Developing the culture of students’ intellectual activity based on cognitive ergonomics principles

The versatility of the concept and the need to develop the culture of students’ intellectual activity as a way of adapting in the modern information space are shown. The article considers the features of designing a joint cognitive system “The teacher – educational information – the student” as a condition for developing the culture of a future specialist’s intellectual activity and improving the quality of mastering educational information in the professional training process. The results of studying the factors reducing the quality of a student’s intellectual and educational activities within higher education environment are analyzed and discussed. Findings and recommendations are made to direct psychological and pedagogical correction in the system of higher education for further research.

Modeling the Effects of Machine Rigidities on Joint Work Strategies

One of the challenges in designing resilient human-machine systems is that machine capabilities are inherently rigid. A resilient joint cognitive system can anticipate and adapt to changing work demands effectively, but limitations of machines can make this adaptation constrained and less fluid. By identifying and accommodating for these rigidities in the design of human-machine system architectures, developers can build human-machine systems that support multiple contexts. This paper proposes a work-modeling approach for analyzing joint human-machine work strategies, focusing on identifying interdependencies that would support opportunistic adaptation and reduce the risk of machine rigidity leading to brittle failures of a human-machine system. The approach is applied to a case study in space operations to demonstrate how interdependencies can be identified and evaluated. The results of this analysis provide early insight into how team adaptation and machine limitations can be systematically accounted for in system architecture design.

What is maritime navigation? Unfolding the complexity of a Sociotechnical System

Maritime navigation is a complex task, involving an ever-increasing number of stakeholders and technologies. As complexity is growing, attention turns to the human element as the major cause of accidents and incidents. However, it is also the human element that might bring coherence and reasoning to the complex sociotechnical system that comprises maritime navigation. Thus, it is essential to develop an interpretative framework that could make sense of this complex system. This research project aims to enhance safety in maritime navigation, by developing a conceptual framework. This enables the design of Joint Cognitive System (JCS) in support of maritime navigation, including unmanned vessels, by focusing on the interactions. Results suggest that common ground is created in two dimensions: control system and shared domain. It is also found that planning helps to create a common cognitive map that supports the distributed control of the JCS.

Making Brittle Technologies Useful

Across a wide variety of systems, from aviation and ground transportation to energy and financial systems, there continues to be a move toward introducing more powerful technological support. Research and practice have clearly demonstrated that, for these complex systems, human centered designs are critical, especially when anomalous scenarios arise. As a result, one important focus of research in cognitive systems engineering has dealt with understanding how brittle technologies influence joint cognitive system performance. This panel will address three issues: 1) What do we know about how system design affects human performance when the competence envelope for the incorporated technology is exceeded? 2) What guidance is available for the design of joint cognitive systems so that they are robust or resilient when these competence envelopes are exceeded? 3) What important research questions need to be addressed to further extend our understanding regarding how to design and integrate cognitive tools into the work environment and to translate this understanding into effective system designs.

System Characteristics and Contextual Constraints for Future Fighter Decision Support

Research on decision support systems for fighter aircraft has to regard future manned and unmanned cooperating aircraft. This paper highlights system characteristics and contextual constraints to guide research as well as system development. Long term trends have been identified for the domain that has to be coped with, including the transformation of the fighter pilot from pilot to tactical decision maker. Automation strategies have to be developed to support manned and unmanned aircraft in a joint cognitive system. For instance, for intelligent fighter pilot support, for distributed unmanned and manned decision making, function allocation has to be concerned. For function allocation it is important not only to regard which agent is best at performing a task but also to regard the risk/cost of performing a task in this kind of potentially hazardous context.