding ethics. The data consider different age groups. We research whether an engineer’s age affects their perception of the importance of ethics in their work and if there are differences between young experts and young managers in their use of ethics within work. The results indicate that practising engineers do not consider ethical issues important in their work. This especially applies to younger engineers; the older an engineer, the more important they consider ethics. No statistically significant difference was found between young engineering experts and managers.

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

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.

Designing a Game for Learning Math by Composing: A Finnish Primary School Case

Music is filled with mathematical relations. When creating music, the composer must keep in mind the rhythm, the notes, and how well they ring with each other. Our aim was to design an application that teaches these relationships and allows users to compose their own songs using numbers. Our work follows the design science research method, and we have co-designed the application together with elementary school students and teachers in Finland. This paper demonstrates the design process and provides an analysis on our design based on data collected from the participants in two separate sessions.

Cultural Calibration: Technology Design for Tourism Websites

With favourable socio-economic and political conditions, tourism has registered an impressive growth both at the international and domestic level. According to the figures released by UNWTO (2016), the total number of international tourist arrivals worldwide was 1.186 billion in 2015, forecasting to reach 1.8 billion in 2030 with a growth of 3.3% a year. Supporting this phenomenon, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), particularly the Internet, play a major role at every stage of the tourism experience. As a consequence, Destination Marketing/Management Organizations (DMOs) should leverage on good-quality websites to answer visitors’ needs and prevail over competitors. Especially for National Tourism Organizations (NTOs), given their role in promoting the destination abroad, the elaboration of online marketing strategies should also take into account culture-bound preferences and needs of reference publics. Within this context, the concept of cultural calibration refers to any technology that transforms contents and tools that people use to communicate with each other in an effort to match with their culture-dependent expressions. Despite the recognized effects of culture on online behavior and willingness to travel, content managers often have to rely on common sense when designing country-specific website editions. In addition to that, differently from eLearning, ecommerce, and online marketing areas, little research has been done regarding software design for adaptation activities in the eTourism context. Consequently, the objective of this paper is to provide a design concept for a software for cultural calibration of destination websites. Its relevance for researchers and practitioners is also presented, together with the evaluation of its functionalities and possible applications.