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Introduction of Government Process Modeling With Rockwell Arena Softwaredecision could be based upon the attributes of an entity that were previously setin an Assign module.The third assignment asked students to create an Arena model, based on thehypothetical explanation of how a nonprofit organization accepts applicationsfrom prospective volunteers, and how it screens them. Stated briefly, prospectivevolunteers enter the system on either a constant or variable schedule, andsubmit their applications. A clerk reviews applications for completeness, andreturns incomplete applications to be completed and resubmitted. Oncecomplete, the application is reviewed by others for different reasons, and otherconditional activities are initiated. A criminal background check may berequired. Skills testing may be required. An interview is required. Ultimately, adecision is made to either accept or reject the applicant as a new volunteer.The question then becomes one of how the entire process should be designedso as to reduce average total-processing time and avoid unnecessary costs. Forexample, if the applicant has none of the skills needed by the organization, thereis no need to invest time and money in a criminal background check. Therefore,skills-assessment should precede the background check, and the backgroundcheck should be contingent upon the applicant having one or more skillsneeded by the organization.There is a “Separate” module in Arena, which allows some activities to beperformed alongside others. In some scenarios, it would make sense to explorethe implications of parallel processing for activities as an alternative to simpleserial processing. Parallel processing could reduce the average service time andsave the organization money.Finally, the students (working individually or in pairs) were asked to write apaper about an existing process in a government agency or nonprofit, todescribe the existing process, and to model a possibly improved process byusing Arena. This assignment highlighted the students’ abilities to identify aprocess, to describe it logically, to use Arena, and to imagine new ways toperform the process.The students had little or no difficulty with the first two lab assignments,because the instructor provided step-by-step instructions. Students completedthese labs quickly, and apparently understood what they were doing. There wassome confusion that the direction of a flow in an Arena model was not identifiedwith arrows. An entity always flows through a module from left to right. This isvisually obvious when a model is run as a simulation. But to inexperiencedpersons, it is not obvious during the construction of a static model.The third lab was somewhat difficult for the students, and caused them to askthe instructor for personal assistance. This lab required use of critical-thinkingskills and resulted in some quality teaching/learning experiences. It provided the390 Journal of Public Affairs Education
Introduction of Government Process Modeling With Rockwell Arena Softwareinstructor an opportunity to encourage students to consider tradeoffs betweenservice quality and costs and between simple serial processing and parallelprocessing. Because the scope of the assignment was well-defined, the instructorquickly became able to anticipate most of the students’ questions, and toprovide guidance and answers with ease.The open-ended writing and modeling assignment was very challenging forboth the students and the instructor. Students had difficulty identifying aprocess and scoping their work. In the real world, business processes are nestedwithin one another, and it can be difficult to define the boundaries of aparticular process. Existing processes in agencies and nonprofits often areunclear, and may not be followed in practice. This assignment resulted instudents asking the instructor to help them use Arena to model things that wererelatively difficult to represent.DISCUSSIONIn terms of evaluating the learning objectives, the first two — recognition andidentification — were lower-level. They were intended to help students learn themechanics of creating Arena models. These first two objectives were met, asdemonstrated by the students and as evaluated by the instructor. The thirdobjective required each student to think critically at a higher level by creatingand assessing the value of a process model within a “business” domain. Thebusiness domain was a nonprofit organization and its need to screen prospectivevolunteers. This objective also was met, and provided the instructor numerousopportunities to help students with their critical-thinking skills. It also madeclear to the instructor some of the students’ misunderstandings regardingbusiness process modeling.The fourth objective (which actually could be considered as multipleobjectives) was to evaluate the benefits of process automation and/or businessprocess re-engineering for a public sector organization or governance network.Requirements for the paper included describing an existing process andmodeling a possible improvement of that process. This assignment was intendedto help students make the transition from classroom examples to “real-world”applications. Evaluation by the instructor determined that the students did notadequately demonstrate this objective. They did not effectively connect theprocess-modeling activities to real processes, or to shared services and serviceorientedarchitecture. Perhaps the students lacked the “scaffolding” necessary toexperience the kinds of discovery that the instructor hoped they would share(Vygotsky, et al., 1978) on the potential of service-oriented architectures tofacilitate networks of strategic alliances. Because evaluation is one of the highestlevels of critical thinking, it is likely that more time should have been devotedto achieving this fourth objective.Journal of Public Affairs Education 391
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