Abstract:

Teaching business process management is not easy in today's era. More and more, aspects of digitalization – in this case, workflows and process orchestration, in the field of business process management – are becoming important. For business students, this represents a significant challenge as they often have little experience with digitalization.

At the beginning of their studies, students typically only know the basics of IT, primarily related to their personal (mobile) environments, rather than real business scenarios such as business process management or workflow management.

A module for undergraduate business students that focuses on business process and project management was developed at a University in Switzerland based on the criteria of evidence-based good university teaching. A team of up to 12 lecturers teaches the module in such a way that business process and project management can be taught within one scenario in the same way by all lecturers. The university is spread across three different locations in Switzerland. The 6 classes in the spring semester of 2024 were taught (4 in German, 2 in English) using the same (translated) case study and exercise, and the same exam at the Bloom’s Taxonomy level “Evaluate” at the end, and therefore an elaborated exam.

This module is taught in the same way at a university in Vietnam as part of a dual degree program.

For 12 weeks, the students had to familiarize themselves with the theory on the topics of business process management and project management. Within the class, the students had to exercise in groups based on the preparation tasks and exercises that were developed by business process and project management professionals. The lecturers coached the different groups during the exercise.

During the semester, the students were able to work on two different assignments (group works). These assignments related to the development of a process based on BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation, an internationally used modeling language for business process modeling) and an implementation of parts of their process within a workflow engine. Creating workflows is a big challenge because it is the first time for the students that they had to digitize something themselves. The assignments count for 30% of the final grade.

Since the workflow tasks pose a significant challenge for the business students, the motivation the students have to complete this task is an important aspect. For this reason, students are offered tasks from various business areas such as marketing, human resources, finance, purchasing, customer service, etc. Moreover, the topics also differ concerning the integration of DMN and AI components in the workflow modeling. DMN (Decision Model and Notation) is an important tool in many companies for making decisions, and AI is currently receiving a lot of attention.

We surveyed 2 classes in Switzerland and one class in Vietnam with a semi-structured questionnaire about what exactly is the basis for deciding on a workflow project task for the students.

In this paper, we explore this aspect and demonstrate how the decision-making basis differs between Swiss students and Vietnamese students and what their reasoning is for this.

Keywords:

AI in Education, Workflow, Business Process Management, AI, Flipped Classroom, Case Study.