Monday 17 June 2013

Curriculum Appendix: Human Resources Management

When we discussed the curriculum of Basic Business Management Knowledge for Social Enterprises/Entrepreneurs, there was one topic that caused quite a bit of discussion about whether to include it in the curriculum or not: Human Resources Management.

On the one hand, Human Resources and their management are crucial for Social Enterprises. Knowing how to manage their staff is essential in order to deliver great service. Especially in times of crisis all investment into human ressources will pay off multiple times.

On the other hand, the topic is very extensive, as it includes recruitment as well as motivation as well as work law as well as issues of leadership. Everything is interconnected and quite challenging to teach in a short and efficient way.

The purpose of the BuCoSoMa-Project is to focus on basic business management knowledge, which should be made available in a concise and efficient way. This is why the project consortium finally decided against including Human Ressources Management as a topic of the BuCoSoMa curriculum.

However, this decision does not mean we do not see the importance of the topic. In fact, the opposite is the case. We created quite an extensive collection of the learning targets which seem relevant in this area. We would like to include this as a kind of appendix to our curriculum. How to include Human Ressources in Social Management education shall be the topic of further international cooperation project.

Appendix: Human Ressources Management

3rd Project Meeting, Vienna, June 12th - 15th, 2013

The 3rd meeting of the BuCoSoMa Project consortium took place in Vienna on June 12th - 15th, 2013. Not only was the weather great, also the team spirit and team work were exceptional.

Here is a quick summary of the results we reached:

  • For everybody who wants do a quick review of what we were working on, have a look at the agendas of Thursday and Friday.
  • We discussed the feedbacks we got for our preliminary curriculum and decided which topics to include and not include and why. 
  • We agreed on a FINAL VERSION of the curriculum.
  • On Friday, we did a Trainer Workshop in order to discuss about how to implement the curriculum in a Blended Learning setting 
    • For your reference, here is the presentation, which includes the 5 models of Blended Learning I presented.
    • Have a look at the photo protocol of the flip charts we created.
    • I created a mindmap which summarises and categorieses the challenges we will be facing in terms of the target group.
  • The next project partner meeting will be held in Maribor on October 17th - 18th, 2013.


On behalf of the Austrian hosts I would like to thank everybody for their contributions and the many laughs we shared!

Günter