Objective
Business process management (BPM) is a holistic management approach focusing on aligning all aspects of an organization with needs and desires of clients. It promotes business effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility and integration with technology. BPM attempts to improve processes continuously. It can therefore be described as a “process optimization process.” It is argued that BPM enables organizations to be more efficient, more effective and more capable of change than a functionally focused, traditional hierarchical management approach. In this context, the main objective of this course is to enable students apply the basic principles of BPM to learning processes or learning-oriented organizations under study. To this end students are taught how to discover, define, design, model, execute, monitor, optimize and improve (or re-engineer) learning processes. In addition, the enabler of business (learning) processes automation, namely workflow technology, is presented along with its usage in the context of e-learning systems. Within the course, students are expected to perform laboratory exercises using well known BPM tools.
Course Contents
- Principles of BPM and their application to learning processes (learning process definition and design, intra-organizational and inter-organizational learning processes, workflows).
- Workflow-based systems in educational environments (correspondence of educational environments to workflow dimensions, course structure as workflows, flexible learning paths definition, learning activities and roles definition).
- Workflow management systems (WfMS) and their application in implementing learning workflows, metamodels, buildtime and runtime environment of learning workflows, learning processes and activities life cycles, interaction between learning workflow participants).
- Workflow management systems standards, generic structure of a WfMS, learning workflow reference models.
- Syntactical rules of processes, course titles presentations (sequential, parallel routing, union, separation, iteration).
- Workflow-based e-learning systems, flexible e-learning environments, workflow technology incorporation in e-learning environments, pedagogical issues.
- Examples of workflow-based e-learning systems derived from the international bibliography.
- Elaboration of a case study and laboratory exercises using Oracle BPM Studio.
- Leymann F, Roller D (2000): Production Workflow: Concepts and Techniques, Prentice Hall.
- Van der Aalst, W.M.P. & Van Hee K.M. (2002): Workflow Management: Models, Methods and Systems, MIT Press.
- Smith H, Fingar P (2003): Business Process Management (BPM): The Third Wave, Meghan-Kiffer Press.
- Fischer L (2009): 2009 BPM and Workflow Handbook: Spotlight on Government, Future Strategies Inc.
- Weske M (2010): Business Process Management: Concepts, Languages, Architectures, Springer.
- Kock N (2007): Encyclopedia of E-Collaboration, IGI Global.
- Khan B (2005): Managing E-Learning Strategies: Design, Delivery, Implementation and Evaluation, Information Science Publishing.