Process Mining Tutorial
For our partner universities we provide slides and instructions for a process mining hands-on tutorial, based on our software Disco.
We have given this tutorial multiple times, and it has been used successfully at several universities already. It covers about 1—1,5 hours and is perfect for a single session on process mining. If you want to include a lecture on process mining in your BPM or information systems course, or a session in the context of a seminar, our tutorial is a great starting point.
The tutorial has the purpose to let students experience all phases of a process mining project “hands-on”. In our experience, it works great and makes the students interested and enthusiastic about the topic of process mining. The example scenario is based on a real purchasing process from an ERP system, which has been simplified for educational purposes.
Software
The tutorial makes use of our process mining software Disco.
Disco makes it easy and quick to get started with process mining. Beautiful process maps, process map animation, and powerful log filters help you to explore your process in an intuitive way. It allows students to experience the whole scope of a process mining project, including the choices that need to be made in the data interpretation phase. The tutorial is designed to cover a range of different process mining scenarios and leads to a success experience for the students.
Disco is fully compatible with the popular academic process mining toolkit ProM due to its support of the event log standards MXML (ProM 5 and ProM 6) and XES (ProM 6). Students can export event logs from Disco and further analyze them with ProM for more advanced courses.
License
We provide you all files and information for this tutorial under the "Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License".
This means that:
- You need to provide proper attribution to us as creators of this tutorial.
- You are not allowed to use this tutorial for commercial purposes.
- If you create a derivative of this tutorial, you must share it under the same terms as we do.
Presentation slides
This slide deck accompanies the tutorial, and provides step-by-step instructions for your students to follow along. These are the slides you can use as a lecturer during the tutorial.
Installation instructions
We provide instructions for setting up Disco on Windows and Mac OS X. It is a good idea to email these instructions to your students before the tutorial.
Event log
The event log used during the hands-on session.
Student handout
The instructions for your students to follow the hands-on session. You might want to print these for your students (see checklist below).
Pre-flight checklist for lecturers
Before the tutorial session, it is handy to make sure the following points are taken care of.
1. Try the tutorial yourself first
We recommend to read through the tutorial slides and follow the steps of the hands-on session for yourself first. If you have questions or problems, you can get in touch with us at support@fluxicon.com.
2. Make sure your students install the software
It is recommended to make sure your students install Disco upfront. Otherwise, you can expect 5—10 minutes at the beginning of the course to deal with the installation. We advise you to email your students the installation instructions (see above) well before the lecture.
We also recommend you include the example log for the session (see above) in the preparation email. It is also a good idea to have the example file available on a memory stick or an internal web page as a backup, because some students have trouble finding their copy when the tutorial begins.
3. Plan your session set-up
We have good experience with using two laptops and two projectors to simultaneously display the hands-on session instructions and actually demonstrate the current step in Disco on the screen. This also means that you need at least two people: One to follow the tutorial at the beamer and the other one to walk around and offer help.
In case you are presenting alone, we recommend to show the screenshots in the tutorial presentation for orientation while the students complete the current step with the help of the handout. The handout is generally useful because some students are slower and may otherwise be lost on the way.
So, you might consider to:
- Organize a second beamer, second laptop, and assistant.
- Print the handout instructions for the students.
Academic Partners
If your university is not listed here, but you think it should be, please get in touch with us at support@fluxicon.com!
info@fluxicon.com