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Business process management systems from various vendors are used by companies around the globe. Most of these systems allow for the full or partial automation of business processes by ensuring that tasks and data are presented to the right person at the right time during process execution. However, almost all established BPMS employ the activity-centric process support paradigm, in which the various forms, i.e., the main way for users to input data into the process, have to be created by hand. Furthermore, traditional activity-centric process management systems are limited in their flexibility as all possible execution variants have to be taken into account by the process modeler. Therefore, large amounts of research have gone into developing alternative process support paradigms, with a large focus on enabling more flexibly executable processes. This article takes one of these paradigms, object-aware process management, and presents the concepts we developed while researching the possibility of bringing the power and flexibility of non-activity-centric process support paradigms to the people that matter: the end-users working with the processes. The contribution of this article are the concepts, ideas, and lessons learned during the development and evaluation of the PHILharmonicFlows runtime user interface, which allows for the generation of an entire user interface, complete with navigation and forms, based on an object-aware process model. This novel approach allows for the generation of entire information systems, complete with data storage, process logic, and now fully functional user interfaces in a fully generic fashion from data-centric object-aware process models.

With the rise of data-centric process management paradigms, interdependent processes, such as artifacts or object lifecycles, form a business process through their interactions. Coordination processes may be used to coordinate these interactions, guiding the overall business process towards a meaningful goal. A coordination process model specifies coordination constraints between the interdependent processes in terms of semantic relationships. At run-time, these coordination constraints must be enforced by a coordination process instance. As the coordination of multiple interdependent processes is a complex endeavor, several challenges need to be fulfilled to achieve optimal process coordination. For example, processes must be allowed to run asynchronously and concurrently, taking their complex relations into account. This paper contributes the operational semantics of coordination processes, which enforces the coordination constraints at run-time. Coordination processes form complex structures to adequately represent processes and their relations, specifically supporting many-to-many relationships. Based on these complex structures, markings and process rules allow for the flexible enactment of the interdependent processes while fulfilling all challenges. Coordination processes represent a sophisticated solution to the complex problem of coordinating interdependent, concurrently running processes.

This study provides information regarding the validity of the regression model for the American College Testing Program assessment (ACT), incorporating high school course grades and ACT test scores, for predicting the first-year college grade point averages (GPAs) of ACT-tested special-needs students. The sample of special-tested students used in this study was pooled across all postsecondary institutions participating in ACT's prediction research service over a 3-year period. Special-tested students were analyzed by diagnosed disability, test package, and extended time guideline separately and in combinations of test package and extended time guideline within diagnosis. The results from an overall group of 2,959 students reveal that special-needs tested students' first-year college GPAs were slightly over-predicted. The correlations between predicted and actual GPAs varied by combinations analyzed, and were largest for students diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Appendixes contain tables showing predicted and earned GPAs and a request form for special-needs testing. (Contains six tables, two appendix tables, and five references.) (Author/SLD)

This study investigated the nature of score gains for 282,231 examinees who took the American College Testing Program Assessment (ACT Assessment) at least twice prior to graduation from high school. The primary objective of this study was to investigate and document the typical changes in test scores for examinees who elect to retest. A second objective was to determine whether any particular group of examinees obtains systematically higher or lower mean gains. Analyses were conducted for gains from first to second, second to third, and third to fourth testing. It was found that the mean gain from first to second testings was slightly higher than the mean gain from second to third testings, which was slightly higher than the mean gain from third to fourth testings. Mean gains consistently decreased as previous test scores increased. Differences in mean gains between males and females, and among all racial/ethnic groups were very small. Results are also presented that can be used to estimate the probability that an examinee with some given test scores will obtain a score increase of some desired level. (Contains 11 tables, 3 figures, and 4 references.) (Author/SLD)