Business Process Elicitation, Modeling, and Reengineering: Teaching and Learning with Simulated Environments

The design of enterprise information systems requires students to master technical skills for elicitation, modeling, and reengineering business processes as well as soft skills for information gathering and communication. These tacit skills and behaviors cannot be effectively taught students but rather experienced and learned by students. This requires a pedagogical shift from teacher-centered teaching approaches towards learner-centered teaching approaches that invite students to more actively participate in the learning experience, and to acquire and enhance such technical and soft skills. This paper introduces simulated environment - a combination of role-playing activities to simulate organizational activities and several skills development activities to hone technical and soft skills - as a pedagogical tool in the learner-centered teaching paradigm that immerses students in a controlled learning environment which enables them to more clearly appreciate various aspects related to systems design, business processes, and information sharing, and to acquire and develop the necessary skills