BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN VOCATIONAL EDUCATION, UPPER SECONDARY AND HIGHER EDUCATION - A COMMON DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT (CDLE)

Finland, the country famed for its education, is seeing a decreasing trend in higher education. The number of students who proceed to higher education has developed a downward trend during the last few years. In addition, the length of studies in higher education is longer than in other European countries. The Ministry of the Education and Culture has challenged universities of applied sciences to develop innovative ways to shorten the overall study time. At the same time, many students starting their higher educational studies are older than in other European countries. The aim of this study is to describe a development project between Laurea University of Applied Sciences and several vocational secondary schools and general upper secondary schools in Finland's metropolitan area. We have co-created a common digital learning environment, which is conceived as an ecosystem - a learning environment consisting of learning tools and components that adhere to common learning goals. In the system, secondary school students have the option of taking some studies from Laurea. This gives them a head start in their future university level studies and helps to bridge the transition. The developed "common digital learning environment" (CDLE) is an ecosystem more focused on learning rather than administration. The purpose of the CDLE has been to shorten overall study time and to give vocational students an option to try higher education studies as a part of their vocational educational studies or studies at upper secondary. The CDLE model has shown that it is possible to integrate higher educational studies with secondary level studies. This article discusses ways of integrating studies between educational levels via a digital learning ecosystem. In this article, we will present a concrete model of the CDLE. This model is ecological, economical, and reachable and student centred. The findings of the project are promising. So far, we have opened the CDLE for almost all of Laurea's bachelor programs. In the future, we aim to make the CDLE available for master's level programs as well. We conclude that there are different ways to shorten study times, intensify studies between levels of degrees and to give a chance to try higher educational studies using digital learning opportunities, such as the common digital learning environment CDLE.