=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2570/paper10
|storemode=property
|title=Use of hybrid learning model for SAP-related technology education
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2570/paper10.pdf
|volume=Vol-2570
|authors=Anton Ambrajei,Nikita Golovin,Anna Valyukhova,Natalia Rybakova,Victor Zorin
}}
==Use of hybrid learning model for SAP-related technology education==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2570/paper10.pdf
Use of hybrid learning model for SAP-related technology
education
Ambrajei, Anton N., Golovin, Nikita M., Valyukhova, Anna V., Rybakova, Natalia
A., Zorin, Victor Yu.1
1
Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University, Polytechnicheskaya 29, St.
Petersburg, 195251, Russia
Abstract. Network educational programs are a format of interaction between
universities that is gaining popularity and makes it easy to integrate courses de-
veloped and provided by other universities or organisations into the educational
process. This makes it possible to significantly raise the level of education for
those universities in which there is no opportunity to attract personnel of the
right qualifications to organise classes according to the traditional version.
Usually, such programs use MOOCs on national platforms (openedu.ru in
Russia, for example) or international platforms such as Coursera. In terms of
obtaining theoretical knowledge, this approach looks very attractive, but the
possibilities of providing practical tasks and using specialised software are lim-
ited by the framework of the particular online platform. And this is a barrier for
the universities to join the network programs that require specialised software
as a hands-on practice tool.
The solution to overcome this barrier can be in using of a hybrid learning ap-
proach, when students acquire the theoretical knowledge in the form of a
MOOC and have practical assignments either at their universities, if there is an
appropriate material base (software access), or using cloud-based SaaS services
owned by partner organisations.
The article gives an overview of the SPbPU’s experience in developing this
“hybrid model” of online courses for studying SAP-related technologies and so-
lutions, its economic value and use cases for incorporating SAP-related tech-
nologies and solutions in the educational process, taking into account the cur-
rent state of the education market for SAP technologies.
Keywords: SAP, e-learning, blended learning, learning environment, higher
education, S/4 HANA, HANA, MOOC.
1 Educational market and educational technologies in use
There are quite a few ways to develop learning process using distance technology,
starting from training courses on Russian and international platforms, such as
openedu.ru, Stepich, Lectorium, Intuit, EdX, Coursera, etc. [1]. These courses are
usually free of charge, but if the student would like to get a certificate, he (for exam-
ple, student in Russia) will pay about $30 for the courses on national (Russian) plat-
forms and $80 or more for the courses on foreign platforms.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
ICID-2019 Conference
2
The bottlenecks of most of massive open online courses (MOOCs) are their low eco-
nomic component, although they usually do not pursue commercial goals, and the low
conversion rate of those who have reached the end of the course. Typically, 5-7% of
students pass the final test. But of course, there are exceptions. Open.sap.com can
serve as one of the striking examples of a successful MOOC platform. It offers a wide
range of free courses on various topics, both related to SAP products and general
education (for example, “Programming on Snap!”, “Basics of sketching for IT busi-
ness”, “Introduction to Statistics”, etc.) According to the data of 2018, the number of
students on the platform was about 150 thousand people, and the number of registra-
tions for various courses was about 800 thousand. Moreover, more than 50% of those
who registered actually took part in course and the share of those who successfully
completed training is about 25% [2].
Thus, we see that MOOCs courses continue to gain popularity, opening access for
everyone to the content generated by the best universities and the most innovative
companies. At the same time, we observe constant exploration and further develop-
ment of the field of knowledge related to the construction and application of MOOCs,
and the growing number of studies on the topic confirms this observation [3]. Of
course, also the technology behind those educational instruments has to develop, to
provide sufficient functionality and support. [8]
Despite the development of technology and availability of MOOC’s recording in-
struments (for example, almost all large universities in the Russia have their own
professional studios or self-recording studio), the process of developing truly high
quality content is still quite time-consuming. This also applies to a course support
processes, which require constant updating, especially in the subject areas as innova-
tive technology, manufacturing, IT.
From the quality assurance point of view, the skills, acquired by students, usually
assessed by different types of tests and with use of proctoring tools – monitoring and
control procedures – to confirm the fact of individual evaluation. Usually, proctoring
is a paid service and accounts for about half the cost of certificates for Russian plat-
forms.
The practical assignments in MOOC are also have organizational difficulties, both for
technical (infrastructure) and support (supervising) reasons. For IT related courses, it
seems to be less problematic.
Here it is reasonable to use blended learning model, where online work is combined
with classroom activities. This is so called «flipped classroom model», when almost
all theoretical part (lectures) are going online, while practical assignments are done in
classroom. Such a scheme is very effective for internal purposes, because allows you
to unload faculty from routine lectures, gives students more freedom in attending
(watch/listen) lectures or watch them again. While during classroom practical assign-
ments faculty can get a feedback and communicate with the student [4] [9]. A signifi-
cant number of studies conducted to study the results of MOOC’s usage, including the
MBFL model (MOOC-Based Flipped Learning – “an inverted class based on
MOOC”), confirm the improvement in student performance, an increase in their in-
volvement in the educational process and an increase in the level of interaction among
themselves, as well as more efficient use of time spent in the class, compared to the
3
traditional teaching model [5]. However, in this approach it is difficult to achieve the
real “mass” access to the course.
Another option to overcome problems is to use “distributed class model”, when stu-
dents can be at any location and come to the classroom only on fixed predefined
times. However, even here distance participation in face-to-face workshop is also an
option. A similar approach is applied by SAP Education, offering the opportunity to
participate in their workshops remotely [7].
Nevertheless, any practical workshop require relevant infrastructure and qualified
lectures, who can assist students in their assignments. If this is not the case, you can
use lectures with little experience in a particular field to help with practical classes
and at the same time provide quick feedback, often online, with an expert. This op-
tion, for example, has worked well for SAP end-user training projects.
In general, when organising training, one cannot limit himself by fixed educational
models, but should look towards a combination of all kinds of communication meth-
ods and use a wide range of appropriate tools.
An important trend in modern education is the fixation of the student’s digital foot-
print. And online courses provide a huge amount of information in a format well suit-
ed for machine analysis. The results of offline training are usually limited to esti-
mates, because it is difficult to organise the fixation of the trajectory “offline” educa-
tion.
2 SAP-technology educational processes in universities in CIS
2.1 SAP-Technology programs structure
SAP technology training strategies can be classified as described bellow
Narrow training of specialists in internal programming language ABAP. Because
the language is proprietary, it does not make sense outside the SAP ecosystem, the
demand for graduates is local, while the cost of training and educational systems is
rather high. This option is possible only if there is a strong partner, who will provide
financing for infrastructure and lecturer. There are few successful implementations of
this case in the CIS region. Nevertheless, often new to SAP academic program uni-
versities consider this particular option as the most understandable from the point of
view of the organisation of the educational process.
Training of consultants for SAP. In general, the university can prepare an initial
consultant, especially considering that TS410 certification course “Integrated Busi-
ness Processes in SAP S/4HANA” is available for them. While preparing programs of
such type two factors should be taken into the account. Firstly, the future consultant
will need not only knowledge of SAP technologies, but also have to have a set of soft
skills –project management, communications, change management, presentation
skills, etc. As well as knowledge in the field of future specialisation – logistics, fi-
nance, production management, etc. – also should be an important part of educational
process. And here universities are traditionally strong. The second factor – the univer-
sity’s lack of real practice in implementing SAP systems and lack of narrow special-
ists in SAP functional modules. Here again universities cannot work without a partner
4
– a system integrator with the wide SAP practice, which will help with the missing
competencies and students' practices. In classification of consultants’ levels adopted
in the SAP ecosystem, the university can prepare a K0-K1 specialist.
The third, also obvious way, is to use SAP systems either as a separate “SAP
course” or as a basic system for disciplines such as “Corporate Information Sys-
tems”. By itself, the “SAP course” does not make much sense educationally as a
standalone subject. Firstly, because the technology themselves are different, although
they usually use an ERP system, and secondly, students will need a lot of knowledge
related to the work of a modern enterprise for conscious work.
Finally, the option that should have become the basic one is the inclusion of modules
related to products or technologies in standard training programs in various areas
– management, finance, logistics, marketing, data processing, etc. Given the pool of
covered technologies, we can say that in almost any discipline there is a place to use
SAP products. The complexity of the implementation of this – is the difficulty of
mastering the corresponding software products by lecturer.
Further, it is essential to highlight the activities of Next Gen Lab centres as a form of
project-oriented work commissioned by companies. An urgent recommendation for
such centres is the inclusion of their activities in the standard educational process,
thus providing students with extra skills, knowledge, motivation and, in some cases,
basic funding. In this case, the problem and expert support are coming from the cus-
tomer and SAP landscape and basic skill and knowledge – from university. As a re-
sult, such collaboration should bring the problem solving up to the prototype stage
and the centres should serve as the interface between companies (with their tasks),
SAP technologies and students. Despite the fact that this approach is now more and
more popular in the Russian educational environment, it is quite expensive in terms of
resources and management, and requires trained project mentors.
2.2 Educational Infrastructure
SAP University Alliances Program (UAP) is a global academic initiative of SAP SE
that includes more than 3500 educational institutions in 116 countries. There are two
forms of participation in this initiative: associate membership and full membership.
Both forms grant access to SAP University Alliances curricula and community mem-
bership, but the institutions that choose for full membership also acquire access to
teaching systems to reinforce theoretical knowledge with the practice of working with
real SAP products. [8]
A large number of software products and technologies are available to educational
institutions as part of the SAP University Alliance Program (UAP). Some of these
solutions, for example, cloud analytics SAP Analytics Cloud of development tools at
SAP Cloud Platform, are offered as trial versions with the possibility of extending of
the trial period for education purposes, others, for example, SAP Lumira or SAP Pre-
dictive Analytic are available as full versions.
The main business solutions, such as the flagship ERP system SAP S/4HANA, the
analytical platform SAP HANA or SAP BI systems and a number of others are avail-
able only according to the cloud-based hosting model.
5
This is a convenient scheme, in which from end-user it is only requires to install the
client program (GUI) on the local computer or even just to use a browser (IE,
Chrome, FireFox) and access to the SAP systems can be organised from any class-
room, as well as from students' home computers.
The SAP systems (on hosting as a part of UAP) come with a ready-to-use dataset,
customised/configured business processes and case studies. Cases are globally devel-
oped by the UAP UCC/ACC and universities involved and adapted (both materials
and master-data are localised) into the Russian language (in case of CIS region) by
the SAP ACC at SPbPU.
It is also necessary to note the economic game ERPsim – a simulator, which use the
ERP interface of the S/4HANA system. The game has several modifications and is a
perfect mean to get acquainted with ERP in a playful way. The game was created by
HEC Montreal (business school).
2.3 Educational resources
Universities now have several online resources available:
Portal of the University Center for Competencies in the EMEA region (http://sap-
ucc.com). It provides access to globally developed materials for training students for
each of the hosting products, as well as infrastructure for registering students and
providing them with the opportunity to work remotely with educational systems (for
example, from home).
The opensap.com web resource is a complete online learning platform that contains
dozens of SAP courses, mainly in English. For those universities that do not have
difficulties with English-language materials, the inclusion of these courses as ele-
ments of the relevant disciplines can be recommended.
For lecturers the SAP Learning Hub Academic Edition resource is available. It
features a variety of both proprietary SAP materials and those developed by universi-
ties. The preferred format is e-books and archives with educational materials. Without
adaptation, these materials are not suitable for student learning.
In general, we can summarize that all this creates a convenient landscape for the use
of distance educatinal technologies.
3 Use of hybrid educational model
3.1 SPbPU experience
Peter the Great St.Petersburg Polytechnic University (SPbPU) has accumulated suffi-
cient experience in organisation of training using distance technologies. MOOCs from
SPbPU are available on almost all major educational online platforms.
In the field of blended learning, a very interesting course “Fundamentals of Project
Activities” was implemented at SPbPU. All 2nd year students of all fields of study
(technical and natural sciences, humanities and economics) simultaneously attend this
6
course. This turns into 4,500 students and about 500 projects that students carry out
during the duration of the course.
The course required a specific architecture. The authors tried to optimise and auto-
mate as much as possible of all course management processes. As a platform LMS
MOODLE is used, but with a number of improvements and add-ons.
The course has a blended learning format, which includes a theoretical MOOC course
and separate project courses for each of the projects that are carried out offline with
the result recorded in the online course. For each course-project a mentor is assigned,
who is responsible mainly for the methodological part and is not an expert in the field
of the ongoing project. This approach has proven itself and has allowed to collect a
high-quality digital footprint of students.
3.2 Blended educational model модель and change of the support model
The Figure 1 shows a traditional blended model of teaching IT technologies appended
with routines of the proposed hybrid model. The difference is that in the proposed
scheme, students can generally refuse to attend computer classes, as access to the
system can be obtained directly from home.
Fig. 1. Traditional blended model and proposed hybrid model. Additional (compare to blended
model) elements and links are shown by dotted line.
Support processes, done by the lecturer, can be replaced with the detailed video tuto-
rials, a series of online tutorials and supporting webinars through the web conferenc-
ing facilities. This does not abolish the use of computer classes, but reduces the quali-
fication requirements for the lecturer, who run practical classes with students. This is
very important given such a complex area as ERP systems.
The next step, which have to be assessed – is it possible to remove completely the
local lecturer from the scheme. If so then it is possible, in principle, to change the
model of university courses in SAP technologies.
7
Nowadays, a standard process is: SAP system, a set of guidelines and help on-demand
are delivered to universities. For training of lectures standard trainings (TTT) with a
duration of 3-5 days are used. Some lecturers can additionally pass certification
courses such as TERP10 or TS410.
However, as our more than ten years of experience shows, this may not be enough
and serious independent work and knowledge from a large number of areas are need-
ed: economics, production organisation, business processes, accounting, IT, etc.
Therefore, we always feel a shortage of qualified lecturers.
In a new model, SPbPU Academic Competence Centre will be able to deliver a fin-
ished product in the form of expanded support for the functioning of educational sys-
tems with the organisation of a full cycle of the educational process. It seems possible
to organise the teaching of complex disciplines (which incorporate usage of SAP
technology) without using the local university infrastructure and lecturers. This will
be a transition from a resource provider to a full value educational product provider.
3.3 Hybrid program on S/4 HANA at SPbPU
As already stated above, there are all the prerequisites for creating distance learning
courses on SAP technology for students with only one element missing – the Russian-
language online course on SAP technology, adopted to be used in educational process
at the university.
In 2019 such a course was created and tested on the continuing education program
“Building the business processes of an intellectual enterprise”. Two models were
used: a combination of face-to-face and online trainings and a completely distance
form.
Initially, this program was aimed to educating lecturers, providing them higher com-
petences in SAP-related technology and using them for education. However, even the
first experience has shown that such trainings are quite interesting to students as well.
The first admission to the distance course was 395 people from more than 50 univer-
sities in Russia, Republic of Kazakhstan, Republic of Uzbekistan and the Republic of
Belarus. 45% of the participants were students. About 35% of participants successful-
ly completed the course, which is a rather good result, given that the course was free
and the students were not bound by any obligations.
Access to the cloud systems was provided individually for students and support was
provided through forums, e-mail and online consultations.
A survey at the end of the course was filled-in by 30% of participants, among whom
only 27% had work or training experience related to SAP ERP or S/4HANA. 100% of
respondents found such a distance course effective for teaching students and 99% are
ready to recommend the course to their colleagues.
Duration of the course was considered sufficient by 58%, 27% did not have enough
time, and 7% were ready to pass it faster. The ratio of theory and practice was consid-
ered optimal by 82% of respondents. The main difficulties noted by the respondents
were: the implementation of practical cases in the system and work with the interface
(33% and 26%, respectively), the understanding of the theory (33%) and only 10%
indicated that they had difficulties with access to the system (see Fig. 2).
8
There is no definite answer regarding the advantage of video instructions or written
instructions for practical exercises, so most likely you need to use both options, for
which 61% of respondents voted.
Fig. 2. Course assessment by participants (survey results).
Thus, we can conclude that the experience was successful. The usefulness of the
course on a 5-point scale was rated at 4.6, which indicates a high level of participants’
satisfaction. Now we are considering two basic options for using the product (see Fig.
3): in combination with standard hosting and without it, using a network educational
model.
Fig. 3. Extended support options.
The partner will be able to create their own author's modules, give assignments to
students and evaluate their results (see Fig. 4). This will enrich the educational pro-
cess and gives company the opportunity to assess the students on real tasks.
9
Fig. 4. Partner engagement model.
Conclusion
The first experience in implementing a hybrid educational program for teaching SAP-
related technology should be evaluated as successful and the product is ready for ex-
port to other universities.
Given the scalability of the proposed hybrid approach to teach SAP-related technolo-
gy, we can say about creating a new scheme for organising training on SAP products
for universities and a mechanism for interacting with partners within the global eco-
system.
The implementation of the hybrid approach will solve a number of existing issues in
the SAP ecosystem:
lack of qualified lecturers;
providing training opportunities on real systems for associate members of the
UAP, who do not have access to SAP products;
reduce the cost of training for small groups of students;
provide mass training for the ecosystem;
involve SAP partners in the educational process.
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