Understanding of business processes is becoming an important key factor for successful businesses and today many organizations are facing the lack of knowledge about the business processes that they are working on. Since the interaction between different business processes and different actors are becoming more common it is not only enough for employees to have knowledge about the business processes that they involve directly, but also they need to know about the other business processes in the organization. Unfortunately there is not enough research on this topic in the literature and the goal of this thesis is to propose a method for solving the indicated problem by increasing the understanding of business processes by the employees in an organization. The proposed method basically contains the design and execution of process models based on a real scenario. A case study has been conducted at an IT company where the employees have no or limited knowledge about the business processes that their organization works on. Even though the method has been only tested in one organization it is generic and can be applied to any other similar organization. The design science approach is used to develop the method and build the process models as artifacts. The process models have been verified by using an executable business modeling tool, iPB, and presented to the employees in a seminar in order to make them to understand the business processes better. The knowledge of the employees about the business processes has been analyzed before and after the presentation, thus we could compare the results and find out how much their knowledge has increased after the presentation. The results have shown that the knowledge of the employees has increased significantly. In conclusion, the method of design and presentation of executable business process models has been proved to be a solution to the problem of not understanding of business processes in an organization well enough.

The time to treatment plays a major factor in recovery for stroke patients, and simulation techniques can be valuable tools for testing healthcare policies and improving the situation for stroke patients. However, simulation requires individual-level data about stroke patients which cannot be acquired due to patient’s privacy rules. This thesis presents a hybrid simulation model for generating a synthetic population of stroke patients by combining Agent-based and microsimulation modeling. Subsequently, Agent-based simulation is used to estimate the locations where strokes happen. The simulation model is built by conducting the Design Science research method, where the simulation model is built by following a set of steps including data preparation, conceptual model formulation, implementation, and finally running the simulation model. The generated synthetic population size is based on the number of stroke events in a year from a Poisson Point Process and consists of stroke patients along with essential attributes such as age, stroke status, home location, and current location. The simulation output shows that nearly all patients had their stroke while being home, where the traveling factor is insignificant to the stroke locations based on the travel survey data used in this thesis and the assumption that all patients return home at midnight.

Att en spelare lever sig in i ett spel kan ses som en av de viktigaste delarna av ett bra spel och spelare vill ständigt ha spel där dom känner mer och mer inlevelse. Tidigare forskning visar på att inlevelse i digitala spel inte är ett enkelt område och för att kunna forska på det så krävs det att man delar upp det i mindre, mer hanterbara, delområden som kan undersökas både som enskilda områden och i relation till andra. Denna uppsats bryter ut tre delområden som alla bidrar till inlevelse i spel för att utforska, testa och utvärdera. De valda delområdena används för att skapa en artefakt i form av ett spel där delområdena är implementerade och kan testas. De resultat som presenteras i detta arbete visar på att olika delområden inom inlevelse påverkar inlevelsen i ett spel olika mycket. Vidare visar även denna uppsats på hur vissa av dessa delområden relaterar till varandra och hur de tillsammans påverkar inlevelsen i ett spel som helhet. / Immersion can be considered as an essential part in digital games and developers are constantly challenged when trying to create immersive game experiences to an ever growing demand. However, as previous work suggests, immersion is not an easy concept to grasp and the area must be divided into smaller sub-areas. The sub-areas can then be investigated both individually and in relation to one another. This thesis breaks out three sub-areas (immersive features), that contribute to the overall feeling of immersion, to explore and test. The immersive features are used to create an artifact in the form of a game where all features can be tested. The data presented in this thesis shows that the three features have different amounts of impact on immersion. Furthermore, this thesis shows how the selected features relate to each other and how they together affect the overall game.

The ways film can be studied are many. The academic area of film science is very fragmented due to a lack of unity in its consensus and the overarching understanding of what its field entails. This situation warrants the evaluation of alternative pathways and tools for students to better understand the field of film science. The usage of gamification, an alternative approach to academic study, was chosen for this work due to its growing in interest, potential and usage. The method used to determine the validity of this concept was based on principles and methodology found in design science. The produced prototype showcased the concept of a gamified platform for film students to use in their studies. The study performed was an interactive lesson and test of the prototype where twelve participants used and experienced its intended purpose, with additional data collected using qualitative interviews and a questionnaire. The results of this work found that gamified interfaces can aid students but cannot be the sole source for an academic course or program. Partial aspects were found to be effective, but more research is necessary to fully see the effects of its implementation.

Git is a distributed version control system that tracks changes to a project overtime and is used to save these changes. Today it is being used by millions of people and is becoming a demand on the job market. For this reason it has become important to learn the version control system. Learning Git however may be difficult for beginners and learning it through tutorials may not always be effective. Learning it through a serious educational game (SEG) may be more effective as a SEG can provide motivation and feedback which are two factors for successful learning. This study seeks to assess how effective a SEG is in teaching Git by looking at the amount of knowledge gained from playing a SEG. This study also seeks to assess how much participants learned Git using a tutorial compared to participants who used a serious educational game. From the results, the study found that the SEG expanded the understanding of Git. The study also found that there was no significant difference in the amount of understanding gained from the SEG and the tutorial.

Um in der heutigen, von permanenter Veränderung geprägten, Umwelt erfolgreich zu sein, ist es zweifelsfrei notwendig, die eigenen Kompetenzen stetig weiterzuentwickeln und auf dem neusten Wissensstand zu sein. Berufsbegleitende Weiterbildung ist somit ein elementarer Bestandteil des Paradigmas des Lebenslangen Lernens. Mitarbeiter im IT-Management und -Consulting (ITMC) stehen allerdings häufig vor der Herausforderung, passende Angebote zu auszuwählen und das Gelernte erfolgreich umzusetzen. Diese Arbeit adressiert dieses Problem, indem ein Service-System für Weiterbildung im ITMC entwickelt und anwendet wird. Die entwickelten Artefakte bestehen dabei aus Vorgehens- und Prozessmodellen, einem Ordnungsrahmen sowie einer prototypisch implementierten Plattform sowie deren Evaluation. Zusammen bilden sie das Service-System, welches die Frage beantwortet, wie wir heute und in Zukunft mit unserem Wissen umgehen.

People around the world who are working in companies and organisations need to collaborate, and in their collaboration use information managed by different information systems. The requirements of information systems to be interoperable are therefore apparant. While the technical problems, of communicating or sharing information between different information systems, have become less difficult to solve, the attention has turned to other aspects of interoperability. Such aspects concern the bussiness processes, the knowledge, the syntax and the semantics that involves the information managed by information systems. Enterprise modelling is widely used to achieve integration solutions within enterprises and is a research area both for the integration wihin an enterprise (company or organisation) and the integration between several different enterprises. Enterprise modelling takes into account several of the aspects, mentioned as important for interoperability, in the models that are created. This thesis describes a research which has resulted in the connector view concept. The main contribution with this framework comprises a model structure and an approach, for performing the modelling of the collaboration between several partners in an extended enterprise. The purpose of the enterprise models thus created, by using the connector view concept, is to find solutions to interoperability problems, that exist in the collaboration between several enterprises.

The Program for International Assessment tested students in mathematics from 41 countries and found that students in the United States ranked in the lowest percentile. This struggle with math among youth in the United States prompted this quasi-experimental quantitative study about using interactive technology to engage and motivate 9th grade students in an Algebra classroom. The theoretical basis of this study was a constructivist perspective, using the Piagetian concept of action as an intellect builder. A convenience sample of 76 students was divided into 4 groups: Group 1, the control group, used no technology and consisted of 21 students; Group 2 used the TI Nspires calculators and consisted of 17 students; Group 3 used the TI Nspire calculators with the TI Navigator and consisted of 20 students; and Group 4 used the TI Nspire calculators, the TI Navigator, and the clickers. The participants were given 45 instructional classes that covered a 9-week period. All groups took the Motivated Strategy for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness test (STAAR) before and after the treatment of interactive technologies. A paired t test and a factorial repeated ANOVA were conducted, revealing no significant effect for the MSLQ based on the use of technology. However, the use of technology with the STAAR did show a significant difference in test scores for 2 treatment groups: Group 3, which used the calculator and the TI navigator; and Group 4, which used the calculator, the TI navigator, and the clickers. These results support the use of additional technology that is needed in the mathematics classroom to support the use of the calculators.

Augmented Reality (dt.: erweiterte Realität) und Virtual Reality (dt.: virtuelle Realität) ermöglichen die Erweiterung der Realität durch das Einblenden von visuellen Informationen in das Sichtfeld des Nutzenden bzw. den Ausschluss der Realität und das Eintauchen des Nutzenden in computergenerierte Simulationen mithilfe von Datenbrillen. Bestehende Arbeitswelten können durch diese Technologien nutzenstiftend erweitert werden oder vollständig neue Arbeitswelten abbilden. Damit eröffnen diese Technologien eine Vielzahl an Anwendungsfällen und diverse Nutzenpotenziale. Verschiedenste Barrieren hindern jedoch die Einführung der Technologien im unternehmerischen Bereich. Zur Entfaltung der Nutzenpotenziale und zur Minimierung der Adoptions- und Diffusionsbarrieren verfolgt die Dissertation einen gestaltungsorientierten Forschungsansatz der Wirtschaftsinformatik. Dabei wurden folgende Ergebnisse erzielt: (1) die Konzeption und Implementierung eines modellgetriebenen Softwareentwicklungsansatzes für erweiterte Arbeitswelten, (2) die Herleitung von Gestaltungsempfehlungen für erweiterte Arbeitswelten, (3) die Gestaltung von multiuserfähigen virtuellen Arbeitswelten als Prototyping- und Kreativitätsmedium sowie (4) die Entwicklung eines wirtschaftlichen Ökosystemmodells erweiterter und virtueller Arbeitswelten. Die im Forschungsprozess entwickelten IT-Artefakte wie Modelle, Methoden und Prototypen sowie das hergeleitete Gestaltungswissen leisten einen wesentlichen Beitrag zur Diffusion der Technologien, um nutzerseitig akzeptierte sowie im betrieblichen Umfeld nutzenstiftende erweiterte und virtuelle Arbeitswelten zu erzielen.

Units of measurement are needed in many of today’s software programs and datasets for describing physical concepts. Despite this, there are many issues regarding units of measurement in both code and data, such as inconsistent unit annotations, unit types being difficult to annotate and missing built-in unit support in tools and programming languages. Not least, is there a lack of examples of how to implement safe usage of units of measurement within an entire ecosystem consisting of code programs and data resources. Therefore, this thesis takes a design science approach to explore how a simple ecosystem of interconnected software and data components can be refactored to support safe usage of units of measurement, and whether the given solution shows it is possible to mitigate the burden of having to annotate types within the ecosystem. This has resulted in the development of an artifact that offers read/create, refactor and formatting capabilities, that can be used to implement units of measurement and unit checking into an ecosystem. The findings are that the artifact demonstrates how it is possible to implement safer usage of units, and at the same time being able to avoid the annotation burden to some extent.