Learning to Build Systems of Systems
From Aesop
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The AESOP (Augmenting Education of System of Systems Professionals) project is sponsored by the National Science Foundation to prepare students to build large and complex systems in organizational and multi-organizational environments. The AESOP strategy, currently in use at Penn State, has five elements: Organizational: establishing a separate College of Information Sciences and Technology; Curricular: establishing a sequence of courses specifically aimed at Systems Integration; Active-learning: implementing of a repository of resources and a learning environment; Problem-based learning: delivering courses through team-based problems; and Experiential learning: projects, sponsored by partners from industry and government, that student teams build integrated systems solutions. The project involves articulating this strategy, its adoption at Georgia State University, its extension to include an Open Source element, and its evaluation in both settings. The project has been funded under the CPATH: CISE Pathways to Revitalized Undergraduate Computing Education program from August 2007 through July 2010. |
About AESOP(Original summary of the Proposal submitted [1]) Computing professionals are being called upon to build and support large and complex systems of systems that can (a) bridge software and work practices across functional and organizational boundaries and (b) evolve independently over time instead of being developed as monoliths. Under current practices, the track record of deployment and adaptation success for these projects has been sub-par. Key requirements for a new breed of system development professionals include: (a) knowledge of competing technologies and standards, particularly in regard to loosely-coupled, inter-operable systems, (b) skills to understand organizational work practices and processes, and (c) the ability to work in multi-disciplinary teams to understand the organizational context. Developing all these competences requires multiple epistemologies, a challenging proposition for both the teachers and the learners. Penn State University has been successful in pursuing an innovative strategy to prepare such professionals. The strategy contains five major elements. The first is organizational; the establishment of a separate College of Information Sciences and Technology. Under this umbrella, the college has designed foundational courses including discrete mathematics as well as fundamentals of organizations unfettered by legacy concerns from traditional computer science or information systems programs. The second, curricular, has been to establish a sequence of courses specifically aimed at Systems Integration, an option selected by more than two out of three students. The third, active learning, has resulted in the implementation of a repository of resources, supplemented by a learning environment that students use for self-directed learning and construction of individualized structures. The fourth, problem-based learning, has revolutionized course delivery as a series of team-based problems, where students work in teams and the instructor’s role changes to that of a coach to facilitate proximal development. The fifth, experiential learning, is achieved with projects, sponsored by partners from industry and government, that student teams work with to build integrated systems solutions. A significant measure of the success of this strategy has been high placement rates and increasing enrollments, a record that counters the nationwide downturn in computer science and information system enrollments. The purpose of the proposed work is to generate the needed knowledge to enable extension of Penn State’s successful efforts to computing programs at other institutions of higher education. To achieve this objective, the first phase of the proposed work is aimed at adoption of the strategy at Georgia State University, building on ongoing work there related to curriculum revisions and support for pedagogical innovations. Specific challenges during this phase include: overcoming the inability to replicate the organizational elements (i.e., a separate school), and adopting the strategy in an urban university with a significant non-traditional and minority student population. The second phase of the proposed work is aimed at systematic programmatic evaluation of the strategy in both settings to identify differential contributions of the several elements of the Penn State Strategy. The third phase of the proposed work will extend the strategy in a coordinated effort to integrate a new learning element: converting situated, specific learning from organizational projects into generic solutions using, for example, open-source platforms. Intellectual merit of the proposed work stems from two sources. First, the strategy proposed to be evaluated, adopted, and extended gives explicit recognition to a multiplicity of epistemologies. Second, the strategy elements specifically deal with this challenge by balancing incremental learning of concepts and the learning of context that is essential to build and deploy systems of systems-like capabilities in organizations. The planned extension to the strategy, converting situated learning from organizational projects into generic, innovative solutions with an open source platform, further extends this challenge. Broader impacts of the proposed work relate to the overall CPATH vision of “a cadre of computing professionals prepared to contribute to sustained U.S. leadership in computing in a wide range of application domains and career fields, and a broader professional workforce with knowledge and understanding of critical computing concepts, methodologies and techniques.” Partners, who have committed to work on the project, include the Association for Enterprise Integration and others including Accenture, Computer Aid and Lockheed Martin. Together, the significant non-traditional and minority student population at Georgia State, the multi-state partnership between the two institutions, and partnerships with industrial associations offer the promise of significant potential for national scale impact. |
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