Business Process Management Education in Academia: Status, challenges, and Recommendations

In response to the growing proliferation of Business Process Management (BPM) in industry and the demand this creates for BPM expertise, universities across the globe are at various stages of incorporating knowledge and skills in their teaching offerings. However, there are still only a handful of institutions that offer specialized education in BPM in a systematic and in-depth manner. This article is based on a global educators’ panel discussion held at the 2009 European Conference on Information Systems in Verona, Italy. The article presents the BPM programs of five universities from Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America, describing the BPM content covered, program and course structures, and challenges and lessons learned. The article also provides a comparative content analysis of BPM education programs illustrating a heterogeneous view of BPM. The examples presented demonstrate how different courses and programs can be developed to meet the educational goals of a university department, program, or school. This article contributes insights on how best to continuously sustain and reshape BPM education to ensure it remains dynamic, responsive, and sustainable in light of the evolving and ever-changing marketplace demands for BPM expertise

Curriculum Guidelines for Undergraduate Programs in Data Science

The Park City Math Institute (PCMI) 2016 Summer Undergraduate Faculty Program met for the purpose of composing guidelines for undergraduate programs in Data Science. The group consisted of 25 undergraduate faculty from a variety of institutions in the U.S., primarily from the disciplines of mathematics, statistics and computer science. These guidelines are meant to provide some structure for institutions planning for or revising a major in Data Science

Emerging cad and bim trends in the aec education: An analysis from students\u27 perspective

As the construction industry is moving towards collaborative design and construction practices globally, training the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) students professionally related to CAD and BIM became a necessity rather than an option. The advancement in the industry has led to collaborative modelling environments, such as building information modelling (BIM), as an alternative to computer-aided design (CAD) drafting. Educators have shown interest in integrating BIM into the AEC curriculum, where teaching CAD and BIM simultaneously became a challenge due to the differences of two systems. One of the major challenges was to find the appropriate teaching techniques, as educators were unaware of the AEC students’ learning path in CAD and BIM. In order to make sure students learn and benefit from both CAD and BIM, the learning path should be revealed from students’ perspective. This paper summarizes the background and differences of CAD and BIM education, and how the transition from CAD to BIM can be achieved for collaborative working practices. The analysis was performed on freshman and junior level courses to learn the perception of students about CAD and BIM education. A dual-track survey was used to collect responses from AEC students in four consecutive years. The results showed that students prefer BIM to CAD in terms of the friendliness of the user-interface, help functions, and self-detection of mistakes. The survey also revealed that most of the students believed in the need for a BIM specialty course with Construction Management (CM), Structure, and Mechanical-Electrical-Plumbing (MEP) areas. The benefits and challenges of both CAD and BIM-based software from students’ perspectives helps to improve the learning outcomes of CAD/BIM courses to better help students in their learning process, and works as a guideline for educators on how to design and teach CAD/BIM courses simultaneously by considering the learning process and perspectives of students. © 2018 The autho

A learning tool to develop sustainable projects

This paper presents a tool developed to help engineers to design and develop sustainable projects. The tool has been designed to introduce and evaluate the sustainability of engineering projects in general, but here we show its application to assess the final project of an engineering degree. This tool is a guide for students to introduce and estimate the sustainability of their projects, but it also helps teachers to assess them. The tool is based on the Socratic Methodology and consists of a matrix where each cell contains several questions that students must consider during the project development and which they must answer in their project report. A positive or negative mark is assigned to every cell, and the sum of all marks states the project sustainability. However, the result is not as simplistic as a final number, but a descriptive sustainability analysis where questions are answered and every mark justified. A pilot test with some students has obtained good results, but the first Final Degree Project using this methodology will be read in July 2016.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Learning requirements engineering within an engineering ethos

An interest in educating software developers within an engineering ethos may not align well with the characteristics of the discipline, nor address the underlying concerns of software practitioners. Education for software development needs to focus on creativity, adaptability and the ability to transfer knowledge. A change in the way learning is undertaken in a core Software Engineering unit within a university's engineering program demonstrates one attempt to provide students with a solid foundation in subject matter while at the same time exposing them to these real-world characteristics. It provides students with a process to deal with problems within a metacognitive-rich framework that makes complexity apparent and lets students deal with it adaptively. The results indicate that, while the approach is appropriate, student-learning characteristics need to be investigated further, so that the two aspects of learning may be aligned more closely

Latin American perspectives to internationalize undergraduate information technology education

The computing education community expects modern curricular guidelines for information technology (IT) undergraduate degree programs by 2017. The authors of this work focus on eliciting and analyzing Latin American academic and industry perspectives on IT undergraduate education. The objective is to ensure that the IT curricular framework in the IT2017 report articulates the relationship between academic preparation and the work environment of IT graduates in light of current technological and educational trends in Latin America and elsewhere. Activities focus on soliciting and analyzing survey data collected from institutions and consortia in IT education and IT professional and educational societies in Latin America; these activities also include garnering the expertise of the authors. Findings show that IT degree programs are making progress in bridging the academic-industry gap, but more work remains

Building University-School Partnerships: An Exercise in Communication and Understanding

This article provides an overview of the Collaboration to Advance Teaching Technology and Science (CATTS) program and the conditions necessary to establish and maintain partnerships that promote inquiry and research in schools. These programs are effective because they benefit all stakeholders. CATTS creates opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students (the CATTS Fellows) to learn effective teaching practices and to be active participants in K-12 education. School districts and University of Arizona outreach programs benefit when CATTS Fellows work on projects that address identified educational needs in K-12 schools. K-12 teachers and students benefit from the additional classroom assistance and resources provided through the CATTS program. Educational levels: Graduate or professional

Developing e-assessment using the quiz activity within Moodle: empowering student learning

Using formative assessment within Moodle has been shown to encourage self-directed learning (Bromham & Oprandi, 2006). Our experience of using formative assessment quizzes as stand alone entities, as well as within Moodle lessons, has been used to introduce Moodle assessment quizzes over the past year in Level 1 and Level 2 Life Sciences courses. This experience has been distilled to inform the content of this workshop. Some advantages of incorporating assessments in the form of Moodle quizzes are that they allow for quick, reproducible and flexible assessment with a relatively small initial set-up cost, and substantial long-term staff and administration savings. One significant advantage is that staff and room pressures can be reduced as students can attempt the assessment at a time and location of their choice within a specified time period. This flexibility can help to reduce student stress associated with completion of a continuous assessment for their course. It is also a relatively simple process to account for students entitled to extra time during assessments. Providing clear instructions beforehand and at the start of the quiz ensures that students understand their responsibilities for completion of this assessment and ultimately the course. There are some disadvantages and limitations to the system as it currently exists, for example there is the perceived ability for students to “cheat” by completing the assessment as a group, accessing books and the internet. Strategies to account for these can be put in place and will be discussed in detail during the workshop. This workshop aims to take the participants through the initial set up of a quiz, highlighting the various question types and how these can be used to create a challenging assessment that can be quickly graded and prove informative for staff and course development. Reference Bromham L. & Oprandi P. (2006) Evolution online: developing active and blended learning by using a virtual learning environment in an introductory biology course. Journal of Biological Education 41 (1): 21-25