Collaborative Teaching of ERP Systems in International Context
Jānis Grabis
1
, Kurt Sandkuhl
2
and Dirk Stamer
2
1
Institute of Information Technology, Riga Technical University, Kalku 1, Riga, Latvia
2
Chair of Business Information Systems, University of Rostock, Albert-Einstein-Straße 22, Rostock, Germany
Keywords: ERP, Collaborative Teaching, ERP Internationalization, Business Process.
Abstract: ERP systems are characterized by a high degree of complexity what is challenging to replicate in the
classroom environment. However, there is a strong industry demand for students having ERP training
during their studies at universities. This paper reports a joint effort of University of Rostock and Riga
Technical University to enhance introductory ERP training by introducing an internationalization dimension
in the standard curriculum. Both universities collaborated to develop an international ERP case study as an
extension of the SAP ERP Global Bikes Incorporated case study. The training approach, study materials and
appropriate technical environment have been developed. The international ERP case study is performed at
both universities where students work collaboratively on running business processes in the SAP ERP
system. Students’ teams at each university are responsible for business process activities assigned to them
and they are jointly responsible for completing the process. The case study execution observations and
students’ evaluations suggest that the international ERP provides a good insight on the real-life challenges
associated in using the ERP systems in the international context.
1 INTRODUCTION
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are one
of the most widely used large-scale information
systems (Shehab et al., 2004). They are used
primarily by large international companies operating
in many countries with different regulatory
requirements and regional and cultural differences
(Markus et al., 2000). Given importance of the ERP
systems, higher education establishments have
incorporated them in study programs (Hepner and
Dickson, 2013). A range of training materials has
been elaborated very often with a help of vendors of
the ERP systems. However, the traditional teaching
materials lack the international dimension and often
follow a one-user-does it all approach. As a result,
students are able to complete long-running multi-
role cross-organizational processes in a relatively
short time and ignoring permissions associated with
various roles. Therefore, they do not gain a good
understanding of the ways processes are executed in
practice. Additional, the traditional teaching
materials often focus on step-by-step instructions
reducing a need for in-depth exploration of the
features of the ERP systems and dealing with
potential pitfalls.
This paper reports a collaborative effort by
University of Rostock (UR) and Riga Technical
University (RTU) to provide ERP teaching in the
international environment. The objective of the
paper is to elaborate an international ERP teaching
case and to reflect on initial experiences in
collaborative studying of the ERP systems.
The international ERP case is used for practical
exercises in a study course devoted to enterprise
applications or business information systems. The
course is given to both computing and business
students and focuses on functional aspects of the
ERP systems. A sales and distribution process
performed by organizational units in different
countries is at the core of the case. The SAP ERP
system is used for executing the international sales
and distribution process. The case is developed as an
extension of the standard SAP training material
using the GBI case study (Magal and Word, 2012)
and students have knowledge of the standard case
prior starting the international case. This way the
international ERP is a natural continuation of
previous exercises and the students work in the
familiar environment. The other key principles used
in the design of the international ERP case are usage
of structured case execution instructions instead of
196
Grabis J., Sandkuhl K. and Stamer D..
Collaborative Teaching of ERP Systems in International Context.
DOI: 10.5220/0005464101960205
In Proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2015), pages 196-205
ISBN: 978-989-758-096-3
Copyright
c
2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
the step-by-step type of instruction to facilitate
inductive learning (see section 3.2). Student groups
located in different countries are jointly responsible
for the case execution and a joint troubleshooting is
promoted to facilitate peer learning. The sales
process is executed in an asynchronous manner to
resemble real life business operations where partners
do not respond immediately.
The main contribution of the paper is
development of the didactical approach to studying
ERP systems in the international environment and
elaboration of a new type of template for presenting
case studies and training instructions. The didactical
approach is based on a mix of deductive and
inductive teaching approaches including
collaborative work by teams of the students in
different countries. The template for presenting
training instructions is based on using structured task
specifications rather than step-by-step guides.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows.
Section 2 reviews related work on ERP studying.
The extended international ERP case including the
teaching approach is presented in Section 3. The
technical approach is described in Sections 4.
Section 5 reports initial case study execution
experiences and Section 6 concludes.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
Boyle and Strong (2006) have identified skill
requirements of ERP graduates. The skills are
categorized as ERP technical knowledge, technology
management knowledge, business functional
knowledge, interpersonal skills and team skills. The
international ERP case focuses developing skills
systems design/integration, knowledge of business
functions, ability to understand the business
environment to interpret business problems, ability
to accomplish assignments, ability to be proactive,
ability to work cooperatively in a team environment.
More importantly ERP skills have direct impact on
ERP implementation success (Mohamed and
McLaren, 2009).
Hepner and Dickson (2013) provide a summary
of business processes taught using ERP-integrated
curricula and an ERP curriculum assessment. They
focus on value of ERP-integration. Hayes and
McGilsky (2007) report on introducing ERP systems
in the business core courses. They specifically
emphasize importance of developing training
curriculum and faculty competences showing that
the standard materials are a good starting point and
these can be later on elaborated for specific needs.
An ERP simulation game is one of the ways of
illustrating characteristics of ERP systems,
especially, to business students (Cronan et al., 2009).
The game focuses on comprehension of conceptual
foundations of the ERP systems. Léger (2006)
implemented a turn-based simulation game approach
for both undergraduate and graduate business
administration students focusing on information
technologies. The students were running five
national companies during this simulation, which
sell their products independently on three different
marketplaces. The affected processes were:
procurement, production and sales.
Cronan et.al. (2012) compared two different
methods — an objective measure and a self-assed
one — to measure cognitive learning effects in an
ERP simulation game. To obtain knowledge about
ERP systems and business processes a simulation
game is more appropriate than other learning types
like lab exercises or lectures as Cronan et. al.
pointed out. Theling and Loos (2005) proposed a
multi-perspective approach to teach ERP systems to
take into account that different roles were involved.
They integrated four different perspectives on ERP
systems in their curriculum like software engineer’s,
software consultant’s, business analyst’s and end-
user’s view. The hands-on experience was given by
a case study using standard learning material
provided by SAP. Monk and Lycett (2011)
described a work in progress multi-method approach
to measure the effectiveness of ERP teaching. They
combined a quantitative analysis of an experimental
simulation game using a t-test and a qualitative
analysis of interviews about the gained knowledge.
They run their simulation game both in the UK and
the US.
Dealing with complexity of ERP systems is a
major challenge in studying ERP systems. Hussey et
al. (2011) propose a methodology for facilitating
active learning so that students can attain in-depth
understanding of the ERP systems. O’Sullivan
(2011) perceives usage of ERP systems as a way of
bringing in real-world tools and experience in the
classroom. ERP training can contribute to
development of a wide range of professional skills
for engineering students (Moon et al., 2007).
International collaboration is shown be particularly
beneficial. Although modern information systems
are used in the global context, information systems
curriculum often does not follow the suite
(Pawlowski and Holtkamp, 2012). The
internationalization framework proposed in that
paper emphasizes importance of collaboration,
communication and project management to achieve
CollaborativeTeachingofERPSystemsinInternationalContext
197
curriculum internationalization objectives.
Chang et. al. (2011) investigated the influence of
post-implementation learning on ERP systems. They
used a cross-sectional mail survey including 47
companies for their quantitative research. The
number of returned questionnaires was 659. The
main finding is that post-implementation learning
has a significant influence on ERP usage including
the dimensions like decision support, work
integration and customer service. Furthermore,
Chang et.al. showed that ERP usage has also
significant effects on individual performance
including areas like individual productivity,
customer satisfaction and management control.
The literature survey provides evidence that ERP
training plays an important role in information
systems curriculum. The training has to provide a
wide range of skills and internationalization is one
of major challenges. Capturing complexity of using
and developing large scale information systems is
also important and challenging in the classroom
environment. According to our literature research
there is no cross-country collaborative case study
using an ERP system including a setting with
multiple roles and limited permissions in order to
deepen the students’ knowledge on cross-
organizational business processes. This applies also
to ERP systems taught by double loop learning and
peer learning.
3 DESCRIPTION OF THE CASE
STUDY
The international ERP studies are implemented as a
collaborative effort between Riga Technical
University and University of Rostock. The
international ERP case is designed for business
informatics and information technology students as
an introduction in ERP systems. It is based on the
standard GBI case provided (Magal and Word,
2012). The standard case is extended for application
in the international environment.
3.1 Teaching Environment
The international ERP is a part of courses devoted to
introduction to ERP systems. At RTU, the ERP
Systems course is given to master students in the
Information Technology study program. At UR, the
course is given to both Master students in Business
Informatics and students in the “Service
Management” program which leads to a Master
degree in business administration. The Information
Technology as well as Business Informatics study
programs deal with application of ICT in business
environment and the ERP systems is one of the key
aspects of using ICT at companies. The introductory
ERP courses at both universities focus on general
characteristics and functional aspects of the ERP
systems. This founding knowledge is used as a
prerequisite in related courses devoted to ERP
development and implementation of enterprise
applications.
Table 1 lists topics covered in the courses at
RTU and UR, respectively. Every topic consists of
lectures and practical exercises in the lab following
the standard GBI curriculum. The international ERP
process is executed as a part of the topic on ERP
internationalization. This topic is given using the
extended international case. It consists of an
introductory overview of international ERP,
independent work by students’ teams of
international ERP process execution and reflections
on the process execution. Further details of the
collaborative learning process are provided in
Section 4. Completion of the international ERP
process yields credits towards the final grade of the
course.
Table 1: Topics of the introductory ERP courses.
RTU UR
Enterprise business
processes
General characteristics of
enterprise applications
Data in ERP systems
Sales and distribution
process
Financial accounting
processes
Sales and financial
accounting integration
Production and inventory
management processes
ERP internationalization
Process-oriented
organizations
General characteristics of
information systems in
enterprises
ERP systems
Sales and distribution
processes
Material management
processes
Financial accounting
processes
Integration of business
processes
Electronic business in
general
e-procurement
The specific learning objectives for the international
ERP case are:
Strengthening general ERP usage skills
Strengthening knowledge of the sales and
distribution process
Ability to track the process execution progress
Improving communication skills and foreign
language skills
Business process execution in the collaborative
setting
ICEIS2015-17thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
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Understanding of roles and user permissions in
ERP systems
The learning objectives relate to the required
ERP skills as identified by Boyle and Strong (2006).
The ERP usage skills and knowledge of the sales
and distribution process are strengthened by the need
to go beyond standard tasks described in the step-by-
step instructions. The process execution progress
should be tracked to ensure communication among
the distributed teams and to comply with the
reporting requirements. The student teams work
together thus improving their teamwork skills
reinforced by working in the international
environment. By using the structured case
requirements and instructions, the students also learn
about design of ERP implementation artefacts. The
technical objective of understanding roles and
permissions in the ERP systems is achieved by
limiting a number of functions each student team
can perform.
3.2 Teaching Method
From a teaching perspective, the selection of
methods and instruments started from the learning
outcomes the international case study was supposed
to establish. These learning outcomes are presented
in Section 3.1. Learning outcomes are what the
students can reliably demonstrate at the end of the
module, i.e. what can be assessed in exams or is
manifested by oral presentation or written
documentation of the students’ results.
Traditional engineering instruction usually
follows a deductive approach, which starts with
theories introduced in lectures or homework and
progresses to the applications of those theories.
Alternative teaching approaches are more inductive
and include methods, such as problem-based
learning, project-based learning or case-based
teaching {Prince and Felder, 2007). As inductive
teaching methods are found to be more effective
than traditional deductive methods for achieving a
broad range of learning outcomes (Prince and
Felder, 2006), we decided to combine deductive and
inductive approaches. Teaching in the international
case study started with a deductive part: lectures
introduced the relevant theoretical background;
homework of the students was directed to read
additional material; the material was discussed in
question-answer sessions at the beginning of the
next lecture. After the deductive part, the inductive
part followed manifested in case-based teaching (see
also Section 4.4).
When planning the teaching method, we also
took into account that in particular in ICT there is a
tendency to a competence perspective on personal
qualification, as manifested in the European e-
Competence Framework (CEN 2014). The term
competence is defined by the e-CF 3.0 as:
“Competence is a demonstrated ability to apply
knowledge, skills and attitudes for achieving
observable results.” (CEN 2014, p. 5). Typically a
distinction is made between technical, method and
social competences. The technical and method
competences for our teaching module correspond to
the learning outcomes defined in section 3.1.
However, the teaching module also has the objective
to develop social competences. Social competences
are difficult to express in “assessable” learning
outcomes but nevertheless need to be taken into
account when planning the teaching methods. For
our case, the social competences are the ability to
actively contribute to distributed and international
group work, which includes understanding that work
with partners in other locations and countries usually
cannot be solely performed by using ERP systems
but also requires communication with people and
coordination of group work and to train the ability to
coordinate problem solving in distributed teams.
In order to support the inductive part of our
teaching module, we decided to support different
learning situations: collaborative learning, peer
learning and tutoring. Collaborative learning can be
very broadly defined as "a situation in which two or
more people learn or attempt to learn something
together" (Dillenbourg 1999, p. 1). In our case, we
formed groups of students who got a joint
assignment which included initial guidelines how to
proceed. Some of the advantages attributed to
collaborative learning are, e.g., that students come to
a more complete understanding by comparing their
views with other group members, having to explain
to others requires elaboration and students with
better skills serve as promoters in the groups (Laal
and Ghodsi, 2012).
Tutoring basically means to guide the students or
group of students to the point in the learning process
at which they become independent learners.
Tutoring was provided by having a subject teacher
from the field as “stand-by” for inquiries of the
students during the course of the case study. At each
university, a tutor was available who could be
contacted by e-mail or visiting the tutor’s office.
Online-tutoring by using video-links was also
possible.
Peer learning basically is the “acquisition of
knowledge and skill through active helping and
supporting among status equals or matched
CollaborativeTeachingofERPSystemsinInternationalContext
199
companions” (Topping, 2005). We envisioned that
peer learning situations would emerge between the
collaborating groups at the two universities, i.e. that
the groups from Riga would help the corresponding
group from Rostock to understand issue and solve
problems in the case study and vice versa. Support
for peer learning was provided by offering document
sharing, joint editing platforms and communication
support for the groups.
For the above learning situations, computer
support is provided, e.g. by providing groupware
and learning management systems. The students
were made aware of these instruments and used the
computer support for peer learning and tutoring as
part of their collaborative learning.
In order to develop the social competences, we
designed the case material in a way that enforced
communication between groups in Riga and
Rostock, e.g. by including exceptions in the work
flow which could not be remedied just by using the
ERP system. Furthermore, the groups were forced to
agree on an internal way of working, i.e. we did not
define the “inner” roles and tasks of the teams. In
Rostock, we also formed teams with mixed
backgrounds, as the participants were from business
information systems (engineering-oriented) and
service management (purely business-oriented)
programs. The tutor actively focused on technical
and method support and promoted discussions
within the teams for solving communication
problems or conflicts.
3.3 Extended GBI Case
The international ERP case is developed as an
extension of the standard GBI case. It covers the
sales and distribution process starting with a
customer inquiry and finishing with customer
payment. It is assumed that GBI has outsourced
several business functions to another country. The
operations in another country are performed by a
business services provider on behalf of GBI. The
outsourcing service provider company is called GBI
BPO. GBI is responsible for the customers
relationship management and billing activities, while
Figure 1: The international sales and distribution process.
ICEIS2015-17thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
200
GBI is responsible for preparing initial sales
documents and the warehousing activities. Activities
performed in one country depend upon activities
completed in other country. The process involves
Sales and Distribution (SD), Materials Management
(MM) and Financial Accounting (FI) activities.
An overview of the international ERP process is
given in Figure 1. The process is initiated by one of
the GBI customers inquiring about buying bicycles.
In the case of a new customer or changing customer
contact information, the customer master data are
updated. A new customer can only be created by the
Plat responsible but customer data also can be
changed by the Sales person. The customer also
requests GBI to issue a legally binding sales
question. During the process, employees use SAP
ERP reporting and analytic functions to analyze the
sales process. For instance, the employees evaluate
the order probability of success and check the stock
level. Once the customer has accepted the quotation,
a sales order is created and the shipping and billing
activities are initiated. The Warehouse employee
creates an outbound delivery document and
indicating the materials pick-up data in this
document. The Billing clerk creates an invoice for
the materials delivered, and the Accountant settles
the invoice by posting incoming payments. If
customers request products, which are currently not
available in the stock, than the procurement
processes should be invoked. The procurement
operations are performed by GBI BPO.
4 TECHNICAL APPROACH
In order to achieve learning outcomes, the standard
GBI training instructions were extended and
restructured, alternative variants of ERP setup were
identified and appropriate user rules were created in
the ERP system.
4.1 Design of Instructions
Given that the students already have had an
introduction into working with the ERP system
following the standard GBI guidelines, the
international GBI instructions are created to
resemble ERP implementation specification
documents rather than the step-by-step instructions.
That is intended to promote self-learning and deeper
understanding. At the same time, the students always
can consult the standard GBI training materials.
In a fashion similar to ERP specification
documents, each process activity defined using its
objective, role involved, tasks to be performed and
input data.
Fragments of the instructions given to the
students are shown in Figure 2 and Table 2.
Figure 2: Elaboration of tasks of the Create Inquiry
activity.
Table 2: Input data for performing tasks of the Create
Inquiry activity.
Nr Data item Value Description
Task 1
1 Inquiry
type
IN A classification that
distinguishes between
different types of
sales document.
2 Sales
organizati
on
US East An organizational unit
responsible for the
sale of certain
products or services.
3 Distributio
n channel
WH
4 Division Bicycles
Tasks 2, 3, 4
5 Customer <customer> Customer from the
initial data of the
assignment
6 PO
number
<any string> Number that the
customer uses to
uniquely identify a
purchasing document
7 PO day <today’s
date>
8 Valid from <today’s
date>
The date from which
the inquiry is valid.
9 Valid to <today’s
date + 30
days>
The date till which the
inquiry is valid.
10 Inquiry
items
<product
name>
<quantity>
Product name and
quantity from the
initial data of the
assignment
CollaborativeTeachingofERPSystemsinInternationalContext
201
Figure 3: Integration scenarios.
These fragments refer to the Create Inquiry activity
of the Sales process. Figure 2 shows individual tasks
to be performed within this activity. For instance,
the customer information should be provided to
create an inquiry. Meaning and purpose of these
tasks are explained in the instructions. However, the
students are left to their own devices to choose
appropriate features of the ERP system to perform
the task. Table 2 provides the relevant input data
values to perform the tasks.
A template for reporting the case execution
results is also developed. It defines the main
outcomes for every step of the business process to be
reported.
4.2 ERP Setup
The ERP setup should enable execution of the
international sales process by providing integration
between teams studying at different universities.
Four integration scenarios are identified in Figure 3.
The simplest scenario (a) assumes that both
universities use the same ERP client and both the
main unit and BSP use the same company code. This
scenario implies that the identical configuration is
used and there is no need establishing an
information integration link. The single client two
company codes scenario (b) implies that both
companies might have different configuration
allowing to represent specific localization
requirements while application integration is not
necessary. The remaining two scenarios (c) and (d)
include application integration and most closely
resemble real-life execution of cross-enterprise
business processes.
Currently, the simplest scenario of integration is
used implying that both universities use the same
ERP client and work within a single company code
though with limited permissions to execute certain
tasks as described in the next section.
4.3 Role Setup
Every university involved in the case represents one
of the companies (i.e., GBI or GBI BPO). Every
company is responsible for a certain list of activities,
and these activities are performed by certain role in
the company (Table 3).
To delimitate the roles, two composite SAP ERP
roles are create. The composite SAP ERP role
SAP_GBI_SD_MAIN is assigned to GBI and the
composite SAP ERP role SAP_GBI_SD_BPO is
assigned to GBI BPO. Thus, every company can
perform only activities assigned to their composite
Table 3. Assignment of the roles between GBI and GBI
BPO.
Company Role Activity
GBI Plant rep.
Create new customer
Create quotation
Create sales order
Check stock status
Billing
Clerk
Create invoice
Accountant Post incoming payment
GBI BPO Sales
person
Create inquiry
Warehouse
Emp.
Create outbound delivery
Change outbound delivery
Procurement
ICEIS2015-17thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
202
role (e.g., Create inquiry is available only to GBI
BPO). There is no separation of roles within the
company (e.g., Plat representative and Billing clerk
use the same composite role SAP_GBI_SD_MAIN).
4.4 Collaborative Learning Process
The international ERP collaborative learning takes
place in three stages: 1) kick-off; 2) process
execution; and 3) evaluation. During the kick-off
phase, an introductory lecture on international ERP
is given, teams of students are formed and individual
assignment is given to the teams. The introductory
lecture gives an overview of the case study and
explains the collaborative learning process.
Students organize team of 3-4 students at both
universities. The teams are randomly paired together
and they exchange the contact information. The
individual assignment is given to each pair of the
teams. The individual assignments represent three
different customer inquiries and it includes cases of
a new customer and out-of-stock situations.
Execution of fulfillment processes is initiated by
GBI BPO and subsequently every team has 2
working days for completing its activities.
During the evaluation phase, the teams finalize the
process execution report and fill out a questionnaire
providing their feedback on the assignment.
5 OBSERVATIONS
The international ERP assignment was used in the
study process in Fall of 2014. 46 students organized
in 7 teams and every university participated in the
exercise. All 7 pairs of the team were able to
complete the process using data from at least two
initial customer inquiries though 3 teams were not
able to complete the process using data from one
initial customer inquiry because of incorrectly setup
master data or lack of coordination in inventory
replenishment.
The learning experience is evaluated by
summarizing responses from the questionnaire
(Table 4). The students mostly agree with statements
from the questionnaire. Several questions indicate
that the international ERP exercise was more
engaging led to better understanding of the SAP
ERP systems and the sales process. However, a
significant number of students indicate that having
specific roles did not improve their understanding of
the sales process execution in the ERP system. The
students stated that actions of the other team were
not sufficiently transparent. This issue could be
resolved by having the team to switch their roles.
There is also a significant spread of options
concerning the improvement of problem-solving
skills. On several occasions troubleshooting was
done remotely by the instructors. It is suggested that
it should be done jointly by the instructors and the
students’ team working together. Not all team
Table 4: The surveying results as a percentage of all answers.
Question Strongly Agree Agree Disagree Strongly Disagree
International ERP was a more interesting way of studying
than traditional exercises
36 42 19 3
Completing International ERP exercises was more complex
than completing the standard GBI exercises
46 43 11 0
Completing International ERP exercises required more in-
depth understanding of SAP ERP than completing the
standard GBI exercises
43 46 9 3
Completing International ERP exercises improved my
understanding of SAP ERP system
39 39 11 11
Having specific roles in the process execution improves
understanding of the way enterprise applications work.
36 33 19 11
Communication with your other teams was positive 28 47 19 6
International ERP improved my collaboration and problem-
solving skills.
17 47 25 11
International ERP consumed more time than I expected. 78 14 8
We needed to communicate with the other team too often 31 42 19 8
We needed to seek outside assistance (e.g., from instructor)
too often.
28 44 17 11
CollaborativeTeachingofERPSystemsinInternationalContext
203
interacted smoothly and this issue could be resolved
by organizing an initial virtual get-together for the
team members from all universities so that they can
discuss their background and studying approach.
A number of potential improvements in the
instructions and organization of the collaborative
learning process were also identified to reduce the
need for frequent outside assistance from the
instructors.
The learning objectives stated in Section 3 were
achieved. The knowledge of the sales process was
improved by resolving different exceptional
situations not considered in the standard GBI case.
The teams were able to track the process execution
and to exchange the necessary process execution
data as well as to submit the final report. The
students had very intense exchanges and jointly
worked on problem solving. They experienced
significant peer pressure to complete their activities
on time and they approached that very dutifully. The
cases of peer learning were observed both within the
team and among team in both universities. The
students also experience restrictions imposed by
having different roles in the SAP ERP system.
In general, the mix between deductive and
inductive teaching methods proved suitable for our
teaching module and the international ERP case
study. A small part of the lectures was a repetition of
content in information systems, ERP systems and
process-oriented organizations that already was part
of earlier courses. Most of the lectures were
dedicated to prepare case study work.
It is difficult to assess what individual progress
and competence development the different students
made. Here, we only can rely on the results of the
assignments and exams. We also performed the
international case study in autumn 2013. In 2013,
the participation in the case study was not
mandatory for in Rostock from MSc service
management, i.e. they were allowed to participate in
the e-Business module without the case study. When
comparing the exam results between those students
participating in the case study and those not
participating, the results for the participating ones
were much better in the ERP part. This is not
surprising; nevertheless it indicates a certain value of
the case study for learning success.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The international ERP provides a realistic
representation of business process execution using
ERP systems in the international environment and
the students recognized the value of having this kind
of exercise. At the same time several areas of
improvement have been identified. The objective of
promoting collaborative problem-solving was only
partially achieved and additional effort should be
devoted to establishing initial cohesion between
team at different universities. The joint
troubleshooting with the instructors is also
important. The students need to have an initial
exposure to the SAP ERP system and going through
the standard GBI curriculum first is essential for
successful completion of the international ERP.
From the technical perspective, other ERP
integration scenarios should be considered as they
provide a more realistic representation of the way
ERP systems are used by different companies.
Exposing differences of ERP configurations used in
different counties is also an important aspect for
further elaboration.
Using a common e-learning platform is also
considered for future activities because current e-
learning systems used at both universities are not
compatible and even though the same information
was distributed to the students it was presented
differently and there were some information
availability gaps. This is the general limitation of
many e-learning platforms that they are not geared
towards cross-university collaboration.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The work presented in this paper was supported
within the projects “KOSMOS (Konstruktion und
Organisation eines Studiums in Offenen Systemen)”
and “Studium Optimum” funded by the BMBF
(Federal Ministry of Education and Research,
Germany) and the European Social Funds of the
European Union.
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