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19.04.2021

Press release

Process Mining: Online course provides up-to-date basic knowledge in two weeks

A new online course from Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) explains how business processes can be analyzed on the basis of collected event data from IT systems. The free two-week educational offering is entitled: "A Step-by-Step Introduction to Process Mining." The course, offered in English, starts on May 5 on the IT learning platform openHPI. Registration is available online at: https://open.hpi.de/courses/processmining2021  

"The goal is to give professionals from management, consulting and information technology a common understanding of the basics of this complex technology," says Prof. Mathias Weske, head of HPI's Business Process Management department. Weske is leading the free course together with Prof. Henrik Leopold, associate professor for Data Science and Business Intelligence at Kühne Logistics University (KLU).

Both scientists want to introduce participants to the basic concepts and techniques of process mining. The aim is to facilitate communication between the stakeholders involved in business process improvement projects.

Recognizing and evaluating variants of business processes

"Process mining is used today not only for analyzing business processes, but also increasingly in logistics and healthcare," explains computer scientist Weske. In many cases, he says, the objective is to identify and quantify weak points and different variants in business processes.

In course week 1, Weske and his professor colleague Leopold will present an exemplary business process, and examine event data that is generated during its execution and transferred in a suitable format to so-called event logs. From this logged data, as presented by the course instructors, the actual process flow can then be reconstructed and made visible.

Course week 2 is primarily devoted to the question of how process mining software can use this as a basis for detecting deviations from target processes and possible problems involving compliance with rules and regulations. The HPI scientists also explain how process mining helps us to find out why specific decisions were  made in a business process and what  factors determine the overall duration of real processes.

Participants who watch all the instructional videos, complete the self-tests and do the homework will need about three hours for each course week, as estimated by the course instructors. The instructors hope for intensive discussions between teachers and learners in the online course forum. Participants who score more than half of the possible points will receive a certificate from the internationally renowned institute.

Background to the openHPI interactive education platform

The Hasso Plattner Institute launched its interactive Internet offerings as a pioneer among European scientific institutions on September 5, 2012 - on the platform https://open.hpi.de. Since then, it has offered free access to current university knowledge from the rapidly changing fields of information technology and innovation. So far, this has mainly been done in German, English and Chinese. In the fall of 2017, however, openHPI also offered online translation and subtitling of a course in eleven world languages for the first time. Meanwhile, more than 867,000 course enrollments have been registered on openHPI. More than 255,000 people from 180 countries belong to the platform's permanent user base. The platform continues to enjoy rapid growth. For particularly successful participants in its "Massive Open Online Courses," or MOOCs for short, the institute has issued around 95,000 certificates to date. The openHPI annual program for 2021 includes numerous offerings for IT beginners and experts. The 70 courses offered in the past can also still be used in self-study - also free of charge. In addition, students can now receive credit points at their university for completing openHPI courses. Those who want to watch video lessons from the courses while on the go , even if no Internet connection is guaranteed (for example, on an airplane), can also use the openHPI app for Android mobile devices, iPhones or iPads.