Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
End-User Training within IT Management
With modern software architectures such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), more
workplaces are integrated into the companies' information technology infrastructure. By
networking many workplaces and work flows and vertically and horizontally integrating ERP
systems, users' skills in handling the software are critical, because technology networks are
more error prone than stand-alone systems.
As the money spent on end-user training adds up to 10 to 20% of implementation costs,
it becomes more important to spend that money effectively and efficiently (Olfman/Pitsatorn,
2000). Therefore, end-user training — its design, organization, and management — is an
important topic for the future IT manager.
End-user training is also an important point of contact between professionals from the
IT department and users from other departments of a company. In addition, end-user training
has to cover various aspects: technical aspects of the software, organizational aspects of the
situation in which the software should be used, motivational aspects when the implementa-
tion of the software will change the way people work, etc. Therefore, the management of end-
user training is an important part of managerial skills in IT organizations.
For these reasons, we designed a special graduate Information Systems course, where
students of the Department of Business Administration at the University of Applied Sciences
Hannover in their (approximately) third year had to train elderly people in how to handle and
use the Internet. Older people should have the opportunity to test the Internet — especially
the World Wide Web (WWW) and electronic mail (email) — without fear and risk. At the end
of the training, they should be able to send and receive emails, handle a standard browser,
make a simple search using a search engine, and know basics about PCs and the Internet. In
total, the skills of the elderly people in handling and using new media — here, the Internet
— should be improved significantly. Barriers, which hinder them in using new media and
modern technologies, should be lowered. A systematic performance evaluation was con-
ducted in order to measure how well the older people and trainers (students) reached those
goals.
From this point of view, Internet training for older users is a good simulation of some
responsibilities graduates will have in their future working environments, when designing
and conducting end-user training. The skills and training needs of the trainees are not clear
— there are certain barriers in using the application, and there are social and communication
problems between trainers and trainees.
Finally, the “S3: Senior Surf School” was conducted by six students at the end of the
semester on three afternoons from 3 to 6 p.m. Each of the 33 (older) participants, in groups
of eight to nine people, received nine hours of intensive training using the Internet.
COURSE DESIGN
There are various Information Systems courses with different structures and scopes
required for our students. One special form of a course is called “project,” which means that
students in groups of four to 12 people work together on a given task. The volume of their
work for a project like this during the semester is calculated as (approximately) 12 hours per
week, which adds to approximately 200 hours of work per person. There is no fixed schedule
for this work, because the students have to organize all of their work by themselves, with some
