Being innovative is not always easy, especially if it is a larger academic course of 15 ETCS with more than 150 students. However, some chances are too good to pass up. Therefore, besides the Case Fair in January, we also introduced Dynamic Condition Response (DCR) graphs as an alternative modeling choice to BPMN in Process Innovation at DBI - Digital Business Innovation Section at IT University of Copenhagen.
The road to being innovative in teaching entails providing the best possible learning environment around the topic. Thus, we allied with Prof. Thomas Hildebrandt from the Computer Science Department at the University of Copenhagen (Københavns Universitet), who gave a fantastic explorative and insightful view in his lecture on DCR and based it on his industry and research endeavors. To quality test the exercise material, we made additional alliances with some of the best industry experts, Mark Straarup, Håkon Normann, and Rasmus Balthazar Andreasen, who also supported incorporating cases based on real-world implementations.
As a result, the strength of a close industry collaboration sparked opportunities, and DCR Solutions allowed all our students to gain industry certifications as an optional extra curriculum. The extra curriculum required two optional afternoons, from 16.00 to 20.00, to learn more about DCR and the modeling technique. Hence, I am incredibly pleased to announce that all of the 23 students have passed the industry certification examination for the extra curriculum (see picture). The certification is only made possible due to DCR Solutions and their Academy Alliance program for generously funding each industry certificate taken by the students, which holds a value of 15.000 DKK.
Why collaboration matters: it makes sense to build closer collaborations between industry and academia to raise the ambitions for synergies among education, business, and research. We should continuously improve the quality of our Danish IT talent by actively involving the industry.
Want to collaborate: We are planning the next Case Fair at the IT-Universitetet i København, where we will continue embracing industry collaboration with our students and their case projects in the course (https://lnkd.in/dF5JkACH). If this interests you and you want to collaborate closer with IT University of Copenhagen, feel free to reach out.