Development stage is crucial to the success of the project. Taking into consideration all the knowledge we gather during the research stage, we are going to develop the Joint European Masters programme in Search and Social Media Marketing in four general stages.
First stage is development of core structure of the course. Our aim is to design a perfectly balanced curriculum that develop both knowledge and skills of its participants. That introduces them not only to core philosophy and frameworks of digital marketing, but also challenge them to test important concepts and competences in practice. That takes the best of both academic and practitioners worlds by incorporating their perspectives deeply in the structure of the course. That includes not only knowledge and skills important on national markets of our students but also the wider outlook on international landscape of search and social media marketing.
Second stage is the design of international experience. Since JEMSS is a joint programme, it’s going to be delivered as a combined effort of all the partners. International cooperation and synchronisation of course delivery is going to be a challenge from the organisational perspective, but crucial to the learning outcomes for the student. International project teams, on-line access to teachers and practitioners from all partnering countries, European perspective in all major parts of the course delivery and learning outcomes evaluation are going to be embedded in the core structure of the course.
Third stage is course content development. Given all the information we get from the research stage of the project – especially the needs for specific skills and knowledge reported by consulting SMEs – we are going to design the content of each course is such a way, so it would meet our core standards: practical approach, up-to-date education, best delivery and international perspective.
Fourth stage is all about testing. Out proposed structure and content for each of the courses within the masters programme is going to be consulted with SMEs, corporate and organisational partners. Experiences of starting and running a MOOC are going to be really important input to fine-tuning the main programme. Smaller elements of the JEMSS (such as individual case studies or parts of the courses) may be tested in partnering institutions – as a case studies for students organisations, parts of digital marketing courses etc.
Altogether, our main goal is to introduce to the European educational market the best programme in search and social media marketing possible. Structured development, constant consultation and testing of all elements of the design are going to play an important role in meeting this objective.