Abstract:

The objective of the paper is to outline how the switch from a classical ex-cathedra teaching of the topics business process management and project management in two different and separated courses to an integrated case study based and flipped classroom format changed the perception of the students as well as the outcome in learning and exam result.

One of the big challenges today are innovative teaching concepts for business students in the area of business process and project management.

At a university in Switzerland most of the teaching for business students is done in a classical ex-cathedra set-up. In the past the topics business process management and project management were taught in such a setup and without any linkage between the topics. At the end students were able to solve problems not more than Bloom’s Taxonomy level “Understand”. Because in Switzerland both topics are highly relevant in job applications and it is expected that business students can manage these topics after the university the way the topic should be taught had to change.

During the revision of the curriculum at the university a new module for undergraduate business students which aims at business process and project management was developed. A team of 7 lectures decided to set up the module in a way, so that business process and project management can be taught within one scenario in the same way by all lectures. The university is distributed between three different locations in Switzerland. The 12 classes were taught (German 9, English 3) with the same (translated) case study and exercise and at the end the same exam at Bloom’s Taxonomy level “Evaluate”.

The methodology of the new module is based on the one hand on case study teaching and on the other hand on the concept of flipped classroom. For that a case study was developed in which a start-up company is described, that wants to develop a new crowdsourcing process within a project. The case study was developed out of concrete experiences of a start-up company.

For 12 weeks the students had to get familiar with the theory on their own due to the topics business process management and project management. Within the class the students had to exercise in groups based on the preparation tasks and exercise that were developed from business process and project management professionals. The lectures coached the different groups during the exercise.

During the semester the students were able to work on 2 different assignments. These assignments related to the development of a process based on BMPN 2.0 and an implementation of parts of their process within a workflow engine. Due to the final exam, the assignments counted 30%.

Over the last term we observed that the way this module is designed and taught is well accepted by a lot (but not all) students (as opposed to classical ex-cathedra teaching).

This paper will also show, how the course was evaluated by more than 300 students and what is important due to lecture performance and dean alignment. It has shown, that the lectures must commit to the set-up as well as the dean, otherwise parts of the students are more likely to engage less in the course. In addition, it is also shown, how the knowledge exchange between the lectures was done and what the experiences were in trying to teach “the same way” amongst the different teachers and classes with the same learning objectives and at the end the same exam, based on more than 50 peer visits of lecture.

Keywords:

Flipped classroom, case study.