Experiential education. Interactive/Intensive course of european brand management Erasmus Project

Project Title

Experiential education. Interactive/Intensive course of european brand management

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for higher education

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Pedagogy and didactics

Project Summary

According to Eurostat, in the EU-28, there were 4.4 million students in 2017 studying business, administration or law. The job market for that profile of graduates is very dynamic in EU: employers’ expectations are voluminous. At the same time in the recent literature (Finch&McIntyre, 2019 for example) shows that there still is a significant gap between graduates’ profiles and employers’ expectations. Moreover, Finch, Nadeau&O’Reilly (2013) explored this challenge exclusively in the marketing field. In their study, the authors found an important gap between the individual skills and knowledge areas defined as important by professionals and the corresponding performance of new graduates. Consequently, experts tend to agree that there should be a shift in focus, from knowledge generation to skill development (Rundle-Thiele, Bennett &Dann, 2005).
This leads to the question about effective teaching methods and techniques in the field of management, in particular marketing. In recent years, much attention has been paid to experiential methods in teaching and learning. As J. Clawson from University of Virginia emphasis, experiential teaching methods are those that rely on data generated during the exercise/learning experience rather than on data prepared in advance as with lectures and cases. Experiential methods engage students in experiences that simulate social phenomena. They include games such as Starpower or Global Markets, and the Organization Game as well as computer simulations like Markstrat.
Having that in mind, together with strong experience in simulation games, but also in EU projects, the members of European university network Dukenet decided to start working on the education experiential module that can be used in marketing education. Apart of creating the module that uses the game based experiential concept it was important to combine it with the idea of intensive programs. IP it is an international, intensive, one week-long, structured graduate course, that can be recognized within each partner university programme (4-6 ECTS). It can be use distantly too.
BrandY- it’s an experiential teaching module to train marketing students in European brand management and give them the possibility of better employability. The concept is based on one-week international intensive programmes tough outside home university.
The specific goals of the project are to:
•introduce the concept of game based experiential teaching module as a way to increase the competences of the students and for a better employability
•improve the academics’ teaching skills and competences in experiential marketing
•increase the knowledge of the students in are of international brand management but also intercultural management
•integrate the SMEs to be part of university programme development
•increase mobility of the students from the partner universities, both during the project but also due to dissemination the project outputs.
•enlarge the international cooperation among the partner universities.
Eleven universities will be involved in the project. Ten of them are members of Dukenet. University from Geneva has been invited to the project due to its extensive experience in application of experiential learning and teaching and also previous cooperation. The university were selected to the project due to its profile and experience both in teaching and research. There are five subgroups of the universities identified regarding its tasks in the project:
1. Experiential teaching and learning experience: EE, USMB
2. IT and interactive game experience: Howest, IEM, BUW
3. International brand management and intercultural management experience: UEKat, UT, CEU, BBS, USMB, ULE
4. IP organisation experience: CEU, BBS, UEKat, USMB
5. Erasmus+ project management experience: UEKat, ULE
6. Dissemination and communication in the project: UoB, ULE
Each of the partner universities has demonstrated extensive experience in assigned areas, at the same time due to joint, long-term cooperation and experience, it guaranties the successful implementation of the project goals.
The main activities undertaken in the project are described according to 4 work packages
WP 1 Developing the teaching materials and content.
WP 2 Learning Instrument Guidelines and Procedures
WP 3 IT platform and interactive game dashboard
WP 4 Communication and Dissemination
In the project the PM² methodology will be used based on UE recommendation. It also uses IP as a main tool in project implementation.
The result of the project will be the experiential based, interactive IP study module from the are of international brand management. It will use the game based scenario to increasing the effectiveness of teaching and involvement of the students. It will be available on internet platform together with the support. The teaching module BrandY will strongly impact the teaching of brand management strategies giving the students and teachers possibility to improve the skills.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 409325 Eur

Project Coordinator

UNIWERSYTET EKONOMICZNY W KATOWICACH & Country: PL

Project Partners

• UNIVERSIDAD DE LEON
• FUNDACION UNIVERSITARIA SAN PABLO-CEU – UNIVERSIDAD CEU CARDENAL HERRERA
• HAUTE ECOLE SPECIALISEE DE SUISSE OCCIDENTALE
• UNIVERSITATEA DIN BUCURESTI
• BUDAPESTI GAZDASAGI EGYETEM
• UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI TRENTO
• BAUHAUS-UNIVERSITAET WEIMAR