Kirsti Ala-Mutka

• Doctor of Technology
• Policy officer at European Commission

Reviews and studies on the contribution of dance for health and well-being often highlight the use of dance in clinical interventions, either as a motivating form of physical exercise, or as a therapeutic tool for the elderly and for persons with health problems. The presence of dance in people’s lives as a personal, social and cultural practice is...

This presentation summarises and extends further key messages from my Master's thesis on theory of dance, completed in December 2020.

El movimiento rítmico compartido ha reflejado y fortalecido conexiones entre personas en el desarrollo humano, y sigue teniendo esa capacidad en la práctica social de los bailes tradicionales. Los bailes populares tradicionales cubanos reflejan la memoria cultural e inteligencia social con potencial para aportar el bienestar en Cuba y todo el mundo...

Technologies are increasingly being used in society and the economy, and this is transforming ways of working, studying, communicating, accessing information and spending leisure time, among others. Attention must be paid to ensuring that everyone has digital competence as it provides important benefits while its lack can lead to various risks to c...

Teachers are major stakeholders in the field or learning. However, they are rarely consulted when thinking about the future challenges and changes for education and training. To change this, IPTS took the opportunity to develop and discuss visions on the future of learning with teachers during the yearly eTwinning conference in February, 2010, in S...

This article summarises research carried out between 2006 and 2008 by IPTS (Institution for Prospective Technological Studies) in collaboration with a consortium of experts from 10 member states, led by ICEGEC. The project gathered information on eLearning developments to assess drivers and barriers and to suggest implications for policy and resear...

Over the last few years, the Internet has had a profound effect on the private and professional lives of European citizens, offering them an increasing number and range of opportunities for accessing information, gaining and exchanging knowledge and realising personal learning goals. With the emergence of social media applications, which encourage...

EU policies call for the strengthening of Europe’s innovative capacity and the development of a creative and knowledge-intensive economy and society through reinforcing the role of education and training in the knowledge triangle and focusing school curricula on creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. This report brings evidence to the debate...

In 2008, as part of its policy support for DG Education and Culture, IPTS launched a study to explore the innovative social and pedagogical approaches to learning that are emerging in new ICT-enabled collaborative settings. This is the final report on the project. Lifelong learning plays a crucial role in society today as jobs, and the skills they...

Teachers are major stakeholders in the field or learning. However, they are rarely consulted when thinking about the future challenges and changes for education and training. To change this, IPTS took the opportunity to develop and discuss visions on the future of learning with teachers during the yearly eTwinning conference in February, 2010, in S...

Over the last few years, “Web 2.0” or “social computing” applications like blogs, wikis, photo- and video-sharing sites, and also online social networking sites and virtual worlds, have seen unprecedented take up. Research evidence suggests that these online tools have not only affected people’s private and professional lives, but are also starting...

This paper reports on a review of learning opportunities that are emerging in online networks and communities. Participation in these new virtual spaces is not mandatory, but rather motivated by an interest to know, share, create, connect and find support, and these activities lead to a range of learning outcomes. New technologies offer the tools a...

Lifelong learning should be considered a necessity rather than a luxury for living and working in the European information society. However, wide participation in it has not become a reality despite the political endorsement and the needs of industry to have people with new skills for the new jobs. It is forecasted that the qualification structure...

This report provides a systematic empirical assessment of the creation, use and adoption of specific social computing applications and its impact on industry, personal identity, learning, social inclusion, healthcare and public health, and government services and public governance.

This report presents the outcomes of the expert workshop held at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) on 29 and 30 October 2008 to discuss the impact of the social computing on Education and Training (E&T) in Europe. The workshop aimed to validate the results of the Learning 2.0 study, launched by IPTS in collaboration with DG...

This report is part of a project launched by IPTS with DG Education and Culture to study the innovations for learning, which are emerging in the new collaborative and informal settings enabled by ICT. The report gathers and analyses evidence from learning opportunities that are emerging in ICT-enabled networks and communities. In these new virtual...

The role of learning is changing in ageing societies as the ageing phenomenon causes pressures to improve the quality of life and active participation of older people for promoting active ageing. Learning provides means to improve both the physical and mental health as well as general activity of older people. Research suggests that older people do...

In 2005, IPTS launched a project which aimed to assess the developments in eGoverment, eHealth and eLearning in the 10 New Member States at national, and at cross-country level. At that time, the 10 New Member States were Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia. A report for each country...

Over the last few years, “Web 2.0” or “social computing” applications like blogs, wikis, photo- and video- sharing sites, as well as online social networking sites and virtual worlds, have seen an unprecedented take up, changing the way people access, manage and exchange knowledge, and the way they con- nect and interact. This trend is accompanied...

New technologies, and especially social computing, provide new opportunities for education and training, as they enhance learning and teaching, and facilitate collaboration, innovation and creativity for individuals and organizations. The benefits of deploying social computing and ICT for learning depend on the learning approach used, emphasizing t...

This report uses a rigorous imagining approach to develop an alternative way of organizing learning in Europe whereby the traditional school system no longer plays a significant role. This study shows that, on the basis of phenomena already present in Europe today, it is possible to invent a discontinuous model of how people learn and how what they...

The rapid emergence of social computing applications is changing the ways people connect with each other, exchange and create knowledge in different spheres. In particular, young people entering higher education are integrating ICT seamlessly in their everyday life and call for educational institutions to support their digital learning styles. But...

Collaborative content, created with web2.0 technologies, is part of the social computing phenomenon. The key feature of collaborative content is that it is created, reviewed, refined, enhanced and shared by interactions and contributions of a number of people. The report provides an assessment of the use, adoption and impact of collaborative conten...

Lifelong learning strategies need to answer to the growing need for advanced digital competence for all jobs and for all learners. Learning digital skills not only needs to be addressed as a separate subject but also embedded within teaching in all subjects. Building digital competence by embedding and learning ICT should start as early as possible...

Future Learning Spaces: new ways of learning and new digital skills to learn This article discusses the elements of and requirements for digital competence for learning in a knowledge-based society, where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) play a key role. Key challenges for future learning are both the need for new digital skills and...

Doctoral Dissertation

Programming is related to several fields of technology, and many university students are studying the basics of it. Unfortunately, they often face difficulties already on the basic courses. This work studies the difficulties in learning programming in order to support developing learning materials for basic programming courses. The difficulties hav...

Practical programming is one of the basic skills pursued in computer science education. On programming courses, the coursework consists of programming assignments that need to be assessed from different points of view. Since the submitted assignments are executable programs with a formal structure, some features can be assessed automatically. The b...

Lectures for large groups end up easily as a one-directional presentation of the lecturer, because students may not dare to present their personal opinions or questions. A Personal Response System (PRS) can be used to enhance interaction and student activity by giving the students a possibility to interact with the lecturer anonymously. In this pap...

The Open Source Courseware project (OSCu) is aimed at cooperative course development and implementation in university software-engineering education. Open materials and a distributed course implementation model offer effective means for knowledge sharing between universities. However, in practice there are many difficulties in managing distributed...

To deal with the problem, a set of coding rules was collected and justified to be used in C++ pro- gramming courses of the university. An automatic C++ programming style analyzer tool was im- plemented to ensure that students were following the rules. Students can freely use this tool to improve the quality of their coursework, and tutors can use i...

Cooperation between industry and university is generally considered beneficial for developing university education. Especially in the field of software engineering, it is important for the university to receive information from actual software projects to consider the development needs for the course curriculum. However, important information is al...

The art of programming includes knowledge of programming tools and languages, problem-solving skills, and effective strategies for program design and implementation. A common approach in programming education is to first teach the basics of a programming language and then guide students towards effective strategies for the whole programming process...

Assessment provides means for influencing students' learning results and strategies on university courses. However, supporting students to learn practical programming skills requires carefully designed assignments and their assessment. This paper studies challenges and approaches for assessing homework programming assignments. We present and discus...

Increased class sizes are forcing academics to reconsider approaches to setting and marking assessments for their students. Distributed and distance learning are creating some of the biggest changes. Some educators are embracing new technologies but others are more wary of what they do not know. In order to address this issue it is first necessary...

The field of information technology extends continuously. This implies an increased number of IT professionals as well as rapidly evolving technologies. In universities, the challenge is to manage increasingly large student groups, while at the same time the teachers need to use a lot of time in developing new IT courses and updating the old course...

Open Source Courseware project (OSCu) aims at cooperative course development and implementation in university level software engineering education. Since implementing distributed courses requires active collaboration between course personnel, it is important to analyze the development aspects for cooperation in these courses. Activity Theory offers...

Monella ohjelmistotekniikan opettajalla on tapana helpottaa työtehtäviään erilaisten tietotekniikan sovellusten avulla. Pienimuotoiset kokeilut eivät välttämättä jalostu pitkäaikaiseen tai yleiseen käyttöön, mutta niiden avulla voidaan löytää apukeinoja, jotka ratkaisevat myös suurempia ongelmia. Silti hyvätkin ratkaisut jäävät usein vain tekijän o...

Summary As the share of older people increases, there is a need to improve their well-being and possibilities for integration in the knowledge society. In ageing societies, learning plays a key role in addressing challenges such as increasing social and health costs, re-skilling for employment and participation, and intergenerational sharing of exp...