The degree programme in Business Management and Entrepreneurship is a Master’s degree programme, that is intended for persons who wish to develop their international competences and know-how in international business.
As a part of this 90 ETCS credit programme, the students get to write a Master’s thesis, the aim of which is to develop and demonstrate the students’ ability to apply research data, use selected methods for analyzing an solving workplace problems and to carry out demanding specialist tasks. The thesis process is quite extensive, since it takes 30 ECTS credits of the entire programme, and students will complete it individually. The task is demanding, not to say the least, but also rewarding for the students.
An event called Poster seminar was held during a contact day of the first year BME students in January. In the event, the students got to present the progress they’d had with their Thesis topics. Around 30 students took part. The seminar was organized so that multiple students were presenting at the same time, and the rest of the group were moving from one presenter to the next giving their comments and feedback. Also the teachers participated by giving each presenter valuable advice and suggestions on how to move forward with their Thesis processes.
“This way of holding a seminar is much more interactive and involves all the participants in a more effective way, compared to the traditional style of holding a seminar, where just one presenter speaks and the rest listen. In this way, we can also have a bigger number of presenters and thesis topics during one day. The presenters and the audience have to focus much more”, explains Pirjo Valokorpi, one of the lecturers in Master’s business programmes.
The thesis topics of the group ranged very wide, from a marketing plan for an online shop to development of the start-up environment of a city. All the topics were something that the students were very interested in, and many of the topics were related to the companies they were working for.
”This is a very intimate and intensive event. The students do most of their studies in teams and individually and we meet face to face only once a month. Therefore, it is nice to do it properly and in very close contact when we do actually meet. This way we get to know the people much more personally and get a different kind of contact with the students”, says Pirjo Valokorpi.
In the students’ opinion, the event was challenging with all the intensive presentations that took the whole day, but it was also successful in many ways. Everybody got helpful feedback on how to progress on their thesis processes. For example, some of the topics were too wide for one thesis, and needed some narrowing down. But the event was successful and helpful in other ways too. Some of the students found possible future business partners from among their classmates!
