A Review on Erasmus University Rotterdam’s Innovation Management Short Course

Coursera is undeniably one of the most popular online education platforms in the region. What seems to have massively contributed to the success of Coursera is its consistently expanding list of partner universities, institutions, and transnational companies worldwide, including Google, Meta, IBM, Yale, and Princeton University.

Offering a variety of certifications from short courses you can finish in a day to expert-level specializations and fully accredited degrees, Coursera houses more than 5,000 courses from a plethora of topics.

One such topic is Innovation Management, discussed in a certification course by the Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands’ premiere institution for economics and business. The course seeks to discuss about the processes, principles, and theories behind new business models, products, and services in the market. Having finished the track and earning the certificate in Innovation Management, the following are commentaries to the different aspects of the course.

Structure

With a 9-week structure, the course explores innovation concepts, creativity and idea management, innovation strategies, implementations, and networks. However, the course allows for considerable flexibility in terms of pacing, as is true with most courses in the platform.

Learners are allowed to advance through the different lessons without following the 9-week arrangement. Lagging behind the lessons is allowed too, as long as deadlines for the required course work are met.

Lessons

Lessons are delivered in video format, with textual transcripts of the lecture for those who prefer reading more than watching video material. They are organized in an incremental manner and are divided into smaller parts that make them easy to digest.

Delivered by expert instructors, professors, and academicians, the content of the various video lessons themselves are utterly comprehensive — diving deep into the topic, giving ample examples, and discussing concepts with completeness. The lectures come with additional external resources to aid in the understanding of the topics such as YouTube videos, and the modules are also tagged with supplemental readings.

Assessment

There are three different types of assessments for the course: pop-up exercises, written assignments, and one final exam. Pop-up exercises are questions that appear in the middle of the lectures. While they do not contribute to the grading for the course, they encourage retention and rumination.

Meanwhile, there are three assignments in total, all essay in nature. The assignments delve deep into the learner’s full understanding of the lesson. They seek to gauge how the learner might relate with or theoretically apply into their professions or academics the concepts, techniques, and ideas discussed in the modules.

Lastly, there is the final exam that consists of about 30 identification, enumeration, and situational questions. While the assignments more accurately display the learner’s comprehension of the lessons, the final exam is a quick and easy assessment to culminate the course content.

In conclusion, the Innovation Management course is a high quality learning resource for everyone in the design thinking, entrepreneurship, innovation, product development, and management fields. It lives up to its nature as an academic material from the Erasmus University Rotterdam as it exhibits comprehensive and well-built instructional design delivered effectively through the online platform, and any beginner in innovation management should find value in this certification.