In September, two new employees have started work at Aalto University Student Union – Developer Juha Isotalo and IT Support person Riku Kettunen. In this interview, they talk about what kind of work they will be doing for the Aalto community in the coming months.
Developer Juha Isotalo works on the new online course for the Student Representatives in Administration, or Hallopeds.
Student Representatives are statutory members of a higher education institution’s administration elected from among its students. Their mission is to bring the students’ point of view into the institutions’ decision-making.
“The purpose is for the Student Union to start practising as it preaches. We want the University to offer flexible opportunities, yet our way of training Hallopeds has been to tell them to come to a certain place at a certain time and to listen to us speak,” says Isotalo of the project’s background.
The new training is Finland’s first online course for Hallopeds. It will be executed using the Aalto Online Learning pilot funding granted by Aalto University.
“We are putting together a course on the Aalto MyCourses platform that everyone can work on regardless of the time and place. You can also take part in constructing the course yourself in different ways during the autumn. Which is exactly how we would want studying to be,” says Isotalo.
“The greatest challenge of the project is making the course interesting and motivating. It is important that the course offers new Hallopeds information in a meaningful way on matters that will be important to them in their future position of trust.”
Isotalo has plenty of merits from student unions. He has been, for example, on the Board of the Student Union of the University of Turku and worked as AYY’s first Specialist for Academic Affairs in 2010–13.
“I have fond memories of when I worked here last, and it feels good to come back. It would be impossible to execute a project like this alongside Specialist work, so it is great to be able to focus solely on this.”
AYY has also just gained a new IT Support person, Riku Kettunen. Kettunen is a freshly graduated Engineer of Information Technology from Savonia University of Applied Sciences and is completing his civilian service on AYY’s IT team.
“Because of my education, I will probably get some specialised tasks as well, but above all, I am in charge of all kinds of IT-related problems at the AYY office. When the internet or a programme is not functioning, the IT Support person helps,” explains Kettunen of his duties.
According to Kettunen, having a lot of patience is useful for an IT support person.
“Pretty often, the problem is resolved by asking if you have tried restarting the computer.”
Kettunen has no previous experience from student organisations. At AYY, he was tempted by the job description that seemed interesting and beneficial for his own future.
“The best thing is getting to work in your own field. Information technology is such a broad field that there is always more to learn. I feel like I have succeeded if this job helps me gain more IT-related experience in general.”