Article Text
Abstract
Background The children’s products industry is forced to innovate continuously in order to maintain the business activity and meet the highest safety requirements, taking into account the special vulnerability of children as consumers. The SMEs which stand for 95% of total of this industry lack of resources and knowledge to assess the safety of their new products, which undermines their competitiveness. Similarly, consumer associations are the other weak stakeholder. According to the Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on a Consumer Programme 2014–2020, one of the main issues to be addressed is the insufficient capacity of consumer organisations, especially the lack of resources and specialists, in the new Member States in particular.
Objective To develop and implement an innovative Open Educational Resource using ICT-based methodologies in order to provide training on safety assessment and management for new and innovative children’s products customised to the needs of the staff working in the industry, consumer organisations and other stakeholders.
Results The result has been an online course with unlimited participation and free and open access via the Internet, commonly known as MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), on children’s product safety. Its pedagogical design is focused on five key areas: learning, activities, resources, interactivity and assessment. It covers subjects such as the legal framework for children’s products, risk analysis and epidemiology of the injuries related to products used by children.
Conclusions In addition to training, this MOOC has also served as a platform to exchange experience and raise awareness of the importance of safety products for children among the key stakeholders (consumers, industry and other stakeholders). MOOCs aimed at specific interest groups actively involved in product safety can become an effective tool to prevent unintentional injuries that arise from the use of products.
- Risk management
- child safety
- product safety
- injury prevention