Erasmus Report Hanken School of Economics Vaasa

Transcription

1 Erasmus Report Hanken School of Economics Vaasa Autumn semester 2015 Julia Guenther S January, 2016

2 A) General report 1.) Host institution and exact dates of semester abroad I studied at the Hanken School of Economics from the 2 nd of September till the 18 th of December. However, the 30 th and 31 th of August were introduction days, therefore it is necessary to arrive a little earlier than the actual begin of the study period. The Hanken School of Economics is located in two cities in Finland, in Helsinki and Vaasa. This is important to know so you won t make the same mistake as I did. We were in total three students from the RUG who applied to Hanken and all of us thought we would go to Helsinki instead of Vaasa. This proved to be wrong. However, looking back, I am glad that I ended up in Vaasa. The four months in Vaasa were an amazing time and it could not have been any better! Vaasa is definitely a small city but this can be an advantage as you make friends faster and get orientation in the city more easily. 2.) Contact with home faculty, preparation and journey The RUG provided us with a list of possible places for the study abroad. I choose three preferences, ranked them 1 st, 2 nd and 3 rd and wrote a short motivation letter for my first choice, which was Hanken. Therefore, the application procedure was easy. Once the RUG accepted me at Hanken in Vaasa (not Helsinki as I hoped first), I still had to apply to Hanken. However, this was just a matter of bureaucracy. Hanken sent me a detailed step-by-step guidance to help me fill out the required documents. Therefore, it was easy to do that. Once also Hanken accepted me officially as one of their incoming exchange students I had to get a personal password to be able to use their computer facilities. This was the only thing in the entire preparation process that was somehow inconvenient for me. Because of security reasons, Hanken was not willing to send this document to my home address but only to the Exchange Office of the RUG. This can be tricky if you are an international student as they send this password during summer vacation. I am German and didn t spend the summer vacation in Groningen, so I had to arrange that someone picked the password up for me and send it to me. It is very important that you get this password, as it is the only way you can use the computers at Hanken. My journey to Vaasa was perfectly fine. If you want to fly to Vaasa you will most likely have a stop over in Helsinki or Stockholm. However, you can also choose to fly to Helsinki and than go my train to Vaasa (4 hours travel). I arrived by plane and already met two other exchange students in the airplane from Helsinki to Vaasa, which was nice. We were picked up by our tutors, which were the most helpful and kindly people I got to know during my stay.

3 3.) Residence abroad I applied for an apartment at the student housing office (VOAS) as soon as I could. That was three months before my arrival in Vaasa. However, VOAS did not confirm me a room until 10 days before my departure. I was already stressed and very lucky when I finally got the confirmation. My room was located in Olympia, which I can recommend as it close to the city center and the university. However, I was unlucky and got an unfurnished room, which meant that I had to arrange all furniture by myself (bed, mattress, lamp, desk etc.). Olympia 1 and 2 are two buildings, which are located right next too each other. However, only Olympia 1 has furnished apartments, Olympia 2 doesn t. Therefore, I can strongly recommend that you apply for a room in Olympia 1! In case you get an unfurnished room as I did, I can recommend you to book one or two nights in the Omena Hotel (cheap and good location). Than you have sufficient time to organize yourself and find some furniture (I got mine from second hand shops). Furthermore, some apartments from VOAS are rather far away from the city center, therefore you should pay attention when you apply for a room that you name student houses with a central location as your preference. The houses at VOAS are very basic but are sufficient for your 4- month stay. They are quite cheap ( euros), which is nice as expenditures for food, going out and traveling will be much higher than you are used to. The houses are mostly shared with one or two roommates. Most likely your tutors will offer to pick up your apartment key for you. This is a great offer as the office of VOAS is only opened till 5pm and closed on Sundays. As Finland belongs to the EU a Visa is not necessary. Therefore, you can just travel with your ID. However, depending on the trips you want to make it might be necessary to take your passport too! If you want to travel to St. Petersburg a passport is necessary. I can only recommend this trip as it was one of the best experiences I made. Hanken will tell you to register at the local Police station as your stay in Finland exceeds three months. This costs 50 euros. To be honest I don t think that it really matters whether you register or not. If you leave the country in the first three months of your stay in Finland it is not really necessary either. None of us registered as the police at we travelled a lot and therefore left the country several times. 4.) Grant As Finland is one of the most expensive countries you will receive the highest monthly Grant payment, which is about 270 euros a month. You will receive 70% of your total Erasmus money in advance of your study abroad if you filled out the required papers correctly. I received a bit more than 700 euros before I left to Finland. This might seem a lot at first, however you should not underestimate the monthly costs for living in Finland. All the Erasmus money was already gone in my first month, as I had to buy furniture (bed, mattress, chair, desk, lamp) and a bike. Also most likely, you will already book some trips in your first month. My monthly expenditures were about 1000 euros

4 including travelling, rent and food. Especially doing groceries is much more expensive than in The Netherlands/ Germany. We did most of our groceries at the Lidl as it is much cheaper than other Finish supermarkets such as the K-Market. Going out for dinner or even just for coffee and cake can cost you a lot of money too! An average piece of cake is approximately 5 euros. An average dinner will cost you about euros. This does not include drinks yet. A beer is about 5 euro and a glass of wine can quickly cost you 7-9 euros in a restaurant. However, there are some cheaper possibilities too. Your tutors will tell you about Pubs that have certain student prices on Tuesday and Fridays. However, keep the high expenditures in mind if you choose Finland for your study abroad! 5.) Study If you want to follow a course at Hanken you need to register via Webodi. Don t forget that you have to register for the course and the exam separately. Therefore, it is best to register for the exam straight away, so you won t forget it later on. The semester consists out of two blocks just like at the RUG. However, there are also some courses, which take the entire semester. Furthermore, courses are either 8 credits or 3 credits. Hanken is a Swedish University therefore all students speak Swedish too each other and not Finnish. However, the courses for the exchange students are all in English so there is no need to worry! I even took a Swedish course in order to adapt to the school a little better. Swedish is quite similar to Dutch/ German and therefore not too hard to learn. I followed five courses in total and most of the courses set a high focus on teamwork. Also not every course has an exam at the end. Some grades are based on big assignments, which have to be solved in teams. In one course I had a take home exam. This sounds easy, however the questions were difficult to solve and took much longer than I expected. Too sum it up, the workload is often quite high as you might have many assignments and therefore many deadlines. However, the grading is a little better than at the Rug and it is therefore a bit easier to receive high grades. The courses I followed are: Human Resource Management (8 ECT) Business Networks and Strategy (8 ECT) Project Management and Teamwork (8 ECT) Intercultural Business Communication (3 ECT) Swedish as a Foreign Language (3 ECT) 6.) Summary impression Studying at Hanken is a completely different experiences that at the RUG. The school in Vaasa is very small (about 400 students in total). Therefore, lectures and tutorials are held for students. The entire atmosphere at Hanken is very family- like. All the students know each other and the board of the students (SSHV) organises a lot of parties and activities for the students at Hanken. The school has a real school spirit! This is

5 something I never experienced in Groningen (probably due to the enormous size of the RUG). You can call all teachers by their first names and just visit their offices without any appointment. If you cannot take an exam because you are traveling they are often even willing to re-schedule an exam for you! The classes are very flexible due to the small sizes and often tutorials will be rescheduled if students cannot attend a certain class. You can even ask for a key to school so you are able to entire the school on the weekend, when the school is actually closed. This can be handy to access the library or to study together with friends for an exam. It was a great feeling to be a student at Hanken and I never felt lonely or lost! I am sure you will not regret your decision if you decide to go to Hanken. B) Specific report The following pages will give deeper insight into the courses I followed at Hanken (Vaasa, 2015, autumn semester). I followed in total five courses to get 31 ECTS in total. 1.) Human Resource Management Lectures and literature The course HRM was given in block 1.1. The course had in total seven lectures. The lectures very interactive. The teacher asked the students a lot of questions and encouraged a strong participation. Sometimes, the lectures included small tasks students had to solve in groups of 2-3 students. After each lecture students were supposed to write a short (1/2 page) learning diary. This sounds like a lot of work, however the questions we had to answer in the learning diary were easy to solve. It was quite a nice way to remember the content of the lectures. The learning diaries were also graded. Therefore, every student had to write at least 4 out of 7 learning diaries. However, that meant that attendance to at least 4 out of the 7 lectures was required. There was no specific book required for this course. Students were encouraged research academic articles and books that were helpful to solve the assignments. Exercise classes Next to the lectures, we had three exercise hours. Those exercise hours were taught by a PHD- student. The task was that students had to read a case and write an essay of three pages in advance to the exercise class. The solutions were than discussed in class and the teacher graded the essays.

6 Examination and grading As you can see, the biggest amount of points were given for the group assignment. The group assignment replaced the exam and was therefore very important. For the group assignment students worked together in a group of 2. The teams had to solve different problems that might arise in Human Resource Management and had to relate those topics to a real company. Some teams conducted real interviews, others searched for secondary data about the company online. Both was fine. The course ended with the presentations of the group works. Relevance to Groningen study program I am studying International Business in Groningen. In my study we already discussed several aspects of HRM in previous courses, however we had never a real HRM course. For me, this was the most interesting course at Hanken! I think the course helped me to relate several things I already knew about HRM and showed me a bigger picture. I can really recommend taking this course. All the different assignments can seem inseminating, however once you have a clear overview of the course you will understand it better. Study load & assessment Human Resource Management is a 8 ECTS course and I experienced the workload to be quite high! There are many deadlines for the three essays, the learning diaries, the group work and the final presentation. I think this is the course I spent most time on at Hanken. As you don t have an exam at the end of the course, the study load is especially during the course very high! However, once you finished the course, you wont have an exam in the exam week, which is also nice! This gives you the possibility to travel in the exam week (if you don t have other exams). The overall grades for this course were quite high as students can already collect points for attending the exercise seminars and writing the learning diaries. Added value

7 As I already indicated, this courses had the most value for me personally. I really liked the set-up and the content of the course. In the previous two years of my study I never thought that much about HRM as it is not really a strong focus in my study. However, now, after taking this class, I even consider to specialise in HRM in my Masters. 2. Business Networks and Strategy Lectures and literature The course consists of lectures, guest lectures, seminars, individual and groups assignments. Most of the lectures were teached by the teacher. I think we had three guest lectures in total. Some of the lectures were obligatory, but not all. Every lecture was a about a new topic of Business Networks and Strategy. The lecture discussed the following topics:» business and social networks» formal and informal networks» legal and ethical aspects of networks» networks of small entrepreneurial firms» clusters and industrial networks» Internationalization and networks Specific books were not really needed as the students were supposed to do their own literature review. The aim of the course is to enhance students abilities to understand contemporary highly networked industries and business relations. Exercise classes After three lectures an exercise class followed. In those classes questions concerning the lectures that were given had to be answered. The exercises classes were always 2 hours. In the first hours the questions were given to the students and the students had 45minutes to prepare the answers. Those were presented in the second hour. Examination and grading Grading is based on several tasks performed independently and in groups. Weights of each task are distributed as follows: Term paper and presentation (40%); acting as opponent (10%); take home exam (40%); activity (10%). The take home exam was new to me, as I never had this before. Every student got to questions, which had to be answered within four days on 6-8 pages. I somehow underestimated the take home exam in the beginning. The question seemed to be easy in the beginning, However, the proved to be quite tricky as it was difficult to find academic sources.

8 Relevance to Groningen study program I am not sure whether Groningen offers a similar course like this. Before starting this course I did not have much knowledge about business networks. I think this course can be especially useful for students who are interested to start a business. Examination and grading This was an 8 credits course. The estimated amount of work hours were 214 (36 contact hours non-schedulled work). Added value This course was a little disappointing for me as I expected it to be a little different. I thought this course would be useful to improve my personal network skills. However, the course is pretty theoretic and more about the background of networks than about own networking skills. 3.) Project Management and Teamwork Lectures and literature The course had in total six lectures and four article sessions. In the lectures the teacher discussed chapters of the book. The article sessions were more interactive. In the beginning of the course the teacher provided the students with a list of 12 articles, which the students had to read. Every article session covered three articles. The students had to work in pairs of two and had to prepare a presentation and a paper, which summarized the articles in advance to the article session. The lectures were not obligatory, however the four article sessions were obligatory. Microsoft Project Exercises The exercises gave an introduction to the most used project management software. The exercises were not mandatory and were not part of the final exam. However, I found it interesting to get some insight into this program. Relevance to Groningen study program The course is definitely interesting for students who want to know more about project management or might even want to work in project management.

9 Examination and grading The course had a written exam at the end of the block. The written exam based on chapter 1 to 20 from the course book. The final grade is based to 60% on the exam. Term paper (essay) on one article, presence and activity at the article sessions count for the other 40% of the grade. The course was a 8 credits course. Added value The course was definitely interesting. I got to know a lot of project management and how to manage project management. I think this course can be also interesting for other students as more and more companies integrate proper Project Management. 4.) Intercultural Business Communication Lectures & literature This course was very different from all other courses I followed. The course took the entire semester, however it just took two hours every week. The course had no real lectures but only interactive classes. As this was a language and not a business course, the entire set-up of the classes was very informal. We were a group of 10 students (mostly exchange students). Every week we discussed a different country and the clichés and characteristics of this country and the country s business culture. The course did not take much preparation. We only had to research a little about the different countries in advance. The teacher was extremely open and interested in different cultures. The final presentation The final presentation of each student was the only thing that really needed preparation. The presentation was a about a country we did not discuss in class yet. The teacher graded the presentation content wise but also the presentation style and the use of the English language. Examination and grading 70% of the final grade counted for the attendance and participation in class. This might sound weird, however regularly attendance was very important for the discussions that evolved in class. The other 30% counted for the final presentation. The course was a 4- credit course.

10 Added value I can really recommend taking this class! The informal set-up was very interesting and the classes were always different depending on the discussion. The classes were always interactive and I learned a lot about different business cultures. 5.) Swedish as a Foreign Language Lectures and literature This course had no real lectures but rather classes. Every week, we had two Swedish classes in the afternoon. The attendance was mandatory as it counted into the grading. The course continued over the whole semester. In the classes the teacher introduced us to new vocabulary and grammar and we had to solve exercises to practice what we just learned. The classes were like typical other language courses. The course is for beginners with the target level A1. Therefore everybody can follow this course without any knowledge of the Swedish language. The following book was used in class: Levy Scherrer, P & Lindemalm, K. Rivstart A1 + A2. Natur & Kultur. Homework After almost every class we got some homework to do. However, the homework was mostly done in minutes and therefore not too much work. Oral and written exam The course ended with an oral and written exam. The oral exam took about 15 minutes and the written exam about one hour. Both exams were easier than I expected. The exams covered the following aspects: understand very simple, short texts on familiar matters, write simple, short texts about personal details such as where you live, your family or about your studies, use familiar everyday expressions and basic phrases to introduce and describe yourself ask and answer simple questions about personal details and interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help, use the most elementary grammatical constructions in written and oral communication.

11 Added value Thanks to the course I got a basic understanding of the Swedish language. I can recommend following this course as it is nice to know a it about the language if you study at a Swedish speaking school.