In Finland higher education has three roles: respond to the world of work and its development needs, based on research principles and support for individual professional growth. The Learning by Developing, LbD, is a pedagogical model and it is developed and used in Laurea University of Applied Sciences, LUAS, (Raij 2006, 2007). In the LbD, a developing project is seen as a learning environment where there are three essential types of knowledge; knowledge in practice, knowledge of practice and knowledge for practice (Raij 2007). The LbD model has holistic view of students and students have ability to do things and create processes together with working life (Vyakarnam, Illes, Kolmos & Madritsch 2008). Producting knowledge it’s not enough. The knowledge for practice needs also to exchange the working process. The innovations in this project were to created new working models of nursing practice in medical care. In this kind of development process the goal is not only make new knowledge but also adapting the innovation to the specific context at the same time as it is created (Partamies, Ahonen & Ora-Hyytiäinen 2008). The aim of this study was to develop teaching and guiding in projects. Ora-Hyytiäinen and Rajalahti (2006) found that working groups had difficulties finding time for interaction needed. Partamies, Ahonen and Ora-Hyytiäinen (2008) found that in the beginning of projects both professionals and student thought more positively about partnership, teamwork and they believed in change in working process, but the results were lower in the end of the project. Also the partners did not find e-learning environment beneficial to use. Regarding this data, some changes have been made in order to obtain better participation from the partners. Students will be acquainted with the theoretical framework for six months before they start working with professionals. Students do some of their practical training in the same work community they are dealing with in the project. Also educational sessions were arranged to all participants.

Quantitative data was collected with the questionnaire three times from both professionals and students during this project (N=95). Qualitative data was collected with focus group interviews to generate data. Ethical standards of research were observed: anonymity, voluntariness and right to refuse to answer the survey (Burns & Grove 2005).

It seems that this kind of development process generates competence and new development skills for students, professionals and lecturers. Teaching and guiding in project is subject which needs more research. This development project will also product eight bachelors’ thesis.