Community Blogs | Using Gather.Town for an activity on Business Process Modeling (Renata Silva Souza Guizzardi)

Activity Description

In the academic year of 2021-2022, during the IEM/BIT Module 3, I conducted a special activity within the Business Process Management Course. In the past edition of this course, I realized that despite having practical classes, students still had a lot of doubts on Business Process Modeling. Thus, the motivation behind this activity was giving the students more time during class to practice with Business Process Modeling, while having the opportunity to solve possible doubts on the spot, by asking TAs and to the teacher (i.e., me).

The activity was organized using Gather.Town, a web-based environment that allows the configuration of customizable virtual spaces, which can be used for conference organization, classes, meetings and the like. The activity was conducted twice in the module, one time for BIT students and the other time for IEM students. This overcame some difficulties regarding the number of groups that could work simultaneously in the configured space. Figure 1 shows the Gather.Town customized space configured for this activity. The environment had been created by Victor Dibbet, as part of his final project for BIT.

(A)

(B)

Figure 1. Cutomized Space at Gather.Town, showing (A) the assembly room where students, Tas and teacher gathered for instructions and final presentation; and (B) a room configured for the group work on their modeling assignment

The proposed Business Process Modeling (BPM) activity was organized according to the following tasks:

Meeting at the Assembly room: The teacher presents a modeling scenario that the students must model in groups, also providing some instructions on how to use the Gather-Town environment and how to get help from TAs and the teacher. Moreover, a TA presented some instructions on how to access and use the BPM tool the student needed to use to create their models (i.e. lucidcharts - https://www.lucidchart.com/).
Group Assignments: The groups of students worked together in groups to create the model for the proposed scenario in separate rooms. To facilitate the distribution of groups, the students were gathered in the same groups used for the module’s project. During the assignment, the teacher and TAs circulated through the rooms observing the groups’ works and responding to questions.
Model Presentation and Discussion: The teacher shared with the students, a model that she created, while discussing differences she noted in the groups’ models while circulating through the rooms. The teacher model was also shared through the Module’s Canvas page. Students asked questions about their doubts.
Activity Evaluation: The students were asked to respond to a questionnaire, evaluating the activity.

Annex A presents the modeling scenarios used in this activity, while Annex B depicts the models the teacher created for each of these modeling scenarios.

People Involved

In the development of this activity, several people have been involved besides me. Corrie Huijs and Sten Roetmaat were involved in supporting this work from the beginning and assisting in acquiring the required Gather.Town license. Robin Emmerloot also joined our effort and provided very relevant feedback on the environment and on the activity organization. Victor Dibbets configured the Gather.Town space and provided invaluable support throughout the activity organization and execution. I consider that Corrie, Sten, Robin, Victor and I compose the Gather.Town team. Before the activity was conducted with the students, the Gather.Town team organized a pilot, from which some of the module’s TAs participated to provide feedback on the environment and the activity. Other than TAs, three students from the Psychology bachelor and one student from the Educational Science and Technology master programme also joined the pilot. The pilot was crucial to test our ideas and to correct some issues before the

Students Evaluation

Tables 1, 2 and 3 summarize the results of the evaluation form they filled in task 4) previously described. The survey was responded by 41 students in total.

Table 1. Results of the Evaluation Questionnaire Closed Questions

In general, how would you evaluate the activity?	Very Valuable		Quite Valuable			Not so valuable				Complete waste of time
	20		18			2				1
Would you like to do more activities like this one?	Yes					No
	37					3
	Very good	good			average			poor			Very poor
The configuredenvironment at Gather.Town	23	16			1			1			0
The way the activity was structured	17	19			4			1			0
The modeling scenario	12	19			8			2			0
The assistance given bythe teacher and the TAs	10	17			9			5			0
The used modeling tool (Lucidcharts)	14	18			7			1			1
Thinking back at the activity, please check the boxes that correspond to true statements:
I felt more engaged in this activity than in a traditional class									29
I felt motivated to do theproposed assignment									22
I think I retained more the information about BPMN modeling by doing this assignment than in a traditional class									14
I had doubts during modeling the assignment that I didn’t even know that I had.									12
Do you think that it would be better to use traditional video-conference tools (e.g. MS Teams, Zoom) to conduct this type of group activity?				No			Maybe					Yes
				24			10					7

Table 2. Negative Remarks about the Activity

Please tell us what you DID NOT LIKE about this activity

I did not know we needed to be so specific and detailed for the bpmn, so ours was much simpler. Would have been nice to know so we could have spent more time on it

Some more explanation was needed before we started modelling

The TA-help was a little unorganized

lucid chart graphical aspects of diagram

There were some connection problems, not sure on what end.

It is hard to know what details you have to add that are not in the description

Lucid charts

I did not like the scenario, I expected it to be more detailed.

A bit laggy

Gather.Town requires more resources from the computer and communication in it is not as convenient as in discord/teams/zoom

We were finished pretty fast so we didnt have anything to do for like half an hour

In the ta help me it said to give a room number but there was no way for me to insert a room number so no ta could help me

Gathertown was laggy sometimes but other than that it was fine

TA-help me did not work because I wasn't able to type my question and room number in TA-help me. The names of the TAs were not listed so I could not know to whom use I ask the question.

There was more of a barrier to communicate with TA's, maybe they could go around the rooms and ask if people have questions.

It took a little too long

Little childish

The fact that a new program is used which adds no value at all, engagement was equal as it would be using Teams or Zoom

Personally i prefer to do this group works on campus, however we still managed to work quite good. As it was the first time in Gather Town I didn't really know how to use it and at the beginning I didn't know how to join the room. Other than that I found the activity very good.

Table 3. Positive Remarks about the Activity

Please tell us what you LIKED about this activity

Engaging and different

Was fun, different way more engaging to see people walking around

This website is so funny and cute.lol

It was an interactive activity that helped me to learn easier through it

The environment and difficulty level

The fact that you got my attention for the entirity of the lecture.

Gather town structure

I think is pretty cool. It all worked very well and it is much more interactive than a more regular conference tool

Interactive

Everything else. (same responder of the negative remark: “Gather.Town requires more resources from the computer and communication in it is not as convenient as in discord/teams/zoom”)

More engaged in the process

Something new

Something new is always exciting

Fun and interactive

I liked gathertown, although it was a bit distracting at first, since it is almost like a game

I liked the environment of gather town and the activity in general. It gave me a good inside on how to work with the bpm model

it was more fun than usual modelling activities the environment is cute

Having an activity in different environment was quite interesting and it was easy to use.

Experience a new environment

It is nice to be taught in a different way for a change. The material comes to life by working with it

i actually quite enjoyed the avatar experience. it did not feel like class and i was very engaged with the material more than in traditional zoom meetings.

the digital environment in wich you could walk arond an explore was the most fun. Ands the little stand where you could share your opinion.

Clear overview

Nothing to be honest

i liked the gather town enviorment. it was different then we are used to. And the exercise was also very useful to improve skills on business process modelling.

I liked the use of a different environment that Zoom, I feel like Gather Town is better because it feels like being all together in a normal room. I also liked the assignment, which was quite challenging at some points.

It was easy to ask questions if necessary

I consider the student evaluation as a positive one, which is confirmed by the result of the first question of the evaluation survey, where 38 of 41 students have considered it as a very valuable or quite valuable opportunity. Moreover, 37 of them reported in the second question that they would like to do other similar activities.

On a self-reflection, I believe we should improve the way the TAs provide help, possibly by creating a dedicated space to get help within the Gather.Town customized space. What bothered me the most about this activity that many students of the BPM course did not participate in it. We had a total of 239 students in the course, and only around 60 participated in the activity. If we do an activity of this sort in the future, we should find a strategy to improve that, such as making the assignment a graded assignment, or making the presence mandatory.

Some students reported that they had technical problems by using Gather.Town, which sometimes lagged in their computer. This may indicate a problem with the use of this system. I would be open to making an experiment with other more traditional environments, such as MS Teams or Zoom. However, I must say that these environments do not support the feeling of being in a common environment as Gather.Town does.

Annex

Annex A - Business Process Scenarios
Emergency Management Process
In a hospital emergency ward, there is a standard procedure to treat incoming patients. First, a nurse triages the patient. If the case is urgent, he is imediately admitted and assigned an attending physician. Otherwise, he must wait in the waiting room for his turn. When admited, the physician makes a physical exam and collects the patient’s medical history. If necessary, requests blood work and image exams. The patient’s blood is drawn in the emergency ward itself and sent to the lab, while for image exams, the patient needs to be moved to the image lab. After analyzing the exam results, the physician may decide to prescribe medication and discharge. Otherwise, if indicated, the patient may be relocated to the surgical ward for surgery.
Conference Paper Review Process
The process starts once a person is nominated as the Conference’s Program Committee (PC) Chair. The PC Chair creates a list of PC Members and send them invitations to be PC Members. At the same time, the PC Chair must create and send the Call for Papers. Once a paper author receives the Call for Papers, she writes the paper and submits it to the PC Chair. Once the submission deadline is reached, the PC Chair sends the submitted papers to the PC Members for review. The PC Members send their reviews to the PC Chair. Once the review deadline is reached, the PC Chair checks the papers. If there are unreviewed papers, the PC Chair reviews the papers herself. Then, the PC Chair decides on papers’ acceptance and finally notifies the paper authors. Once authors are notified, they must produce the final version of the paper and sign a copyright form. Then they will send these documents to the Proceedings Chair. The Proceedings Chair will check if the final version and copyright form are correct. If there is any problem, the Proceedings Chair will ask the authors to resubmit them. Finally, the Proceedings Chair sends the papers to the publisher.
Annex B - Business Process Models
Emergency Management Process
Conference Paper Review Process