Human to human connections are strings for institutional collaboration building

Can you see the strings reaching out to connect with others far away? Can you sense how they vibrate fiercely in the search for greater impact? Can you hear yourself reaching someone on the other side? Can you taste the hope that the connection creates in your being?

Setting out to build institutional collaboration between the Ohio State University (OSU) and Haaga-Helia, reveals multiple dimensions of international partnerships. What does institutional collaboration entail? So far we have had a visiting scholar working with us for studying the Vocational Education and Training (VET), and especially Professional Teacher Education in both the U.S. and Finland. Publications have been made on shared topics such as educational inclusion and the continuous learning of VET teachers. Students’ study visits are included in the Memorandum of Understanding we have had for some years now.

There are more things we could do. Providing the students and staff online opportunities for international interactions and learning would be one key point, offering the staff space for joint research and mutual global competence development another.

Strengthening and fostering this kind of collaborations is a matter of living human beings, individuals connecting both personally and transnationally. In this article I will explore some of the ways human individuals make the institutions, and how institutional collaboration is fundamentally created in human to human connections.

Institutions come alive through human interaction

An institution is a society or organisation founded for a religious, educational, social, or similar purpose and /or an established official organisation having an important role in the life of a country (Oxford University Press n.d.). From the sociological perspective institutions are systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions. They can be seen as defining mechanisms for controlling behaviour within societies and evolving through enduring interaction between state and society. (Gilad n.d.)

When building transnational institutional collaboration between higher education institutions it becomes evident that these institutions are void without the presence of human beings. Institutions as such without people interacting within them would not exist. Institution could be described as ‘rules of the game’ that is, as patterns of behaviour shaping shared expectations, norms, and routines (Gilad n.d.). Here is when human connection comes into play. The yearning for connection is a universal experience (Robson 2024). The human urge for these connections is also the origins for transnational institutional collaboration.

In political science institutions are shared understandings that guide and prescribe human interactions (Gilad n.d.). They are systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions (Hodgson 2006). Hence institutional collaboration is a system of interactions sustained by connecting and connected human actors. Within a system even one small particle or party, for instance a single human being or a novel connection between two of them, can generate significant changes in the entire system.

From chance encounters to transformative alliances

How do this kind of game-changing alliances come about? The story behind Haaga-Helia’s cooperation with OSU is a narrative of humans desiring to share realities and investigate possibilities for co-creation. A Fulbright call to come to Finland as a Fulbright visiting scholar, the joint research efforts for comparing the similarities and differences in the vocational education systems and teacher education, the will to explore and experience the circumstances where the other implements their pedagogical approach, a professional craving for discovering new connections to strengthen the bond between institutions – they all stem from a connection among real living human beings.

Connection is about revealing, consciously and consistently, proactively co-creating shared realities (Robson 2024) even amidst apparently different systems and circumstance. It is cross-pollination that allows creativity. When a person encounters another in either unexpected circumstances such as the coffee room or the airport a space for novelty opens. The same happens when people representing their institutions pursue a shared understanding and seek common interests in the form of international visits and projects.

A process of creating a shared reality gets its quarks, the tiniest of building blocks, from this interaction that was not there before, but gets created while the human connection grows. The results of this creativity could be just about anything from works of art and serious games for learning to new models and processes of education management and pedagogy.

In the case of higher education institutions, it culminates in scientific research and innovating more developed pedagogies and education systems. This, too, stems from varied human person-to-person connections. The sort of global issues the education systems are tackling now, such as sustainable development in all its dimensions – environmental, economic, social and cultural – world peace and human well-being are pleading for the kind of connections that facilitate both the emergence of shared realities and co-creation of novel solutions that benefit all parties. To find the personal motivation, the necessary intercultural understanding and transnationally applicable solutions, the inter-personal creative space is a necessity. To bring this about, the first and most important step is the humans to connect as living beings.

Curiosity, consistency, and courage turn connection into meaningful collaboration

The yearning for connection is a universal, transnational experience. There are opportunities, such as the Fulbright, to put this urge into action. Fortunately, these connections bring about human well-being and creativity, which facilitate inter-institutional and international solutions, stronger and more sustainable connections. And all it really takes is to be curious, to concentrate on the similarities. All human-beings and all educational institutions need alliances, all seek to provide learning for a diversity of learners, they exist for creating preferable futures for people and are curios to investigate the realities we human beings live in and educate our people.

Instead of emphasising the difference, pursue connection and the creation of shared realities. To be consistent with one’s own rapport with people, and ask for the others’ help when needed, is what it takes on the institutional level, as well. The universal human need for connection is both the reason and solution for devising new strings of institutional attachment.

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