Abstract: This paper highlights recent curriculum innovations that have occurred in Introduction to Information Systems, a required second-year course for all students completing an undergraduate degree in business or a business minor at the Sprott School of Business, Carleton University. The goal of this course is to highlight the role of technology in business today with particular focuses on enterprise integration and enterprise systems, management decision making in a process-oriented datadriven organization, and the transformation to e-business. The concepts are introduced in lecture and are then brought to life through active learning activities as the students become a company (petPRO) and work in groups to simulate the concepts they have learned. At a second-year level, students have neither encountered all of the functional areas of a business, nor have they seen the interplay among the functions. Through the simulated company experience, students come to appreciate what all the business functions are, and they experience some of the challenges a firm goes through on the road to becoming an integrated, e-business enterprise. Hands-on technology components such as the development of a corporate intranet, a data sharing assignment, execution of the procurement process in SAP, and the course website itself all provide additional mechanisms to bring the concepts to life.

Keywords: Enterprise system, Active learning, Simulation, Process, Management decision-making, E-business

Download this article: JISE - Volume 15 Number 3, Page 267.pdf

Recommended Citation: Hajnal, C. A. & Riordan, R. (2004). Exploring Process, Enterprise Integration and E-business Concepts in the Classroom: The Case of petPRO. Journal of Information Systems Education, 15(3), 267-276.