Abstract:

One of the big challenges today are innovative teaching concepts for business students in the area of digitalization. At the beginning of their study, students mostly know only basics of IT mainly related to their private (mobile) environment and not real business scenarios such as business process management or workflow management.

This paper describes how students perceive the creation and development of process automation in the form of workflows using process automation tools (e.g. Camunda). The objective of this paper is to show how students perceive the creation of workflows, in the context, that parts of the task involve artificial intelligence (AI) components. The hypothesis is that they perceive tasks with AI components as more relevant for their future and that they enjoy developing the workflow more. This is, because we are increasingly seeing that ChatGPT, for example, is an integral part of our students' research.

At a university in Switzerland a module for undergraduate business students that aims at business process and project management was developed based on the criteria of evidence-based good university teaching. A team of up to 12 lecturers teaches the module in a way, so that business process and project management can be taught within one scenario in the same way by all lecturers. The university is distributed between three different locations in Switzerland. The 10 classes in autumn semester 2023 were taught (German 7, English 3) with the same (translated) case study and exercise and the same exam at Bloom’s Taxonomy level “Evaluate” at the end.

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 a 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 familiarize with the theory on the topics 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 (complex group works). These assignments related to the development of a process based on BMPN 2.0 (Business Process Model and Notation, an internationally used modelling language for business process modelling) 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 30% of the final grade.

In order to test the hypotheses mentioned at the beginning, we give the groups two differently orientated tasks for the creation of workflows. One area includes the integration of ChatGPT into the workflow in at least two places and the other area of the tasks focuses on the embedding of Decision Model and Notation (DMN), a very important and relevant aspect in the creation of workflows. In each of the 10 classes, 2-3 tasks are assigned with a focus on AI and 2-3 tasks with a focus on DMN. After the presentation of the group tasks, the groups are asked to complete a standardised questionnaire individually.

Keywords:

Flipped Classroom, Case Study, AI in Education, Workflow, Business Process Management, AI, Natural Language Processing, ChatGPT.