It’s Our Time: SAP Education Wants to Know What’s Important to Us

[Sabine_Benz]

Back in the day I was an educator, and I can still get passionate about the topic. Training and education have everything to do with our ability to work efficiently, to think in new ways, and to contribute and grow. So, in my mind, training and education should start with us. Apparently SAP Education is of the same mind. The team has been working with the research and consulting firm, Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC), to survey members of SAP Community Network (SCN) with the aim of better understanding our training priorities and preferences. 

Five minutes well spent
My passion and I have looked at the survey, and we encouraged you to complete it when you can. It just took 5 to 7 minutes of your time to give SAP Education the input it needs to design training and education that meets your needs. The survey asked about your personal goals for training, how training influences your daily work, and which elements of training are important to you.

Needless to say, the data was treated as strictly confidential. I’m told that “all data is evaluated in aggregated and anonymized form. It will not be possible to draw any conclusion revealing your organization.“

The best time to voice your opinion is when someone is listening.

SAP Education views input from SCN as essential to continuous improvement of its offerings and the members of the community let SAP Education know what’s important to them. We will soon publish results of the survey!

[jessica_knell]

Great initiative Sabine! Looking forward to reviewing the conclusions with you :smile:

[Sabine_Benz]

Thanks Jessica,

we are hoping to have first interim results by end of February/beginning of March. Which I will share with the SCN community.

Sabine

[SophsterM]

Sabine,

Has anyone done a survey of how people learn best? For example, video tutorials, self-paced click and go tutorials, online training (text based), instructor-led classroom style training?  I know everyone is pressed for time, and doesn't always have time or budget to attend in person workshops, seminars, etc. I'm curious what the trend for training and getting up to speed on products and process is these days?

[Sabine_Benz]

Sophia,

there are several research documents available looking into the topic of different learning delivery options for different purposes and learners. There is an article posted on SCN like to highlight: Formalized Informal Learning: A New Architecture for Corporate Training by joshua.bersin. In the article has been discussed today's increasingly important need for deep specialization among all employees, and the resulting trend toward collaborative, informal training and learning strategies. Driven by the adoption of new technologies, a younger workforce and the need to share information more quickly, informal learning has now become a critical strategy for corporate HR and business leaders.

The SAP Education survey conducted by the research and consulting firm PAC does also cover to a certain extend the importance of the different options. Based on the results of the survey we may consider a follow-up survey for some focus areas and hot topics.

Sabine

[SophsterM]

Thank you Sabine. I'll be interested in viewing the Education Survey results when they are available. Thanks for the link to the article.

Sophia

[Sabine_Benz]

You are very welcome, Sophia.

Will share interim results when available. Hope to have them by beginning of March.

Sabine

[Former Member]

Hi Sabine,

Does SAP have any plans for associate or professional certification in supply chain execution covering  SAP SCM EWM 9.0 , SAP SCM TM 9.0 & SAP SCM EM 9.0.

- Abhilash

[ravi_ekambaram]

Hi Sabine,

Good to see that frequent feedback's are taken from the participants for the betterment of training. It would be always better, if 360 degree feedback is taken for the training programs (i.e. Participant,Instructor, Content designer & the organisation sponsoring the training).

I have completed the survey and eagerly waiting for the results.

Regards,

Ravi

[Sabine_Benz]

Hi Abhilash,

thanks for your note, please post the question in the certification space of SAP SCN and community members with respective expertise will reply to you there.

Thanks,

Sabine

[Sabine_Benz]

Hi Ravi,

SAP Education is gathering feedback from every participant as end of course evaluations regarding e.g. content, instructor (if relevant), and the training system. In addition, the team runs market analyses, takes customer and partner feedback into account when developing certification updates and SAP solution curricula. And the survey initiative conducted by PAC is another approach of getting insight into SAP professionals' learning priorities.

You may have noticed that the content definition of the Learning Rooms, as part of SAP Learning Hub, e.g. is largely driven by learners' submission.

Fair enough that's not a full 360° view. but I hope it is obvious that feedback and the communities' perspective is very important to SAP Education.

Sabine

[ravi_ekambaram]

Hi Sabine,

Thanks for your reply.

Agree with..

Fair enough that's not a full 360° view. but I hope it is obvious that feedback and the communities' perspective is very important to SAP Education.

Regards,

Ravi

[Former Member]

as new SAP learner i thank you all the ideas, i look forward to write my first SAP exam.

[Sabine_Benz]

Hi Henri,

interested to hear more, keep us posted!

Sabine

[martin_chambers]

Hi Sabine,

I have been using SAP Learning Hub for a few weeks to learn about some of the new BusinessObjects Tools. Generally, it has been a frustrating experience!

The courses offered were obsolete, e.g. Analysis for Office 1.1 (current version is 1.4). This didn't just mean losing out on new functionality, it also made it more difficult to understand because menu items had been moved around.

Studying the course meant reading the hundreds of pages on "Flipbook". This presents PDF documents using Flash. This of course means that I cannot read the book on a tablet (Flash doesn't work on iOS or Android) while working through the exercises on my notebook.

Flipbook is quite wasteful with screen real estate, leaving large margins all around. Trying to read on a notebook is a pain (lots of scrolling involved). You definitely need access to a large screen, preferably one that you can rotate by 90°.

Some of the exercises required loading files which weren't available.

On top of all that, you have to be online. No offline reading is possible.

It seems to me that SAP does not want to offer too much competition to the more profitable classroom training.

Regards,

Martin

[JanM]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for pointing this out. I have looked into your points and would like to provide you with an update.

Regarding the availability of the latest Analysis for Office content (release 1.3 and 1.4) we have Online Knowledge Products available, which will be uploaded to the SAP Learning Hub in the next days. Thanks for pointing this out, these should have been there. Apologies!

Regarding the flipbook format, we have received just as much positive feedback as negative feedback. It seems that some people really like it and other do not. We are evaluating other formats, but have not come to a decision to change this yet. That said, we just tested accessing the flipbooks on the SAP Learning Hub with an IOS device. Flipbooks are not flash based and they work nicely on mobile devices. Even the screen real estate is improved on mobile devices; which flipbook might have been designed for. We are working with focus on enabling full online and offline consumption of all Learning Hub content on mobile devices.

Let me ensure you that we are extremely committed to constantly improving the SAP Learning Hub experience and value to our customers and learners. We are working on daily and weekly improvements as well as on mid- to long-term roadmap items like mobile offline consumption, content upload and content customization. We absolutely want to develop SAP Learning Hub to become the best and most attractive SAP learning solution for SAP Professionals and SAP users in the future. We really believe in making all our content (old and new), access to SAP experts (via Learning Rooms) and access to our pre-configured training systems (via SAP Live Access) available via the cloud - available on-demand, anytime, anywhere.

Best regards,

Jan

[martin_chambers]

Hi Jan,

Thanks for your reply.

                            Jan Meyer wrote:

we just tested accessing the flipbooks on the SAP Learning Hub with an IOS device.

Does that mean that all I have to do is install the Flipbook app on an iPad and I can access theLearning Hub (as long as I'm online)?

You mention Analysis for Office 1.3 and 1.4 being added very soon to the Learning Hub. Will you do the same for Design Studio 1.2?

I haven't looked into Live Access. Would this allow me to do the exercises in the Learning Hub courses, e.g. Analysis for Office, using ready made queries, planning functions, VBA code, etc.?

Regards,

Martin

[JanM]

Hi Martin,

you do not even need to install or download an app...just access the SAP Learning Hub via your browser and open the flipbook. BUT, we need to flag all objects for this mobile usage first, which we have decided to do now, but it will take a few days.

SAP Live Access is a new offering exclusively available to SAP Learning Hub customers. You can purchase 20, 40 or 60 hrs. access to SAP Education's original, pre-configured training systems. The scope is currently limited to 50 courses, however we are planning to add ~100 more courses in during Q2. You can find more information on SAP Live Access on training.sap.com.

The Design Studio 1.2 OKP is in SAP Learning Hub. The standard course BOD310 for 1.2 is due at the end of April.

Best regards,

Jan

[martin_chambers]

Hi Jan,

Jan Meyer wrote:

Hi Martin,

you do not even need to install or download an app...just access the SAP Learning Hub via your browser and open the flipbook. BUT, we need to flag all objects for this mobile usage first, which we have decided to do now, but it will take a few days.

Good news indeed!

Cheers,

Martin

[martin_chambers]

Hi Jan,

you wrote that the standard course BOD310 1.2 would be out in April. I haven't seen it yet, although the software Design Studio 1.3 was made available last month. Any new date set?

What about the availability of new handbooks for Analysis for Office BOAN10 and BOAN20 in the version 1.4?

You also mentioned flagging all objects for mobile use. Last time I tried that, I failed. Have they been flagged yet? Should I try again?

Cheers,

Martin

[Sabine_Benz]

Hi Martin,

BOD310_99 will be available in the training and education shop and in SAP Learning Hub by beginning of August. The flipbook of BOD310:EB_Col98 is there already.

Best regards,

Sabine

[martin_chambers]

Hi Sabine,

Thanks for your reply.

Any info on my other questions?

Cheers,

Martin