Incorporating SAP® ERP Training into Industrial College Education: A Usability Evaluation

Abstract

The main vision of Jubail Industrial College (JIC) is to "To excel in providing technology education and training, applied research, and innovation to support sustainable economic and industrial development of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia". To ensure the readiness of JIC students for successful careers, they need to be exposed to the latest software tools and technologies currently used in the surrounding industry. The Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) course is part of many degree programs at JIC where the academic staff is utilizing the SAP ® University Alliance Program (SAP ® UA) to inject a practical component into the theoretical ERP course. This paper presents insights into the integration of SAP training in an ERP course by assessing the usability of the SAP® UA system. In particular, our goal is to evaluate the usability aspect of the SAP ® UA system among future industrial and petroleum employees. Since, the SAP® UA system has been used in the college for ten years, and the available relevant literature in this region and under the same circumstances is very limited, we undertook this research to determine the acceptance of the SAP ® UA system among JIC students. The System Usability Scale (SUS) was the tool of choice in our research and the final results obtained generated a SUS value of 67 which falls within the acceptance range.