Young Business Generations

Digital business courses for high school students

Young Business Generations offers a digital business course unit for upper secondary education. Courses are based on innovative pedagogical solutions and materials from real life business partners.

English | Suomi

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Finland 100

Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

Finland 100

Web presence

2016

Established

-

Children

1

Countries

Updated

March 2017

We want as many young people as possible to have a chance to study international business, if they choose so.

About the innovation

What is it all about?

A significant number of young people will consider setting up a business soon after graduation, but the education system does not currently provide necessary skills. International school success does not translate into business world success by itself. Connecting secondary education to the labor market will benefit both students and society.

The Young Business Generations Business Courses provide entrepreneurial skills relevant to working life by combining up-to-date pedagogy, content created by experts and an innovative digital learning platform.

Courses take advantage of real life business content delivered by partner companies, and are modified for teaching purposes. The courses enhance knowledge on economic structures and provide relevant skills for working life.

There are four courses:

1. Sales, Marketing and Commercialization:, commercialization, managing your finances, the importance of marketing, sales conditions

2. Communication and negotiation skills: the conditions and importance of constructive communication in business; the stages, goals and techniques of negotiation and different ways of communicating

3. Global market economy: international trade, challenges and opportunities of globalization, megatrends in the economy, importance and implementation of responsible business

4. Economy, Finances and Entrepreneurship: running a profitable business, understanding entrepreneurship, accounting and financing

Online courses are completed partly under teacher supervision, partly remotely. Courses are available in Finnish, Swedish and English.

The engaging learning model, developed by the professor Kirsti Lonka of the University of Helsinki, has been selected as the pedagogical approach to the courses. It is one way of implementing phenomenon based learning, which has been scientifically proven to be one of the best ways to learn.

The engaging learning model emphasizes the steps of an activating and interactive learning process:

Activation and attracting interest
Collaborative information building
Summary
Reflection

The key to engaging learning is experiencing the meaningfulness of learning and interest that together lead to internal motivation and discovery.

The experiences from the courses have been positive: 91% of the students participating in the courses would recommend them to their friends. The courses have been in use in over 40 high schools in Finland and abroad.

Impact & scalability

Impact & Scalability

Innovativeness

Courses teach business skills without compromising on content or pedagogy.

Impact

Students feel that the courses are very inspirational and useful for working life.

Scalability

The digital course material allows for easy application and tailoring the courses locally.

Media

Implementation steps

Getting to know the structure of the courses

Get to know the courses first to get a comprehensive picture of the content.Courses are based on different themes:

The themes are designed to conform to the engaging learning model – each theme includes task types that support the different phases and goals of the model.

The courses are based on the following types of tasks, through which the model of engaging learning becomes concrete in the content of the courses.

Anchor Tasks

Anchor tasks are activating tasks that link a specific theme to the high school students’ own life and raise interest in it.

As an example from the first course, a marketing themed anchor assignment in which you consider what young people already know about marketing before expanding their skills.

Fact sheets

The most important informational content and concepts related to the themes are highlighted in fact sheets. The following tasks compliment and concretize the content. During the presentation of the fact sheets students comment on their contents by presenting their key insights and ask questions related to the topic.

As an example from the first course, a marketing theme fact sheet presenting the most common concepts and methods of digital marketing.

Material assignments

These tasks are based on different types of texts. They aim to deepen the students’ knowledge on a specific theme and teach the key concepts and approaches. For example, the students read a topical article and answer questions on it.

As an example from the first course, the students worked on a marketing themed material assignment. The task involved video material that helped students analyze features of digital marketing campaigns and share their own ideas and insights.

Commenting assignments

In this type of task students comment on some material, e.g. videos. These comments are based on a certain question or perspective and the material is analyzed together.

As an example from the first course, a marketing themed commenting assignment, in which students answer questions based on a video.

Applied Assignments

In applied assignments related key themes are transferred and applied to some other context. Often the task is to solve a real-life case from the perspective of a specific theme. The aim is to gain a profound understanding of the key issues, make connections and learn to apply them.

As an example from the first course, a marketing themed applied assignment in which you take a look at various social media as marketing tools.

Getting the course and how to proceed

Contact the Young Business Generations team to subscribe, for additional information and how to proceed.

Contact mikko.hakala@tat.fi or the Economic Information Office here and we’ll make a plan to suit your school.

We’ll provide the teacher with lesson plans in advance. If the course material is in accordance with the teacher's wishes, the Economic Information Office will assist with the introduction of the course.

The course fee per student is 25 euros. The school does not have to pay for the course.

School Visit or Training

You can request a school visit or online training to get started. The training is provided by the Economic Information Office.

In addition to training, we provide teachers with course-specific teacher guides as well as marketing materials directed at students for information on courses.

Gathering students and getting started

Once you have started the course, the Economic Information Office provides you full time assistance, if needed. Forms of assistance include guidelines for involving students, instruction and assessment.

Giving feedback

After the course, you can give feedback on the course’s successes and development targets by filling out the embedded questionnaire. We continue to improve the content and the platform of the course based on user feedback.

Participating in related events

Our course has often opened doors to summer jobs for the students and inspired them to participate in the annual Slush Youth event.

Slush Youth has been an illustrative experience for many young people about how to use the skills learned during the courses in practical working life.