The necessity of increasing the management efficiency of distributed knowledge-oriented systems of distance learning under quarantine restrictions requires the use of information technology, that provides displaying of system status and system management processes in real time [1]. Analysis and visualization of management processes avoid the psychological barrier and misunderstandings between the user and the developer of the information system, as well as reduce the cost of development, implementation, and maintenance of such complex systems [2][3][4].
The purpose of development is to present visual modeling methods of knowledge-oriented systems, as well as the development of a management system on the example of a linguistic school. During the analysis of the structure of the research object, key problems were identified and methods for their solution are offered, tools for optimizing management processes and ensuring functional and non-functional requirements to the system.
The novelty of the work is the presentation of systems analysis techniques, in accordance with international standards [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13], which, during the implementation in the process of information modeling for knowledge-oriented systems, provides visualization of management processes and simplifies the understanding of their structure and course.
The practical aspect is a comprehensive analysis of the structure and course of management processes of knowledge-oriented systems, avoiding misunderstandings in the tasks formulation and user requirements gathering, as well as reducing the cost of creating and operating management systems.
Basic user requirements for linguistic school process management system: language learning process control, electronic client registration, creation of client account, client activity monitoring, communication with the linguistic school, client financial account creation, automation of the payment process, linguistic school financial control. The result of the system creating is websites and mobile applications, the use of which should increase the efficiency and competitiveness of the linguistic school in the market of educational services. Such knowledge-oriented systems should transparently facilitate communication between customers and the company and, if desired, the use of loyalty status under loyalty programs.
A convenient way to enter a language school without the need for a personal visit to the institution, electronic document management, transparency of the recruitment process for language courses and their course, the possibility of statistical processing of client metadata (their age, gender, address, motivation to start courses, learning progress) activities, a list of the main effects of the management system implementation. The automated payment process allows you to constantly monitor unpaid receivables and the overall financial condition of the linguistic school. An important factor is to ensure competitiveness in the market of educational services through promotions and PR activities.
The language school operates as part of territorially dispersed branches and offers individual and group courses in five languages (English, French, German, Italian and Spanish). In the conditions of quarantine, the urgency of conducting online courses increases.
The guidance of the linguistic school set a task to automate the process of enrolling clients in courses. The linguistic school has full-time teachers, employment contracts, and part-time teachers. There is also an accountant in charge of the marketing and promotion department, secretariat staff, and technical staff (fig. 1).
The system is used through a mobile application or an Internet browser. This allows to communicate with users, register and exclude from the course, control payments, as well as receiving and processing customer comments. Teachers have access to accounts in the system, protected by a login and password received from the owner of the language school. School clients register in the Director Lecturers Secretariat
Marketing and promotion department IT department English German French Italian Spanish system independently. Their records are confirmed by name, surname, telephone number, and e-mail address. The customer of the system requires the support of a maximum 50 teachers, 150 students, and 3 owners.
System users are potential customers, current students, teachers and the school owner. Pupils and students who use mobile applications are a significant target group. Also, many clients use the services of the school on the recommendation of the employer or on their own initiative. The composition of teachers changes adaptively to the number of students.
The system provides users with the following capabilities: review the current offer of courses and teachers in order to compare with other schools and choose a course; registration and secure login to the system with access to personal data and the ability to perform all functions of the system; making payments in the application in order to increase efficiency and avoid cash transactions; commenting on the current functioning of the school, teachers and the atmosphere of classes. access of teachers to information about their courses, their participants and assessments, in order to control the course of the didactic process; flexible system of evaluation of the educational process and monitoring of the progress of knowledge acquisition. the owner of the language school has access to statistics on the number of students, the most
The context diagram shows (fig. 2) data streams of interaction with external objects in the system. Examples of such objects are the external components of the system, institutions, users. The diagram shows which data is entered into the system from the outside, which is processed inside the system, as well as which is output by the system to the outside.
Based on the formulated user requirements, the system management process was decomposed into two subprocesses: user registration for the course and financial calculations for training.
BPMN notation is used for graphical display and analysis of business processes in the system. A characteristic feature of BPMN-models is the unambiguous representation of Workflow-processes and ERP systems.
Figure 3 shows the BPMN model of user registration for the selected course. The result of the decomposition of the processes of the control system is the definition of two system subprocesses: enrollment in the course and payment [7], the composition of which for the two components of the processes are given in Tables 1 and 2. The tables show the following abbreviations of system actors: SE -an employee of the secretariat, ITE -an employee of the IT department, DBAdatabase administrator, BIS -the bank interaction subsystem, SO -school owner.
Matrix models of the general process of system management reflect two subprocesses defined by the customer: enrollment (fig. 4) and payment (fig. 5). This model allows visualizing the execution of individual system operations by the relevant departments on a time scale [6,7,9,14,15]. Each of the cells determines the type of system operation (DX), the unit in which it is performed (OY), the start time is shown in the upper left corner, the execution time -in the upper right corner, the info exchange time -above the arrows, and the system network, which are indicated by arrows.
Gantt's models allow to visualize in the time scale of system operations in each of the subprocesses (fig. 6, 7).
The "network graph" model (fig. 8, 9) is a basic, derivative of Gantt's model [4,9,14], allows to pass to UML-modeling and represents such basic system parameters, as times of the beginning and the end of system operations, their performance in units, as well as the structure of the system and communication channels.
A combined time model (fig. 10, 11) is used to estimate the total computational load of the control information system [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. However, this graph does not show the units in which individual system operations are performed.
The process was simulated using the online environment BPSimulator, located at http://www.bpsimulator.com [16]. The following is a model built to simulate the control process (fig. 14) based on previous information models and a simulator-generated report (fig. 15). The simulation results allow to evaluate the performance of the control system software and determine the average execution time of the process [17].
Based on the simulation results, the developer is able to perform visual modeling of business processes, identify "narrow" areas of productivity, assess the time and cost of operations, select and justify the best option for organizing the management process.
Based on the developed visualization methods of processes functioning in difficult control systems the bases and methods of modeling which have allowed to display a course of processes and to carry out the management of an information system in real-time are defined. Visualization of management processes has avoided mutual misunderstandings between customers and developers of information systems, as well as reduced costs for the development, implementation, and maintenance of distributed management systems.
The goal of the project was achieved -to model the management system, as well as to develop a simplified example of models of the management system of student learning processes.
The implementation of the system allowed to optimize costs, improve the quality of services, and automate management processes, as well as improve the exchange of information between individual departments and move to an electronic management system. The introduction of changes in the system led to an increase in the competitiveness of the school, and the functionality of the system was adapted to market standards. The implementation of the developed models is designed to create a real competition of the language school by solving the existing shortcomings of similar systems. The economic advantage of the services offered by the language school is the scaling effect. The more students participate in the course, the more teachers provide tuition, saving money on teaching materials and teacher pay. Thanks to pre-registration for the courses, the analyst can assess the real demand for the course and hire the required number of teachers, paying in the appropriate amounts.