2.3.4 The contract team
Are you always the quiet one when it comes to group discussion? This unit will help you improve your working relationships with other people in groups of three or more. This unit also deals with project life cycles, project management and the role of the leader.
4.1 Beginnings Systems engineering has its roots in three linked strands of thinking: the concepts of systems science, engineering and public policy problem resolution. The first of these can be traced back to the work of von Bertalanffy (1968, pp. 8–15, 96–98) and others during the 1920s and 1930s but received a significant impetus when, in 1954, the Society for General Systems Theory was established at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The society later cha
References The Big Bang and the Creation of Earth 4.19 Technologies and explicit knowledge continued The following examples give a taste of what is now making the transition from research laboratories into commercial products. Large hierarchical information structures are extremely common, whether in libraries, organisational charts or websites. Displaying such large structures is a challenge, and since the user soon runs out of screen space, navigating them can be tedious. Screen 7 shows a system that uses animation and carefully designed graphical effects to give the impression of manipula 4.18.2 Information visualisation We read increasingly of the problem of information overload. Earlier, we emphasised the importance of designing appropriate information representations to assist human interpretation in order to create actionable knowledge. Information visualisation is concerned explicitly with designing representations using intuitive visual metaphors and graphics to highlight the most important aspects of information structures and processes. Information visualisation is a rapidly emerg 4.15.1 Ontologies We noted earlier that, in philosophy, an ontology refers fundamentally to ‘being’, or ‘what can be’. In the field of artificial intelligence the term ‘ontology’ has been appropriated to mean a ‘reusable terminological scheme’ or, if you prefer, a ‘conceptualisation’: a scheme for providing a rigorous description of the concepts, attributes and interrelationships deemed relevant to describe a particular aspect of the world. Its precision means that 4.13.2 Example: an ‘intelligent’ email system Let us work through an email example of making a system ‘smarter’. We are all familiar with the standardised fields in an email system: From, To, Subject. The computer needs the To/From information, expressed in a standard format, to direct the message to its addressees and allow them to reply. It has no concept of who the sender and recipient are, or what the Subject field means. We can imagine simple knowledge-level email categories which add status information 4.13 Technologies and explicit knowledge Knowledge-based systems have the ability to analyse specific kinds of information in order to take action. Since we have earlier defined knowledge as arising out of the interpretation of information as mediated by representations, we can claim that in a limited sense such systems can ‘know’ things: they have a representation of part of the world, and they have some rules that allow them to analyse that representation, from which they can decide on a course of action. In that sense, t 3.6.1 When we just want to forget (‘we're only human’) Group memory systems might be counterproductive if they damage morale or prevent a team from moving on after a failure. Studies of software teams show that many commercial projects are cancelled before completion. This generates an intense pressure to work as hard as possible (so that maintaining group memory falls by the wayside) and, understandably, in many cultures if a project is regarded as a failure everyone wants to forget it as quickly as possible rather than analyse it for lessons le 3.4.1 Integrating memory systems into the flow of work There has been a substantial amount of research interest over the last decade in group/organisational memory systems. For example, software researchers have investigated the possibility of capturing design rationale, the key reasoning that underpins design decisions (Moran and Carroll, 1996). However, time and again projects have failed. A given information codification scheme encourages particular ways of thinking about information and the problem at hand: typically, information must 3.2 Organisational memory systems Without a memory, humans are paralysed in the present moment, unable to reflect on lessons learned or to anticipate the future. You will notice that the heading given to the framework in Figure 3 is corporate memory. The whole dynamic system of people and technologies is conceived as constituting an organisation-wide resource that will enable it to become a more intelligent, learning organism, to pursue the anthropomorphic metaphor. The organisational memory challenge goes beyond tradi 2.5 Design implications The difficulties just described have very practical implications when it comes to designing technologies. Consider the following quotations: in selecting any representation we are in the very same act unavoidably making a set of decisions about how and what to see in the world … a knowledge representation is a set of ontological commitments. It is unavoidably so because of the inevitable imperfectio 2.4 Codification and formalisation continued An important point is that the process of ‘objectifying’ knowledge brings with it a gradual change in the knowledge represented, because content and form are inextricably linked. McLuhan's famous quotation ‘the medium is the message’ highlights this phenomenon, but overstates the case a little. We can say that the medium shapes the message, as follows: 1 Knowledge technologies in context There are many non-technological dimensions to understanding what it might mean to ‘manage knowledge’. However, technology is a thread weaving throughout, and seems now to be a fixture in knowledge management conferences and publications. ‘Knowledge’ can be managed as an objectified asset is a core idea in knowledge management. This unit will encourage you to question what this means in different contexts. ‘Context’ allows us to considere what value is added by view Introduction Knowledge technologies embody formal models of how the world works. If well designed, these models can relieve people of mundane activities and free them up to concentrate on what they do best. At their best, knowledge technologies can detect patterns in information which are too complex for humans to detect, or which they do not have time to detect, and can deliver this information to the right people, at the right time, in the right form for interpretation. This unit looks at the cor What's Hot and What's Not? Surgical Resident for a Day How it's Made: Toothpicks HIV/AIDS Education in America (MWV14)
This 1:17 long video does a short review of what happened to create the Big Bang and the events that followed. Good graphics and narration.
With the help of simple, teacher-led demonstration activities, students learn the basic physics of heat transfer by means of conduction, convection, and radiation. They also learn about examples of heating and cooling devices, from stove tops to car radiators, that they encounter everyday in their homes, schools, and modes of transportation. Since in our everyday lives there are many times that we want to prevent heat transfer, students also consider ways that conduction, convection, and radiati
In this activity, students will become surgical residents for the day. As a team, they will be asked to use surgical instruments to complete a task inside of a black box. They will be able to see inside of the box with the help of a "laparoscope" (webcam and flashlight). This activity is intended to show the students one application of medical instruments, as well as to allow them to see first had how form fits function. They will also realize that an engineer's job does not end with a finished
From birch logs to the handy tool that helps you clean your teeth.
In this episode of MicrobeWorld Video we ask some leading researchers, education specialists, and public health officials about the state of HIV/AIDS education in America and ideas they have to support the teaching of microbial evolution using the latest HIV/AIDS research all while instilling innovative prevention strategies. Filmed at a forum for educators on February, 11, 2008 at the Koshland Science Museum in Washington, D.C. and at San Diego State University, this episode features the follow
