In the curriculum of our international underdegree programme "Business Administration with Informatics" we offer the elective "IS Project". In this elective, students conduct a real-life information systems development project, typically with a regional company.
This year we had selected our regional agency for economic development and aimed at digitizing four processes using either Microsoft 365 PowerAutomate or RPA with UIpath. With the lockdown right before the start of the semester (and a corresponding delay of the start of the semester) we discussed with the company whether we would be able to go for our joint course. We then decided to "double down" and offer the course in a fully remote environment:
- All interaction between lecturers, students, and representatives from the company took place via Zoom or email
- Project management of the students as well as document/knowledge management was fully moved to the cloud
- Process modeling was done using a cloud-based solution (Signavio)
From a teaching methodology perspecitve, we employed different approaches:
- First, we had three video conferences in a traditional lecture setting to clarify administrative questions and introduce process thinking, process modeling, and process automation
- Secondly, we used an e-learning unit of a RPA provider the students could go through self-paced and self-responsible
- Thirdly, using agile sprints students could solve the problems of the company and present every second week
- 1st sprint: As-is processes
- 2nd sprint: To-be processes
- 3rd sprint: Implemented solution
- 4th and last sprint: Finalzed solution
As such, we aimed at fulfilling the following learning goals. After the course students should be able to
- understand and model processes
- discuss and evalute different options for process automation
- automate a process using modern tools
- collaborate using cloud-based tools in a distributed setting to prepare for a future way of working (not only in times of pandemic)
- solve intra- and inter-team conflicts in a reasonable manner
- present their solutions also to managers from the company
For an internal presentation we have prepared a short video which we uploaded with English subtitles here:
sciebo - www.hochschulcloud.nrw
In case of any questions feel free to contact me.
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Ralf Plattfaut
South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences
Soest
+49-2921 378 3543
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