A Concept of Operations for an Integrated Vehicle Health Assurance System

This document describes a Concept of Operations (ConOps) for an Integrated Vehicle Health Assurance System (IVHAS). This ConOps is associated with the Maintain Vehicle Safety (MVS) between Major Inspections Technical Challenge in the Vehicle Systems Safety Technologies (VSST) Project within NASA s Aviation Safety Program. In particular, this document seeks to describe an integrated system concept for vehicle health assurance that integrates ground-based inspection and repair information with in-flight measurement data for airframe, propulsion, and avionics subsystems. The MVS Technical Challenge intends to maintain vehicle safety between major inspections by developing and demonstrating new integrated health management and failure prevention technologies to assure the integrity of vehicle systems between major inspection intervals and maintain vehicle state awareness during flight. The approach provided by this ConOps is intended to help optimize technology selection and development, as well as allow the initial integration and demonstration of these subsystem technologies over the 5 year span of the VSST program, and serve as a guideline for developing IVHAS technologies under the Aviation Safety Program within the next 5 to 15 years. A long-term vision of IVHAS is provided to describe a basic roadmap for more intelligent and autonomous vehicle systems

Educational Technology and Related Education Conferences for June to December 2015

The 33rd edition of the conference list covers selected events that primarily focus on the use of technology in educational settings and on teaching, learning, and educational administration. Only listings until December 2015 are complete as dates, locations, or Internet addresses (URLs) were not available for a number of events held from January 2016 onward. In order to protect the privacy of individuals, only URLs are used in the listing as this enables readers of the list to obtain event information without submitting their e-mail addresses to anyone. A significant challenge during the assembly of this list is incomplete or conflicting information on websites and the lack of a link between conference websites from one year to the next

Using blog-like documents to investigate software practice: Benefits, challenges, and research directions

Background An emerging body of research is using grey literature to investigate software practice. One frequently occurring type of grey literature is the blog post. Whilst there are prospective benefits to using grey literature and blog posts to investigate software practice, there are also concerns about the quality of such material. Objectives To identify and describe the benefits and challenges to using blog‐like content to investigate software practice, and to scope directions for further research. Methods We conduct a review of previous research, mainly within software engineering, to identify benefits, challenges, and directions and use that review to complement our experiences of using blog posts in research. Results and Conclusion We identify and organise benefits and challenges of using blog‐like documents in software engineering research. We develop a definition of the type of blog‐like document that should be of (more) value to software engineering researchers. We identify and scope several directions in which to progress research into and with blog‐like documents. We discuss similarities and differences in secondary and primary studies that use blog‐like documents and similarities and differences between the use of blog‐like documents and the use of already established research methods, eg, interview and survey

Understanding and Evaluating Assurance Cases

Assurance cases are a method for providing assurance for a system by giving an argument to justify a claim about the system, based on evidence about its design, development, and tested behavior. In comparison with assurance based on guidelines or standards (which essentially specify only the evidence to be produced), the chief novelty in assurance cases is provision of an explicit argument. In principle, this can allow assurance cases to be more finely tuned to the specific circumstances of the system, and more agile than guidelines in adapting to new techniques and applications. The first part of this report (Sections 1-4) provides an introduction to assurance cases. Although this material should be accessible to all those with an interest in these topics, the examples focus on software for airborne systems, traditionally assured using the DO-178C guidelines and its predecessors. A brief survey of some existing assurance cases is provided in Section 5. The second part (Section 6) considers the criteria, methods, and tools that may be used to evaluate whether an assurance case provides sufficient confidence that a particular system or service is fit for its intended use. An assurance case cannot provide unequivocal "proof" for its claim, so much of the discussion focuses on the interpretation of such less-than-definitive arguments, and on methods to counteract confirmation bias and other fallibilities in human reasoning

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Test & Evaluation Best Practices for Machine Learning-Enabled Systems

Machine learning (ML) - based software systems are rapidly gaining adoption across various domains, making it increasingly essential to ensure they perform as intended. This report presents best practices for the Test and Evaluation (T&E) of ML-enabled software systems across its lifecycle. We categorize the lifecycle of ML-enabled software systems into three stages: component, integration and deployment, and post-deployment. At the component level, the primary objective is to test and evaluate the ML model as a standalone component. Next, in the integration and deployment stage, the goal is to evaluate an integrated ML-enabled system consisting of both ML and non-ML components. Finally, once the ML-enabled software system is deployed and operationalized, the T&E objective is to ensure the system performs as intended. Maintenance activities for ML-enabled software systems span the lifecycle and involve maintaining various assets of ML-enabled software systems. Given its unique characteristics, the T&E of ML-enabled software systems is challenging. While significant research has been reported on T&E at the component level, limited work is reported on T&E in the remaining two stages. Furthermore, in many cases, there is a lack of systematic T&E strategies throughout the ML-enabled system's lifecycle. This leads practitioners to resort to ad-hoc T&E practices, which can undermine user confidence in the reliability of ML-enabled software systems. New systematic testing approaches, adequacy measurements, and metrics are required to address the T&E challenges across all stages of the ML-enabled system lifecycle

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

Impact of Positioning Technology on Human Navigation

In navigation from one place to another, spatial knowledge helps us establish a destination and route while travelling. Therefore, sufficient spatial knowledge is a vital element in successful navigation. To build adequate spatial knowledge, various forms of spatial tools have been introduced to deliver spatial information without direct experience (maps, descriptions, pictures, etc.). An innovation developed in the 1970s and available on many handheld platforms from the early 2000s is the Global Position System (GPS) and related map and text-based navigation support systems. Contemporary technical achievements, such as GPS, have made navigation more effective, efficient, and comfortable in most outdoor environments. Because GPS delivers such accurate information, human navigation can be supported without specific spatial knowledge. Unfortunately, there is no universal and accurate navigation system for indoor environments. Since smartphones have become increasingly popular, we can more frequently and easily access various positioning services that appear to work both indoors and outdoors. The expansion of positioning services and related navigation technology have changed the nature of navigation. For example, routes to destination are progressively determined by a “system,” not the individual. Unfortunately we only have a partial and nascent notion of how such an intervention affects spatial behaviour. The practical purpose of this research is to develop a trustworthy positioning system that functions in indoor environments and identify those aspects those should be considered before deploying Indoor Positioning System (IPS), all towards the goal of maintaining affordable positioning accuracy, quality, and consistency. In the same way that GPS provides worry free directions and navigation support, an IPS would extend such opportunities to many of our built environments. Unfortunately, just as we know little about how GPS, or any real time navigation system, affects human navigation, there is little evidence suggesting how such a system (indoors or outdoors) changes how we find our way. For this reason, in addition to specifying an indoor position system, this research examines the difference in human’s spatial behaviour based on the availability of a navigation system and evaluates the impact of varying the levels of availability of such tools (not available, partially available, or full availability). This research relies on outdoor GPS, but when such systems are available indoors and meet the accuracy and reliability or GPS, the results will be generalizable to such situations