Niva Wengrowicz

Transactional distance in an undergraduate project-based systems modeling course

Assessing the level and quality of collaboration between students working in project teams is a complex task. The main goal of our study was to develop and validate an online questionnaire for assessing the quality of distance teamwork collaboration in a project-based systems modeling course. The research goals included assessing the transactional distance (TD) perceptions among peer students who had collaborated in jointly constructing conceptual system models of projects carried out by distant researchers and the TD between the students on one hand and the distant researchers on the other hand. The research questions were aimed at validating the TD questionnaire as a tool for assessing TD. The research population included undergraduate students who participated and collaborated via a visualization-based environment as part of the EU VISIONAIR infrastructure project. The students interacted both among themselves and with remote researchers across Europe. Reliability and inter-correlation tests have indicated internal structure validity and reliability of the TD questionnaire. Correlation with other student outcomes indicated content validity by criterion. Experiencing visualization-based environments was a key factor in student satisfaction. Based on our findings and the collaboration literature, TD may serve as an alternative assessment tool for evaluating the quality of collaboration among peer students and researchers.

Cognition-Based Visualization of the Dynamics of Conceptual Models: The Vivid OPM Scene Player

Modeling plays an increasingly important role in the lifecycle of systems. Complex dynamic systems are difficult to model, preventing users from deeply understanding their intricate behavior. Existing conceptual modeling languages contain behavioral diagrams aimed to describe how the modeled system changes over time. However, most of these diagram types are static and do not directly reflect the systems behavior in space and time in a manner that is close to conceived reality. Models that are inherently visual and dynamic can potentially provide system architects and designers, as well as prospective customers, with profound understanding of the behavior of the system under development without requiring knowledge of any specific modeling language. Based on this conjecture, which is supported by cognitive neuroscience, we present Vivid Object-Process Methodology OPM, a software module that generates and plays a video clip of the system under development from its OPM conceptual model. While requiring relatively little effort on the side of the modeler, this option explicates how the system behaves over time, providing a powerful tool for understanding and communicating complex systems dynamics. Testing Vivid OPM with human subjects, we found that it enhances the understandability of the system under study, especially in complex situations, where interaction is involved. The preliminary animation application we present can evolve into a powerful model-based 3-dimensional tool for visualizing systems of increasing complexity and sophistication, serving scientists,systems engineers, and students at all levels.

Exporting Object-Process Methodology system models to the Semantic Web

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is gradually becoming an acceptable good practice, especially for large-scale complex systems. The variety of modeling languages enables detailed representation of domain-specific knowledge of different aspects of a system. Semantic Web concepts provide opportunities for easier and more efficient collaboration between design and verification teams using different modeling tools. IBM Semantic Mediation Container (SMC) is a tool interoperability platform, allowing mediation and synchronization among models in different languages based on their ontologies. We propose integrating into SMC the ability to translate Object-Process Methodology (OPM), the emerging ISO 19450 Standard, which provides a holistic view of the systems function, structure, and behavior. In this paper we describe the first integration stages - defining the OPM ontology in a way that conforms to Semantic Web specifications and developing a module for exporting OPM models from their visual representation to and back from Resource Description Framework (RDF). We discuss the scope of the ontology and different approaches of element representation. We portray the implementation of the export module as an extension to OPM CASE tool (OPCAT). The ontology and export module are validated by round-trip transformation of OPM models from their visual representation to RDF and back by experimenting with OPM experts.

Metacognition and Meta-assessment in Engineering Education

In this chapter, we first discuss metacognition in engineering education. We then focus on meta-assessment in general and on student-oriented meta-assessment in engineering education in particular. We describe studies focusing on metacognition and the three meta-assessment types in engineering education. We describe in detail two studies, in which we have investigated the meta-assessment of engineering students at higher education institutes in two project-based courses with different characteristics. The first study involved a large undergraduate information systems engineering course at the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, while the second study involved a small graduate model-based systems engineering course at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. We discuss the advantages of incorporating metacognition in general and meta-assessment in particular into engineering education and using it for enhancing students’ metacognitive skills. In this study, formative assessment was made paossible by providing feedback to the teams as they were engaged in the project-based learning. Our meta-assessment approach enables individual summative assessment of each student’s learning outcomes, whereas each team project served as a basis for the collective teams summative assessment.

Meta-assessment in a project-based systems engineering course

Project-based learning (PBL) facilitates significant learning, but it poses a major assessment challenge for assessing individual content knowledge. We developed and implemented an assessment approach and tool for a mandatory undergraduate systems engineering PBL-based course. We call this type of assessment student-oriented meta-assessment. Research participants included 131 undergraduate engineering students who carried out team projects requiring conceptual modelling of complex systems. Next, individual students assessed their peer team projects. Finally, the course staff assessed students individually, based on the content knowledge that was reflected in students’ comments to their peers, by using the new meta-assessment tool. The research findings validated the meta-assessment tool which can serve for assessing various PBL courses. Our contribution is twofold: a new approach for assessing project-based undergraduate engineering courses, and classification of meta-assessment methods into three types, where a student-oriented meta-assessment as one of the three meta-assessment methods is our newly introduced and validated method.

Students’ Collaborative Learning Attitudes and Their Satisfaction with Online Collaborative Case-Based Courses

ABSTRACT Case-based learning is an interactive group learning approach that embodies the principles of Socratic inquiry. It is a common pedagogy used in many disciplines including business, law, and health. With online learning being the fastest growing segment of higher education, case-based learning is also finding its way into online courses. This research was conducted on a population of 698 students enrolled in online case-based courses. The use of Structural Equation Modelling provided an understanding of the factors that influence student satisfaction. Through Logistics Regression, the extent to which these factors do influence satisfaction was determined. The findings indicate that the greatest predictors of student satisfaction were the interaction and understanding between the students and the instructor. Furthermore, a student’s pre-existing attitude toward interactive group learning is also a significant factor in predicting student satisfaction. The conclusions point to a lack of understanding by students on how to engage in effective interactive online group learning. The recommendation is that training in online collaborative skills be considered as a front-end to any online case-based course.

A comparative study of languages for model-based systems-of-systems engineering (MBSSE)

Teaching model-based systems engineering has become more challenging as research and development has shifted from systems to include systems-of-systems (SoSs). SoSs involve primarily combination of hardware and software, as well as humans and organizations. The need to teach model-based system-of-systems engineering has thus raised the need to determine what the most suitable language for modeling and teaching SoSs is. We developed a new course format, in which groups jointly reverse-engineer and model Web-based information systems in two different modeling languages, UML and OPM, and then individually assess their peers projects. The goal of this study was to compare UML with OPM as two candidates. We developed and evaluated an online peer assessment tool which students used. About 130 undergraduate students in groups of six divided into teams of three modeled 23 systems in both UML and OPM. They then evaluated, compared, and ranked the clarity & understandability and the completeness of the four models of two systems that their peers had constructed. Findings demonstrate that neither the order of the models assessment nor the assessor gender affected the grading, indicating assessment reliability. We found significant differences in model clarity and understandability in favor of OPM and no differences in completeness between OPM and UML models. These findings validate our approach of teaching both conceptual modeling languages and using peer assessment in large-scale project-based undergraduate information systems engineering courses.

Defining Object-Process Methodology in Web Ontology Language for Semantic Mediation

Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) is gradually becoming an acceptable good practice, especially for large-scale complex systems. The variety of modeling languages allows detailed representation of domain-specific knowledge of different components and aspects of a system. Semantic Web concepts provide opportunities for easier and more efficient collaboration between design and verification teams using different modeling tools. IBM Semantic Mediation Container (SMC) is a tool interoperability platform, allowing mediation and synchronization among models in different languages based on their ontologies. We propose integrating into SMC the ability to translate Object-Process Methodology (OPM), the emerging ISO 19450 Standard, which provides a holistic view of the systems function, structure, and behavior. In this paper we describe the first integration stage - defining the OPM ontology in a way that conforms to Semantic Web specifications. We discuss different approaches of element representation and validate the ontology by round-trip transformation of OPM models from their visual representation to Resource Description Framework (RDF) and back.