martin.gollogly

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    Developing IT skills using SAP via Formative assessment

    In recent years governments especially in the western world have expressed an interest in moving away from using standardised summative tests for evaluating students in exams. A summative test is best defined as a educational benchmark whereby students are set a fixed curricula and testing regime.

    One of the reasons put forward for this interest has been that summative testing, whilst excellent for examining skills for those subjects that require memory skills, is less effective for evaluating skills in subjects where an ability to put skills into practice is just as important. In the medical world this has long been a point of view with summative testing around core medical concepts, drugs, techniques and so on being combined with internships and other means of evaluating how effectively students put skills into practice

    One key weakness for summative assessment

    Summative testing also has one key weakness which is that feedback is completely one way. Often tests are conducted at the end of courses and so only if courses have been designed with a good mix of coursework or mock exams is the student able to reflect on their knowledge and skill level and adjust their learning to compensate. This in turn also can isolate the student from their learning experience - feeling they have no role to play in their own development or that they are only a ‘success' if they achieve an arbitrary mark or grade in an exam that may little to do with the skills necessary to succeed in their chosen field.

    The background to formative assessment

    Formative assessment has been viewed as a means to bridge the gap between structured, guided learning and self-motivated learning that requires an input from the student not only into learning materials but into the whole process of learning itself. And it is my conjecture that using the tools within the University Alliance program is a major mechanism to achieving this.

    Formative assessment has been put forward as a pedagogical philosophy since the late 1960s when commentators noted that many people who had a reduced access to a university education nonetheless had undergone highly advanced processes of learning through apprenticeships and other less structured educational processes. To incorporate some elements of formative learning into university education the route typically involved  multiple assessments intended not to grade the student but to provide a diagnosis (or prognosis) of the student's level of attainment.

    Crucially the student was able to find out where their own skills were lacking and where their strengths were whilst simultaneously (ideally) a lecturer / teacher would be able to evaluate the teaching mechanism to see what worked and what didn't. The general observation made of formative assessment is that it is an aid to discovery and learning rather than an end result in itself.

    SAP enables Professors to pursue a formative assessment strategy

    This is where the use of advanced technical systems such as SAP are potentially highly valuable. The typical class set-up might have a lecture on an aspect of management information systems, operations management or general business analysis and strategy. The material within this lecture would be evaluated by examinations at the end of the course in a summative fashion to provide the student with a route to attaining a degree.

    However it is quite difficult for a student to actually gain access to a working management information system to evaluate their own understanding of the material that they will have just learnt. It would be almost impossible for a student to process that information a reflective manner and begin to formulate their own ideas and conclusions about their understanding of the subject. Without access to such a system the student literally has to a) take the lecturer's or course material's word for it and b) only be able to form an understanding based on hypothetical or ‘virtual' examples.

    Using SAP tools enables students to reflect and understand

    Using the SAP tools offers an opportunity for students to reflect on their understanding not only of the taught materials (i.e. is this correct or is there an example I can study) but also on the system itself i.e. to reach their own understanding and conclusions about the tools. It also provides lecturers with an additional tool outside of the summative examination structure to evaluate student progress and understanding.

    Formative assessments occur whilst content is being delivered and immediately afterwards and are intended to continue during the entire process of learning. There is not an SAP exam (except for TERP10) but the lecturer can clearly evaluate from face to face contact which students are struggling and which are grasping immediately the material.

    A final observation is that formative assessments often include an initial overview assessment and a final objective assessment to see whether the student has understood the materials and has progressed in their understanding of the topic. In the use of SAP as a tool this can be easily accomplished by assessing the real world systems knowledge of SAP as a tool prior to undertaking the course and then generating feedback related to the student experience.

    Often the best student feedback is an analysis of the system using elements of subjects that a student has picked up in lectures that they can now relate back to their physical use of SAP and use that experience to inform their exams rather than ‘passing' SAP being an aim in its own right. In this case Terence Crooks (1988) noted that teachers can modify or ameliorate the use of the system in such a way that students gain not only a better understanding of the system itself but how it relates back to their structured learning.

    The value of ICT when looking at sustainability 

     

    Sustainability does not, initially at least, seem to share very much in common with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Not because it is an unsustainable product – in fact much of ICT must rank as one of the most sustainable products ever invented when you compare it to products with a similar level of take-up such as the car.

     

    The value of ICT is in the software which is the product of ones and zeros stored electronically and the physical system is usually mostly air and sand and those elements which would become in hundreds of years more rare such as copper and plastics are now frequently recycled. No - the reason that ICT doesn’t have too much attention paid to it is because the focus is on reducing the perceived negative impact of products rather than looking at the nature of the impact of a particular product and its greater impact in the sustainability debate.

     

    This is crucial with ICT because when looking at its impact as a product it can be arrayed with other physical products as something to be controlled and the damage reduced – we look at plastic recycling, power usage etc. However at the heart of sustainability is the concept that we should pay attention to the manner in which we use the tools that we create and this includes their better use as well as their lesser use. So the two concepts – ICT and a sustainable world and economy should be closely entwined.

    ICT and Sustainability 

     

    There are numerous different aspects to ICT that should be considered when addressing the issue of sustainability. There is the potential to manage the movement of people around the world by reducing the number of commuter-journeys by expanding work-from-home. There is the potential for revising our energy consumption and the pollution that is caused locally by the need to move people across what are often relatively short, but congested, distances. There is also the potential for reducing the volume of materials taken up by the technologies themselves (consider the reduction in size of ‘personal computing’ to modern iPhones and Notebooks even with the high replacement rate when compared to 1970s desktop machines).

    ICT in sustainable education

    However the real impact on sustainability of ICT may not be so obvious. At present in areas of high unemployment or deprivation there needs to be a considerable investment in educational facilities to be able to give the same chances in life to young people as those who live in affluent areas. This means that educational provision always falls some way behind economic development – when a local authority or school board has the funds to build a facility or repair or extend an existing one it is usually because the local economy has picked up.

     

    In positive cases a considerable investment may be made in an area of deprivation in order to try and stimulate the areas’ growth but this is a very top-down approach and the provision is limited to the topics and facilities made available by the authority as well as being only those that such an authority deems fit. Remote and self-motivated learning on the other hand empowers young people to take their education into their own hands.

     

    This does not necessarily mean remote courses, though that is certainly the logical conclusion, but rather the ability to explore knowledge in an informative and enjoyable way via interactive tools. These can include Wikis and Forums and other user-led resources as well as remote course provision. There is some debate over the value if wikis as they can be amended by anyone including those with either less than perfect knowledge or that have a particular bias via within the subject. But to criticise the entire concept is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Much useful information and opinion exists – it is more a case of selecting that which is both relevant and true.

     

    Perhaps one of the most useful skills in this world of total information availability will be to train young people in logic and critical thinking so that they can plough through the volumes of material that exist and ask the right questions to find the information that is valuable, relevant and to ensure that they are forming their own opinions and not being a mouthpiece for someone else’s.

    ICT and sustainable society 

    This leads to the next potential positive impact that ICT can play on sustainability – the support of society itself. Margaret Thatcher, a UK prime minister, once said ‘there is no such thing as society’. How she would hate Facebook! If the Internet has done anything it has enabled people to maintain contacts and relationships with other human beings but on a much richer and interactive level than was previously possible via phone or proprietary e-mails systems. Ideas can be better explained and explored between individuals because there is less room for misinterpretation when multiple channels of communication are employed.

    Greater freedom and variety in channels of communication also make education a richer experience because firstly it becomes possible to create interactive and entertaining tools that educate as they entertain, and secondly people can discuss and become more engaged with the topic – as anyone who visits a movie forum will discover! The act of debate and disagreement / agreement can solidify key concepts in the mind of the individual as well as forever linking supporting and opposing arguments to those concepts which can in turn make the process of learning and interaction richer. But more importantly forumites are learning from each other as much as from a sanctioned authority figure and this is perhaps where true society lies – it is a mechanism for the free expression of ideas and the knowledge that you are part of a community of people who are thinking about the same topics, even if they disagree with you. 

    ICT and sustainable decision making

    A final and again less obvious benefit is the better management of society and its resources. Partly this is due to better decision support techniques that are in turn dependent upon better software that is in turn dependent on the quality, reliability and timeliness of data. But interpretation of data is also dependent upon the interpreter and the ability to make sense of the information that is available is a key skill – the greater the depth of educated opinions brought to bear on a topic the greater the chance that the decisions taken will be at least well thought out (though not necessarily correct!).

     

    So the focus on sustainability in controlling or reducing the impact of certain negative aspects of our society – pollution, commuting, isolation and work/life balance – are certainly one positive aspect of the use of ICT in the modern world. However I like to think that potentially those aspects with the greatest long-term benefits for society as a whole will be those I’ve discussed – education, accessibility, communication, interaction and more effective decision making and government.

    Over the past few months I have had numerous conversations with faculty regarding TERP10 and whether their students should do it and what benefits they would receive from completing it. We currently have a dozen UK&I institutions that are participating to some degree in the program and the main points raised seem to be:

    What does it contain

    What benefit does it bring to the student

    What benefit does it bring to the employer - is an employer likely to find it attractive

    How does it fit into an overall SAP career

    What is the benefit to the university

    These are all valid points and I shall try to answer them to the best of my ability.

    What does it contain - well the course objective is to enable students to see how a modern enterprise system is an iterative, cohesive system with nonetheless the possibility to specialize in areas of specific interest. There are components that cover sales and distribution, finance, and HR, but perhaps half the material is about manufacturing. This isn't because manufacturing is less or more important than any other industry but because it is an excellent example to illustrate the need for specialization and granularity to business roles in a large company but that these roles or functions need to be able to communicate and integrate in such a way that one process blends into another seamlessly and with information being made available from one process to another in a logically consistent manner.  The key word is integration which is why the course is entitled Business Process Integration.

    As to what benefits it brings to the student. These are numerous and some are not at first obvious. The initial benefits are that it gives a good overview of how to navigate through the SAP system, how to enter and extract data and reports, how to push a process forward in an IS environment and how different functions use the same system in different contexts in ways that are similar but tailored towards specific requirements. However there are also less obvious benefits. The first of these is that many students of business or IS will have taken multiple courses and had studied other roles as electives such as HR within an accounting course or marketing within operations. TERP10 shows that each of these functions is integrated into a cohesive whole via the use of a modern EIS so that marketing can directly gain access to relevant information created by operations, or that finance can see when an invoice has been raised by procurement. In short business functions though separate and distinct are also integrated. The second is that it places a new validity on material taught in class - a kind of ‘told you so' that reinforces that process types and forms are indeed used in business and here is supporting evidence in IS form. This should raise the enthusiasm for non-SAP learning in return.

    For the employer the TERP10 qualification show three things. First the student has understood SAP to a degree that they have passed an exam whilst still at school. This in itself is worth its weight in gold as it already shows to implementers that they have a potential consultant and to customers that this person could rapidly pick up how they use their own MIS internally. Second it shows a mature and focused attitude towards learning and career development - this person has invested their own time and money in learning SAP. Third - this person is already ‘ahead of the game' as they will already have had exposure to the SAP system, have had that exposure integrated into class learning so they understand the real world applicability of MIS; and have already had a period most likely of weeks or months of study which otherwise the partner/customer would have to pay for themselves!

    The benefits to an SAP career relate to the ability of the student to now make accurate and mature choices about career development. They may already have formed an idea as a result of TERP10 which aspects of ERP interest them and can therefore evaluate opportunities from that perspective. They may even decide that an SAP consulting career is not for them but have had any fear removed of using SAP in a role within a SAP customer. Indeed it may even make them more confident in their appreciation of the roles of other people as they understand the connection between MIS development and organisational structure and change.

    To the university the benefits are too numerous to include all here. Perhaps the main benefits are firstly that it gives students an Sap Certification before the point at their career when they should have been able to obtain one which means that those students immediately become more highly prized and employable. It signals to industry that this is a university which takes employability and ‘real world skills' seriously and is prepared to work with industry to secure a better future for its graduates. It enables students to see the tangible implementation of knowledge that they would have received through their core university courses and electives. It enables faculty to draw on a case study of real use of an MIS for business purposes. It shows to government and regulators that the university is entrepreneurial and innovative in seeking out skills and knowledge development innovations and is not afraid to try new techniques and technology.

    TERP10 is an excellent initial SAP Certification and a worthy addition to the opportunities presented to universities and students through the University Alliance Program - I passed it myself in 2008 and wish I had studied it five years ago!

    An alliance between industry and universities brings with it tremendous benefits for all parties but since taking over the UKI program five years ago I have noted there is one particular benefit which is perhaps sometimes overlooked.

    For the university working with industry offers several key benefits. The first is that it informs research - it is so much easier to gather research subjects for longer or more in depth studies and thereby improve the overall quality and validity of reearch. This doesn't mean that all industrial research must be primary and necessitate close engagement with industry - but there are plenty of research topics that require direct access to employees, direct knowledge of processes, procedures and people that can only be achieved if there is a pre-existing bond of trust between the two (or more) organisations. Second - it raises the (potential) validity of the university experience for students to see that what they are learning has direct applicabilty in the world after their studies are completed. In fact the best courses I have noted are those that seem to seemlesly incorporate the two into one teaching philosophy - with students gaining knowledge from faculty, studying themselves, and then gaining additional insights from industry as to how that element they are studying applies or is adapted in their company or industry. For me this rather like adding an additional dimension to class learning - like turning a 2-D blueprint into a 3-D model.

    There are advantages to industry too. Universities may bring together whole groups of specialists on topics which a company would be unable, whether for financial or political reasons, to field itself perhaps in a product area that it has only partial interest in yet is interested in evaluating the potential in. By directly involving itself with universities the company can also provide resources that enable it to have an influence over the form and typs of teaching and research so that students arrive in industry with immediately valuable skills, and these in turn can be deployed by the university in such a way that its' integrity is protected but that in turn it is able to form that close relationship that informs research, teaching and student development.

    But perhaps the greatest outcome of university / industrial alliances is this: that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I have noticed that there is a feedback loop that operates in the members within the SAP UA Program which begins as moderate amendments to the effectivenesss of one degree or course but which is then built on not just to expand SAP usage but to inform the whole development of research and teaching strategy. In the case of teaching for example faculty initially are able to gain new SAP skills. These in turn feed a greater 'real-world' knowledge of SAP and Enterprise Systems which in turn informs the research and curricula development process, leading to a greater understanding of what is important not only in industry but technologically and pedagogically. Thus faculty are brought 'inside' and as members they are able to make judgements about where whole industries, applications and even business processes and strategies are heading. As a result faculty know where there will be interesting developments, potential research subjects and of course potentially research funding, and can, if they wish, direct their research efforts there. The feedback loop also of course feeds into teaching, with faculty able to use multiple new means of raising enthusiasm in students, underline their teaching with new teaching methods, case studies and technologies and enhance student applications and retention. 

    These in turn feed back to students who are more engaged and have a deeper insight into not only industry but their own studies - recognising the value of what they have learnt with a new appreciation; and to faculty that are able to 'see the future' more clearly and develop their research and teaching strategies accordingly.

    However the best news is that this UA feedback loop doesn't stop - it continues to evolve year in year out as faculty develop ever greater skills and knowledge, build ever deeper relationships and make ever more sophisticated and informed adaptations to curricula and research. In this case the UA must be one of the deepst and richest academic / industrial collaborations ever pursued.

     Martin