Business education has been criticized for being theoretical and distant from the dynamisms of the business life. To answer to this criticism, different types of experiential learning environments, such as manual role-plays, computer simulations, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, have been used. In this paper, we study how a holistic learning environment, combining a practice enterprise model, an ERP system and a simulation, improves learning results and why. We present a full-year long case study to compare the learning outcomes of the holistic learning environment with a manuallyoriented practice enterprise model. Our findings indicate improvements on different domains of Bloom's taxonomy. We suggest that the improvements are due to the holistic learning environment acting as a boundary infrastructure where the practice enterprise model, the simulation and the ERP system are all different kinds of boundary objects. This boundary infrastructure functions as a point of interaction and communication, and enables the students and teachers to cross social, cultural and conceptual boundaries between different communities of practice, and importantly, between theory and practice.
Small and medium size enterprises are an important and growing part of the economy. They lack an adequately skilled workforce. Higher education is claimed to provide students with theoretical knowledge rather than skills. Enterprise resource systems, business simulation games and the practice enterprise model are all practical, experiential learning environments. Each of them solves different learning challenges but does not provide a comprehensive learning environment. This paper presents a simulated learning environment that merges the three environments together, allowing students to learn the daily operations of SMEs in a practice-focused manner. In addition, the instructor can create learning situations appropriate for the learning objectives at hand. The paper describes experiences of the first pilot from both the student and the teacher perspective. An initial evaluation shows positive learning outcomes on the long-term memorizing of declarative knowledge among the low and average students. 2 SME BUSINESS LEARNING ENVIRONMENT ERP systems give a good technical environment for 233
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