Incorporating Analytics into a Business Process Modelling Course

Embedding analytics is about integrating data analytics into operational systems that are part of an organization’s business processes. Currently, most organizations focus on automation business processes and enhancing productivity. However, going forward, in order to stay competitive, organizations have to go beyond automating their processes, by making them more intelligent, by embedding analytics into their processes and business applications. Therefore, there is need for enhancing the knowledge and skills of BPM professionals with know-how on improving a business process by embedding analytics into the workflow. In this paper contribution, the authors share their experience on how an existing process modelling, analysis and solution designing course was modified in order to incorporate the analytics component. The paper describes in detail the content, pedagogy, and lessons learned when introducing analytics into an existing business process modelling course. Thus providing one pathway for IS professors to adapt their current process modelling, enterprise systems and BPM courses to include analytics

Rapid Transition of a Technical Course from Face-to-Face to Online

Just like most universities around the world, due to the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, senior management at Singapore Management University decided to move all courses to a virtual, online, synchronous mode and gave instructors a short notice period—one week—to make this transition. In this paper, we describe the challenges we faced, the practical solutions we adopted, and the lessons we learnt in rapidly transitioning a face-to-face master’s degree course in text analytics and applications into a virtual, online, course format that could deliver a quality learning experience

Hippi Care Hospital: Towards Proactive Business Processes in Emergency Room Services

It was 2:35 am on a Saturday morning. Wiki Lim, process specialist from the Process Innovation Centre (PIC) of Hippi Care Hospital (HCH), desperately doodling on her notepad for ideas to improve service delivery at HCH’s Emergency Department (ED). HCH has committed to the public that its ED would meet the service quality criterion of serving 90% of A3 and A4 patients, non-emergency patients with moderate to mild symptoms, within 90 minutes of their arrival at the ED. The ED was not able to meet this performance goal and Dr. Edward Kim, the head of the ED at HCH, had approached the PIC team for help. Lim and her team would study the issues and provide possible solutions. The ED experienced demand surges on Sunday evenings and Mondays. On some days, the patients may experience long wait of two hours before seeing a doctor. In these situations, Dr. Edward Kim would request his off-duty colleagues to come and help out with surges - but such requests were often made too late and with little success. Hence, he ended up extending his own shift to attend to the patients. On Mondays, Dr. Kim would often find himself totally exhausted from nearly 16 hours of working in the ED. He could plainly see that this way of operating was unsustainable. A solution was needed – and soon. Mr. Viz., the head of PIC and Lim’s boss, was interested in exploring innovative ways to improve ED operations by making only minimal changes to the process. Lim would have to be creative

Designing a Datawarehousing and Business Analytics Course Using Experiential Learning Pedagogy

Experiential learning refers to learning from experience or learning by doing. Universities have explored various forms for implementing experiential learning such as apprenticeships, internships, cooperative education, practicums, service learning, job shadowing, fellowships and community activities. However, very little has been done in systematically trying to integrate experiential learning to the main stream academic curriculum. Over the last two years, at the authors’ university, a new program titled UNI-X was launched to achieve this. Combining academic curriculum with experiential learning pedagogy, provides a challenging environment for students to use their disciplinary knowledge and skills to tackle real world problems and issues through inter-disciplinary approaches and activities. A course designated as UNI-X involves external partners from corporate, non-profit or government-sector organisations. The course requires the student to learn knowledge and skills during the classroom sessions and then to apply them in solving a real-world project proposed by the partners. The instructor along with the industry partner plays an active role in the project design, mentoring and assessment. In this paper contribution, the authors share their experience in designing a Data Warehousing and Business Analytics (DWBA) course to include experiential learning activities. The paper describes in detail the content, pedagogy, in-course project, challenges and lessons learned when introducing experiential learning into an existing course. Thus providing one pathway for Information Systems (IS) professors to adapt their analytics course to include experiential learning activities

APPLYPING DESIGN THINKING TO STUDENT OUTREACH PROJECTS: EXPERIENCES FROM AN INFORMATION SYSTEMS SCHOOL

As countries turn in to Smart Nations, Infocom Technology plays a key role in enhancing their competitiveness through high skilled workforces. Reaching to younger generations and attracting them to computing programs such as Information Systems (IS) and Computer Science (CS) is a key challenge faced by universities. Many high-quality students from junior colleges either don\u27t choose IS programs or choose IS programs as their last option during the application process. A school of Information Systems (SIS) from a large metropolitan university decided to implement an innovative outreach program to attract high quality high school aka Junior College (JC) students. JC or high school students are those in 2-year program that transfers them to the 4-year university degree. In this project, we took a design thinking approach which enabled us to analyse the output of each stage of the design thinking process and make informed decisions for implementation. Our empathy stage showed that only 5% of top JC students were aware of Information Systems and we attribute this as the root cause of low numbers and quality of applications into IS schools. With empathy study and analysis, we ideated and implemented an innovative camp to bring awareness of IS to JC students. A team of twenty-nine faculty and staff worked on a project for twelve months and we have seen significant improvements in the number and quality of applications. This paper provides useful insights into using design thinking to re-engineer student outreach programs that can enhance the number and quality of applicants to a university program. We share the methodology, the details of each stage, and the outcomes of each stage

Improving student learning in an introductory programming course using flipped classroom and competency framework

The author Joelle Elmaleh was publishing under the name Joelle Ducrot.</p

Targeted Blended Learning through Competency Assessment in an Undergraduate Information Systems Program

The author Joelle Elmaleh was publishing under the name Joelle Ducrot.</p