INTERACTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS TO ENHANCE THE ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES FOR IMPROVING ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE

The project aims to stimulate the use of Interactive Learning Environments (ILE) in university education in the field of Human Resource Management and Development. Specifically, a training program aimed at university students and focused on certain human resource management practices was designed using an innovative ILE developed through the System Dynamics (SD) methodology. The ILE was developed by the SD group of the Department of Political Science and International Relations (DEMS) of the University of Palermo (ITALY) – the leading partner of an ERASMUS+ Blended Intensive Program (BIP) project [2021-1-IT02-KA131-HED-000004576-1; https://www.unipa.it/dipartimenti/dems/bip] – and it is a simulation software that can be used online through login credentials provided to all course participants. The project intends to share the results with the project partners – Universidad Miguel Hernandez de Elche, Spain; Instituto Politecnico do Porto, Portugal; Lisbon School of Economics & Management, Lisbon, Portugal - emphasizing the importance of adopting such an innovative teaching methodologies centered on online collaborative learning, including: a) facilitating participation in university courses for people who are unable to easily travel due to health problems or because they live in remote and/or rural areas; b) implementing mutual recognition of learning outcomes through online assessment models. The project aims to equip students with the necessary skills to comprehensively address the relationship between HR practices and performance. Students are advised to cultivate a systems-thinking approach to understand how HR managers and professionals can effectively achieve sustainable organizational goals. This involves considering different scenarios that arise from the organization's distinct internal and external environmental factors. Each student undergoes a learning-by-doing process facilitated by a system dynamics-based Interactive Learning Environment (ILE) that exposes them to the decision-making skills required in a complex and rapidly changing environment. The course focuses on employee performance as a key proximal outcome in the HR-performance relationship. Throughout the course, we will explore several widely-used HR practices, including management by objectives, personnel recruitment and selection, training, compensation and incentives, and organizational well-being. Our objective is to demonstrate how these practices have a positive impact on organizational performance. The 63 hours course, which lasts, has been delivered using a blended learning approach and it has been structured as follows: a) in-person training (20 hours) at Miguel Hernandez University of Elche (Spain) from 22 to 26 May 2023; b) remote training (43 hours), from 29 May to 10 August 2023. The in-person training consists of classroom lectures and discussions as well as laboratory activities conducted simultaneously in three subgroups. In-person exercises will be supervised by a tutor and managed through the ILE. Remote training activities have been autonomously managed by students through the ILE, and online debriefing sessions supervised by a tutor have been planned.