Search Results (2)

Digitalisation nowadays impacts business environments significantly. Therefore, if higher education wants to educate students properly for a successful career path, the business and economics curriculum must be enriched with innovative teaching approaches covering actual topics, such as, for example, the implementation of the ERPsim business simulation, a representative of serious games. The ERPsim business simulation is based on SAP ERP, and is aimed at teaching ERP concepts. It covers different business processes, and allows students to learn using a hands-on approach, simulating real-life scenarios. The presented research focuses on using an ERPsim business simulation as the introduction to the course. The simulation was implemented to ease the introduction of ERP and IT concepts to the business and economic oriented students. Considering the positive effects of serious games and gamification, our research was formed and focused on knowledge acquisition and future student engagement. We researched whether participation in the introductory simulation results in significant knowledge gain and impacts students’ future course engagement. The data were gathered using a self-assessment questionnaire before and after an introductory simulation. The results were highly positive, confirming many positive aspects of business simulation, among others, significant knowledge increase in the domains of business process and ERP transactions, and in the domain of technical knowledge for SAP ERP. The results confirmed that the introductory simulation is appropriate for introducing ERP concepts to newcomers, and, nevertheless, confirmed the positive impact on their intent on future course engagement. Full article

The introduction of enterprise resource planning (ERP) concepts to IT students entails many challenges. Due to the system’s complexity, newcomers need an extensive amount of time to be able to use it independently. Additionally, the learning preferences and characteristics of digital natives differ significantly from previous generations. Therefore, the use of alternative learning approaches is desirable. To achieve the best possible learning outcomes, it is advisable to implement learning approaches that require students’ active participation, for example, an experiential learning approach. A variation is an ERPsim business simulation game, which we used within the ERP systems course. The game is implemented in sequential rounds, whereby each round ends with a review of the collected experiences. The simulation game was used at the beginning of the course to ease the introduction of ERP concepts for IT-related students. This paper is the result of three years of research into the perceived usability of SAP ERP introduced with the business simulation game, combined with the results of a study evaluating students’ opinions, knowledge, and skills. Perceived usability was measured using a System Usability Scale (SUS), while the students’ experiences were gathered using a self-evaluation questionnaire. The study revealed the positive impact of the experiential learning approach that was used. Students evaluated the usability of SAP ERP as OK, and empirical analysis confirmed that the use of the simulation game for introducing the ERP concepts resulted in anticipated knowledge and skills, while increasing the students’ intent for future engagement. Full article