A framework for design engineering education in a global context

This paper presents a framework for teaching design engineering in a global context using innovative technologies to enable distributed teams to work together effectively across international and cultural boundaries. The DIDET Framework represents the findings of a 5-year project conducted by the University of Strathclyde, Stanford University and Olin College which enhanced student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, directly experiencing different cultural contexts and accessing a variety of digital information sources via a range of innovative technology. The use of innovative technology enabled the formalization of design knowledge within international student teams as did the methods that were developed for students to store, share and reuse information. Coaching methods were used by teaching staff to support distributed teams and evaluation work on relevant classes was carried out regularly to allow ongoing improvement of learning and teaching and show improvements in student learning. Major findings of the 5 year project include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful eLearning implementations. The DIDET Framework encapsulates all the conclusions relating to design engineering in a global context. Each of the principles for effective distributed design learning is shown along with relevant findings and suggested metrics. The findings detailed in the paper were reached through a series of interventions in design engineering education at the collaborating institutions. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the pedagogical and the technological approaches

DIDET: Digital libraries for distributed, innovative design education and teamwork. Final project report

The central goal of the DIDET Project was to enhance student learning opportunities by enabling them to partake in global, team based design engineering projects, in which they directly experience different cultural contexts and access a variety of digital information sources via a range of appropriate technology. To achieve this overall project goal, the project delivered on the following objectives: 1. Teach engineering information retrieval, manipulation, and archiving skills to students studying on engineering degree programs. 2. Measure the use of those skills in design projects in all years of an undergraduate degree program. 3. Measure the learning performance in engineering design courses affected by the provision of access to information that would have been otherwise difficult to access. 4. Measure student learning performance in different cultural contexts that influence the use of alternative sources of information and varying forms of Information and Communications Technology. 5. Develop and provide workshops for staff development. 6. Use the measurement results to annually redesign course content and the digital libraries technology. The overall DIDET Project approach was to develop, implement, use and evaluate a testbed to improve the teaching and learning of students partaking in global team based design projects. The use of digital libraries and virtual design studios was used to fundamentally change the way design engineering is taught at the collaborating institutions. This was done by implementing a digital library at the partner institutions to improve learning in the field of Design Engineering and by developing a Global Team Design Project run as part of assessed classes at Strathclyde, Stanford and Olin. Evaluation was carried out on an ongoing basis and fed back into project development, both on the class teaching model and the LauLima system developed at Strathclyde to support teaching and learning. Major findings include the requirement to overcome technological, pedagogical and cultural issues for successful elearning implementations. A need for strong leadership has been identified, particularly to exploit the benefits of cross-discipline team working. One major project output still being developed is a DIDET Project Framework for Distributed Innovative Design, Education and Teamwork to encapsulate all project findings and outputs. The project achieved its goal of embedding major change to the teaching of Design Engineering and Strathclyde's new Global Design class has been both successful and popular with students

Teaching photonic integrated circuits with Jupyter notebooks : design, simulation, fabrication

At Ghent University, we have built a course curriculum on integrated photonics, and in particular silicon photonics, based on interactive Jupyter Notebooks. This has been used in short workshops, specialization courses at PhD level, as well as the M.Sc. Photonics Engineering program at Ghent University and the Free University of Brussels. The course material teaches the concepts of on-chip waveguides, basic building blocks, circuits, the design process, fabrication and measurements. The Jupyter notebook environment provides an interface where static didactic content (text, figures, movies, formulas) is mixed with Python code that the user can modify and execute, and interactive plots and widgets to explore the effect of changes in circuits or components. The Python environment supplies a host of scientific and engineering libraries, while the photonic capabilities are based on IPKISS, a commercial design framework for photonic integrated circuits by Luceda Photonics. The IPKISS framework allows scripting of layout and simulation directly from the Jupyter notebooks, so the teaching modules contain live circuit simulation, as well as integration with electromagnetic solvers. Because this is a complete design framework, students can also use it to tape out a small chip design which is fabricated through a rapid prototyping service and then measured, allowing the students to validate the actual performance of their design against the original simulation. The scripting in Jupyter notebooks also provides a self-documenting design flow, and the use of an established design tool guarantees that the acquired skills can be transferred to larger, real-world design projects

Pattern-based software architecture for service-oriented software systems

Service-oriented architecture is a recent conceptual framework for service-oriented software platforms. Architectures are of great importance for the evolution of software systems. We present a modelling and transformation technique for service-centric distributed software systems. Architectural configurations, expressed through hierarchical architectural patterns, form the core of a specification and transformation technique. Patterns on different levels of abstraction form transformation invariants that structure and constrain the transformation process. We explore the role that patterns can play in architecture transformations in terms of functional properties, but also non-functional quality aspects

Scrum2Kanban: Integrating Kanban and Scrum in a University Software Engineering Capstone Course

Using university capstone courses to teach agile software development methodologies has become commonplace, as agile methods have gained support in professional software development. This usually means students are introduced to and work with the currently most popular agile methodology: Scrum. However, as the agile methods employed in the industry change and are adapted to different contexts, university courses must follow suit. A prime example of this is the Kanban method, which has recently gathered attention in the industry. In this paper, we describe a capstone course design, which adds the hands-on learning of the lean principles advocated by Kanban into a capstone project run with Scrum. This both ensures that students are aware of recent process frameworks and ideas as well as gain a more thorough overview of how agile methods can be employed in practice. We describe the details of the course and analyze the participating students' perceptions as well as our observations. We analyze the development artifacts, created by students during the course in respect to the two different development methodologies. We further present a summary of the lessons learned as well as recommendations for future similar courses. The survey conducted at the end of the course revealed an overwhelmingly positive attitude of students towards the integration of Kanban into the course

Designing for designers: Towards the development of accessible ICT products and services using the VERITAS framework

Among key design practices which contribute to the development of inclusive ICT products and services is user testing with people with disabilities. Traditionally, this involves partial or minimal user testing through the usage of standard heuristics, employing external assisting devices, and the direct feedback of impaired users. However, efficiency could be improved if designers could readily analyse the needs of their target audience. The VERITAS framework simulates and systematically analyses how users with various impairments interact with the use of ICT products and services. Findings show that the VERITAS framework is useful to designers, offering an intuitive approach to inclusive design.The work presented in this article forms part of VERITAS, which is funded by the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme (FP7) (grant agreement # 247765 FP7-ICT-2009.7.2)

Business Process Innovation using the Process Innovation Laboratory

Most organizations today are required not only to establish effective business processes but they are required to accommodate for changing business conditions at an increasing rate. Many business processes extend beyond the boundary of the enterprise into the supply chain and the information infrastructure therefore is critical. Today nearly every business relies on their Enterprise System (ES) for process integration and the future generations of enterprise systems will increasingly be driven by business process models. Consequently process modeling and improvement will become vital for business process innovation (BPI) in future organizations. There is a significant body of knowledge on various aspect of process innovation, e.g. on conceptual modeling, business processes, supply chains and enterprise systems. Still an overall comprehensive and consistent theoretical framework with guidelines for practical applications has not been identified. The aim of this paper is to establish a conceptual framework for business process innovation in the supply chain based on advanced enterprise systems. The main approach to business process innovation in this context is to create a new methodology for exploring process models and patterns of applications. The paper thus presents a new concept for business process innovation called the process innovation laboratory a.k.a. the Ð-Lab. The Ð-Lab is a comprehensive framework for BPI using advanced enterprise systems. The Ð-Lab is a collaborative workspace for experimenting with process models and an explorative approach to study integrated modeling in a controlled environment. The Ð-Lab facilitates innovation by using an integrated action learning approach to process modeling including contemporary technological, organizational and business perspectivesNo; keywords

Business Process Management Education in Academia: Status, challenges, and Recommendations

In response to the growing proliferation of Business Process Management (BPM) in industry and the demand this creates for BPM expertise, universities across the globe are at various stages of incorporating knowledge and skills in their teaching offerings. However, there are still only a handful of institutions that offer specialized education in BPM in a systematic and in-depth manner. This article is based on a global educators’ panel discussion held at the 2009 European Conference on Information Systems in Verona, Italy. The article presents the BPM programs of five universities from Australia, Europe, Africa, and North America, describing the BPM content covered, program and course structures, and challenges and lessons learned. The article also provides a comparative content analysis of BPM education programs illustrating a heterogeneous view of BPM. The examples presented demonstrate how different courses and programs can be developed to meet the educational goals of a university department, program, or school. This article contributes insights on how best to continuously sustain and reshape BPM education to ensure it remains dynamic, responsive, and sustainable in light of the evolving and ever-changing marketplace demands for BPM expertise

Investigation into Mobile Learning Framework in Cloud Computing Platform

Abstract—Cloud computing infrastructure is increasingly used for distributed applications. Mobile learning applications deployed in the cloud are a new research direction. The applications require specific development approaches for effective and reliable communication. This paper proposes an interdisciplinary approach for design and development of mobile applications in the cloud. The approach includes front service toolkit and backend service toolkit. The front service toolkit packages data and sends it to a backend deployed in a cloud computing platform. The backend service toolkit manages rules and workflow, and then transmits required results to the front service toolkit. To further show feasibility of the approach, the paper introduces a case study and shows its performance