Abstract:

It has become mandatory to complement the traditional learning methods with active ones that enhance the motivation and facilitate the deep understanding by all persons.

Previous research shows that this LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) methodology has great potential in engineering education, and it can be used as an aid in the development of this knowledge to business-undergraduate students.

This paper presents an original LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® activity to teach through their four-step methodology, how to apply Digital Transformation Technology like IoT, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud, DataScience and Cybersecurity, for real problems of real organizations as part of their learning experience.

This activity has been applied in an Innovation and Digital Transformation course taught to senior undergraduate students of Business Areas; during the first 4 weeks of the course the students carried out different activities to embrace these technologies,but something was missing, to get them “own” the technology, to be empowered so that they could use it, get its benefits and feel secure on how to use it for the Business Disruptive Digital Transformation.

At this point of the course the original LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® activity was applied. Students were asked to group in teams and were assigned the case study of a real organization. In this four-hour activity, they had to investigate to get to know the organization in order to identify at least three different issues that the organization had to improve.

They had to define which specific problems they were going to solve, and then to use LEGOs to model the organization, and to present a digital transformation proposal, justifying the use of each one of the chosen technologies to create value for the organization.

At the end of the activity, using storytelling, they solved their case in which they used the LEGO model to present their proposed solution for solving the business case by making the organization sell more, spend less, better serve its customers and comply with government regulations through the use of IT technologies.

This activity is an early exploratory study which is supported by qualitative data gathered from a survey and a post-tests.

During the activity the professor observed that students were working in an enthusiastic way, she observed them looking for information, arguing, working in their models and preparing the videos to present their solutions.

The results of this activity indicate that the students outperformed themselves; the professor found their activity very well fundamented, but more importantly, she observed that the students felt confident when defining the use of technology, despite the fact that they are not experts on it.

In the survey we could observe that students found this activity highly motivating as well as a very fun way to truly understand and learn about Technology (without the hassle of complexity, cost and implementation). Some students commented that the use of LEGOs allowed them to be more creative, to be able to present their proposals in a tangible way and think that this activity will allow them to remember how to apply these technologies in the long term.

Further study will continue to use LSP as a promising higher education tool to be used for Digital Transformation Courses for Business undergraduate students.

Keywords:

Digital Transformation, LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, Innovation, Active Learning.