Project partners from 17 Universities out of 10 different European countries are sharing teaching practices for experiential learning. The main objective of MASTIS is to align and possibly update programs and teaching methods in a group of Universities of Ukraine and Montenegro, and as a secondary outcome, it supports a fruitful exchange of experiences on methods, tools, arguments among universities of several western and eastern European countries. Here is a summary of the outcomes of the project meeting held in Bled (Slovenia) from September 26th to 29th 2017.
Prof. Škraba from Maribor University (SLO) made an interesting presentation, during which he highlighted the importance of introducing to the IS students the logic of feedback loop based on hydraulic laws. According to him, this may be a very promising adoption for control and reaction systems in Internet of Things applications. He made also a practical demonstration involving all meeting’s attendants on how to build a simple IoT solution, starting from simple and cheap hardware components to connect and mount – like a Linux Mini pc, an Arduino controller, some resistors, an actuator -, and reusing and adapting a very short code written in Javascript. The just-built system perfectly worked and was immediately controllable from all attendants, from either their pc or their smartphone.
What is interesting is that this kind of experience is provided in Maribor University at the faculty of Organizational Studies to students of Organization and Management courses, who are thought to gain important knowledge by learning the system dynamics, in terms of actions and reactions, laws of feedback and stabilization, etc. This simple practical application may be a source of knowledge on systems like inventory management and even in social systems. The aim is that of demonstrating through a practical – then much more effective – experience how all systems are sensible to internal and external impulses, and how difficult tuning the action to reach and stabilize the desired situation is.
Prof. Gregor Lenart from Maribor University made an interesting presentation on “Teaching by design thinking”, a method they use since 3 years. They use this human-centered method for problem solving by stimulating students to face complex problem situations in social contexts. He described in detail how they use this method during classes to make students familiar with problems in the real world where IS are a component of the context, but most issues come from the social side. They apply this method in undergraduate courses like “Enterprise Architecture (BPM)”, “Business Information Systems”, “Electronic commerce/Digital business”, where the focus is on analysis of problems and contexts and on design of solutions at a high level.
SAP, within its University Alliance Curriculum, provides various tools to support the use of design thinking method during classes, where students are organized in work-teams. The equipment needed is fully analogical, and involves paper, scissors, stickers, color markers. Prof. Lenart reported the lesson learnt through this experience: 1) appointing students to real business companies is often challenging; 2) this is not a one-day workshop: it takes 2/3 months; and 3) students need steering from faculty and business side. On the other side, the method reveals very effective in facing students with broad variety of real world problems, and students become better equipped for practice.
Prof. Marko Urh and Prof. Eva Jereb, still from Maribor University, made a presentation on gamification in education, stressing the big issue of involving and motivating students during classes (where they usually are not), just like videogame producers succeed to do. They highlighted the components of gamification (use of videogame logic and solutions in different fields), illustrating what are important and reusable in education (awards, progress in status, …). It should be found a balance between challenge level and skill level to let the student be in the right flow channel, and to avoid either frustration or boredom, which appear when challenge overcomes, or vice versa. They also presented a real case study on the entire process of adopting gamification with students, who had to face a real world problem (how to sell a new car model, and how to motivate dealers for selling it).
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