Application of Business Process Management in Web-Based Education

This thesis deals with Business Process Management and its possible application in the field of Web-based Education and learning processes. To investigate these possibilities in practice, a tool that supports learning processes through Business Process Management has been developed. The thesis presents the software development process of that tool in detail. Thus, the thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part discusses the current state of Business Process Management in detail. It introduces concepts, technologies and tools to facilitate the Business Process Management by supporting the whole business process life cycle in a seamless way. For each phase of the process life cycle, that are, model, implement, execute, analysis, and optimize, emerging standards are presented which help manage quick changing business processes. The second part argues that Web-based Education deals with similar issues as Business Process Management. Moreover, learning processes have the same life cycle as business processes and can be treated like them. Thus, concepts and technologies that support Business Process Management can be applied. In addition, this part of the thesis also evaluates a Learning Process Management System to show the usefulness of this idea. Finally, it identifies missing tools in that system that can improve management of the learning process lifecycle. The last part of the thesis presents a complete software development process of one of such missing tools for the Learning Process Management System. This tool improves the modeling phase of the learning process life cycle.