Involving Engineering with In-Service K-4 Teachers

A strong workforce in science and engineering and literate citizens in a technology-based society depends on an educational system that prepares students in science, mathematics, and engineering. Unfortunately, many K-12 students lose interest in such topics early in their school years. Engineering applications can capture the imagination of students and illustrate the concepts in science and mathematics. Level-appropriate resources are as necessary for primary teachers and our young scholars as for teachers and students in higher grades. A model for interaction between engineers and K-4 teachers is proposed. The State of Missouri defines curriculum standards in each subject area and assesses student performance three times during a student\u27s education. The first assessment for science is in the third grade and for mathematics is in the fourth grade. These standards were examined from an engineering perspective. In addition, in-service primary teachers were surveyed to determine their background, needs, and attitudes regarding science, mathematics, and engineering. Early years of an effective technical curriculum must introduce the basic concepts and begin layering this understanding with detail and connectivity. Our model shows how engineering applications can provide hearing, seeing, and doing components, i.e. auditory, visual, and kinesthetic educational activities, within the recommended pedagogy. The approach involves in-service teachers throughout the development process, addresses state standards and testing criteria, and partners specialists in engineering content and teacher training

Engaging Users to Co-Create - Implications for Service Systems Design by Evaluating an Engagement Platform

Far-reaching digitalization affords significantly more opportunities for engaging actors and mobilizing resources in service systems. By leveraging these capabilities, digitally enabled service systems can facilitate user-generated services. Traditional service engineering approaches provide for such service systems. This paper presents and discusses the evaluation of a field-based design science research project for designing an engagement platform that facilitates the co-creation of user-generated services. This study reports contributions to the design knowledge of such an engagement platform and their consequences for engagement activities. Based on the evaluation, we propose design propositions for such an engagement platform from a sociotechnical perspective

The crustal dynamics intelligent user interface anthology

The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) has initiated an Intelligent Data Management (IDM) research effort which has, as one of its components, the development of an Intelligent User Interface (IUI). The intent of the IUI is to develop a friendly and intelligent user interface service based on expert systems and natural language processing technologies. The purpose of such a service is to support the large number of potential scientific and engineering users that have need of space and land-related research and technical data, but have little or no experience in query languages or understanding of the information content or architecture of the databases of interest. This document presents the design concepts, development approach and evaluation of the performance of a prototype IUI system for the Crustal Dynamics Project Database, which was developed using a microcomputer-based expert system tool (M. 1), the natural language query processor THEMIS, and the graphics software system GSS. The IUI design is based on a multiple view representation of a database from both the user and database perspective, with intelligent processes to translate between the views

To Engage Creation

An engineer\u27s role in this service is to use science and technology to care for the entirety of creation - humans, other creatures, and the natural environment - in a way that both develops its potential and ensures that our activities do not impair its ability to flourish in the future. Posting about ­­­­­­­­a Christian perspective on engineering from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world. http://inallthings.org/to-engage-creation

Science and Technology (S&T) Legislative Landscape: Mapping State-Level S&T Legislation in the US

Atlanta Conference on Science and Innovation Policy 2009This presentation was part of the session : Policy Actors and RelationshipsOver the last four years, the Georgia Tech Research Institute's Office of Policy Analysis and Research has supported the Georgia General Assembly's Science and Technology (S&T) legislative committees with policy analysis and expert testimony. This role provides OPAR a unique perspective on the S&T policy agenda in Georgia. In our duties, we are often called upon to prepare policy bulletins on S&T topics, including health information technology, biotechnology for economic development, and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. Because this research often results in comparative analysis with other US states, we recognized an opportunity not only to systematize this research, but also to provide a valuable service to the S&T policy community. The Science and Technology Legislative Landscape Project is an effort to do so. This research will inform state-level policymakers of nationwide trends in science and technology policy

A framework for the elicitation and analysis of Information Technology service requirements and their alignment with enterprise business goals

As the economies of the world have become increasingly dependant on Information Technology (IT) services, there is a need for service designers and developers to focus on co-value creation between service providers and service consumers. Developers need to conduct a more rigorous and systematic identification, elicitation, and analysis of IT service requirements than ever before so that the resulting IT services are closely aligned with the enterprise business requirements. Research in Services Science from the business and management discipline has mostly focused on the delivery and management of services experience from the business perspective. Much of the research focus in Service Oriented Computing (SOC) so far has been on the design and delivery of services (especially Web Services), but engineering of IT service requirements has received much less attention. The overall aims of the proposed research is the design and development of an integrated framework and its supporting toolset for the systematic identification, elicitation, and analysis of IT service requirements that satisfy consumers' needs and are closely aligned with their enterprise business goals. © 2010 IEEE

A review of personal communications services

This article can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2009 Nova Science Publishers, LtdPCS is an acronym for Personal Communications Service. PCS has two layers of meaning. At the low layer, from the technical perspective, PCS is a 2G mobile communication technology operating at the 1900 MHz frequency range. At the upper layer, PCS is often used as an umbrella term that includes various wireless access and personal mobility services with the ultimate goal of enabling users to freely communicate with anyone at anytime and anywhere according to their demand. Ubiquitous PCS can be implemented by integrating the wireless and wireline systems on the basis of intelligent network (IN), which provides network functions of terminal and personal mobility. In this chapter, we focus on various aspects of PCS except location management. First we describe the motivation and technological evolution for personal communications. Then we introduce three key issues related to PCS: spectrum allocation, mobility, and standardization efforts. Since PCS involves several different communication technologies, we introduce its heterogeneous and distributed system architecture. IN is also described in detail because it plays a critical role in the development of PCS. Finally, we introduce the application of PCS and its deployment status since the mid-term of 1990’s.This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60673159 and 70671020; the National High-Tech Research and Development Plan of China under Grant No. 2006AA01Z214, and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) of UK under Grant EP/E060722/1

User, Use & Utility Research - The Digital User as New Design Perspective in Business and Information Systems Engineering

Business and Information Systems Engineer- ing (BISE) is at a turning point. Planning, de- signing, developing and operating IT used to be a management task of a few elites in pub- lic ad-ministrations and corporations. But the continuous digitization of nearly all areas of life changes the IT landscape fundamentally. Success in this new era requires putting the human perspective – the digital user – at the very heart of the new digitized service-led economy. BISE faces not just a temporary trend but a complex socio-technical phenomenon with far-reaching implications. The challenges are manifold and have major consequences for all stakeholders, both in information systems and management research as well as in practice. Corporate processes have to be re-designed from the ground up, starting with the user’s perspective, thus putting usage experience and utility of the individual center stage. The digital service economy leads to highly personalized application systems while orga- nizational functions are being fragmented. Entirely new ways of interacting with infor- mation systems, in particular beyond desk- top IT, are being invented and established. These fundamental challenges require novel approaches with regards to innovation and development methods as well as adequate concepts for enterprise or service system ar- chitectures. Gigantic amounts of data are be- ing generated at an accelerating rate by an in- creasing number of devices – data that need to be managed. In order to tackle these extraordinary chal- lenges we introduce ‘user, use & utility’ as a new field of BISE that focuses primarily on the digital user, his or her usage behavior and the utility associated with system usage in the digitized service-led economy. The research objectives encompass the de- velopment of theories, methods and tools for systematic requirement elicitation, sys- tems design, and business development for successful Business and Information Systems Engineering in a digitized economy – infor- mation systems that digital users enjoy us- ing. This challenge calls for leveraging in- sights from various scientific disciplines such as Design, Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology and Sociology. BISE can provide an integrated perspective, thereby assuming a pivotal role within the digitized service led economy

Improving The Service Design Process: Process Integration, Conflict Reduction And Customer Involvement

Service design is the science of creating service experiences based on the customer’s perspective, to make it useful, enjoyable and cost-effective for the customer. Although the field of service design is relatively new, it has been rapidly expanding in research and practice. Most researchers focus on the usefulness of the service, cost efficiency, meeting customers’ needs, or service strategy. However, all service elements can benefit from improving the service design process. Current service design processes are suffering a lack of integration of activities, conflicts in decision-making processes, and exclusion of practitioners’ methods. In prior research, information models were created to integrate the service design process across the enterprise. As an extension, this dissertation introduces Petri Nets to improve the service design process. Petri Nets provide a uniform environment for modeling, analysis, and design of discrete event systems. Petri Nets are used to develop a new service design process that enhances the multidisciplinary approach and includes the practitioner methods. Additionally, this dissertation uses the Lens Model to improve the decision-making mechanism. The Lens Model is to characterize decision-making policy in service design. Research shows that there is a conflict between the designer and the manager in service design decision-making. Single Lens Model systems are designed to capture the decision policy for the service designer and the service manager. A double Lens Model system is used to compare the perspectives. Finally, this research suggests a new role for the customer in the design by applying an Asset-Based approach. Asset-based System Engineering (ABSE) is a recently introduced concept that attempts to synthesize systems around their key assets and strengths. ABSE is developed with as an innovative approach that views customers as a primary asset. Customer integration in the design process is achieved through several new service design tools