Teaching Enterprise Modeling Based on Multi-media Simulation: A Pragmatic Approach

Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of how university students can acquire enterprise modeling skills so that they can build high quality models of organizational structure and behavior in practical settings after their graduation. The best way of learning such skills is apprenticeship where the students follow a modeling master in a real business case. However, in a university classroom setting this is difficult to arrange, if even possible. Therefore, the paper suggests the use of a computer-based simulation as a good approximation to apprenticeship. Moreover, it suggests a pragmatic, low-cost approach making the idea accessible even for courses with a low budget. A business case is simulated by providing the students with multi-media information sources that are usually used by system or business analysts when building models. The sources consist of recorded interviews with the stakeholders, a web-site of the enterprise under investigation, internal protocols from management meetings, results of twitter search on the company name, etc. The paper presents practical guidelines on how to build such simulation based on a trial successfully completed at the Department of Computer and System Sciences at Stockholm University.