The Impact of Serious Games in Economic and Business Education: A Case of ERP Business Simulation

Digitalisation nowadays impacts business environments significantly. Therefore, if higher education wants to educate students properly for a successful career path, the business and economics curriculum must be enriched with innovative teaching approaches covering actual topics, such as, for example, the implementation of the ERPsim business simulation, a representative of serious games. The ERPsim business simulation is based on SAP ERP, and is aimed at teaching ERP concepts. It covers different business processes, and allows students to learn using a hands-on approach, simulating real-life scenarios. The presented research focuses on using an ERPsim business simulation as the introduction to the course. The simulation was implemented to ease the introduction of ERP and IT concepts to the business and economic oriented students. Considering the positive effects of serious games and gamification, our research was formed and focused on knowledge acquisition and future student engagement. We researched whether participation in the introductory simulation results in significant knowledge gain and impacts students’ future course engagement. The data were gathered using a self-assessment questionnaire before and after an introductory simulation. The results were highly positive, confirming many positive aspects of business simulation, among others, significant knowledge increase in the domains of business process and ERP transactions, and in the domain of technical knowledge for SAP ERP. The results confirmed that the introductory simulation is appropriate for introducing ERP concepts to newcomers, and, nevertheless, confirmed the positive impact on their intent on future course engagement.

Predicting Students’ Achievement in a Hybrid Environment Through Self-Regulated Learning, Log Data, and Course Engagement: A Data Mining Approach

With the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, many universities adopted a hybrid learning model as a substitute for a traditional one. Predicting students’ performance in hybrid environments is a complex task because it depends on extracting and analyzing different types of data: log data, self-reports, and face-to-face interactions. Students must develop Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies to monitor their learning in hybrid contexts. This study aimed to predict the achievement of 82 undergraduates enrolled in a hybrid English for Business Communication course using data mining techniques. While clustering techniques were used to understand SRL patterns through classifying students with similar SRL data into clusters, classification algorithms were utilized to predict students' achievement by integrating the log files and course engagement factors. Clustering results showed that the group with high SRL achieved higher grades than the groups with medium SRL and low SRL. Classification results revealed that log data and engagement activities successfully predicted students’ academic performance with more than 88% accuracy. Therefore, this study contributes to the literature of SRL and hybrid classrooms by interpreting the predictive power of log data, self-reports, and face-to-face engagement to predict students’ achievement, a relatively unexplored area. This study recommended practical implications to promote students’ SRL and achievement in hybrid environments.

Disruptiveness of COVID-19: Differences in Course Engagement, Self-appraisal, and Learning

We investigated how the transition to remote instruction amidst the COVID-19 pandemic affected students’ engagement, self-appraisals, and learning in advanced placement (AP) Statistics courses. Participants included 681 (Mage=16.7 years, SDage=.90; %female=55.4) students enrolled in the course during 2017-2018 (N=266), 2018-2019 (N=200), and the pandemic-affected 2019-2020 (N=215) year. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater improvement in affective engagement but a decrease in cognitive engagement in the spring semester relative to a previous year. Females enrolled in the pandemic-affected year experienced a greater negative change in affective and behavioral engagement. Students enrolled during the pandemic-affected year reported a greater decrease in their anticipated AP exam scores and received lower scores on a practice exam aligned with the AP exam compared to a prior year. Though resilient in some respects, students’ self-appraisal and learning appeared negatively affected by pandemic circumstances.

The Inspiration Design Toolkit: A Human-Centered Design Tool for a System Engineering Course

System Engineering education typically includes content to help students learn to design and engineer large, complex systems in a structured way. In this paper, we describe the outcomes of introducing a human-centered design tool, the Inspiration Design Toolkit (IDT), to encourage students to think non-linearly. The IDT is an educational resource consisting of a deck of illustrated cards that contain provocative questions, reflection messages and icons, applicative examples, and key takeaways on microlearning units. The aim of the IDT is to improve the participants’ learning experience and course engagement, increase opportunities for them to interact with their peers and teaching team, enable them to practice and reinforce the concepts through the creation of their own IDT cards, and share the cards in the discussion to increase learners’ engagement with course material and peers. We designed the IDT for an MIT online course on System Thinking. We collected, analyzed, and synthesized qualitative and quantitative feedback from 171 course participants. Our findings suggest that IDT provides learners with a digital asset that allows them to reinforce and recall the course takeaways, and apply them to other contexts. For future research, we want to understand how learners like and use IDT through demographic differences and preferred self-identified learning styles. We discuss how these findings may help educators consider critical design principles and for creating a digital self-learning toolkit connected to the course content and increasing its content adaptability.

Math Anxiety, Engagement, and Performance in High and Low-stakes Tests in AP Statistics

We examined direct and indirect relations between engagement-related constructs, math anxiety, and learning outcomes. Confirmatory factor analysis was first used to validate scores from measures of these constructs with a sample of high school students enrolled in AP Statistics (N = 696, Mean age = 16.7 years, SD = .90). Structural equation models were fitted to examine relations between these constructs on a subsample that completed all measures (N = 219). A greater proportion of variation was explained in a high-stakes learning outcome (R2 = .54) than a low-stakes learning outcome (R2 = .22). We found evidence of indirect effects of academic procrastination and course engagement on the learning outcome through math anxiety. The findings shed light on opportunities for intervention on academic maladaptive behaviors, such as procrastination, which could lessen their effect on math anxiety and thus better facilitate learning. Further, these findings highlight the importance of testing stakes when examining associations between engagement, math anxiety, and learning.

Social Learning Through a Participative Storytelling Framework

The shift from face-to-face learning and talent development environments into virtual and online learning environments gives an opportunity to rethink what may be described as the essence of the course learning environment. The focus shifts from face-to-face controlled structures into a more participative storytelling framework that reflects social learning efforts. The essence of course engagement changes into a participative storytelling framework that embraces concepts highlighted by Gomez in his 10 commandments: brand essence; story world; design and development blueprint; obtain the creative talent; common resource that includes goals, mission, vision, and values; content matrix and cross-content progression; incentivized support; validation and reverence of socialized course engagement; participative storytelling framework marketing alignment; and array of participative engagement from online to blended to face to face. Reimagining Gomez's 10 commandments highlights the strength of participative storytelling frameworks within the essence of course engagement.

Undergraduate Student Course Engagement of an Ethnically Diverse Population in Auckland, New Zealand

Increasing student engagement leads to improved educational outcomes, promotes positive student experiences, and reduces attrition rates. In Aotearoa (New Zealand), Māori students now account for 20% of university enrolments, but first-year attrition rates are approximately 17%. Both Māori and Pasifika students are more likely to drop-out during their first year of study than Pākehā students. To address the question Are Māori and Pasifika students less engaged than Pākehā students when studying in their first year of university? we measured student engagement during a compulsory first-year course delivered by a university in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). Questions were from the National Survey of Student Engagement, and students identified their ethnicity as either Māori, Pākehā, Pasifika, or Other. Information on the campus of study was also collected. Three scales within the questionnaire were (1) Cooperative Learning, (2) Cognitive Development, and (3) Personal Skills, and both total score, and score for each scale, were compared between ethnicities and across campuses. Total engagement for Māori students was higher than all other ethnicities on all campuses, and at the South Auckland Campus, Māori students scored higher in Cooperative Learning than all other ethnicities. These encouraging scores for Māori students reflect a commitment of inclusion and support for Māori enrolled at this large tertiary education provider in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. The questionnaire was convenient to use and scales showed good internal consistency. We suggest that regular measures of student course engagement are made so trends can be shown for all student groups enrolled at universities throughout Aotearoa.