Work skills of the future

Competitive competence for work

Jamk aims to educate specialists who respond to employers’ future challenges through innovation and competitive competence. An underlying theme of all curricula is the development of future work skills while supporting students’ professional growth. Future work skills are developed alongside substance studies. Pedagogical choices can support the development of necessary work skills. Identified future work skills are introduced to curricula as evaluated learning outcomes. Cooperation with the representatives of business and industry supports the development of curricula and makes the required competence more concrete for students.

Helpful questions for curriculum work

• Is the curriculum open and flexible for the current needs of business and industry?
• How are work skills apparent in course descriptions and operating methods throughout the studies?
• How well do the intended learning outcomes and contents of the courses respond to the challenges and needs of work in the future?
• Do the intended learning outcomes support the development of transferable skills (e.g. work community skills, ethical competence, internationalisation skills, interaction and communication skills)?
• What kind of work skills is the student expected to have?
• How is the student supported in finding the future competence that is suitable for them?
• How is the student supported in identifying their competence and putting it into words?
• What kinds of pedagogical choices offer the student opportunities to learn work skills?
• How do the studies outline the future operating environment?
• Are courses’ intended learning outcomes described in a way that enables studification?

Materials to support curriculum work

• The main results of the Finnish National Agency for Education’s foresight work are published in the Vipunen (Finnish National Agency for Education statistics service, Finnish web site)
• The Skills Needs Compass provides information on the competence needs of working life
• Information about professions’ employment prospects and competence needs: http://www.foreammatti.fi/ (Finnish web page)
• What kinds of tasks higher education graduates work in: https://toissa.fi/
• AVOP feedback
• Career monitoring survey for our alumni who graduated five years ago. Information on successful employment cooperation and career guidance from the perspective of our alumni. https://amk-uraseuranta.turkuamk.fi/en/results/
• Self-evaluation tool for working life cooperation for planning teaching. This self-evaluation tool allows teachers to evaluate what kind of employment-oriented pedagogical solutions could be used in the learning process. The development of the tool has only just started, and the first version has now been published (Self-evaluation tool for working life cooperation for planning teaching | Library of Open Educational Resources | Finna, Finnish web page).
• Laitinen-Väänänen, S. 2020. Työelämäyhteistyö opetuksen suunnittelussa – itsearviointimittaria kehittämässä. (Employment cooperation in the planning of teaching – developing a self-evaluation tool.) In Kohti oppimisen uutta ekosysteemiä. (Towards a new ecosystem of learning.) Eds. M. I. Koskinen, R. Nakamura, H. Yli-Knuuttila & P. Tyrväinen. Jyväskylä: Jamk University of Applied Sciences, 97–102. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-830-562-3 (Finnish web page)
• https://tulevaisuusohjaus.fi/

Anne Hakala 26.1.2023, updated 16.9.2026