Rebecca Denning

Cooperative Problem-Solving Challenges for the Movement of Aircraft on the Ground

In this paper, we discuss issues surrounding aircraft surface movement that were uncovered through a series of ethnographic investigations, including (a) observations of surface movement operations, (b) structured interviews with airline ramp control and dispatch personnel, and (c) critical incident reports. These results are part of the “problem identification” stage of a study aimed at the design of cognitive tools to improve the safety and efficiency of aircraft surface movement. This study is focusing on such issues from an airline operations control perspective (i.e., ramp control and dispatch). We have identified areas of opportunity for aiding airline staff and controllers in this information-intensive cognitive work, which will lead to identifying the nature of cognitive tools and procedures that could improve prioritization, planning, and coordination during surface movement

Cooperative problem-solving activities in flight planning and constraints for commercial aircraft

Prior to departure, each commercial aircraft must have a flight plan from its origin to its destination, This flight plan describes the route, the altitudes, and the speeds which the plane is expected to fly for the trip, and it affects fuel consumption, safety, speed, arrival time, and passenger comfort. While this flight plan describes parameters intended for the flight, the initial flight plan is rarely followed exactly. In practice, it is common to see minor amendments to the plan, and major changes are not unusual. There are a variety of reasons why an initial flight plan might be changed enroute. The dynamic, unpredictable circumstances under which flights occur must be accommodated through changes made prior to take off or while enroute. As examples, the weather pattern may not develop as forecast, take-off may be delayed due to air traffic congestion, or the scheduled arrival time may be changed due to a runway closure. An important role in these planning activities is played by airline dispatchers working in conjunction with the ATC system and the flight crew. Within the ATC system itself there are several groups involved including the Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center (ATCSCC), which is responsible for the strategic planning and replanning for all flights nationwide each day, and the Traffic Management Units (TMUs) at Enroute Centers, which are responsible for coordinating traffic within their geographic regions. This context provides a rich, real-world setting in which to study cooperative problem-solving and the effects of technological support on such cooperation.

Cooperative problem-solving in the air traffic management system

A focus group was held to explore different perspectives on the interactions of operational staff at the airlines and the FAA regarding their real time interactions prior to and during flights. To elicit these different perspectives, four scenarios were prepared based on actual events. The resultant discussion raises issues about information exchange, communication, training and coordination.

The Transfusion Medicine Tutor: Using Expert Systems Technology to Teach Domain-Specific Problem-Solving Skills

This study provides data regarding the effectiveness of the expert system-based Transfusion Medicine Tutor (TMT) when used by medical technology students to learn an important problem-solving task, the identification of alloantibodies in a patients blood for the purpose of finding compatible blood for transfusion. The results show that the students who were taught by an instructor using TMT to provide the instructional environment went from 0% correct on a pre-test case to 87%–93% correct on post-tests (N=15). This compares with an improvement rate of 20% by a control group (N=15) who used a passive version of the system with the tutoring functions turned off. The results also demonstrate the importance of relying on objective performance data rather than questionnaire data to evaluate systems, as there was no difference in the subjective responses of the students to these two different versions of the system.

Interactions of airline operations control centers with the Air Traffic Management System

A series of three focus groups was held to study the interactions of airline dispatchers with the air traffic management system. This paper reports on the results of the third focus group, which included as participants dispatchers, airline ATC coordinators, an ATCSCC (Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center) specialist and TMOs (Traffic Management Officers) from several ARTCCs. The findings are organized around three topics, including discussions of concerns over traffic management procedures and training.

The Biology Sleuth: evaluation of an interactive learning environment

The Biology Sleuth is an interactive learning environment developed to study the use of computers to teach both health science content and diagnosis to secondary students. Its design centers around the following four explicitly identified teaching goals: to help students to learn how to form hypotheses to explain patterns of data; to teach students to recognize that several alternative hypotheses may explain the same pattern of data; to teach students that further testing may allow refinement of a set of hypotheses; to help students learn how to identify pieces of data which may be more diagnostic than others, and to learn that this diagnosticity depends on the set of alternative hypotheses being considered. The goal of this project has been two-fold. First, a specific system design has been developed to teach in this context. Second, this context has been used to empirically study the effectiveness of the underlying design concepts to support learning. In particular, an initial formative evaluation was performed in order to gain insights about the effectiveness of this software.<<ETX>>

Initial Experiences with the Expanded National Route Program

One of the goals of the free flight concept is to give the airlines (and other operators) more flexibility in selecting the routes to be flown. This applies to both preflight planning and to flight amendments made while enroute. Exploration of the former, flexibility in preflight planning, has already begun with the implementation of the expended National Route Program (NRP). This paper documents the experiences associated with the introduction of the expanded NRP, and points to areas that must be addressed to help make the program successful from a traffic management perspective.

Teaching problem-solving through a cooperative learning environment

The Biology Sleuth was developed to provide a testbed in which the distribution of critical resources could be varied and the consequent effects on group dynamics and individual learning could be studied. The primary teaching goal of The Biology Sleuth is to teach important problem-solving skills (specifically, diagnostic reasoning) to high school students. In order to meet this goal a cooperative learning [3] environment has been developed in which students work in groups, aided by each other, software, and the classroom teacher,

Problem-Based Learning Partnerships: A Case Study of Problem-Based Learning

Problem-Based Learning Partnerships involve classroom teachers, secondary students, and health care professionals from schools’ local communities. Students met with a health care professional from their community to discuss an actual medical case which is currently being used to train medical students at OSU. This professional volunteered her time during the partnership to mentor the students. The final patient diagnosis and other pertinent data about the case, including X-rays and other test results, were given to the mentor, thus enabling her to facilitate the class discussions at all times. Four classes of students were randomly assigned to be either in the control condition or the treatment condition. In both groups the mentor had the goal of teaching problem-solving skills using the patient case. The difference between the two groups was that when working with the treatment group the mentor-and students had the additional goal of explicitly developing, and then narrowing, based on patient data, a list of hypotheses which could account for the patient’s signs, symptoms, and test results. This was an urban public school in a Great Lakes state, and the 9 1 students were economically disadvantaged. While the data from this evaluation is still being analyzed, initial results show the following improvement in problem-solving skills. Only 47% of the students in the control group were able to generate a set of hypotheses and then to identify the most diagnostic test to narrow that set. 74% of the students in the treatment group were able to answer this question correctly for an overall improvement of 27%

Cooperative Problem-Solving in the Interactions of Airline Dispatchers with the Air Traffic Control Systems Command Center

The activities involved in flight planning for commercial airlines provide a rich context for studying cooperative problem-solving and for exploring the impact of alternative system designs on such cooperation. A case study is presented looking at an important activity within this context: The generation, communication and evaluation of requests for non-preferred routes (submitted by the airlines to the air traffic control system). Factors contributing to the success of this activity are identified and areas for applications of technology to further enhance cooperative performance are described.