The presentation focuses on a new kind of interaction-based teacher training that promotes creativity and innovations in the context of activity research and expansive learning. The resulting community-based practices for learning are utilized at the University of Applied Sciences (UAS) as an important part of the Finnish Triple Helix model for innovation. In the 1990s the UAS institutions were created in Finland to serve as institutes of higher learning closer to working life where students would receive Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees. According to the Polytechnics Act, research and development (R&D) were integrated into the training and education mission of the UAS institutions since their creation. Within the network-like Finnish innovation model, there are many contemporary missions for UAS institution to fulfill and these are often described according to the Living Lab model. UAS educational fields are supposed to produce methodological principles and new combinations of skills that are as close to practice as possible. On the other hand, they are supposed to increasingly spread these principles in the innovation chain from a local to a global level. Becoming a mediator between different fields of expertise, institutions and customers is a top priority for UAS institutions. In everyday life, UAS organisations send their students to do fieldwork in authentic working life learning environments to carry out various R&D projects. They focus on training their students in an interaction-based new mode of working, called co-creation or co-configuration, to promote collaboration and interaction.

The presentation proposes that the work of UAS organisations meets the criteria of organizational improvisation. New arrangements for RDI- based and working life based learning are required to carry this out. The presentation suggests that the network-like practice in UAS organisations should take place in a much more systematic double structure, where the most important prerequisite of improvisation is always present: constant and responsive interaction between all parties involved in learning.

The presentation focuses on the case of Helsinki Metropolia UAS. The first level in interaction is the space where students face genuine working life situations. Students at Metropolia UAS have the possibility to produce so-called interdisciplinary innovation projects in which full-fledged, existing material is used. They also build completely new products, services and activity models that help in reflecting on activities’ future and constructing broader horizons for potential activities. When participating in the development of citizens’ services and products in practical work situations, the students produce material enabling the citizens to mirror their own activity. At the same time, another space for interaction is needed; the space used by students and teachers for designing, directing, working on and evaluating the first interaction. The central participants here are the teachers that can help the students to build tools and methods for first level interaction and to interpret it.

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