Learning information technology business in a changing industry landscape. Introducing Team Entrepreneurship in Renewing Bachelor Education in Renewing Bachelor Education in Information

Speed, uncertainty and complexity are increasing in the business world all the time. When knowledge and skills become quickly irrelevant, new challenges are set for information technology (IT) education. Meta-learning skills – learning how to learn rapidly - and innovation skills have become more essential than single technologies or other specific issues. The drastic changes in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector have caused a need to reconsider how IT Bachelor education in Universities of Applied Sciences should be organized and employed to cope with the change. The objective of the study was to evaluate how a new approach to IT Bachelor education, the ICT entrepreneurship study path (ICT-ESP) fits IT Bachelor education in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. This kind of educational arrangement has not been employed elsewhere in the context of IT Bachelor education. The study presents the results of a four-year period during which IT Bachelor education was renewed in a Finnish University of Applied Sciences. The learning environment was organized into an ICT-ESP based on Nonaka’s knowledge theory and Kolb’s experiental learning. The IT students who studied in the ICT-ESP established a cooperative and learned ICT by running their cooperative at the University of Applied Sciences. The students (called team entrepreneurs) studied by reading theory in books and other sources of explicit information, doing projects for their customers, and reflecting in training sessions on what was learnt by doing and by studying the literature. Action research was used as the research strategy in this study. Empirical data was collected via theme-based interviews, direct observation, and participative observation. Grounded theory method was utilized in the data analysis and the theoretical sampling was used to guide the data collection. The context of the University of Applied Sciences provided a good basis for fostering team entrepreneurship. However, the results showed that the employment of the ICT-ESP did not fit into the IT Bachelor education well enough. The ICT-ESP was cognitively too tough for the team entrepreneurs because they had two different set of rules to follow in their studies. The conventional courses engaged lot of energy which should have been spent for professional development in the ICT-ESP. The amount of competencies needed in the ICT-ESP for professional development was greater than those needed for any other ways of studying. The team entrepreneurs needed to develop skills in ICT, leadership and self-leadership, team development and entrepreneurship skills. The entrepreneurship skills included skills on marketing and sales, brand development, productization, and business administration. Considering the three-year time the team entrepreneurs spent in the ICT-ESP, the challenges were remarkable. Changes to the organization of IT Bachelor education are also suggested in the study. At first, it should be admitted that the ICT-ESP produces IT Bachelors with a different set of competencies compared to the conventional way of educating IT Bachelors. Secondly, the number of courses on general topics in mathematics, physics, and languages for team entrepreneurs studying in the ICTESP should be reconsidered and the conventional course-based teaching of the topics should be reorganized to support the team coaching process of the team entrepreneurs with their practiceoriented projects. Third, the upcoming team entrepreneurs should be equipped with relevant information about the ICT-ESP and what it would require in practice to study as a team entrepreneur. Finally, the upcoming team entrepreneurs should be carefully selected before they start in the ICT-ESP to have a possibility to eliminate solo players and those who have a too romantic view of being a team entrepreneur. The results gained in the study provided answers to the original research questions and the objectives of the study were met. Even though the IT degree programme was terminated during the research process, the amount of qualitative data gathered made it possible to justify the interpretations done.

Plant-Herbivore Interaction in a Fragmented Landscape: Local Adaptation and Inbreeding

Reciprocal selection between interacting species is a major driver of biodiversity at both the genetic and the species level. This reciprocal selection, or coevolution, has led to the diversification of two highly diverse and abundant groups of organisms, flowering plants and their insect herbivores. In heterogeneous environments, the outcome of coevolved species interactions is influenced by the surrounding community and/or the abiotic environment. The process of adaptation allows species to adapt to their local conditions and to local populations of interacting species. However, adaptation can be disrupted or slowed down by an absence of genetic variation or by increased inbreeding, together with the following inbreeding depression, both of which are common in small and isolated populations that occur in fragmented environments. I studied the interaction between a long-lived plant Vincetoxicum hirundinaria and its specialist herbivore Abrostola asclepiadis in the southwestern archipelago of Finland. I focused on mutual local adaptation of plants and herbivores, which is a demonstration of reciprocal selection between species, a prerequisite for coevolution. I then proceeded to investigate the processes that could potentially hamper local adaptation, or species interaction in general, when the population size is small. I did this by examining how inbreeding of both plants and herbivores affects traits that are important for interaction, as well as among-population variation in the effects of inbreeding. In addition to bi-parental inbreeding, in plants inbreeding can arise from self-fertilization which has important implications for mating system evolution. I found that local adaptation of the plant to its herbivores varied among populations. Local adaptation of the herbivore varied among populations and years, being weaker in populations that were most connected. Inbreeding caused inbreeding depression in both plants and herbivores. In some populations inbreeding depression in herbivore biomass was stronger in herbivores feeding on inbred plants than in those feeding on outbred ones. For plants it was the other way around: inbreeding depression in anti-herbivore resistance decreased when the herbivores were inbred. Underlying some of the among-population variation in the effects of inbreeding is variation in plant phenolic compounds. However, variation in the modification of phenolic compounds in the digestive tract of the herbivore did not explain the inbreeding depression in herbivore biomass. Finally, adult herbivores had a preference for outbred host plants for egg deposition, and herbivore inbreeding had a positive effect on egg survival when the eggs were exposed to predators and parasitoids. These results suggest that plants and herbivores indeed exert reciprocal selection, as demonstrated by the significant local adaptation of V. hirundinaria and A. asclepiadis to one another. The most significant cause of disruption of the local adaptation of herbivore populations was population connectivity, and thus probably gene flow. In plants local adaptation tended to increase with increasing genetic variation. Whether or not inbreeding depression occurred varied according to the life-history stage of the herbivore and/or the plant trait in question. In addition, the effects of inbreeding strongly depended on the population. Taken together, inbreeding modified plant-herbivore interactions at several different levels, and can thus affect the strength of reciprocal selection between species. Thus inbreeding has the potential to affect the outcome of coevolution.