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Structure of face-to-face teaching sessions for an undergraduate technology-centered computing course: Establishing a set of best practices
Abstract
Since more than a decade, all kinds of businesses and organisations are intensively exploring enterprise-level information systems to better integrate their business processes, information flows and people. Consequently, the industry demands for technically skilled, but also “business-savvy” IT professionals are permanently growing. To meet this need, more and more computing education programs try to incorporate enterprise-level information systems into their curricula. While there is some computing education research done to investigate the need for this new type of IT-business professional and to analyse general implications for higher education, only very few research works or practice papers exist which report on concrete attempts to design and deliver higher education computing courses which intensively use enterprise-level systems. In this conference contribution, the authors report on a series of experiences made within the Bachelor of Science (Information Systems Management) degree program offered by the School of Information Systems (SIS) at the Singapore Management University (SMU). The primary focus of this paper is put on establishing a working set of best practices for the design of an effective structure of the face-to-face teaching sessions for courses which use enterprise-level systems and applications in their curricula. While this conference contribution is principally based on education experiences made within the frame of an Information Systems program, the best practices presented in this paper are equally applicable to any other computing education field or even to the engineering education in general.
... Hands-on Traditional classroom lectures have a prominent place in ES education as a necessary and sustainable means to convey information to students. Some educators have reported negative experiences in experimenting with replacing traditional lectures with video-based instruction (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). ERP technologies tend to be fairly complex for beginners and lectures provide a suitable venue for students to ask questions related to content, activities and deliverables. ...
... A hands-on exercise might include a list of procedural steps that need to be completed by the end-user in order to configure an ERP system or to commit transactions on it. Hands-on tasks have been recommended by various ERP educators as a viable teaching practice in ERP training (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014;Corbitt & Matthews, 2009;Peslak, 2005;Wang & Hwang, 2011), and are often recommended as an effective complement to traditional lecture sessions (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). ...
... A hands-on exercise might include a list of procedural steps that need to be completed by the end-user in order to configure an ERP system or to commit transactions on it. Hands-on tasks have been recommended by various ERP educators as a viable teaching practice in ERP training (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014;Corbitt & Matthews, 2009;Peslak, 2005;Wang & Hwang, 2011), and are often recommended as an effective complement to traditional lecture sessions (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). ...
Enterprise Systems (also known as Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP systems) have experienced mainstream adoption across various industries as a comprehensive solution for cross-functional integration and end-to-end business process management. In the post-modern ERP era, these technologies continue to grow in use as companies of all sizes digitize their business processes through flexible multi-vendor sourced enterprise systems. To meet the needs of the industry and train a competent workforce, business schools are under constant pressure to develop and deliver courses related to enterprise systems strategy, implementation, and use. In order to be effective with providing enterprise systems training, faculty members require a deep understanding of different pedagogical practices that can help in teaching ERP systems by taking into consideration the myriad of learning styles of students and the variety of instructional resources and techniques that can facilitate student learning. This paper provides an overview of current ERP curriculum design and teaching practices from the extant literature, and proposes a pedagogical framework for enterprise systems courses in business schools by drawing upon principles and postulates of experiential learning theory. The proposed framework outlines the use of (i) lectures and seminars; (ii) case discussions; (iii) system demos and screencast tutorials; (iv) simulations and interactive assessments; (v) workshops and walkthrough assignments; and (vi) capstone projects. Various benefits of these teaching practices are discussed, and possible ways of integrating them into a coherent enterprise systems program offering are suggested. Lastly, aligned with the proposed framework, the paper offers several actionable guidelines for pedagogical design based on the author's own experience with teaching enterprise systems courses over several years. Overall, the proposed pedagogical framework aims to offer a viable means to facilitate effective ERP course offerings aimed at helping students perceive and process the uses, benefits, functions and applications of enterprise systems in a business environment.
... It also offers a suitable place for students to ask questions related to activities, content, and deliverables. To complement the lecture session, hands-on experience with the system function is recommended by previous research (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). Hands-on allows the students for exploring process-oriented transactions as well as configuring ERP systems. ...
... Therefore, case studies usually are used in the ERP curriculum in business schools (Herreid & Schiller, 2013). Case study approaches in the ERP course have been suggested to develop higherorder analytical capabilities in the student and expose them to a real-world problem of ERP system adoption (Motwani & Akbulut, 2008;Wang & Hwang, 2011;Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). Simulation games let students role-play various positions in the different departments and grasp the complexity of business process planning and execution, additionally examining the result of those activities in real-time (ERPSim Lab, 2015). ...
ERP courses have been running for decades and are applied by various university majors, ranging from business school, information systems, and computer science to industrial engineering. Every major has a different ERP curriculum that is adapted based on the nature and goals of the major. In conjunction with this, a lot of research has been conducted to measure the effectiveness of each approach and find the gap to improve ERP learning practice in the university. However, there is no comprehensive research that systematically presents and analyses all available literature that focuses on ERP pedagogy. Therefore, this systematic literature review research aims to present trend and emerging themes, and comprehensively analyses the practice of current ERP learning from all relevant publications in this decade. This research follows PRISMA method to conduct a systematic literature review which consists of four stages. This study found that research focusing on ERP pedagogy and curriculum has an increasing trend. Many influential studies on this topic are dominated by ERP Simulation games, such as the impact of the ERPSim game on the experience and cognitive side of learners. A lot of opportunities can be gained by conducting an ERP course. Yet, it also has challenges that need to be solved to maximize the learning process.
... The hands-on laboratory exercises can include a business case with a list of procedural steps that are required to configure business processes offered by the system or to commit transactions on it. ERP systems educators have been offering the students these exercises as a viable teaching practice (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014;Monk & Lycett, 2016;Stevenson, 2015). The practice is an effective complement to traditional lecture sessions (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). ...
... ERP systems educators have been offering the students these exercises as a viable teaching practice (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014;Monk & Lycett, 2016;Stevenson, 2015). The practice is an effective complement to traditional lecture sessions (Baumgartner & Shankararaman, 2014). All the practical exercises can help the students build up their confidence with the business and technology features of ERP systems. ...
Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this study is to propose a curriculum development model for the integration of technology, organization, and environment (TOE) framework into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems education. The study investigated the relationships between the three factors of the TOE framework and student learning outcomes from their ERP systems study. Background: As the demand for ERP systems grew and spread to diverse organizations, educational institutions have attempted to integrate the ERP systems into their curriculum. Yet, lacking a conforming framework to the systems results in a considerable gap between the integrated curriculum and student learning outcomes. A pedagogical framework to bridge the gap between educators and students is needed for the ERP systems education. Methodology: The study identified eight propositions from literature reviews and conceptualized a model with corresponding constructs to the propositions. The constructs comprise the seven predictor variables from the TOE contextual factors and one predictive variable for student learning. These constructs provide more details on the TOE factors and eight survey questions in the study. The study analyzed 133 survey responses of four semesters with a SPSS multiple linear regression. Contribution: The study contributes to the emerging body of ERP systems education and research by integrating the TOE framework to the technology curriculum development. The study model provides a structured approach for the selection of appropriate pedagogical contents to achieve a variety of student learning outcomes. Findings: The findings of the study indicate the use of the TOE framework enhances student learning of ERP systems. All the three factors of the framework were found to be statistically significant predictors in the ERP systems learning. The eight propositions depicting the relationships between the seven constructs of the TOE factors and student learning outcomes are all supported. Recommendations for Practitioners: The study recommends a practical guideline to ERP systems educators to utilize the TOE framework in their curriculum development. The guideline is aligned with typical teaching objectives for ERP systems courses. Recommendation for Researchers: Further studies are necessary by various scholars who have noted limited research pertaining to ERP systems and information technology education. The TOE framework demonstrates a practical application of a proven theory to student learning outcomes as a feasible approach to deliberate the use of the systems education and research. Impact on Society: This study will have a valuable impact on educators for their technology curriculum development and software vendors for their investment decisions on enterprise-wide system products. Future Research: Relying solely on student self-reported survey responses may be prone to response bias. For future work, researchers can extend this study and undertake similar research to empirically validate the efficacy of various teaching practices for student ERP systems learning. This could include objective measures of student learning by qualitatively coding behaviors at student project meetings or from hands-on ERP system exercise results.
... Lectures are often characterized as being very theoretical and teacher-centered. However, even with this criticism, research has shown that lectures still have merit, despite the search for alternative approaches [20]. For this reason, we have incorporated lectures in this course as a means to introduce the basic concepts in ERP system design. ...
This paper describes the design and evaluation of an ERP system design course, which utilizes experiential learning theory along with open ERP sys-tem to provide the students with a holistic and cost-free learning environ-ment. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with the ERP se-lection and implementation life-cycle. When designing the pedagogical framework, the goal was to help students, especially those with little to no working experience to acquire the necessary knowledge, and develop the practical technical experience. Additionally, it was necessary to help students appreciate the depth and issues involved in the ERP system selection and implementation life-cycle. Lectures, case discussions, system demos with interactive labs, and group projects were used all together to enable in depth learning of the proposed topics. We focus on open source ERP system to provide the students with the required hands-on experience, and also to demonstrate that such approach can be utilized even by low resource universities. This paper includes details of the proposed framework. The proposed framework was taught and evaluated in a 1-semester graduate level course at the university of Jeddah, in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The course design was in-directly assessed using a survey, and the results revealed the positive impact that the proposed framework had on students’ learning outcomes. The results of the assessment support that experiential based learning using open source ERP systems can lead to improved learning outcome.
Bite-Sized Teaching approach uses relatively small learning units with short term focused activities. The paper presents the effectiveness of Bite-Sized lecture pedagogy on learning outcomes for an analytics course offered by the School of Information Technology at Nanyang Polytechnic. The methodology involves breaking a typical 1 hour lecture into 3 to 4 short lectures followed by related tutorial/practical exercises relevant to each respective short lecture. The results from the exercises show statistically significant improvements in the assessed learning outcomes for the Bite-Sized lecture over the traditional 1 hour lecture. 75% of the surveyed respondents agreed that the speed of the course materials presented in the Bite-Sized lecture was just right. Majority of the repondents agreed or strongly agreed that Bite-Sized lecture helped them to learn better. Although this paper is primarily based on education experiences made within an analytics module, the findings presented are applicable to any other computing related courses or even mathematics related courses in general.
The use of enterprise systems to facilitate cross-functional integration within an organization's functional areas is becoming increasingly important. Business schools around the globe have realized the importance of using enterprise systems to facilitate the teaching of business processes and business processes transformation. The authors adopt an experiential learning pedagogical framework for enterprise systems education to conceptualize the results of the experience obtained by using experiential learning in one enterprise systems course.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have experienced mainstream adoption as a comprehensive solution for business function integration and end-to-end process management. To meet industry demand, many business schools offer academic courses in ERP strategy and technology to train students to be proficient in the use of ERP systems. The extant literature on ERP education highlights the need for additional research about pedagogical techniques that can help business schools in their efforts. To be effective in the delivery of ERP courses, instructors require a deeper understanding of how they can teach ERP systems in a meaningful way and consequently foster higher levels of student engagement. This paper provides an overview of the current state of ERP academic programs and teaching practices. This is followed by a review of experiential learning theory (ELT) which is later used in this paper as a basis for pedagogical practice suggestions towards the improvement of ERP training. A pedagogical model comprising of various course activities and teaching practices is proposed. The proposed practices are justified in terms of their efficacy towards developing experiential learning spaces for students to cultivate theoretical and applied knowledge of ERP systems.
Considering the increasing importance of enterprise systems in business, and their pedagogical value in demonstrating business process orientation and concepts of integration, several universities have incorporated popular enterprise system (ES) software products such as SAP R/3 into their business school curricula. This paper describes an attempt at that integration and reports on the evaluation of the curriculum design and instructional strategies employed and the perceived knowledge gain. Based on the self-assessment of students' knowledge and students' perception of various aspects of the curriculum design and delivery, the effectiveness of the course was analysed. Analysis revealed that the students had perceived a significantly higher level of knowledge gain during the course on the knowledge domains such as implementation of enterprise systems and SAP software skills than on others such as interface knowledge and management knowledge. Expansion of the curriculum to enhance the depth of the SAP skills, more guest lectures to bring real-world experiences into the class room, integrated project that requires application of conceptual as well as technical (software) skills of students, more case studies that deal with post-implementation issues, better alignment of this course curriculum with other pre-requisite courses, and improvement in the knowledge of academic staff and their access to students are some of the potential improvements emerging from this study. The study also noted significant differences between Commerce and Information Technology (IT) students with IT students more satisfied with the course than the Commerce students. (Contains 7 tables.)
This article describes the design, delivery, and outcomes of a course on enterprise integration at the senior undergradu-ate level in the e-business concentration in the University of New Brunswick's Faculty of Business. The course aims to provide education to the young business manager regarding the process of adoption and exploitation of an ERP or en-terprise-wide software system. The course is deliberately "business-centric" rather than technology-oriented. It con-tains two streams: a management component based on readings and discussion, and a hands-on laboratory component in which students individually configure a firm. We evaluated students' performance in three areas: completion of a learning log containing literature summaries and reflections on individual learning, completion of configuration exer-cises on SAP R/3, and completion of a take-home business case. We offer several suggestions to potential providers of enterprise integration education to business students. First, do not underestimate the considerable operational requirements of a lab-based ERP course. Second, because no business-oriented curriculum for enterprise integration business education is presently available on the market, teachers must be prepared to develop one. Third, students have very different learning needs with respect to ERP. The combination of hands-on lab learning and management learning via reading, discussions, and cases is very powerful but it is a chal-lenge to balance the two streams and to relate the lab learnings with the management learnings.
More than 1,000 universities worldwide have incorporated SAP solutions in their curriculum to teach different aspects of Enterprise Systems. This reflects the importance of Enterprise Systems to modern business and the worldwide shortage of SAP related skills. These two factors threatens the viability of many Enterprise Systems implementations and limits the adoption of Enterprise Systems in developing countries. SAP, the leading Enterprise Systems vendor, has established its University Alliance Program (UAP) to help address these skill shortages. The SAP UAP provides the opportunity for universities to access SAP solutions and associated curriculum, to facilitate teaching, at a reduced cost. This paper proposes that the real cost for universities, to access SAP solutions, varies from country to country presenting a possible barrier for developing countries. A number of alternative options are presented to lessen this barrier.
Because of the increasing importance of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and their educational value, as well as the rapidly-changing ERP market, many universities use, or want to use, ERP systems for their courses. The aim of these courses is to teach and demonstrate different ERP-related concepts and processes. To support these courses, some ERP manufacturers co-operate closely with universities and offer their systems and resources for academic teaching. However, there are very few empirical insights on system usage in academia. Therefore, we developed a questionnaire to determine the current status of ERP system usage and integration in courses at IS chairs of German-speaking, research-oriented universities (response rate 41.4%) and universities of applied sciences (response rate 53.1%). The results show that, among the respondents, more than two-thirds of the universities and nearly all of the universities of applied sciences use ERP systems practically in their courses. Though, almost every university chair (35 out of 38) and every professor/lecturer at the universities of applied sciences (47 out of 47) that are providing practical courses for students are using at least SAP ERP systems. In comparison with a former study we could show that the taught ERP functionalities have shifted throughout the last years from selected transactions towards selected modules or even towards the complete ERP system's core.
IT education, particularly at business colleges, is undergoing a transformation because of the emerging federated systems or enterprise-wide systems (ES). This follows a trend in industry, which uses complex software applications like SAP and others. This movement toward ES in industry has created major challenges for integrating ES into the classroom. Enterprise Systems Education in the 21st Century presents methods of reengineering business curricula in order to use ES solutions. It also helps ES vendors understand the higher education environment so they can support college and university programs. Enterprise Systems Education in the 21st Century acts as a platform for both educators and vendors to present solutions and experiences gained from the challenges of integrating ES into the business classroom.
This study proposes a knowledge management framework for developing and managing enterprise resource planning (ERP) curriculum within business schools. Both theory and a practical implementation are addressed. The knowledge management (KM)1 framework has two components which utilize ERP from a big picture curriculum overview and a ground level coursework perspective. First, a flowchart illustrates the mapping of ERP2 system practice cases to program courses. Using the flowchart, faculty can more easily communicate and manage ERP curriculum features within an existing major course structure. Our design was implemented using a specific ERP system and example company setup to provide for minimal start-up and overhead costs for faculty and a minimal learning curve for students. The second component of the KM framework provides a mapping and library function. Specific design course cells have a general description of case summary features and/or homework exercises. Each design course cell also links to the relevant ERP system settings and a list of learning objectives. This mapping enables one company to be used throughout an undergraduate Accounting or IS degree program where the student's learning experiences in each course are tailored to provide by program's end a broad experiential view of ERP system usage. The system design flowchart is flexible and can be modified year-to-year or differentiated to work at any school. The system design flowchart also enables faculty to assign a list of accreditation competencies (within the context of learning objectives) to each course in the system design chart.
We present a curriculum that prepares students for supporting large Enterprise Information Systems (EIS). EIS is best explained
through the evolution of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). These systems evolved over the last years driven by (1) changing
business requirements and (2) new development capabilities provided by technologies evolution and software vendors’ innovation.
These developments led to a new discipline—Enterprise Information Systems, which deals with issues whose focus is on creating
and sustaining business benefits through the utilization of corporate IT infrastructure assets. Currently, EIS knowledge is
essentially acquired on the job after substantial time of experience building and longer career ladder scale. This paper presents
an experience of a curriculum implementation that prepares students for the pervasive EIS landscape in meeting today’s corporate
needs. Our IT-based educational approach is evaluated as an alternative to prevailing Business-based approaches to EIS instruction.
In this IT-rooted approach, the curriculum is divided into four sections: a Core IT block of courses followed by two progressive-levels
of advanced EIS-related specialized subjects, and an industry-oriented field-training experience. Initially, a Core IT background
provides a foundation for IT innovation in developing EIS components at sophomore-level. A junior-level of specialized instruction
introduces integrated modules which form EIS platforms. Finally, supporting technologies of EIS-related processes and workflows
are presented at senior-level of specialized EIS instruction. An assessment case study of the proposed Enterprise System programs
is carried out through which we discuss the results of the curriculum performance.
KeywordsEnterprise Systems–Curriculum design–Program outcomes–Academic assessment–Information systems
Enterprise systems design, implementation, and integration are focal points for business and information technology (IT). Businesses of all sizes are looking to information technology to better integrate with business partners, reduce costs, and provide strategic advantage. These challenges require a new type of technical professional, one with the training and perspective of an enterprise architect with general technical expertise as well as business strategy and planning skills. This paper investigates the need for this new type of IT professional and the implications for higher education.
As businesses world-wide begin to adopt enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in increasing numbers, academics are deciding how to utilise these types of systems in information systems (IS) curricula. Alliances with some of the ERP vendors have enabled some universities to develop innovative courses and subjects. Nevertheless, the limited research in this area has only outlined case studies or examples of ERP use in IS. In this paper we outline how ERP systems can be incorporated into a broad IS curriculum model such as IS'97, thus providing a guide to institutions that may be contemplating the use of ERP in their curriculum.
Using Virtual Servers to Teach the Implementation of Enterprise-level DBMSs: A Teaching Note
- W P Wagner
- V Pant
Wagner, W.P., & Pant, V., Using Virtual Servers to Teach the Implementation of Enterprise-level DBMSs: A Teaching Note. Journal of Information Systems Education, 2010. 21(4): p. 349-354.
Developing a curriculum for an on-line international business degree: an integrated approach using systems and ERP concepts
- M S Desai
- R Pitre
Desai, M.S., & Pitre, R., Developing a curriculum for an on-line international business degree: an integrated approach using systems and ERP concepts. Education, 2009. 130(2): p. 184-194. 978-1-4799-3190-3/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 3-5 April 2014, Military Museum and Cultural Center, Harbiye, Istanbul, Turkey 2014 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON) Page 191