Week 5 is about ABAP Dictionary. Student need to know the real purpose of ABAP Dictionary before they can go further in writing ABAP programs that use ABAP Dictionary to access the database. In practical sense, you would need to use the objects that you created in ABAP Dictionary in your ABAP program. In Week 4, I explained briefly about ABAP Dictionary. In Week 5, it is going to be hands on. The lab activities enable students to experience ABAP Dictionary. The material that I used in the lab is the the Unit 1 and Unit 2 of the BC430 ABAP Dictionary course in SAP. I do not know whether this course still exist or not. A quick check. Wow! BC430 course still exists. Check out https://training.sap.com/course/bc430-abap-dictionary-classroom-015-us-en/. Lucky students! This BC430 course has a prerequisite which is BC400 ABAP Workbench. That course exists too. Check out https://training.sap.com/course/bc400-abap-workbench-foundations-classroom-016-us-en/. EISD course in UTP is a combination of these 2 SAP courses. Students learn both the Dictionary and the Workbench. Because of we are tied up with the 14 weeks, then I cannot show them all. But, I think the skills that they learn in this course is sufficient to jump start their career in case they are going into this direction.
Unit 1 is about introduction to ABAP Dictionary i.e what is all about and the functions in ABAP Dictionary, definition of data objects etc. In the lab, students had the hands on in defining data elements, domain and how these two objects are used in an ABAP program. They were minor hiccups in which the material that they are referring to i.e BC430 exercises had some minor differences with the IDES system that they were using. But those were really minor.
I think for a first time user of ABAP Dictionary and to actually use it to create data elements and data objects, the students did okay. Students should not feel afraid to try out or make mistakes. That is how the students learn from it. Students have to develop programs that demonstrate the use of this data elements and domain. The data elements were used as types for the objects in the program i.e name, assets and liabilities. Some programs were not working because of the name used for the data elements were typed incorrectly or the data elements were not activated. It is important for the data objects to be activated. Save, Check Syntax and Activate. These are the three things that students need to do for an object or program.
The lecture is about recapping the things we learn/did this week. I gave them a quiz in which the quiz was an open note quiz (not open book or open Google). Students can look at their own notes and other friends' notes. What the students were doing is actually comparing notes. If a student feels that their friends write really good notes, copy them. If both of them don't write notes, then the should be doing something about it.
Coursework: Activities Greatest Hits!
In the lecture, I briefly talked about the coursework. One new component of the coursework is Assignment 3. This assignment 3 involves
selecting 5 lab programs that a student has written and explain the programs. I basically want to encourage students to complete the activities in the lab. I call this
Assignment 3 Activities Greatest Hits! (Hahaha. I am so impressed with myself right now!. Coming up with such a lame name for an assignment. Wanted to add...."covering all your favorites!" but I guess that is just too much and kind of overdoing it). Well, assignments should not be daunting or terrifying. At least it sounds like really fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment