Shared Learning Spaces as Enablers in Regional Development and Learning

Abstract

This chapter presents a development work that aimed at creating shared learning spaces within the context of a regional learning network in the tourism sector in Eastern Uusimaa, in Finland. The overall idea of establishing learning networks in Finland represents a new approach to innovation and a form of project activity that was initiated and financed by the Workplace Development Programme of Finnish Ministry of Labour (TYKES-FWDP) since 2004 (Alasoini 2004). The idea of this new approach to innovation is to combine multiple actors and competencies of universities and/or other research units, companies and other organizations within learning networks. Compared to the traditional types of user-oriented and method-based projects, these learning network projects are expected to produce ‘generative results’ and to allow the actors of the networks ‘to improve their own development competence and to strengthen their own development systems by participating in discussions of the experiences of other actors’ (Alasoini 2008, p. 73).