Running Head: LAB 1 – TRAIN DESCRIPTION
Lab 1 – TRAIN Description
Jacob Sims
CS411
Hill Price
February 18, 2013
Version 5
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LAB 1 – TRAIN DESCRIPTION
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Table of Contents
1.
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................3
2.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION ....................................................................................................4
2.1
Key Product Features and Capabilities ............................................................................ 6
2.2
Major Components (Hardware/Software) ........................................................................ 7
3.
IDENTIFICATION OF CASE STUDY ..................................................................................9
4.
PRODUCT PROTOTYPE DESCRIPTION ..........................................................................11
4.1
Prototype Architecture ................................................................................................... 16
4.2
Prototype Features and Capabilities ............................................................................... 19
4.3
Challenges and Risks ..................................................................................................... 21
List of Figures
Figure 1: Major Functional Component Diagram ................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
Figure 2: Prototype Functional Component Diagram ..........................................................19
List Tables
Table 1: Prototype vs. Real World Product ...........................................................................16
LAB 1 – TRAIN DESCRIPTION
1.
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INTRODUCTION
Every position within a workforce body requires the employees that fill those
arrangements to be educated on how to successfully carry out the responsibilities associated
within those positions. Businesses and companies, both in the private and public sectors, teach
the persons filling those roles by using different methods of training. This type of educational
vice has become a crucial determinant on whether a company will thrive or dive on
accomplishing goals instilled within the employees during training.
In CS 410, the Green Team defined the societal problem with training by identifying key
factors that need to be reexamined and improved through the implementation of new technology.
To be more precise, the team defined the societal problem as comprised of three parts: difficulty
in delivering training materials efficiently, implementing reliable feedback mechanisms, and
creating and executing a training module in a reasonable amount of time. Such parameters, as
previously written, can be seen as evidence for the hypothesis that the current delivery of modern
training is in need of a practical solution.
The ideal version should allow users of all roles to access the product and define their
association with organizations. The course creator should have the capability of retrieving the
training materials from a single database and thus allow for quicker access to resources. The
product should facilitate creating training modules that can pull educational materials to build a
course. This capability should greatly decrease course creation time by removing the need for
manual construction and replacing it with automation, ultimately reducing monetary and
opportunity costs. Lastly, the ideal product should strengthen customer involvement in course
creation by generating the course from a list of customer requests.
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The Green Team has taken these ideal factors and molded them into a prototype design
known as the Training Resource And Information Network (TRAIN). The group's design of this
ideal system addresses the traits of the best model. TRAIN is designed to be a functional
prototype able to answer the needs for a compatible solution for the designated societal problem.
2.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The TRAIN prototype is designed to be a training module used in order to help create an
ideal learning environment where both students and instructors can succeed. The Green Team
has a created a blueprint where the product incorporates the factors of time, reliability, feedback,
and security to generate a setting where students can benefit the most from lessons taught and
instructors can adhere to their clients’ needs. The group has designed a plan to address this set of
goals, starting with the issue related to the length of time usually needed to produce instructional
modules.
The first goal of the prototype is to reduce the amount of time it takes to create a training
course. By shortening the length of time, the instructor can allocate that time to other areas that
would benefit from it the most. The second goal is to improve the return on investment (ROI) for
customers, students, and the instructors using the TRAIN software for the creation of training
units. The plan is to increase the value provided to the customers by the product in a way where
everybody is benefiting its use. The best way to analyze if customers are benefiting from the
training modules is to provide a method of feedback. This introduces the third goal: providing
reliable feedback. Criticism from the students and instructors can help improve the lessons and
the system overall. Lastly, to make sure the customer data is private, the fourth and final goal is
to provide a secure environment. This goal is needed to ensure the integrity of customer data
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(personal and organization information) and to prevent the system from being comprised by
unethical and potentially harmful means.
With those goals in mind, the hope is to achieve these results in the solution. The first
result would be that TRAIN would provide a management environment where the instructor can
create, configure, and manage a set of learning modules. This environment would be built upon
the idea that the Green Team’s product would allow for the search and retrieval of needed data
that is used to build these educational foundation of the modules. The plan is to structure the
product in such a way to provide the best path for the uploading and updating of data.
The second result is an evident decrease in time it takes to create a course from start to
finish through automation of the current process. The automation would consist of four different
parts with the first being a customer survey. This review would reduce the communication time
that it currently takes from arranging and having an in-person meeting with the instructor.
Another part of the automation process is the course generation function. This tool would replace
the time consumed by the instructor to search for topics that match their customer’s request. The
third aspect of the automation process is the ease of searching and selecting topics. With this
type of capability, the prototype is expected to strengthen the overall value of the course with
more time being spent in the planning of training that would best fit the learning style of each
customer. The fourth and final aspect in the automation process is the ability to have packaging
of all the course materials. This should allow quick printing of course packs, saving time from
having to print each topic one by one.
The third and final result is to increase the ease of creating training modules. This
solution represents the overall plan for the case study. Currently, one employee manages this
whole process. The goal for TRAIN is to expand this role. This capability will allow new users
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to quickly learn the capabilities and procedures of the product, thus no longer relying on one
person to be the only one with knowledge of maintaining the system.
2.1 Key Product Features and Capabilities
The functionality of TRAIN can be defined in three parts: the selection and creation of
training modules, the searching algorithm, and a feedback tool. These features are what will
define TRAIN as a viable solution for designing training modules for both workplace and
educational settings alike. The product has been designed to not only benefit the instructors
alone, but their possible students too.
The first process in training is defining what will be taught to the potential students. In
order to do this, the instructor needs to know what the customer wants to learn. Thus, it has been
planned to implement a selection and creation feature that would enable the customers to place
their own personal touches on the educational subjects presented to them. As such, customers
(potential students) will be able make their selections for the initial creation of the training
program by choosing learning objectives presented from a list. Through this process, topics are
chosen by the associated learning objective requested by the customer. This capability removes
the instructor's guesswork of what the customer wants through the usage of computerization.
Automation will be used to process customer request, with the hope of saving time and work for
the instructor.
The search algorithm combs for related topics based upon learning objectives requested
or courses that contain certain topics. The algorithm will use a tagging system for more accurate
searching. This process removes the hand picking of topics and the memorization of what
courses they are assigned to and how they are used. The algorithm is expected to not only save
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time, but it will make work more efficient and will enable new instructors to learn how to use the
system quickly.
The final method that will contribute to the system is the feedback function. With prior
and current students giving constant feedback, instructors will be able to determine what subjects
and teaching methods were the most effective and the ones that need improvement. This
feedback will assist in the process of collecting criticism from the students. These opinions and
suggestions provided will be incorporated into current and future courses in order to improve
them. To determine the effectiveness of the training modules, there will be a weighting system to
help the course generation code select the top rated topics matching the customer’s request. This
will enable instructors creating training classes to find outdated or poorly rated topics that need
to be either reconfigured or removed entirely.
2.2 Major Components (Hardware/Software)
The TRAIN system has been designed to be partitioned into two subsystems: hardware
and software. In Figure 1, the design of the system is shown to be comprised of both
subsystems. The hardware being used to create the prototype will be made up of the servers
holding necessary data and the workstations being used by each user role. The software will built
in the ASP.NET environment with C# as the prominent language. MySQL will be the tool used
to communicate with the database.
The software is designed to plan and create training courses through the interaction
between a database and a remote application. The code will gather requests from the end user
and retrieve requested records stored within the repository. The database will be used to store all
the application data used in the prototype. This will serve as the storage unit that houses all the
necessary data tied into the software.
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The web-based application is comprised of four separate user interfaces that are
associated with different types of users. The first user is the Administrator, who is granted all the
capabilities provided to the other roles. There are certain abilities that the Administrator has that
are not granted to the other three user roles. The first of these is the ability to review and approve
course requests generated by the customers. When they have approved a course, they will then
be able to assign instructors to that course. The Administrator will also have access to the
functionality that manages users and organizations for the entire application.
The next interface is that of the Instructor. They will be able to able to manage courses
and materials associated with them. They will also be able to review feedback on courses they
have been assigned by the Administrator. When needed, an instructor will have the ability to
upload and edit data within their interface. The Instructor will also have access to everything that
is accessible to the Customer, the next lower interface on the role tier.
The Customer interface has the capability to request a training course and will be able to
assign students to that course once it is approved. Feedback will also be another vital function
within this interface that will allow the Customer to express their concerns on the condition the
course was taught. The Student interface, along with the Customer, will have access to the
feedback section after the course has been taken.
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Figure 1: Major Functional Component Diagram
3.
IDENTIFICATION OF CASE STUDY
The focus of the case study revolves around the needs provided by the National Center of
Systems of Systems Engineering (NCSOSE), an enterprise research center that focuses on
problems that reside in complex systems. On a daily basis, the organization “develops and tests
theory, methods, technologies, tools, and provides focused training to more effectively deal with
complex system problem domains” (National Center of Systems of Systems Engineering). The
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subject matter that is their specialty is system-of-systems engineering. This type of trade deals
with a system that is has a direct correlation to a much larger one.
NCSOSE provides their expertise in systems engineering to interested and potential
customers. They provide hands on assistance to customers, ranging from overviewing a
customer’s provided material and giving feedback, to even making a personal appearance to a
site to carry out research. The center provides expertise and extensive knowledge of engineering
from a common body of engineers that work for NCSOSE. The center also proves training to
organizations instead of just relying on NCSOSE’s experience for knowledge of systems
engineering. The training allows customer’s organization to solve their own issues related to
system-of-systems engineering independently.
The Green Team’s connection to NCSOSE is with the domain expert Dr. Kevin Adams, a
Principal Research Scientist at NCSOSE where he has “more than 25 years of program,
financial, project and technical management experience in the military and private industry”
(NCSOSE). He holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering from Old Dominion University and two
M.S. degrees in Marine Engineering and Naval Architecture from Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. This knowledge and experience in the educational parameters of engineering define
Dr. Adams as the ideal domain expert for this type of venture.
Dr. Adams role requires him to develop courses for customers once he obtains their
request for training modules. This customer request is matched with a set of topics that are to be
pulled and combined into a presentation. This current methodology is time consuming and can
be emotionally draining. This is why Dr. Adams has brought the Green Team a case study
pertaining to the creation of training modules.
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With Dr. Adams providing his current training module creation routine, the Green Team
has drafted a prototype design known as Training Resource And Information Network (TRAIN).
TRAIN hopes to reduce the time needed to create training modules through the automation of the
current processes. TRAIN hopes to increase NCSOSE’s overall general effectiveness by
providing a more efficient and effective feedback mechanism that should decrease the overall
time for course creation.
4.
PRODUCT PROTOTYPE DESCRIPTION
The most effective way to put the proposed solutions of creating training modules to use is
to design and build a prototype. To understand what the prototype’s functionalities and
capabilities are, the goals and objectives hoped to be accomplished with the TRAIN prototype
must be defined first. As detailed in a previous section, TRAIN is an educational tool that will
help instructors and students design, develop, and evaluate training modules. This type of
training production will not only allow for instructors to create courses in a more time efficient
manner. The students, however, will have the opportunity to select the courses being taught to
them, providing a hands-on experience to their education.
In order to accomplish this task, one of the first goals is to allow the solution to be global.
The intention is to make the prototype expand beyond the scope of course creation by instructors
through including the involvement of students and their needs. This will be accomplished by
having the prototype become web-enabled, granting access to students and instructors wherever
the training is needed.
TRAIN will be learning-objective based. Instructors will base the course on a set of defined
learning objectives. If the course has not yet been created with learning objectives that fit the
needs of the students, TRAIN will be able to arrange them in a way that allow users to find the
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necessary objects by the execution of searching patterns (i.e. search bar, reference, titles).
Instructors will be able to find the necessary objectives and place them into an order that will
satisfy a subject of topic. Instructors will have the capability to edit current courses by the
addition of other required learning objectives or removal of those no longer in use. In essence,
TRAIN will allow users the full power of customization to better suit their needs.
TRAIN will have the capability to create and add users, organizations, and roles when
needed. The expectation is that this enables the model to become more robust with the
fluctuation of clients and the roles they fill varying over time. Such capabilities are just a mere
addition to the mock-up. The prototype will be able to consolidate all current learning objectives
into one place, with the plan to enable users to avoid spending time looking for needed data.
Table 1 addresses what will be implemented in the prototype compared to the ideal real world
product.
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Features
Real World Project
Prototype
User Authentication
Role logs in with
Implemented
Username/Password
Admin: Approve
View customer request and
Request
approve
Admin: Assign
Assign instructors that will
Instructor/s to
be teaching and creating
Organization
course. These instructors
Implemented
Implemented
will be able to edit only their
courses
Admin: add users
Create users and assign role Implemented
Admin: Add/Update
Add customer organization, Implemented
Organization
add users, change
information
Instructor: Add/Update Add or update topics,
data
references, learning
objectives
Implemented
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Features
Real World Project
Prototype
Instructor: Associate
Link learning objectives to
Implemented
Data
topics, topics to learning
objectives, learning objects to
references, references to
learning objects
Instructor: Feedback
Notify instructors/admin
Not Implemented
Notification
when course is rated low
Instructor: Edit
Add or remove topics from
Generated Course
generated course
Instructor: Create
Create course from scratch
Implemented
Easily search for required
Implemented
Implemented
Customized Course
Instructor: Search
material when
creating/editing course
Instructor: Add
Add customized feedback to Not Implemented, all topics will have a
Customized Feedback
learning objective, topic, and number rating. All students will be able to
Instructor: View
Feedback
course
only rate topics.
View all student feedback
Partially Implemented, all topics will have a
number rating. This will be searchable.
LAB 1 – TRAIN DESCRIPTION
Features
Real World Project
Instructor: Compile and Quickly compile all data
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Prototype
Implemented
Print Course
making up course and print
Manager: Request
Request course by selecting Implemented
Course
desired learning objective
Manager: View
After selecting learning
Requested Course
objectives, display course
Hours
duration
Manager: Assign
Assign students to approved Implemented
Students
course
Implemented
Manager: Add Students Give students username
Implemented
Manager: Update
Update organization name
Not Implemented, Admin can change
Organization
and email
information
Information
Manager: View Student See all students ratings for
Rating
particular course
Student: View Course
Admin upload course
Materials
material for student view
Implemented
Not Implemented
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Features
Real World Project
Prototype
Student: Course
Student gives text based
Partially Implemented, a single text box for
Feedback
feedback on course as a
course feedback
whole
Student: Topic
Rating based feedback per
Feedback
topic
Student: Learning
Take a quiz at the end of
Objective Quiz
each topic based off of
Not Implemented,
Not Implemented, only course feedback
learning objective
Student: Course History View previous courses taken Partially Implemented
and feedback given
Prerequisites
Topics will have
Not Implemented, admin will have to
prerequisites that will affect review generated course and add extra
course generation
topics accordingly
Table 1: Prototype vs. Real World Product
4.1 Prototype Architecture
The database will interact with the web-based application to gather requested records
stored within it. One type of data that will be placed in the repository is the users of TRAIN. The
end users (defined in Section 2.2) control the user’s capabilities when using the testing product.
These roles are defined as: Student, Customer, Instructor, and Administrator. When a user is
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logged in with correct certifications, they will be granted the privileges associated with the role
and redirected to the correct user. Along with those roles, the user’s information and organization
will be held in the repository.
The other datasets to be acquired are the courses and their feedback. The courses will be
presentations that have already been created and possibly given in the past. These courses will
also have feedback related to them. This meta-information will allow students and instructors to
determine whether the prospective course was suitable for the previous students and had met
their needs.
The other area that completes the prototype is the GUI environment. The Green Team has
designed the interfaces into three separate views that will be associated with the roles given. The
Customer will have the most basic interface. Of the capabilities, this format will have access to
feedback and course request. Through this view, the Customer will be able to send inquiries
about certain courses that might meet their educational needs. When attempting to obtain one or
more courses, they will have access to feedback that is associated with the course in question to
better perceive if the module meets their educational goals.
The next immediate interface is the Instructor. This user role will have access to different
modules that are not granted to the Customer or Student roles. Of these, an instructor will have a
topic and reference creation, course review, package download, and feedback view. The topic
and reference creation section will allow the instructor to construct a linkage between topics and
from where the material was derived. The course review will allow the instructor to go over
details about its structuring and presentation as a whole. The instructor will also be able to
compile all the topics and courses together to create a packaged product for download or to store
on a device designated by the instructor themselves. The last vital piece that will complete the
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instructor interface is the feedback view. The teacher will be able to go over student feedback
submitted, allowing the instructor to determine whether a course needs to be reconstructed or
where students benefitted the most.
The last interface designed is the one assigned to the Administrator. This interface will
have all the capabilities as stated earlier but will also have the addition of an organization
management module. This will allow a user with this role to be able to manage and maintain an
organization’s profile that will be used to determine the course taught to them by the instructor.
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4.2 Prototype Features and Capabilities
The most important goal is that the prototype be able to design training modules in a way
that is both efficient and educationally effective, following the structure seen in Figure 2. One
such aspect for success is to strengthen communication between the instructor and the students
based upon their needs. The students relay their desired educational needs through the process of
submitting a course request.
Figure 2: Prototype Functional Component Diagram
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The course request capability empowers the students to inquire about modules
specifically based on their needs. The students will be able to sort through a list of courses that
are already created from previous sessions given by the instructor. They will be able to see an
overview description of the courses that will enable them to review what the focus is for a
current course. If a course does not meet their needs, the student will have the option to request a
course based upon their own specifications and desires. Through a course request, the instructor
will have a greater understanding for what the student is looking for by decreasing the
probability of miscommunication.
When the instructor needs to find or create a course based upon certain learning
objectives, they will need to search through each course manually for the topics taught. Topic
searching utility would be great functionality for the TRAIN prototype to have. The topic
searching function is designed to greatly reduce the search time for topics. Each subject is a part
of set that make up a course. The instructor will have the ability to use a searching mechanism to
find what topics are taught within each course. A topic can be taught in many courses. This
provides a better chance at finding the course that contains a good majority of needed topics.
To understand whether students are retaining the information given to them and how they
were affected by the material, the TRAIN module is planned to have a feedback generator for
students. Feedback will be given by the students to help the instructors better perceive if the
information useful, the execution of instruction was helpful, and how effective the lessons were
for the student. Having all this collected information in one system will tremendously benefit the
instructors as they can review the feedback and, if need be, reconstruct a learning module that
would be most beneficial to future students.
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To best match current media being used in training courses, the prototype should be
developed around having compatibility with Microsoft products, such as its Office suite of
programs. Such compatibility would help instructors use materials already created from previous
training sessions without the prototype. The TRAIN module must also be remotely assessable.
With this stipulation, it has been determined that making TRAIN accessible through the web
would be the best solution to meet this goal. Lastly, the prototype must be easy to use. To be
more precise, the module as a whole must be simple to understand with a navigational system
that is functional.
4.3 Challenges and Risks
It has been determined that there are three main challenges for the TRAIN prototype. One
challenge is the set of incomplete skillsets amongst the team. The best procedure to get beyond
this would be to develop the prototype using the ASP.NET infrastructure with C# as the main
language. In order to make sure the prototype works as planned, unit tests must be carried out
for analysis. Another challenge is in the team’s lack of knowledge about the project’s domain.
This can be mitigated by studying thoroughly and building comprehension.
Another challenge is defining fluid user requirements. The requisites designed for the
user must be smooth and understandable. Continuous writing and analyzing will be beneficial to
solidify a more understandable set of requirements.
The last challenge faced is the designing of a thorough search algorithm that can be used
with data that is currently available. The Green Team will have to create test procedures that use
the available dataset. This could take many tries before a solution is found.
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GLOSSARY
Administrator: Training organization user that has all administrative capabilities.
Course: Training class that covers various topics.
Customer: User that can request course for employees.
Data: Information content contained in a specialized type.
Data Type: Different types of information used filter and create new course training material
(Learning Objectives, Topics, References, Courses).
Instructor: User role that will be giving training, manage courses, and their materials.
Learning Objective: One individual sub-topic point that on which a user can be trained.
National Center of Systems of Systems Engineering (NCSOSE): Organization that provide their
expertise and extensive knowledge of engineering through hands-on assistance and training
to interested customers.
Reference: Direction of where material for lectures can be found.
Student: User role that takes the training course and can provide feedback after course
completion.
System of Systems: Multiple interrelated groups of components with a common goal.
Topic: General subject areas to cover containing slides, lectures, and learning objectives.
TRAIN (Training Resource and Information Network): A web application software designed to
improve quality and precision of training material and decrease duration of course creation.
LAB 1 – TRAIN DESCRIPTION
REFERENCES
National Centers for System of Systems Engineering. odu.com February 18, 2013.
http://www.odu.edu/ncsose
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