UEF Summer School will be back 5-16 August 2024 with new courses at Joensuu campus.
Application dates: 1 March - 15 June 2024 (some courses may close application earlier)
See below more information about courses for August 2024!
NB! Changes to below information may occur.
Courses 2024
School of Applied Educational Science and Teacher Education:
Education in Diverse Cultures
Course dates: 5-16 August 2024 (2 weeks)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Ritva Kantelinen (ritva.kantelinen@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: FS00CR73
After completing the study unit, the student
• understands concepts and perspectives underlying the diversity in educational settings,
• can apply theoretical knowledge in observing the learners' cultural diversity from different perspectives,
• can recognize and value cultural diversity and its significance in education, training, pedagogical activities, human encounters in work communities, as well as in individuals and their behaviours,
• can distinguish the factors that transmit and create culture in education and training,
• recognizes the significance of pedagogical activity for developing the cooperation and mutual understanding between the individuals,
• can evaluate the significance of shared expertise in operational environments of education.
Maximum number of participants: 16
*
School of Theology:
The Futures of Daily Bread? Food, Inequality, and Utopia
Course dates: 5-9 August 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Anna Salonen, contact person Annika Juurikka (annika.juurikka@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: FT00DQ03
The course familiarises the students with social factors behind contemporary food inequality, including food (in)security, abundance, food waste, and paradoxes of charitable food assistance. These social factors are discussed within the ethical and theological frameworks of food and eating, as well as planetary, cosmopolitan, and critical theologies, and utopian thought. The theoretical explorations are applied in a practical workshop on alternative food futures. Through critical, analytical, and creative exercises, the students acquire skills to apply utopia as a method and pedagogy. The course includes research literature and expert lectures that engage the students with participatory, ethnographic, and collaborative methodologies on studying food, inequality, and utopia. The course includes an excursion to a local sustainability project.
School of Computing:
Learning Analytics (LA)
Course dates: 5-16 August 2024 (2 weeks)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Mohammed Saqr (mohammed.saqr@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: 3621691
Learning analytics (LA) is an interdisciplinary field that lies at the intersection of data science, computer science, education technology, pedagogy, and statistics. Since the field has emerged in 2011, it has exponentially grown to include a vast array of applications, and methods.
This Learning Analytics Course will provide a framework for the understanding of the field and how data has been used in education. The course will address the principles of learning analytics, discuss the theoretical background behind learning analytics and the concepts of the big data. The learning analytics main steps and procedures will be covered in detail, including data gathering, analysis, generation of insights and reporting. The main ethical and privacy issues will also be discussed.
The practical section of the course will enable attendees to practice the basics methods of analysis of educational data using real-life examples and authentic datasets. These methods include social network analysis, mixture modeling, sequence mining, process mining, predictive analytics, and machine learning.
No matter your background, you are welcome in our course. The course does not require prior programming or coding skills and uses accessible tools that can be used by everyone.
The maximum number of participants: 30.
*
Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Computer Games
Course dates: 12-16 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 3-5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Ville Hautamäki (ville.hautamaki@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: LT00DG54
Basics of machine learning (one day + practical component)
What is a machine learning model? Differences between supervised, unsupervised and
reinforcement learning modes of learning. Focus is on deep learning models, the basics of it will
be quickly revised. Recently introduced self-supervised deep learning models will be introduced.
AI agents (two days of lectures + practical component)
The course introduces the basics of reinforcement learning and how autonomous systems can be implemented and trained. In the course we learn how to train software agents (such as playing games, dialog systems, etc.) and how to train physical agents such as robots through simulations. Some of the lectures in this section will be given by Dr. Andrew Melnik from Bielefeld University and Dr. Anssi Kanervisto from Microsoft Research, Cambridge.
Practice component (two days)
During the section, students implement a software agent that can play a computer game by
programming (Python). An agent is a statistical model whose parameters are then learned by
playing the game. There are many different models and training algorithms, and it is expected
that advanced students will be able to try several of these during these two days. During the final
day, students’ agents are pitted against each other in a tournament and we will recognize three
best performing agents.
*
Introduction to Speech and Machine Learning
Course dates: 12-16 August 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 3 ECTS
Course coordinator: Tomi Kinnunen (tomi.kinnunen@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: LT00DG43
Introductory machine learning contains self-contained introduction to elementary supervised and unsupervised learning. Evaluation of binary classifiers (e.g. type-I/II errors, ROC analysis). Introduction to modern deep learning approaches (feedforward, convolutive, recurrent). Basic idea of graph neural networks. Introductory speech processing will include speech as a carrier of linguistic information; basics of speech analysis and feature extraction, and statistical modeling. We will illustrate these ideas through application examples ranging from gender recognition, to voice biometrics (speaker recognition), speech recognition, and detection of spoofing attacks (such as audio-based deepfakes).
The course contains also topics that introduce the student to research in this field, stemming from research done at the Computational Speech Group at UEF. The teaching modes will include offline tasks (to be completed prior to contact teaching); lectures and exercises as part of in-campus teaching. The teaching will be organized only at the Joensuu campus of the UEF, between 12-16 August 2024.
Learning aims: to learn basics about speech and machine learning, and have a gist on research done in the field of speech processing.
*
Department of Physics and Mathematics:
Quantum mechanics for photonics: From molecular spectroscopy to low dimensional materials applications
Course dates: 12-16 August 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 2 ECTS
Course coordinator: Noora Heikkilä (noora.heikkila@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: LF00CS49; see the website of the course
The “Quantum mechanics for photonics: From molecular spectroscopy to low dimensional materials applications” course aims to provide a modern point of view on the quantum mechanics of many-electron systems. The main objectives of the course are to understand the principles of quantum mechanical calculations of optical properties of complex molecular and low dimensional systems (i), to gain knowledge about applications of results of quantum mechanical calculations in modern science, industry, and technology (ii), and to gain basic skills in techniques of quantum mechanical calculations (iii).
The content of the course involves the basic ideas and concepts of a quantum theory of many-electron systems, main approximations, methods of calculations, and their applications for solving fundamental and applied photonics problems. The practical part contains exercises and tests for performing geometry optimization, calculation and analysis of the electronic structure and optical properties, comparison of methods, interpretation of the experimental data based on calculations, using the symmetry, visualization of the calculation results, and others.
*
Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences:
Ecosystem Restoration and Climate Change
Course dates: 5-16 August 2024 (2 weeks)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Frank Berninger (frank.berninger@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: TBA
Under current EU legislation and international agreements there is an increasing obligation to protect and restore ecosystems. While restoration is scale up, there is increasing emphasis on using natural processes to restore damaged ecosystems like in rewilding. Ecosystem restoration also emphasizes increasingly human welbeing and a portfolio of ecosystem services that are to be enhanced. Furthermore, there is increasingly room for private actors in restoration and conservation processes. The course gives, using concrete examples from North Karelia an overview of natural, economic, legal and social frameworks for ecosystem restoration. The work is done in collaboration with the Eco2adapt and Microeco projects.
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Biodiversity.now
Course dates: 5-16 August 2024 (2 weeks)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Elina Oksanen (elina.oksanen@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: LY00CK73
The course deepens understanding about biodiversity, gives examples from nature and biodiversity conservation and maintenance, provides group working skills and critical thinking as well as opportunities for sharing knowledge and networking.
After completing the course, the student is able to:
- understand the concept, structure and crises related to biodiversity deeper, multidisciplinary and in practise
- recognize reasons for the ongoing biodiversity crisis and its consequences to the human society and personal life
- explore own connection to nature and diverse values you assign to it
- recognize a variety of approaches and tools to protect biodiversity, increase biodiversity and promote sustainable use of biodiversity
- apply the issues to own field of studies/work and learn how to be part of the solution
*
Summer Seminar of Environmental Modeling
NB! This course will be arranged at Kuopio campus - if attending this course, make sure you book accommodation and transport to Kuopio.
Course dates: 12-16 August 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 2 ECTS
Course coordinator: Mikko Kolehmainen (mikko.kolehmainen@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: LY00DQ76
The seminar handles timely topics of environmental modeling. Yearly 2-3 selected application areas of environmental modeling are studied in the seminar presentations. For the year 2024 we have selected aquatic modeling, energy modeling and atmospheric pollution modeling. The visiting lecturer is assistant professor Jibran Khan from Århus University. Other presentations are given by several research groups from the University of Eastern Finland (UEF) as well as researchers from the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). The participants are also welcome to suggest their own presentation to substitute the report required.
The student is required to attend at least 80% of the seminar sessions. Additionally, he or she is required to write and submit a report of about 5 pages or give his or her own presentation in the seminar.
NB! This course is organized at UEF’s Kuopio campus. Participants should be sure to prepare accommodation and make travel plans for Kuopio accordingly. It is not possible to acquire accommodation from Joensuu and participate in the course in Kuopio, as there is a distance of approx. 150 kilometres between the cities.
Department of Geographical and Historical Studies:
Environmental Collaboration and Conflict Resolution
Course dates: 12-16 August 2024 (1 week)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Denis Dobrynin (denis.dobrynin@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: 5119174
NB! Application period for this course closes on 1 May, or once 50 applicants have been received.
The course will address environmental and natural resource conflicts that are familiar and topical for the course participants. These cases provide a real-world context for the course contents and the development of practical skills. The themes include natural resource conflicts for example in the fields of forestry, nature conservation, mining and land use conflicts more generally. Students are expected to work with concrete conflict cases along the course program. The course is constructed around a framework of environmental collaboration and conflict resolution. It starts with the introduction of collaborative management and participatory methods and continues with the theory and practice of collaboration, mediation and consensus building. It includes elements of interest-based negotiation theory at its core and builds on the collaborative model of consensus building.
Pre-course reading materials and tasks, lectures, group work, presentations, and an excursion during the course as well as reports/essays after the course. To complete the course and get the ECTS credits Master’s student needs to participate in 80% of course sessions as well as actively carry out group work and reading outside of course sessions.
The maximum number of participants: 30.
Mastering the research data - Tutkimusaineisto haltuun!
Course dates: 5-16 August 2024 (2 weeks)
Course extent: 5 ECTS
Course coordinator: Manna Satama (manna.satama@uef.fi)
Course description in Peppi: KI00DQ35
The course is based on the key themes of data management and its implementation. This is examined in the everyday life of research and from the point of view of research methods and questions. The course is suitable for both qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research data.
The course explores questions such as:
• How different research methods and research questions affect the handling of the data
• How researchers perceive their own relationship to their data (feelings, experiences, everyday challenges)
• How digital tools are used in data collection, management and analysis
• What is meant by data description and documentation, and how to carry it out in practice
• What kind of ethical issues are involved in data management
• How open science can be implemented with different kinds of research data and methods
Social programme
Your stay here at the UEF will not be studying only - although that can be fun, too.
You can enjoy the eastern Finnish nature on your leisure time. Why not try out, for example, canoeing on the river or lake, play beach volley, go Nordic walking in the forest, take a sauna and go swimming in our beautiful lakes? Or you can just relax with your fellow students on the numerous terraces and cafeterias around our campus cities.
We hope you enjoy your stay in Finland. That’s why we will also organise some guided social programme during the weeks and the weekend.
The activities have a participation fee of 60 euros per person, which will be charged upon registration to the events. Registration to the social programme will be made available separately from course application and course registration.
Social Programme for August 2024 has not been confirmed.