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International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Research Volume 2, Issue 1, June 2015 doi: 10.14355/ijmser.2015.0201.02
Design of the Dynamic Teaching Management Platform Based on Workflow Technology Qiang Hu School of Information Science and Technology, Qingdao University of Science and Technology, Qingdao 266061, China huqiang200280@163.com Abstract Many scheduling tasks are involved in the processes of teaching management. However, the business processes of these tasks in the teaching management is frequently changed, the traditional teaching management cannot deal with such transformation for their stationary design architecture. To resolve the above problem, the dynamic teaching management platform based on workflow technology is designed in this paper. The dynamic teaching management platform is guided by a workflow module built by the process model, data model and organization model. Logic Petri nets are adopted to represent the process models while the teaching management tasks and the business process are mapped as their transitions and the logic transformation, respectively. The documents and forms handled in the teaching management platform are described in the data model. Different users can obtain the management functions from the organization model. The proposed teaching management can conveniently realize the dynamic process transformation of teaching tasks and provide an efficient service for the daily teaching work. It can also reduce the cost of teaching management. Keywords Workflow; Logic Petri Net; Process Model; Teaching Managements
Introduction There are a lot of teaching tasks needing to be scheduled in the processes of teaching management and these tasks are often executed with specific business logics. For example, when a postgraduate student selects a tutor, he or she may need to submit a request and provide to the expected teacher, then the tutor will select some students in all the claimers, the rest of the postgraduate students need to guide to select other tutors who have no student to select. The current teaching managements are developed with a static architecture and their business processes are designed with a built-in way. So they cannot adjust their business processes when some processes are not suitable for the routine teaching management. Some new business processes may be occurred when the new teaching tasks are generated. However, the new business processes cannot be added into the teaching management since the architectures of current teaching managements were hard to be changed. Aiming at dynamically deploying the business process in a teaching management, the method to construct the teaching management based on workflow technology is proposed in this paper. By introducing the workflow technology, the business processes are extracted from the teaching management. We only need to predefine the teaching tasks involved in the teaching management and the business process can be dynamically set when they are needed, thus different business processes can be customized according to the requirement. The main contributions of this paper are as follows.
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A dynamic architecture of the teaching management is provided and the business process in the teaching management can be flexibly deployed.
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The business processes, datas or documents and the users’ information are distinctly separated by adding a workflow module in the teaching management.
International Journal of Management Science and Engineering Research Volume 2 Issue 1, June 2015
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The business process is modelled by the logic Petri net and it is easily navigated from the triggering rules of the logic Petri net. Compared with the traditional methods in the workflow system, the scheduling complexity is greatly reduced by introducing the logic Petri net in the process model.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the model method of workflow used in describing the business processes. Section 3 introduces the navigation method of workflow engine. Section 4 introduces the design project of dynamic teaching management platform. Section 5 concludes this paper. Model Method Based on the Workflow Workflow technology can abstract the business flows from the application procedures. The theories about the workflow had procured plentiful and substantial progeny. A workflow model is used to design, deploy and navigate a business process in the teaching management. The workflow model is divided into three parts: process model, data model and organization model. The process model is used to describe the task flow in the teaching management while the data model is used to describe the data objects. The users are classified and supervised in the organization model. Now we give the detailed interpretations of process model, data model and organization model, respectively. Process Model Process model is used to describe the business flow in the dynamic teaching management system. The process model provides the information about the tasks and their transfer relations. The process model is defined as a logic Petri net in the teaching management, formally represented as a 6-tuple of LPN=(P, T, F, I, O, M):
P is a finite set of places;
T includes three subsets of transitions, i.e. T=TD∪TI∪TO , where TD denotes a set of traditional transitions, TI denotes a set of logic input transitions, and TO denotes a set of logic output transitions;
F is a flow relation, i.e. a set of directed arcs F⊆(P×T) ∪ (T×P);
I is a mapping function from a logic input transition to a logic input expression, i.e. ∀t∈TI, I(t)= fI;
is a mapping function from a logic output transition to a logic output expression, i.e. ∀t∈TO, O(t)= fO;
M: P→{0, 1} is a marking function, ∀p∈P, M(p) denotes the token count in p.
Here we use TD to represent the teaching tasks in the teaching management, the node in TD is restricted by the attribute TASK where TASK={ Process_Id, Task_Id, Task_Name, Description, Task_Type, Pre_Node, Post_Node, Task_State, Invoked_App, Task_Time, Task_Roles, DataObject_List }. The meaning of each item in TASK is the ID, name, function description, type, precursor node, subsequent node, the sate, the invoking procedure, the role list and the data object of the tasks. Data Model All the information in the dynamic teaching management system is modeled by the data model. The datas in a workflow are divided into the common datas and private datas. The datas in the workflow are represented by the place in the logic Petri net, i.e., the item P in LPN. The common datas can be visited by all the tasks in the workflow while the private datas are only accessed by its subordinated tasks. The representations of datas in the workflow are the forms and variables. The data items are the basic unit to compose the data models and defined as follows. DATAITEM={Data_Id, Data_Name, Data_Type, Data_Region, Data_Val, Data_IniVal, Data_UI }. The meaning of each item in DATAITEM is the ID, name, type, work region, value, the initial value and user interface of data item. The form is the main data container in the workflow and it can be defined as follows. FORM={Form_ID, Form_Caption, Form_Size, Form_Color, Form_ItemSet, Form_OperateSet }. The meaning of each item in FORM is the ID, caption, size, color, data item set and operation set.
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The datas in the workflow are abstracted into the places with different names in the process model. All the data s in the teaching management must be abided by the restrict rules of DATAITME. The datas are obtained when a place in the process model obtains a token. Organization Model Different users are entrusted the diverse privileges in the dynamic teaching management system. The organization model is used to manage the users in the workflow system. By restricting the authority of different users, the organization model can improve the safety of teaching management platform. The organization model is defined as ORG=<Data _Id，R，O> where Data_Id is the ID of data items, R is the roles which can operate the data items and O is the operation of the roles. O={open, invisible , read, write}, i.e., the authority of data items can be divided into four levels: open, invisible, read and write. Process Navigation The business process of the teaching task is totally modelled only after the process model, data model and organization model are constructed. The teaching task is in the working state when the process model is navigated. Since the process model is constructed by the logic Petri net, the workflow is navigated by the firing rules of LPN. The firing rules of the transitions in LPN are defined as follows. (1) ∀t∈TD , if ∀p∈•t: M(p)=1, t is enabled. If t is enabled, it can fire and a new marking M′ is generated from current marking M, denoted by M[t>M′, where: M ( p ) − 1, p ∈ •t − t • M = '( p ) M ( p ) + 1, p ∈ t • − • t M ( p ), otherwise;
(2) ∀t∈TI, I(t)=fI, if fI|M=•T•, i.e., all input places of t satisfy the input expression fI at M, t is enabled. If t is enabled, it can fire and generate a new marking M′, where: M ( p ) − 1, p ∈ •t M= '( p ) M ( p ) + 1, p ∈ t • M ( p ), otherwise;
(3) ∀t∈TO, O(t)=fO, if ∀p∈•t: M(p)=1, t is enabled. If t is enabled, it can fire and a new marking M′ is generated and ∃S⊆ t•, S must satisfy fO|M′=•T•; M ( p ) − 1, p ∈ •t M '( p )= M ( p ) + 1, p ∈ S M ( p ), otherwise;
Dynamic Teaching Management Based on Workflow In this section, we present a model platform to build the dynamic teaching management by the workflow technology. The model platform is constructed based on the logic Petri net. The logic Petri nets have been successfully applied to model and analyze the E-Commerce workflows, Web service processes, the real-time cooperative systems, and the inter-organizational workflow systems. It can also efficiently describe the temporal properties, batch processing function and passing value indeterminacy. To dynamically realize the construction of business processes in the teaching management, we used the VC++ 6.0 as the development tool to build a workflow model platform. Different model buttons are set in the tool bar of the platform. The user can use this platform to set the task flows in the teaching management or edit the existing task flows. Thus, the workflow model platform integrated into the teaching management can greatly improve the flexibility in modelling or resetting the business processes.
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Fig.1 showed a business process of adjusting the course in the teaching management. Graphically, the circles in the model represent the places in the logic Petri net while the narrow rectangles represent the transitions. The teaching tasks are modeled as the transitions and the places are used to link different transitions. Especially, the circle with a dot is utilized to identify the start of a business process. The logic expression appending on the logic transition is used to control the business flow in the teaching management. The teaching process in Fig.1 initiates from the submitting application and then the course group needs to approve it. Once the application is approved by the course group, the submitted application will be simultaneously authorized by the administrators of the department and school. The final result of this business process will be sent to the teacher who submitted the application when the administrators of the department and school had approved his application.
FIG. 1 THE WORKFLOW MODEL OF THE TEACHING MANAGEMENT
The transitions entitled with “and-split” and “and-join” are the logic transitions, they are used to control the task flow in the process model. The logic expression “p3∧p4” means the transitions “depart_approve” and “school_approve” will be executed simultaneously. The logic expression “p5∧p6” means that only the transitions “depart_approve” and “school_approve” are completely executed, the transition “note_result” can be executed. Conclusions The current teaching managements cannot dynamically set or change the business flow in the management of teaching process for their stationary architectures. The teaching management needs to be redesigned in the level of codes once the existing task flow needs exchanging. To improve the flexibility of the teaching management, we introduce the workflow technology into the teaching management to build the dynamic teaching management. Compared with the traditoal teaching management, the task flows in the teaching processes are abstracted and designed independently in the proposed method. Hence, the dynamic teaching management possesses the following advantages.
The existed task flows can be modified by the users to adapt the changing teaching management scenario.
The new task flows can be easily designed and deployed when needed.
Technologically, the Logic Petri net is used to model the process model of the workflow module, the data and roles
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in the teaching management are administrated by the data model and organization model, respectively. The dynamic teaching management is developed by VC++ 6.0 and it can greatly improve the flexibility of the teaching management. Since the teaching tasks can be dynamically set and the existed business flow changed in our proposed method, the users need not purchase the multifunctional teaching management. Thus, it can greatly reduce the cost of teaching management. ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was financially supported by the 2014 teaching reform project and the startup fund of the doctorate research in the Qingdao University of Science and Technology, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under grant 61472228. REFERENCES
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