LUT - Why we joined the STARS project

Delivering lectures and presenting materials can sometimes be an easy task for teachers, but understanding the key insights and learning from those materials can be a challenging task for students. As students may struggle to improve their assignments or regular tasks in any module they are studying at the university level. Moreover, university students often seek various methods to oversee and manage their cognitive processes. They achieve this by regulating their behavior through self-regulation, which involves using metacognitive strategies such as setting goals, planning, monitoring, evaluating, and adjusting their learning habits and behaviors. The LUT STARS project consortium team of Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology LUT (LUT University, Finland) initially thought of gathering peer-review feedback from students, peers, and teachers and working like a team. These can be done by getting live, instant feedback or providing an online, technology-enhanced platform to share and improve students’ writing-related activities through a feedback mechanism.

The multidisciplinary LUT consortium for the STRAS project is interested in monitoring and collaborating with other regions in the EU if the same kind of feedback-related tasks can be facilitated among students. In the STARS project, our experts at LUT focus on applying their few master’s and PhD-level courses, such as Literature Study, Software and Innovation Application, and Sustainability and IT, which can utilize self-regulated learning. To do this, the modules will emphasize self-reflection and meta-cognition, followed by sequential classes in each module. The assignments and class tasks are based on self-evaluation and peer evaluation among students. Our next extensive endeavor focuses on implementing various modules at LUT and identifying the most effective student engagement approach to strengthen the STARS project.