Perceptions on being a student in CS

Besides courses and projects, sharing spaces also created encounters between students. However, spatial locations of CS program activities and studies kept changing. During its first years, CS Design in the School of ARTS was located in various places, ranging from spaces shared with other actors (as in AMF) to, finally, a designated CS space in 2014. Between 2010 and 2011, the program functioned in spaces designated to the Department of Design in general without any specific designated space. These spaces were also spaces for already established degree programs, and CS was often a sort of guest. Furthermore, the

98 On the PdP course, since 1997 there have 201 projects and 1,917 students involved. Students arrived from various schools or universities before the Aalto merger, with students mainly from de-sign, business, and engineering. A new set of 13–15 projects is initiated every academic year (see http://pdp.fi).

Aalto University merger resulted in changes in campus structure, still affecting the university operations today.⁹⁹

While between 2010 and 2015 the basic CS Design and introductory studies were arranged mainly in Arabia, several CS workshop and teaching sessions (e.g., project presentations) were also organized in the Aalto Design Factory (ADF) on Otaniemi campus.¹⁰⁰ ADF is also mentioned as a reference point for CS students, with its “informal activities and interaction perceived as crucial success factors”

and “open sharing within the community” (Björklund et al., 2011, p. ii). As a working space, ADF is mentioned as a place that “everybody has been” [#16]. For the CS students, however, ADF was not always felt to be open to all collaborators, and it had a strong spirit of its own [#16]. Furthermore, the ADF location was difficult. In this respect, having a space on Arabia campus was essential in facilitating various activities.

The Aalto Media Factory (AMF) in Arabia, however, was considered by CS students (except for the first batch) as their home base, at least in CS Design. As one 2010 CS Design student describes it, “the second year students, the third year students, they said that that was their place,” “a space for them to be, and... where they went whenever they felt like they wanted to meet some people” [#16]. While AMF was not

“officially CS,” it was open to new actors and “they opened the doors, and people went in” [#16]. By 2013, however, space issues were again encountered, as the use of AMF spaces was increasing and new agendas of interest evolved there.

Furthermore, indoor air quality issues played a major role and prevented the plans for building a designated space in 2012. Many spaces were found to be problematic in this respect, caused mostly by the fact that the School of ARTS was mainly based in a renovated factory, with problematic building structures to begin with. Finally, after being more or less “nomadic” for several years [#17], in Fall 2014 a new designated CS space was opened in Aalto Arabia Campus on the second floor, next to the main entrance lobby.

In developing student activities at the beginning of the program, “first everyone was really active” [#15], perhaps partly resulting from the fact that “everything was brand new” [#15]. Gradually, after initial challenges resulting simply from the small number of students, by 2011–2012 the CS Design community started to be established with the CS community on a larger scale, and various student

activities started to emerge. These activities were initiated by a rather small group of students and were often motivated by their personal interests, but were

nevertheless supported by the program management in CS and in CS Design.

99 After the 2010 Aalto merger (as described in detail in section 4.1.1), there was a decision gradu-ally to move all school of ARTS teaching activities to the Otaniemi campus area, some 10 km away from the campuses in Arabia district and in the city center. The move for the Department of Design in Aalto ARTS has, however, been postponed from the original 2014 to what is now considered to be 2018.

100 ADF is a teaching, working, and prototyping space initiated during the establishment of Aalto University, being the first official building of the new university (http://designfactory.aalto.fi/). ADF is based on earlier research and teaching collaborations, aiming to be “a platform for integrative inter-disciplinary education, research and industrial collaboration, as well as a catalyst for a culture of experimental and problem-based education to promote better learning outcomes” (Björklund et al., 2011, p. i).

Many of the students active in developing the CS student community were on the CS Design program, and some reasons are evident. First of all, “at least the first few years, the design people were the majority” [#15] (see statistics in section 3.3.2). It is easy to agree that, as the other CS schools had only a few students and a lot of the studying was still done in school-based degree programs, the other CS students were simply not that present on the Arabia campus.

Furthermore, as one of the first students describes, amongst CS Design “there has always been” some very active students [#15]. Each year, the group of active students varied, but in 2011 the cohesion in the CS Design group was even stronger, as they seemed to “do things together a lot, and spend time together”

[#17]. In the end, “it comes down to the couple of active people arranging things, and then everyone else joining” [#17].

In developing the CS student community, the different disciplines in CS “mix quite well” [#15]. While the group of active CS students always involved a variety of professions (although CS Design dominated) and cultural backgrounds (a minority was domestic), yet there existed a “sort of collective decision-making”

amongst students, based on “a sort of a spirit... and a general positivity among the group” [#17]. In this sense, “the program fosters some kind of sense of

responsibility” and “a basic sense of, yeah, being good” [#17].

The process of developing the CS student community involved various activities bringing people together. Besides possible personal interests, a common

motivation in developing the CS program, its contents, and activities for students was simply serving the CS community. The CS students seem motivated to contribute to the community. As one student, who was involved in various activities, describes it, “I just like, somehow, also to add some value to the group of people I’m studying or working with or doing something” [#14]. The students themselves describe, how “the majority [of them] think CS is more like family”

[#13] and at least “more like a family [when] comparing with other programs”

[#14]. In this sense, the CS students often also “stick with each other and support each other” [#14]. Overall, there was an open approach to collaboration. The CS students interacted openly with other students from Aalto University and pursued collaboration outside the university.

In 2015, one of the CS graduates focused his thesis on CS as an example of

“post-formal” education for social sustainability (Salovaara, 2015). To the graduate, the real learning in CS took place between the shared CS studies as

“core studies” (Salovaara, 2015, p. 40), with advanced content from CS Design (SPSD, Design Ethics) and other departments, and the extracurricular activities, courses, workshops, and projects that were outside the formal agenda. Gradually, these extracurricular activities also progressed outward from the core of CS and even from the university (as in Whose Issues? event and eventually in BPB; see Table 37), eventually connecting back to the program in the form of involvement in course teaching. According to the argument in the work, the learning in CS needs to support both formal, “university-organized and -certified” education, as well as “non-formal” activities connecting to one’s “passion” on some specific subject and activity (Salovaara, 2015, p. 126). If the interaction between the two

contents is well balanced (and managed), the interplay between the formal and non-formal education can lead to a “post-formal education” of the future

(Salovaara, 2015, p. 126), from which the author gathered his expertise during his studies.