Custom-made education: New course helps nutrition consultants’ smart business

What was the impulse for creating a course designated for nutrition consultants?

The Faculty of Economics and Administration was approached by Welko Team s.r.o., a company specialising in nutrition counselling education. The initial idea for starting cooperation was the fact that nutrition consultants are highly educated experts in their field, but they lack business and other general entrepreneurial competences.

Nutrition consultants are mostly self-employed people or small businesses. How did you take their special needs into account when designing the course?

I am in charge of a marketing course in which I had to transform all the theory and examples into the field of service provision, which is specific in itself. It was also necessary to focus on freelancers and microbusinesses, because their range of marketing tools is different from that of large companies and corporations. And the topics have to include the actual field of nutritional counselling.

What economic knowledge and skills do nutrition consultants typically lack most?

Nutritional consultants often fail to “sell themselves” despite providing a high-quality and personalised service. They see a threat in lower quality and mass tools such as AI or in unprofessional advice from various influencers. But their real competition is actually elsewhere: they need to define themselves against providers with less experience, build a reputation in their region and focus on a specific problem in which they will be respected experts. Pricing and communication issues arise from this. The learners also sometimes lack a structured and systematic approach to analysis, so they can finally appreciate the perspective from which they suddenly view their business.

One of the main objectives of the course was to deliver practical and tailor-made learning. How did you make the course as close to the reality of the participants as possible?

My colleagues and I live what we teach. This means that a customer-oriented approach and work with expectations was necessary. What also makes marketing difficult is that most people equate it with advertising, which is a very limited view. Marketing means knowing the market, customer needs, defining the product and its value, pricing, choosing distribution channels, and finally communication, which includes advertising as one of the possible tools. There are therefore a lot of examples and applications in the teaching. Discussions in which the students share their personal experiences are also useful. I can then easily check that they have really understood the concept and can relate it to their own experience.

Adapting the teaching to a specific target group is not easy. How do you proceed when you start designing a course for people with a specific focus?

I always get to know the target group and their needs first, which is how I teach the course for nutrition consultants. I want to make sure that the knowledge is applicable in the long term and provides a base that will enable the graduate to adapt to different changes in the environment in the future. I seek to include as many elements as possible that make the learners think about the context and try to put the theoretical knowledge into practice.

You use the so-called flipped classroom teaching method in your course. Why did you choose this format and do the students like it?

I have been advocating the use of this method for a long time, and it has worked really well. The students first learn about the theory from annotated presentations and scripts. This means they enter the class with a basic knowledge that can be developed and deepened. The course for nutrition consultants is combined. We meet on a monthly basis online and in these sessions, I explain the context and show applications with examples from and beyond the field. I need to make them understand how the concepts discussed generally work in practice. We also meet for two full days of in-person sessions during the course, where teams develop a comprehensive practical seminar paper focused specifically on the field of nutrition counselling.

What was the biggest challenge in creating the course and what did you enjoy the most?

Aligning the timing, so that the knowledge and its application build on each other, was the biggest challenge. On top of that, in online learning it is always more difficult to engage the audience and keep their attention, so I try to use interactive elements such as Slido and encourage discussions. Still, the Friday evenings when the online classes take place are challenging for both parties. I most enjoy working with a specific target group that has a completely different life experience and focus. I have to think of new ways to approach the topic, so we actually learn from each other.

What do you think the future development will be? Do you think that the interest in such specific, tailor-made courses will grow?

We as a faculty have expertise that is universally applicable to almost anyone who works, whether as an employee or as an entrepreneur. From financial literacy to entrepreneurship and marketing, to management skills and project management. It would be great if we could reach out to more partners in the future to add these "horizontal" competencies to their deep expertise, either from external partners or within the university.