Geospatial Data Analysis and Economic Evaluation of Companies for Sustainable Business Development—An Interdisciplinary Teaching Approach

Abstract

Sustainable business development is connected with environmental impact, natural resources and people. This makes the location a crucial factor for the operation of a business. Therefore, a combination of both geo-spatial data analysis and traditional economic evaluation of companies are advantageous. The consideration of geolocation is beneficial with calculations for process optimizations and cost efficiency as well as ecological and social compliance. Since integrating geospatial methods into economics is a rather new interdisciplinary approach, it seems necessary to establish innovative teaching concepts for the education of experts in this field. Creating and testing such new teaching concepts based on playful learning is the idea behind the ERASMUS+ project SPATIONOMY (“Spatial exploration of economic data—methods of interdisciplinary analytics”). An interdisciplinary team of teachers educates an interdisciplinary assembled group of international students. Hence, the fields of economics/business informatics and geography/geomatics are represented by participants and staff. Based on initial lessons about basic knowledge in the connected subjects, the central elements of the teaching concept are case studies and a simulation game, each with interdisciplinary challenges. The principal aim of the project—to educate students to become specialists in spatial economics—could be achieved. This paper aims to present, evaluate and discuss the methodological approach as well as the results from the application of the simulation game. The results show that the gamification of education is worthy. Simulation game-based learning appears to be more playful and experiential compared to traditional teaching approaches. Further research in this area should focus on the students’ engagement evaluation and attitude towards sustainable behaviour in their own business.

The Cross-Postgraduate Training Mode Driven by Intelligent Signal Processing Technology: Taking the Major of Finance as an Example

“…Many economic and social problems and conflicts have also become extremely complex, showing the characteristics of the intersection of various fields, which transcend the boundaries of traditional single disciplines, and require a new vision of interdisciplinary to seek solutions [14,15]. Various changes in today's era indicate that the cultivation of compound and innovative talents are of great significance, which means that the talent training model should be reformed from an interdisciplinary and multifield perspective [16,17]. Postgraduate education is an important part of higher education, which should adapt to the times, trends, actively respond to the call of interdisciplinary, break professional boundaries, integrate disciplinary resources, realize cooperation between departments, etc.…”