A BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT BASED

VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Customised Learning Paths

Ayodeji Adesina and Derek Molloy

School of Electronic Engineering, Dublin City University, Glasnevin, Dublin 9, Republic of Ireland

Keywords: Customised learning paths, Competence-based assessment, Virtual learning environment, Business process

management, Learning workflow.

Abstract: Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) such as Moodle help facilitate the management of educational

courses for students, in particular by helping lecturers with course administration and students manage their

own learning. However, problems still remain; in particular, e-learning environments provide a “one size

fits all” approach to the learning process, where each student must follow the same learning path through

course materials, regardless of their prior knowledge, learning requirements or of possible learning

disabilities. This paper presents the development of an e-learning system based on Business Process

Management (BPM) concepts, principles and technologies, which are used by the enterprise business

community for managing workflow. The developed system allows for the creation of customised learning

paths through course materials in a blended pedagogical approach within a custom VLE.

1 INTRODUCTION

e-Learning has in no doubt had a profound effect on

the way training and education is delivered. In

academia, e-learning is becoming vital for distance

education, and often seen as complementary to the

classroom environment, where it can help to

strengthen the traditional pedagogy. It has been

determined that different learners browsing and

studying the same e-learning materials will generally

show different learning behaviours according to

their personal characteristics (Chuang, H., and Shen,

C., 2008). This is because learners tend to meander

through different paths through learning content.

Although learners can learn to some degree

independently in an e-learning environment, they

have to determine “what to learn” and “where to go”

at each learning node/decision, often consuming

mental and physical efforts during learning that

causes cognitive overload and results in student

anxiety (Lin and Wu, 2007). Within the academic

environment, a Virtual Learning Environment

(VLE) (e.g. Blackboard, Moodle etc) is a software

system that allows for the implementation of e-

Learning. However, one of the limitations of

existing VLEs is that they provide a “one size fits

all” approach to the learning process through the

course materials, as each student must follow the

same learning path regardless of their prior

knowledge, learning requirements or of any learning

disability. This paper presents the design and

implementation of an e-learning system that allows:

a course writer to draw and configure using a

graphical interface the paths possible through course

materials; the course writer can see the statistical

progress of a learner versus other learners, or the

statistical progress of the entire cohort.

2 CUSTOMISED LEARNING

PATH

Within the literature it is widely recognised that an

important component of success in distance

education is related with the ability to customise the

learning process for the specific needs of a given

learner (Colace et al., 2005). In general context,

personalised learning is a potential approach to

meeting future educational needs and may provide

new alternatives that foster learning capacity among

individual learners (Bentley and Miller, 2004).

Jarvela (2006) states that personalisation of learning

has become imperative, where personalisation of

365

Adesina A. and Molloy D..

A BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT BASED VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT - Customised Learning Paths.

DOI: 10.5220/0003273203650368

In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2011), pages 365-368

ISBN: 978-989-8425-49-2

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

learning does not purely mean individualised

learning, nor is it the opposite of social learning, but

as an approach in educational policy and practice

whereby every student matters - equalising learning

opportunities in terms of learning skills and

motivation to learn.

Heller et al. (2006) give a definition that

“customised learning aims at tailoring the teaching

to individual need, interest and aptitude so as to

ensure that every learner achieves and reaches the

highest standards possible.” The decision to find

alternative paths for learners raises a fundamental

question as to whether the same expected learning

outcome can be achieved by learners following

personalised learning paths, supplemented with

contingent teaching, where the lecturer does not

have a fixed linear "script" but rather a diagnostic

branching tree where audience responses to early

questions determine what is performed next (Draper,

2004). Wolf (1995) also advocated this approach

through Competence-Based Assessment and define

it as: “A form of assessment that is derived from a

specification of a set of outcomes; that so clearly

states both the outcomes - general and specific - that

assessors, students and interested third parties can

all make reasonably objective judgements with

respect to student achievement or non-achievement

of these outcomes; and that certifies student

progress on the basis of demonstrated achievement

of these outcomes”. This definition encapsulates the

important components of competence-based

assessment; emphasis on outcomes; specifically,

multiple outcomes, each distinctive and separately

considered. For creating personalised learning paths

and efficiently uncovering the knowledge or

competence level of a learner, prerequisite structures

on LOs and assessment problems, or on skills

underlying those entities, are extremely useful

(Steiner and Albert, 2008). Heller et al. stated that

among the benefits of a personalised learning

environment is the fact that the time taken to learn is

reduced, and that learner’s retention is improved.

3 BUSINESS PROCESS

MANAGEMENT BASED

VIRTUAL LEARNING

ENVIRONMENT (BBVLE)

3.1 Business Process Management

(BPM)

BPM refers to: aligning processes with the organisa-

tion’s strategic goals; designing and implementing

process architectures; establishing process

measurement systems that are aligned with

organisational goals; and, educating and organising

managers to manage processes effectively (Bosilj-

Vuksic et al., 2005). It ensures continued

improvement of business performance by managing

the processes and their components: organisational

structure, policies, business rules, regulations,

human resources, and ICT. BPM refers to: aligning

processes with the organisation’s strategic goals;

designing and implementing process architectures;

establishing process measurement systems that are

aligned with organisational goals; and, educating

and organising managers to manage processes

effectively (Bosilj-Vuksic et al., 2005). It ensures

continued improvement of business performance by

managing the processes and their components:

organisational structure, policies, business rules,

regulations, human resources, and ICT.

Figure 1 illustrates the lifecycle of a BPM system

right from the inception of a business concept. A

business concept is: modelled in a business

modeller; implemented and deployed in a business

run-time engine; monitored in a business monitoring

activity system (e.g. dashboard); and,

analysis/optimisation is performed based on

feedback for continuous improvements.

Figure 1: End-to-end life cycle of BPM.

The purpose of exploring BPM is to manage

learning processes in an automated manner and to

ingrain customised learning paths within a learning

process workflow model. Therefore, a BPM-based

VLE solution is a software system that uses BPM

concepts and technologies to enable the full learning

process to be defined in a computer language,

thereby, allowing possible multiple learning paths.

3.2 Design of Customised Learning

Paths

The paper focuses on the design and implementation

of customised learning paths in a learning process

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through course materials using the following BPM

technologies:

Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN).

BPMN is a core enabler of BPM. It is a standardised

graphical notation for drawing/modelling business

processes in a workflow system. BPMN elements

are made up of simple diagrams that use a small set

of graphical elements. Figure 2 shows the core sets

of BPMN elements, which fall into four categories:

1) Flow objects: These include event (i.e. start, end

and intermediate events) activity (i.e. task) and

gateway (i.e. a diamond shape and will determine

different decisions). 2) Connection objects: This

allows flow objects to be connected together. 3)

Swimlanes: These serve as a mechanism to organise

activities and responsibilities on a process diagram.

4) Artifacts: These allow developers to bring some

more information into the model/diagram. In this

way the model/diagram becomes more readable.

Figure 2: Core set of BPMN elements.

In our BPM-based VLE, BPMN is used to model

learning processes/activities. The course writer is

able to draw out the mode and extent of a workflow

that enables adaptive customised learning paths

through the course materials.

Java Process Definition Language (JPDL). BMPN

is not executable; therefore, it needs to be converted

into a computer executable language. JPDL is a

JBoss process orchestration language that is

executable in a workflow engine. It is an intuitive

process language that expresses business processes

both in graphical and XML form. To bind tasks

together, jPDL has an extensible control flow

mechanism. The BPMN model designed by the

course writer is converted into a JPDL. The

generated JPDL is an XML that can be deployed

into workflow engine and access by any BPM client.

4 IMPLEMENTATION

AND RESULTS

Figure 3 shows a screen grab of our BPM-based

VLE implementation (all web-based). The figure

shows the learning interface for students and a

monitoring interface that allows the lecturer to view

learners' progress. The system uses information

collected during introductory tests to ascertain that a

learner meets any prerequisites. Also, during the

learning process, as the learner begins to navigate

through each topic, the system is able to infer

learner’s knowledge using the results from the

learner’s competence-based assessment (mastery

level) on a specific topic; this inference is a basis for

building the individual learning path for each

learner. The implementation of a customised

learning path in a learning process within the system

encompasses an approach where a general LO is the

ultimate goal but individual learner’s learning

behaviour within a learning process determines the

learning path in achieving the desired LO.

Figure 3: Student/lecturer BPM-based VLE web interface.

4.1 Implementation and Deployment

of Customised Learning Path

Using the basic BPMN elements mentioned

previously, an example customised learning path is

modelled in BPMN as shown in Figure 5. The swim

lanes in the overall diagram represent the activities

and responsibilities between learner and lecturer.

Learning through each topic in the course material is

modelled as task lists that need to be fulfilled by a

learner. Competence-based assessment in this

example is modelled as a simple question to test a

learner’s competency on particular topics. The JPDL

version of our modelled customised learning path is

deployed in JBoss JBPM runtime engine.

A BUSINESS PROCESS MANAGEMENT BASED VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

- Customised Learning Paths

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4.2 Monitoring Instance of a Learning

Path on a Dashboard Console

Dashboard provides real-time alerts based on

business metrics when business processes are in

need of intervention. In our current implementation,

the major benefit of this added functionality is for

the detection of lack of progression (of the

individual or cohort). The course writer can act in

real-time using the monitored data, rather than

detecting problems at semester-end/major

assessments.

Figure 5: BPMN diagram of a customised learning

process.

Figure 6: Learning path of a struggling learner captured,

monitored and given support by lecturer (Path followed in

red).

The chain of the deployed learning process can

be viewed by the lecturer within a BPM dashboard

as shown in Figure 5 (if no learning process is

invoked). Figure 6 captures the learning footprint of

a learner’s learning path that is struggling through

the course note and needs supports.

5 CONCLUSIONS

In this paper we have presented a software

framework and prototype system implementation

that uses BPM technology to allow course writers to

define and model customised learning workflows,

which can contain multiple learning paths. The

drawback and disadvantage of our BPM approach

lies in its complexity. However, as the open source

BPM frameworks, on which we rely, are only

beginning to gain traction we expect the level of

complexity to reduce over time through the addition

of more assistive and visual design tools.

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