Business Informatics Programme Reengineering Erasmus Project

Project Title

Business Informatics Programme Reengineering

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Partnerships for Digital Education Readiness

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2020

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: ICT – new technologies – digital competences; New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses

Project Summary

The BIPER project aims to foster a collaborative partnership in order to develop a blended-learning compatible BIS curriculum based on shared values, eLearning experiences, and sound pedagogical principles.
While eLearning has been around for over two decades now, the recent global challenge invoked by the COVID-19 pandemic has put online education into the forefront of academic attention – both as a technological opportunity to maintain the continuity of teaching (at all levels of education) and as a challenge to innovate and apply new methodological approaches.
The current pandemic put extra strain and challenge on most universities to retain the quality of their education. It has become clear that innovative approaches are needed – and needed fast: approaches that can help to deliver high-quality education in distance learning format in areas traditionally not well suited for digital training. The challenge concerns not only teaching methods and material but also the teachers and trainers themselves.
The academic field of Business Information Systems is a complex area bridging business and organisational topics with questions of applied information technology. Teaching such a multidisciplinary domain which assumes not only knowledge of theoretical concepts and technical skills to use tools but also a problem centred mindset and related problem-solving abilities is a challenge in itself. However, with the heightened need for high-quality online education (offering both distance or blended learning options in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic) educators of this area face increased difficulties to find appropriate methods and create new content and teaching material. Sharing ideas and experiences regarding what worked and what was less successful could enhance our knowledge of BIS distance education.
BIS education in a classroom context may be characterised by what the literature calls ‘active learning’, which refers to pedagogies that increase and enhance student interaction. This is required by the project-oriented and teamwork-based reality of developing, implementing, and managing IT/IS solutions in an organizational context. Beyond the obvious basics of the trade, interpersonal skills, team building and the ability to combine individual efforts with group work are an essential part of training BIS professionals. While video and audio solutions are usually augmented with less synchronous means such as text messages or sharing files, this still does not make up for lost personal proximity. Using document sharing options and working on the same file together raises new challenges just as much as offering new opportunities. To be successful in this setting of increased complexity and expectations lecturers could use any help they could get – let it be experiences, best practices, successful methodologies, or even ready-made materials.
Methodological innovations are needed that can deliver soft skills along with best practices for teaching and learning such skills. This implies digital education that goes beyond the simple demonstration of how to use some software tools but instead could allow the transfer of complex skills and capabilities required by developing and managing modern computer and data systems. Sharing best practices and experiences between institutions of differing cultures is essential in this regard. Furthermore, new methods, methodologies, and techniques need to be explored as well – solutions that could be used both in a fully online setting and could be successful in the context of hybrid and mixed approach educational settings too.
The planned project aims at allowing consortiums partners to share their knowledge and expertise concerning the above situation and develop a shared pool of resources benefiting both its members as well as the wider BIS education community.
Members of this consortium intend to re-think and re-design BIS curriculum not only under the threats of COVID-19, but on a longer term with the following objectives:
• creating a BIS framework in architectural approach in harmony with the accredited learning outcomes and objectives;
• increase the granularity of BIS learning units and reallocate them along overall BIS framework;
• putting the learning and teaching focus on complex problem-solving and collaborative work;
• enhance the interorganisational collaboration in teaching and learning in the online space via identification and sharing best practices;
• enhance the use of cloud software infrastructure, develop a framework for the improvement of computer soft skills education at the higher education level;
• share (existing) content related to teaching soft computer skills, including but not limited to software development and data analytics;
• develop further opportunities for methodological improvement, develop new methods and content (based on those methods) to teach programming and the use of complex analytical techniques and tools.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 223416 Eur

Project Coordinator

BUDAPESTI CORVINUS EGYETEM & Country: HU

Project Partners

• UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF SCOTLAND
• TECHNISCHE INFORMATIONSBIBLIOTHEK (TIB)
• Claranet Srl.
• UNIVERZA V MARIBORU