Keeping Faculty Current on Product changes

[Former Member]

What are the best ideas to keep faculty current on new product changes?

[former_member583013 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

I was the moderator of this topic at a pre curriculum congress meeting last week in Charlotte.

Here are some ideas that were raised during this session :

1) Getting involve with you ASUG chapter (www.asug.com) is key to stay connected with the current technology challenges of the SAP user base in your community.

2) You will find on SDN hundreds on elearning clips to stay up to date with the latest SAP products : https://www.sdn.sap.com:443/irj/scn/elearn

3) SAP TV provides clips on their new products (for example, they have recently posted many new videos on their new Business Suite 7 : http://www.sap-tv.com/channel.php?c=1;l=1) and also case studies that can be used in your classroom ('Sleep better with SAP' is a nice one). I personnaly subscribe to SAP TV podcast on my ipod.

4) Analysts frequently publish reports on SAP. I like to monitor Gartner as we have free access to their reports at our university: http://www.gartner.com/.

I would like to hear other comments on this topic. We really can benefit from sharing our experience on this topic.

Regards,

Prof. Pierre-Majorique Léger, Ph.D

Director ERPsim Lab

HEC Montréal

[SMagal]

A broader question is how do we get the needed skills to faculty. This will be different for new faculty and for those who have been in the program a while. For the latter, there is indeed the issue of keeping current on changes. For the former (and we need new faculty if we want to grow the program), it is still about the basics.

UA does a great job with sessions at the curriculum congress and summer workshops. How can this be scaled to attract more faculty. One good suggestion that has been offered is to use more online options - online courses and webinars.

What about regional meetings? Annually? More frequently?. Perhaps in conjunction with local/regional ASUG meetings, now that Universities have membership in ASUG at not cost (a great resource, by the way). Perhaps have an academic track at these meetings. Or hold an ancillary meeting in conjunction with ASUG. These are going to be much shorter than the Summer workshops, but they can address many needs.They are also much more affordable than 3-4 day national meetings.

There are also regional academic conferences that could be used in a similar way (for example, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) has several regional chapters, such as the Midwest AIS).We could organize a track related to ERP/SAP - related education.

A third option is to host UA-specific regional meetings. There was one held in Michigan many years ago and it attracted people from neighboring states. There may have been others.

If the goal is to get more universities, faculty, courses, and students in the UA program, then we need more options than the annual curriculum congress and summer workshops, both of which are not scalable.

What do you think????

[Former Member]

I like the idea of regional meetings. I had this idea a year ago and called them roadshows. We need to think about where and how to hold these. I'll bring this up at the next meeting we have with ASUG.

[Former Member]

Simha's comment/question is I think a good one: "A broader question is how do we get the needed skills to faculty. ...UA does a great job with sessions at the curriculum congress and summer workshops. How can this be scaled to attract more faculty. One good suggestion that has been offered is to use more online options - online courses and webinars."

We were told at the Curriculum Congress that the UA has been tasked with growing this program significantly. Given that right now most universities are slashing or totally eliminating travel funds, I see this as very problematic. At my university, interested faculty are not attending SAP training since there is no funding. I'm having to self-fund much of my training in this domain.

While in-person training may be ideal, I would echo Simha's suggestion that some type of distance learning technique is going to be needed. I would emphasize though that instead of developing short webinars, an entire "course" should be delivered in a manner similar to how it is done in the in-person training.

Perhaps instead of compensating teachers to deliver content live as is done now, they could instead be compensated to create lessons which would be delivered via streaming video or similar. Perhaps this could be further supported by having a forum here associated with each course for people to ask course specific questions, and so on. The benefit here is that once the "SAP Introduction" (for example) content was developed in this fashion, it could be used by many faculty as needed over time, and would only have to be re-delivered when there are changes to the curriculum or product.

Although I'm sure there are various logistical challenges with the above, I would suggest that economic conditions for the next few years in higher education may preclude participation in some of the training activities as they have been done. It seems that the UA investing in training materials and methods that can be time and location shifted should be a high priority.

[Former Member]

How about a series of UA only product webinars by the SAP product managers for ERP, etc?

Those are really easy to put together, we just need a critical mass of professors to attend in order to book the time with the right people.

If the UAC can come up with a list of topics and set a monthly date for the webinars, I can find the people to give the presentations. We'll record them and post them on the UAC for folks who can't attend, but we need to have people submit topics and questions beforehand in order to maximize the time.

Thanks

Jeff

[former_member583013]

Jeff: This is really a great idea. Thanks for suggesting it !