Helping Improve Education

With locations in Enschede, Deventer, and Apeldoorn and nearly 24,000 students, Saxion is one of the largest universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands. Saxion offers very diverse programs and a large number of special graduation tracks or specializations, both nationally and internationally. Saxion’s education is high-quality, innovative, and entrepreneurial. Students and staff form the beating heart of the educational institution. Everything is aimed at preparing students as well as possible for the labor market. Collaboration between companies and institutions is essential to bridge the gap to professional practice.

The challenge

Passing on knowledge and skills to train students to become professionals remains a challenge. Good teachers, but especially good teaching methods are a must. How can you engage students and optimize their learning development?

Software representative of quality teaching materials

Teachers Rik Teunissen and Jan Röttjers from the “Business Economics and Accountancy” program face a similar challenge. Some example courses are: Auditing, Management Information Supply, and Management Information Systems. Most courses contain a theoretical angle, but the most important lessons are learned in practice. Practice can be simulated by using relevant software. In this case, software includes business process management systems and quality assurance programs. This software is therefore part of the teaching materials and thus defining for their quality.

Problems with software packages

The problem, however, is that software packages can offer everything, but not what the teachers really ask for. Teacher Rik Teunissen believes that many packages are too complex and complicated: “Students sometimes spend a whole month understanding the tools before they can work independently.” Teacher Jan Röttjers feels that the long learning trajectory is not only disastrous for students, but also for teachers. “Especially in the first weeks, mistakes are made that are difficult to fix—this comes at the expense of student motivation and teacher planning.”

How to choose?

How can a software package be chosen that is representative of the teaching material and at the same time appeals to students? To answer this question, Rik Teunissen and Jan Röttjers drew up a list of requirements. A usable software package is:

• User-friendly
• Process-oriented
• Intuitive to use
• Clear and structured

Furthermore, it’s important that the software must be accessible everywhere. Previously, the software was only available a few days a week in a limited number of classrooms. Rik Teunissen found that this limitation had a very restrictive effect on educational objectives: “It’s frustrating to draw up an annual schedule with limitations in time and location, especially with regard to part-time students.” Software available via the internet (web-based) could offer a solution in this case.

The right choice

After the list of requirements was drawn up, most software packages were immediately eliminated: “Too many bells and whistles and far too complicated,” the gentlemen thought. After a number of presentations, online demonstrations, and hands-on training sessions, they ultimately chose Comm’ant’s software. Jan Röttjers insists that students must be able to think and work in processes within a short timeframe: “Being able to think in inputs, processes, and outputs—this is very clear in Comm’ant; this was often missing in other packages.” Furthermore, the look and feel and the fact that you can link documents to processes was a major advantage for Rik Teunissen:

“It’s crucial to be able to link documents that you use with the processes in the system. Otherwise, people work with different versions, causing communication errors.”

All systems up and running!

Both teachers from Saxion University of Applied Sciences have now worked with Comm’ant’s software for more than a year and share their experiences with us:

Jan Röttjers believes the implementation went well, even under difficult circumstances and high time pressure:

“Of course it’s a learning process with trial and error, but your service and response time are commendable. For the rapidly growing number of student users, the server could be effortlessly scaled up to 327 project environments, without problems.”

They also noted that students often know where to find things in the screens after a brief introduction. Comm’ant’s software is also broadly applicable, not only for internal control, but also for process quality, IT systems, knowledge, and human resource management.

In addition, the gentlemen have experienced the advantages of the “cloud,” not only from an ICT (installation) perspective but also from a user experience perspective: “You no longer have to work on a specific PC; you can simply log in anywhere via the internet.”

Finally, Jan Röttjers and Rik Teunissen add that Comm’ant stimulates students and actually contributes to the substantive improvement of education. The software is so successful that teachers run out of time during lessons to do even more with it: “It makes students curious and therefore eager to learn.” The teachers have experienced the collaboration as positive and pleasant: “It’s not just about software, but also about how we can improve education through our lessons. We did that together—that feels good.”