Metropolia Minno®

The Metropolia Minno® 2 course is a hands-on team learning course in which you work on sustainable development challenges. During the course, you will practise skills you will need in any profession: teamwork, communication, problem-solving, giving and receiving feedback, and continuous learning.  

During your studies, Metropolia Minno® courses may feel demanding or “different” compared to other courses. However, many students realise only later in working life that the skills practised in Metropolia Minno® are exactly the ones that are invaluable when jobs, roles and technologies keep changing.

The Metropolia Minno® 2 course is primarily delivered as on-campus teaching for full-time day students.  
Online delivery is intended only for blended-learning students, but they may, if they wish, commit to attending the on-campus sessions for the entire course.

Teaching may take place on a different campus than your other studies, but the whole day is reserved for Minno work (“Minno Monday”).

Structure of the day

- Morning: facilitated workshop with the teacher and student co-coaches  
- Afternoon: your team’s own work in the same place or in another environment agreed together by the team (e.g. campus, café, park, seaside)

The aim is that you can focus on working with your team without having to change campuses in the middle of the day.

Attendance in Metropolia Minno® 2 is mandatory.
The reason is not just “being present”, but that:

• team learning and interaction skills cannot be learned in the same way independently or by only reading theory
• the work is based on discussion, sharing ideas, experimenting together and reflecting
• everyone’s contribution affects the progress and learning of the whole team  

If you are absent from the first session, your completion of the course will be rejected.

In the Metropolia Minno® 2 course, all team outputs (e.g. reports, presentation slides, videos, canvas contents) are published under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.

This means for you:

• you retain the copyright to your own outputs
• the outputs created during the course may be used non-commercially within Metropolia and the student community also after the course
• others may make use of the outputs as long as they follow the licence terms (e.g. credit the authors, do not use commercially, and share any adaptations under the same licence).

The licence makes your work visible and enables other students to learn from it and build further on what you have created.

The skills you practise in Metropolia Minno® – collaboration, communication, problem-solving, feedback culture and learning new things – are exactly the capabilities needed in working life when tasks and technologies keep changing.

By reserving your "Minno Mondays" in your calendar, showing up and really engaging in the work with your team, you are building competences that will be of concrete benefit to you after graduation.

For more detailed tips and information on how to complete the course, see the Word document in SharePoint.

Yes. The Metropolia Minno® 2 course includes five workshops, and attendance in these is mandatory. Without participating in the workshops, you cannot progress with your team or achieve the learning objectives of the course.

The teams are formed by the course staff. The aim is to create multidisciplinary, multilingual and multicultural teams: each team includes students from different degree programmes and language groups. This reflects how projects work in real working life and supports the learning objectives of the course.

You cannot choose your own team. The teams are formed by the teacher to ensure that the groups are as multidisciplinary and balanced as possible (e.g. different fields, backgrounds and languages).

In multidisciplinary teams:

• you learn to look at challenges from different perspectives (e.g. engineering, wellbeing, business, design)  
• you learn to collaborate with professionals from different backgrounds
• you create solutions that take into account more perspectives than would be possible within a single field.

This reflects the way projects are carried out in working life.

Teamwork also involves dealing with different ways of working and with conflicts. Primarily, challenges should be addressed within the team by agreeing on common ground rules.  

If the situation does not improve, contact the student co-coach as early as possible. Their first aim is to support your team in resolving conflicts, and they will contact the course teacher if needed.

Attendance is compulsory because:

• team learning, interaction skills and the design process cannot be learned only independently or by reading theory
• in the workshops you do concrete, facilitated team work, experiments and reflection
• everyone’s contribution affects the progress and learning of the whole team.

For this reason, the course cannot be completed through independent work only.

In the first workshop, the teams are formed and the work on the challenge is started. If you are not present, you cannot be integrated into a team in a natural way, and your completion of this course implementation will be rejected. You will therefore need to complete the course later in a new implementation.

Always inform about your absence in advance according to the course instructions (e.g. via Moodle or Teams, or by email to the teacher). State the reason and the estimated duration of your absence. This way the teacher and your team can prepare for the situation. You will also receive a replacement assignment for the absence.  

Please note, however, that you must be present at the first workshop and it cannot be compensated.

You can compensate for one workshop with an assignment, but this cannot be the first workshop. It is not possible to compensate for more than one workshop, because in order to achieve the learning outcomes of the course you need to be present in the workshops.

MinnoFest is a joint event organised twice a year, where teams present their solutions, network and receive feedback. It is an important part of the learning process and the overall course.

After successfully completing the Metropolia Minno 2 course implementation, you will receive the credits as normal, but we strongly recommend that you also participate in MinnoFest so that you can network with other students and, above all, with representatives from working life.

Teams are deliberately formed to be multilingual so that:

• you can practise working in teams where not everyone speaks the same language – this is very typical in working life
• you develop your ability to communicate about your field and your ideas also in English
• you learn to create shared ground rules for language use (e.g. what is done in English, what can be done in Finnish, and how to make sure everyone can follow).

The aim is not to test grammar, but to support effective, multilingual teamwork.

No, you don’t. It is enough that you can participate in discussions, ask questions and explain basic things. The most important thing is the willingness to be understood and to make sure others understand as well. The team, student co-coaches and the teacher will support you in using the language.

Yes, but in a way that no one is left out. It is good for the team to agree on what is done in English (e.g. joint presentations and documents) and how to ensure that English-speaking teammates understand the content of the discussion (for example by summarising or translating the key points).

Teaching in Metropolia Minno® 2 is organised on the home campus of the teacher assigned to you. The Minno day (“Minno Monday”) is reserved for the course, and you do not need to travel between different campuses during the day.

You will receive information about the teaching location by email after the registration period has closed and well before the course starts. Any changes will be communicated via the course communication channels.

• For full-time day students, the course is organised as on-campus teaching.
• For blended-learning students, an online implementation is offered (e.g. via Teams/Zoom/Meet).
• A blended-learning student may choose to attend the on-campus sessions, but in that case they commit to on-campus participation for the entire course.

Between workshops, teams complete weekly homework tasks (e.g. interviews, ideation, developing prototypes and reflecting on their own learning). These are an integral part of the course structure – without them the team cannot progress, and there will be no material to work on in the next workshop.

Moodle serves as the “backbone” of the course: there you will find assignment descriptions, submission boxes, schedules and key instructions. Also remember to follow your email.

For matters related to Metropolia Minno® 1 registration, the online course, and grading, as well as Metropolia Minno® 2 registration, grading, and the digital open badge, you can contact enni.leskinen [at] metropolia.fi (Enni Leskinen).

For questions regarding the pedagogical content, you can contact minttu.ripatti [at] metropolia.fi (Minttu Ripatti).

If you have questions about RPL (recognition of prior learning) or alternative ways of completing Metropolia Minno® 3, please contact the RPL coordinator responsible for your degree programme.