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About The Global Educator Challenge 

After the successful spring edition of the Global Educator Challenge 2021, the experience was renewed for a second edition which took place this fall. This new edition came with very exciting changes compared to the spring edition. Educators from all around the world got the unique opportunity to connect with each other globally and play supply chain business game, The Fresh Connection, in teams of four.

The Global Educator Challenge is a competition where participants compete against each other for the champion title. Held at the same time as the Global Pro Challenge, the Global Educator Challenge started on Monday, September 13^th, and officially ended on October 22^nd.  Every two weeks, a new round of the business game was played, which made a total of 3 rounds of game-play. After each round, a leaderboard session took place to announce the scores. Last week, the last round was played, meaning we can officially announce the winners of this edition!  

NEW: Open edition

To make it even more exciting than last edition, we decided to open up the competition! What do we mean with this? In the spring edition, only certified educators of The Fresh Connection were able to join the Global Educator Challenge. In contrary to this, in the fall edition, certified educators were able to invite their non-certified educators to join their team. Non-certified educators could also sign up as an individual and then they would be put in a team with a certified educator at random.

By making teams of experienced and non-experienced educators, it made the experience more challenging and fun. The certified educators learned from new perspectives brought by the non-certified educators and vice versa. Also, the non-certified ones were introduced and guided through the business game by the certified ones. What a great learning experience!

Supply Chain business game, The Fresh Connection

The Fresh Connection is a cross-functional business simulation game focused on Value Chain Management. The business game challenges its participants to implement an effective supply chain strategy for a (virtual) manufacturer of fruit juices faced with declining performance.

The Fresh Connection is versatile and can be used for courses of varying complexity and at all levels of higher education so students can develop their hard- and soft skills. Additionally, it can be used for in-company training to help foster cross-functional alignment and highlight the importance of Strategic Value Chain Management.

The theme of this fall edition: Risk Management in Global Supply Chains

This edition’s theme was ‘Risk Management in Global Supply Chains’.

The theme scenario: The Coronavirus outbreak has severely challenged global supply chains. As local disruptions take place, from manufacturing to distribution, entire supply chains are affected. The scale of these disruptions is tremendous, with 75% of all U.S. businesses experiencing supply chain issues, according to Fortune’s latest estimates. How can these disruptions be avoided in future crises, and how do we respond to acute problems within the value chain?

The participants had to respond to this problem by making smart and strategic decisions.

This challenge was a great way for certified and non-certified educators to learn about new functionalities and discover The Fresh Connection but also learn from other educators from around the globe, learn new ways of teaching, and new ways of understanding the game.

Educators from all around the world!

We had the pleasure of welcoming educators from many different countries in the Global Educator Challenge 2021 Fall Edition:

The winners of the fall edition are…

After 6 weeks of the Global Educator Challenge 2021 – fall edition, it’s finally time to announce the winners. Congratulations to all of the participants!

1st place : Team – Latinos para el Mundo

From University of Sao Paula, Universidad Tecnológica de la Habana, Universidade Federal da Paraíba, University of Ribeirão Preto and Universidad Continental de Peru:

• Igor Lopes Martinez
• Kleber Esposto
• Luciano Santos
• Daniel Fernando Bozutti
• Rosalyn Huayllani Miranda.

2nd Place : Team – Incas Continentales

From Universidad Continental de Peru:

• Gustavo Escudero
• Erika Málaga
• Luis Antonio Flores Cisneros

3rd Place: Team – 1

From the Fontys University in The Netherlands :

• Fabian Contreras Conde
• Marijke van Benschop
• Blanche Schrijvers
• Jeroen Keijzers

The Award Ceremony took place on the 29th of October and we had such a nice time sharing time moments with all the participants. 

Personal Experience of the participants

Here is how our participants experienced the challenge:

We all experienced it as if though we were the people task to save the company. The challenges that was posed were not easy and it should never be. The challenge made us think but it seem not hard enough as our ROI remained in the negative. But that also proofs that you cannot decide on arbitrary decisions without taking it’s impact on the other departments. It taught us team work and made us realize that many companies fail because management work in silo’s. They do not care what the impact their decisions will have on others within the organization. 

David Kruger, from South Africa, teacher at the University of South Africa

I feel the Challenge is a great opportunity to meet with colleagues, feel the same experience we have to create in our courses with students and to have training in situations that usually we don’t get in the classroom. In the fall edition, it was a great idea to mix educators with and without experience with the business game in the same team. This included other goals to play as a team with different knowledge levels of the business game. Plus we had to try to win, support our colleagues to understand the business game, motivate us all to be one aligned team, and everything at the same time! I will for sure continue to play with my students in my courses and participate in the next Challenges.

Igor Lopez from Cuba, teacher at the University of Cuba

Conclusion

If you are interested in participating in the next edition of The Global Educator Challenge, stay tuned for more information! In the meantime, you can learn more and read all about it on this webpage.

If you would like to become a certified educator/trainer of The Fresh Connection in order to participate in the next edition, you can check out our upcoming Train the Trainers on our event page.