Seminar 1

Seminar 1 Introduction to ES

Before the seminar

Before the learning week starts, I received an email from our instructor who asked us to post self-introductions onto the Edventure and finish some other tasks as well. I browsed the wiki pages about ERP and also the official website of SAP. My eyes were filled with all those unfamiliar concepts. This was the first time that I was assigned homework even before the first class. At the same time, I realized that this is a course that I cannot slack my pace from the beginning once I've been enrolled in. I was a little nervous, but also inspired, because I made the choice to take this tough course on my own, and there is something new I'm going to challenge.

My parents used to like a TV show in China which is about job finding. The CEOs or HR Managers as interviewers seat in the thrones with a job seeker standing on the stage having the interview. I noticed that a common question from the interviewers was "Do you have any experiences regarding ERP?". I always thought that if I could give a positive answer, I would be more helpful for the company if hired. So I was glad when I found that BC3401 was about ERP. Although my friends told me that this course was hard, I decided to try my best to learn it well.

Course overview

The seminar began with our instructor's self-introduction. My first impression of our instructor was friendly, but not as funny as seen from the forum. James is serious but humorous, which allows seriousness and divertingness to coexist in his class. 

Actually I felt uncomfortable to the way of addressing James, until I heard the seniors calling the name so naturally and easily. The seniors were invited to give us the class overview. There seemed to be a lot of takeaways from this course, and the three seniors shared some important information with us.The first senior introduced what SAP was and its importance in the modern business world.  As an ERP software, SAP helps the cooperation among various departments of a big company in the business processes. The real life example was given by the second senior who shared with us her experiences during the internship. Since she'd got the SAP certificate after taking BC3401, she worked as an SAP expert in a company. Given that SAP is a powerful software, although many companies are using SAP now, most of their employees only know how to enter the data and get the results from a small part of SAP, instead of appreciating how the whole system works. I could see the self fulfillment from her face when she talked about how she helped the communication between employees and the managers. The last senior shared some tips on how to get good grade in this course. This course needs us to put a lot of efforts, and she emphasized that completing the required course work is never enough, so we still have to learn more by ourselves. In addition, James is always ready to help. :)

Team formation

The most important task for the first seminar was to form a team for the group works later on. James divided us randomly, but I still got two friends here in my group, and another member turned out to be our senior. I hope our group works could go on smoothly with partners who are familiar with each other. Nevertheless, we have discussed the measures to take in case that one does not contribute under the stressing of James.  

I'm sure that I will learn more from next seminar on!