MODELING OF PROCESSES FOR VIRTUAL AND DISTANCE EDUCATION

Nowadays, one of the problems that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) faces is to extend the coverage. Nevertheless, physical and human resources are limited in public HEIs. Undoubtedly, virtual and distance education is an alternative to expanding coverage in public HEIs, therefore, guaranteeing the quality of services offered under the e-Learning and b-Learning is a priority. This paper proposes an educational management model for courses in modalities mediated by Information Technology based on the modelling of processes and procedures under Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) [1]. The objective was to identify the processes involved in the design, construction and implementation of courses in semi-presential and online modalities in order to maintain an adequate level of quality in the training of students. The methodology considers the analysis of activities and actors involved as well as relationships between activities, in order to identify processes and finally model them with BPMN. Once documentation is produced, it represents a written or visual reference for queries, which reduces ambiguities in the development of activities. As a part of institution knowledge, this is a form of improvement in the technological, teaching and management practices. Finally, the process model is applied in the start-up of courses mediated by Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) during three trimesters. Online courses integrate educational resources which are assembled as learning objects in a modular way that facilitates their reuse. These also consider diverse learning activities, as accompaniment of student to guide him in his learning process. As a result, process documentation is generated, which encourages standardization. After three trimesters, seven courses in alternative modalities mediated by ICT were obtained. It is intended to reach courses taught 100% online, in order to take advantage of physical and human resources available to the Lerma Unit, as well as increasing student attendance.