THE DESIGN OF THE MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSE (MOOC) PSM IN INNOVATION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Higher education institutions have been assigned as fosterers of societal innovations and are urged to incorporate sustainability and innovation into education and curricula (Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve Communiqué, 2009). However, little is known about how PSM educators incorporate sustainability and innovation in their programs.
Therefore, this question was debated and raised during an educator’s workshop at the IPSERA International Conference in Purchasing and Supply Management. Surprisingly, more educators explained the difficulties in incorporating sustainability issues in PSM activities. A lack of framework in the evolution of PSM activities for teaching today’s and future skills needed has already been noted by Bäckstrand, Suurmond, van Raaij, and Chen (2019).
For the final phase of the PERISCOPE project, an open module-based course for finding and applying innovative and sustainable solutions in PSM Education is developed. The development of the PSM in sustainability and innovation course design was based upon three previous steps: literature review and job advertisement research in IO1, World Café and interviews outcomes in IO2 and the Delphi study outcomes in IO3, which were carried out to explore future competence requirements for PSM managers towards innovative and sustainability solutions.
The design of the MOOC PSM in innovation and sustainability consists of an introductory course, four modules of purchasing innovation, four modules of sustainable purchasing, a closing lecture and an instruction “train the trainer”.
In PERISCOPE, several skills and competencies are found such as knowledge items (e.g. legal compliance), professional skills (e.g. change management activities), interpersonal skills (e.g. communication) and many personal character traits (e.g., resulting in intended learning outcomes). The intended learning outcomes ILOs are aligned with didactical approaches and assessment measures in the educational design. The train-the-trainer part instructs lecturers to apply several didactics. For instance, the advice is to connect with PSM professionals in private purchasing or public procurement to obtain a real-life case from sustainable innovation sourcing.
Download the IO4 white paper here
Overview of PSM skills for innovation and sustainability and MOOC design