Emerging Business Models in Education Provisioning: A Case Study on Providing Learning Support as Education-as-a-Service

Authors

  • Loina Prifti Technical University of Munich
  • Marlene Knigge Technical University of Munich
  • Alexander Löffler Technical University of Munich
  • Sonja Hecht Technical University of Munich
  • Helmut Krcmar Technical University of Munich

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v7i3.7337

Keywords:

Education-as-a-Service, EaaS, Educational Service, Educational Offering, Cloud Services

Abstract


This study aims to give a deeper understanding on emerging business models in the context of education. Industry 4.0/the Industrial Internet in general and especially recent advances in cloud computing enable a new kind of service offering in the education sector and lead to new business models for education: Education-as-a-Service (EaaS). Within EaaS, learning, and teaching contents are delivered as services. By combining a literature review with a qualitative case study, this paper makes a three-fold contribution to the field of business models in education: First, we provide a theoretical definition for a common understanding of EaaS. Second, we present the state-of-the-art research on this new paradigm. Third, in the case study we describe a “best practices” business model of an existing EaaS provider. These insights build a theoretical foundation for further research in this area. The paper concludes with a research agenda for further research in this emerging field.

Author Biographies

Loina Prifti, Technical University of Munich

Loina Prifti studied Computer Science and Information Systems at TUM and received her degree in 2014. Since March 2014 she has been working as a research associate at the Chair for Information Systems of Prof. Dr. Krcmar at TUM, where she is part of the SAP UCC, located at the chair. She is responsible for various SAP ERP products and SAP Solution Manager and conducts several SAP ERP train-the-trainer and certification courses in various universities in Germany and the EMEA region. Her research interest include topics of “Industrie 4.0”, Internet of Things and Digital Transformation by focusing especially on the aspects of competency building and education.

Marlene Knigge, Technical University of Munich

Marlene Knigge studied Information Systems at the Universität Hamburg and received her degree in 2006. Afterwards, she has been working as assistant of the CIO and as in-house consultant for SAP BW at a bank and SAP BW consultant at an information technology company for several years. She has been research associate since March 2014 at the Chair for Information Systems of Prof. Dr. Krcmar at TUM, being staff member of the SAP UCC located at the chair. She is responsible for the maintenance of the simulation game ERPsim as well as SAP BW, BO and SAP HANA. She conducts several train-the-trainer courses for ERPsim and SAP ERP and teaches ERPsim and SAP HANA in Germany and the EMEA region. Her research topic is teaching and training IS topics in the context of “Industrie 4.0” and the Digital Transformation.

Alexander Löffler, Technical University of Munich

Alexander Löffler studied Information Systems at TUM and received his degree in 2016. Since April 2016, he has been working as a research associate at the Chair for Information Systems of Prof. Dr. Krcmar at TUM, where he is part of the SAP UCC, located at the chair. He is responsible for SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA and conducts several train-the-trainer courses in universities in Germany and the EMEA region. His research interests include ERP systems, business processes and simulation games, especially considering the impact of the Digital Transformation.

Sonja Hecht, Technical University of Munich

Dr. Sonja Hecht studied Information Systems and worked for several years as senior SAP consultant and project manager for Business Intelligence solutions from SAP. She is a certified Solution Consultant SAP NetWeaver 2004s Business Intelligence and certified SAP Solution Architect ERP. Since 2014 she is Co-Executive Director of the SAP University Competence Center (SAP UCC) at TUM. Her current research areas are IT service management, big data analytics and IS education. She finished her doctorate in the area of application management maturity models and is author of the book “Xcelsius: Dashboarding mit SAP BusinessObjects”.

Helmut Krcmar, Technical University of Munich

Prof. Dr. Helmut Krcmar has been holding the Chair for Information Systems at the Information Technology Department of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) since October 1, 2002. He is member of the Information Technology Department, a secondary member of the Economics Department, and member of the “Carl von Linde-Akademie”. Since 2004, he has been a member of the board of the elite graduate program in “Finance and Information Management (FIM)” in the elite network of Bavaria, Germany. Since October 2003, he has been academic director of the ¡communicate! programme, since January 2004, he has been Scientific Director of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) of the TUM. His research interests include information and knowledge management; engineering and management of IT-based services; piloting of innovative information systems in healthcare, environmental management, and e-government as well as computer support of cooperation in distributed and mobile work and learning processes. His book “Informationsmanagement” has seen six editions until now.

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Published

2017-09-29

How to Cite

Prifti, L., Knigge, M., Löffler, A., Hecht, S., & Krcmar, H. (2017). Emerging Business Models in Education Provisioning: A Case Study on Providing Learning Support as Education-as-a-Service. International Journal of Engineering Pedagogy (iJEP), 7(3), pp. 92–108. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijep.v7i3.7337

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 3 (2017)

Section

Papers