RDI - Individual work


What is the policy towards RDI in various Finnish educational organisations (such as adult institutes, universities of applied sciences, universities, vocational schools, secondary schools, primary schools), ie. how much time can teachers and staff devote to RDI?
Is RDI important or non-existent in your own organisation?

All institutes in Finland have a strategic plan which normally is planned for the next 5 years. The strategy is planned with different actors. The main ones are:

1. being the city where the institute is
2. the need of the city
3. higher management decision.


Normally, the amount of RDI resource allocated at adult institutes and universities of applied sciences are about the same. They are around 50 hours for each staff. This can be more or less depending on the field the teaching staff is. This hours can be put under the personal development of the teacher. The total number of hours a teacher has to teach per year according to legislation is 1624 hours. However, teaching staff can be part of a project, the project in question can be a project funded by, for example, the EU, Ministry of Education of Finland or the city. In such case, the RDI time allocated to the teacher can be around 400 hours per academic semester. The teacher can work as a project leader or consultant or manager of the project. Universities, however, may have slightly different policies whereby teaching and RDI can be around half of the resources allocated to a teacher. This is because universities are more researched focus.

The amount of RDI a university, university of applied sciences, adult institutes and vocational education provide has a relation to the way RDI is funded, for example, if the Finnish government is giving a big percentage share of money to develop RDI projects that will benefit the society and or the immediate surrounding where the institution in question is; the institution will automatically be launched new projects. One example can be the integration of immigrants in the north Karelia region because of a high influx of immigrants from various countries like Syria, the Finnish government propose different funding for educational institution to evaluate and accreditate level of competence and knowledge of these immigrants in Finland to help them integrate in society and find work. As such, educational institution like Karelia UAS and University of Eastern Finland started new RDI projects.

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