Browsing by Subject "Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulu"

Aims. Generally, there is a lot of research about generic skills, but how these skills develop during the work phase has barely been researched. The participants of the study are students from the Finnish National Defense University, whose studies include a four-year long work phase between the bachelor degree and the master's degree. The research questions were: 1.What kind of generic skills students learn at the workplace? 2. How do these skills and the work phase generally affect the studies after the work phase? 3. How do the generic skills learned during the work phase differ between the students who experienced that the transition from the work phase to masters' studies went well and those who experienced the transition as challenging? The results are used to discuss the development of students' expertise. Methods. The data were collected with a questionnaire during the spring 2015. The link to the questionnaire was sent by email to the second year master students from the Finnish National Defense University (N=108). Twenty-six students responded, the response rate being 24 %. The qualitative data was analyzed with inductive content analysis. The first two questions were analyzed with a variable-oriented approach while the third question was analyzed with a person-oriented approach. Results and conclusions. The analysis showed that students learned many kinds of generic skills during the work phase. These skills were categorized into five categories: social skills, skills related to self-knowledge, skills related to the mastery of big picture, problem solving and organizing skills and other skills. These skills and the work generally had impact on the master studies after the work phase. These impacts were: impact on maturity, impact on the master's thesis, influence on the fluency of the studies and other impacts. The learned generic skills were also related to the transition from the work phase to the studies. Those students who felt their transition went smoothly had learned more skills related to self-knowledge and problem solving and organizing skills than those students who experienced the transition as challenging. On the contrary, these students had learned more social and other skills than the students who felt their transition went smoothly.