Journal of
Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
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 ISSN: 1690-4524 (Online)    DOI: 10.54808/JSCI




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TABLE OF CONTENTS





How to Learn Multidisciplinary Ideas
Shigehiro Hashimoto
Pages: 1-7
ABSTRACT:
The way how to learn multidisciplinary ideas has been discussed. Biomedical engineering is exemplified for a multidisciplinary field. “Biomedical Engineering” makes a multidisciplinary research area, which includes biology, medicine, engineering and others. The cross-cultural student seminars on biomedical engineering have been exemplified as the case studies. In the group fieldwork, students were divided into small groups. Each group visited the university hospital to find research topics related to biomedical engineering as the fieldwork by the cross cultural group. Students pointed out several topics related to the multidisciplinary field, which includes mechanics, informatics, and systemics. They have learned how to communicate with people, who has variety of cultural backgrounds. Through the training, students realized another way of thinking, which stands on another base of idea. The process is effective to master multidisciplinary ideas.


The HY-DE Model: An Interdisciplinary Attempt to Deal with the Phenomenon of Hyperattention
Erzsebet Dani
Pages: 8-14
ABSTRACT:
As academics, as parents, as members of generation X, we cannot afford to ignore that the young generations that have been socialized in information society (generations Y and Z that I call “bit generations”) diverge from their seniors not only in lifestyle and mentality, but they also follow new paths as regards cognitive (and thus learning) processes. International research indicates that the accelerating development of digital devices results in changing habits of information consumption in a matter of a few years. The above changes, perceptible in information society, set me thinking, which, in turn, led me to devising a method based on what I call the HY-DE model. (1)

The method I developed invites those who are interested, into the realm of teaching methodology. It is meant to deal with a logical but problematic, nevertheless not at all useless development of digital-world multitasking: hyperattention. The HY-DE-model method I constructed and wish to deploy as a corrective in the fashion described below is meant to tame and harness this phenomenon so that deep attention, which hyperattention suppresses in the electronic learning process, could again be liberated from the prison-house of hyperattention. But the latter, rather than diminishing or even discarding it, should also be regarded as a necessary tool if its positive aspect is recognized and even trained and cultivated as hyperattention is also necessary in coping with an overwhelming flood of information. Thus, in general, the HY-DE-model approach, with all the difference it represents, falls in line with the widespread research that engages the problematic of teaching and education in knowledge-based information society, trying to exploit the possibilities offered by a ceaselessly changing technical environment and put them to the service of effective learning and knowledge.

(1) “HY-DE” is a term that I constructed from the first syllables of hyper and deep attention.


Open up or Close down - The new Era of “Openneers” and how they lead the Way to Future Success
Manuel Moritz, Tobias Redlich, Pascal Krenz, Sonja Buxbaum-Conradi, Sissy Basmer-Birkenfeld, Jens P. Wulfsberg
Pages: 15-22
ABSTRACT:
In many industries, we observe a paradigm shift from traditional value creation towards value co-creation and open production approaches. The boundaries of companies dissolve and many more players (suppliers, customers, users, community members, etc.) are integrated into the value creation process. Thus, a new understanding and taxonomy of value creation has to be introduced as a reference model in order to describe new phenomena based on Bottom-up economics. In this industrial context, openness as a precondition to participation, cooperation and interaction can be seen as a critical success factor. The purpose of this paper is to make a contribution to a theory of value co-creation by integrating a case observation and conceptual insights from literature that are concerned with co-creation phenomena. A value creation taxonomy is introduced as a reference model which is used to describe an ongoing paradigm shift from traditional industrial production towards Bottom-up economics. On this basis, a conceptual framework is derived for comparing how traditional value chain elements might be rearranged by organizations relying on value co-creation. The underlying research work also aims to apply the authors' framework in order to illustrate how completely new business models arise and how traditional (manufacturing) companies could be enabled to make use of value co-creation patterns for long term success.


Developing Global Competency across the Disciplines: An Interdisciplinary Project
Madelyn Flammia, Houman Sadri
Pages: 23-27
ABSTRACT:
Educators must find ways to prepare students for the challenges they will face in both their professional and their personal lives as citizens in the 21st century. This paper describes an internationalization project initiated by two faculty members at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. The faculty members represent two diverse disciplines: English/Technical Communication and Political Science/International Relations. The project involved the creation of a series of assignments designed to enhance students’ ability to understand issues of communication, power, and negotiation as they relate to addressing global issues at the local level. The assignments were designed so that they could be used either individually or in a sequence.


Knowledge Management Systems as an Interdisciplinary Communication and Personalized General-Purpose Technology
Ulrich Schmitt
Pages: 28-37
ABSTRACT:
As drivers of human civilization, Knowledge Management (KM) processes have co-evolved in line with General-Purpose-Technologies (GPT), such as writing, printing, and information and communication systems. As evidenced by the recent shift from information scarcity to abundance, GPTs are capable of drastically altering societies due to their game-changing impact on our spheres of work and personal development.

This paper looks at the prospect of whether a novel Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) concept supported by a prototype system has got what it takes to grow into a transformative General-Purpose-Technology. Following up on a series of papers, the KM scenario of a decentralizing revolution where individuals and self-organized groups yield more power and autonomy is examined according to a GPT’s essential characteristics, including a wide scope for improvement and elaboration (in people’s private, professional and societal life), applicability across a broad range of uses in a wide variety of products and processes (in multi-disciplinary educational and work contexts), and strong complementarities with existing or potential new technologies (like organizational KM Systems and a proposed World Heritage of Memes Repository).

The result portrays the PKM concept as a strong candidate due to its personal, autonomous, bottom-up, collaborative, interdisciplinary, and creativity-supporting approach destined to advance the availability, quantity, and quality of the world extelligence and to allow for a wider sharing and faster diffusion of ideas across current disciplinary and opportunity divides.


Work Integrated Learning - a Marriage Between Academia and Working Life
Martin Gellerstedt
Pages: 38-46
ABSTRACT:
There is a demand for increased cooperation between higher education institutes and surrounding society, and different frameworks for such cooperation have been developed. University West in Sweden has a profile called work-integrated learning which could be regarded as a systematical approach for combining theory and practice. Actually work-integrated learning has become an ideology for the University which permeates all activities, i.e. education, research and cooperation with surrounding society. This article is a review, explaining and exemplifying our approach. We will also discuss strategies and challenges for bringing the relationship between theory and practice into a prospering marriage.


Alexander von Humboldt's Idea of Interconnectedness and its Relationship to Interdisciplinarity and Communication
Detlev Doherr
Pages: 47-51
ABSTRACT:
Alexander von Humboldt, a German scientist and explorer of the 19th century, viewed the natural world holistically and described the harmony of nature among the diversity of the physical world as a conjoining between all physical disciplines. He noted in his diary: “Everything is interconnectedness.”

The main feature of Humboldt’s pioneering work was later named “Humboldtian science”, meaning the accurate study of interconnected real phenomena in order to find a definite law and a dynamic cause.

Following Humboldt's idea of nature, an Internet edition of his works must preserve the author’s original intention, retain an awareness of all relevant works, and still adhere to the requirements of scholarly edition.

At the present time, however, the highly unconventional form of his publications has undermined the awareness and a comprehensive study of Humboldt’s works.

Digital libraries should supply dynamic links to sources, maps, images, graphs and relevant texts. New forms of interaction and synthesis between humanistic texts and scientific observation need to be created.

Information technology is the only way to do justice to the broad range of visions, descriptions and the idea of nature of Humboldt’s legacy. It finally leads to virtual research environments as an adequate concept to redesign our digital archives, not only for Humboldt’s documents, but for all interconnected data.


A Philosophy of Learning
Jeremy Horne
Pages: 52-56
ABSTRACT:
The survival of the homo sapiens sapiens species depends upon learning and passing on to future generations quality knowledge. Yet, we find to an increasing extent a corruption of the process, resulting in ignorance, environmental destruction, and breakdown of community. A fundamental shift in priorities is required to avert disaster. Articulating a solution depends upon a language, which, in turn, depends upon clarifying concepts. This paper identifies the dialectical (something existing because of what it is not) interrelationship of episteme (theory) and techné (practice) within the framework of ethos, pathos, and logos. This structure and process as learning provides coherence in developing knowledge and can then be what in a generic sense is religion (to cohere, or bind). In a monk-like devotion to learning to generate quality knowledge humanity can appreciate its own meaning and make this world a better place in which to live. In this way religion becomes philosophy, and philosophy religion.


Fostering Innovation in Higher Education through Entrepreneurial Leadership
Ronald A. Styron Jr.
Pages: 57-61
ABSTRACT:
This paper includes a description of the qualities and attributes associated with Entrepreneurial Leadership and how these qualities interconnect with university culture. A summary of model entrepreneurial programs is also presented. Recommendations for university practitioners regarding the integration of entrepreneurial strategies into leadership behavior are contained in the conclusion section.


Informational Urbanism
Wolfgang G. Stock
Pages: 62-69
ABSTRACT:
Contemporary and future cities are often labeled as “smart cities,” “ubiquitous cities,” “knowledge cities” and “creative cities.” Informational urbanism includes all aspects of information and knowledge with regard to urban regions. “Informational city” is an umbrella term uniting the divergent trends of information-related city research. Informational urbanism is an interdisciplinary endeavor incorporating on the one side computer science and information science and on the other side urbanism, architecture, (city) economics, and (city) sociology. In our research project on informational cities, we visited more than 40 metropolises and smaller towns all over the world. In this paper, we sketch the theoretical background on a journey from Max Weber to the Internet of Things, introduce our research methods, and describe main results on characteristics of informational cities as prototypical cities of the emerging knowledge society.



A Silent Revolution in Reflexivity
Karl H. Müller
Pages: 70-81
ABSTRACT:
Currently, a transition from Science I, the traditional science regime from the 16th century onward to the turn of the 20th century, to Science II, the emerging new epistemic regime since 1900/1950, is on its way. This transition has been described, so far, as a complexity revolution. However, this transition can also be classified as a reflexivity revolution in multiple dimensions and practically across all scientific disciplines. Reflexivity is characterized by a circular configuration between two components x, y like in x causes y and y causes x or between a single building block like in x ? x. The current reflexivity revolution manifests itself, above all, in a new form of science, called second-order science, which fulfils vital functions for the overall science system in terms of quality control, of creating robust forms of knowledge and of providing challenging new research problems and large opportunities for innovations.


Innovative Approaches to Building Comprehensive Talent Pipelines: Helping to Grow a Strong and Diverse Professional Workforce
R. Cherinka, J. Prezzama
Pages: 82-86
ABSTRACT:
The world today is constantly changing requiring organizations to adapt quickly and seek expertise to help meet the demands on their business. There are many workforce challenges that organizations seek to overcome, and one of the hardest things to do in modern corporations is to keep the talent pool young and vibrant. Early career hires tend to bring new and exciting ideas into play that may not even be considered by their more seasoned peers. The challenge with early career hires, especially in the Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) career fields, is the extreme difficulty in finding candidates who, not only have book knowledge, but also have hands-on, real world experience. Statistics show that this is a real concern to professional workforce employers. In this presentation, we highlight a model aimed at adopting new approaches for seeking and evaluating high quality candidates for on-boarding, conducting interviews and hiring to build a corporate talent pipeline. We discuss the model as it relates to recruiting, training, competition-based interviewing and providing hands-on work experience toward helping to build strong professionals in an organization. We conclude by highlighting several examples of successful approaches and their outcomes.


The Multiple Faces of Reflexive Research Designs
Karl H. Müller
Pages: 87-98
ABSTRACT:
Reflexive research can be grouped into five clusters with circular relations between two elements x ? x, namely circular relations between observers, between scientific building blocks like concepts, theories or models, between systemic levels, between rules and rule systems or as circular relations or x ? y between these four components. By far the most important cluster is the second cluster which becomes reflexive through a re-entry operation RE into a scientific element x and which establishes its circular formation as x(x). Many of the research problems in these five clusters in reflexivity research are still unexplored and pose grand challenges for future research.


Towards a New Cybernetic Interdisciplinary Approach to Pedagogic Challenge
Russell Jay Hendel
Pages: 99-104
ABSTRACT:
After reviewing the past half century of definitions of higher cognitive pedagogy, this paper presents a new approach rooted in brain function. We define higher cognitive pedagogy as indicating the presence of executive function. Executive function in turn is defined by the presence of multiple disciplinary areas and multi-parameter subject matter. We show this approach unifies the approaches of the great pedagogists such as Bloom, Anderson, Van-Hiele, Gagne, Webb, Piaget, Marzano, Bruner, Yazdani, Pegg and Hess etc. We illustrate the applicability of this executive function approach to several disciplines including mathematics, writing, law, music, and literary analysis. The proposed executive function definition is simpler to use than previous definitions and approaches and is equally discriminatory.


The Use of Narrative Medicine Literature for Interdisciplinary Communication through the Internet Learning System
Ya-Huei Wang, Pan-Fu Kao, Hung-Chang Liao
Pages: 105-115
ABSTRACT:
The increased reliance on nonhuman technologies can lead to an impersonal and calculating medical care system in which medical care professionals and specialists do not care enough about patients’ human experiences and the quality of medical care declines. Patients lose personal contact with their doctors and other medical care professionals. Moreover, failing to understand patients’ perspectives can lead to communication problems among physicians, medical care professionals, patients, and patients’ families. However, these communication problems may be bridged by narrative medicine literature through the internet learning system. In this paper, narrative medicine literature and interdisciplinary cooperative learning are promoted to establish more humanizing medical care.


The Interdisciplinary Business Doctorate for Executives: A Novel Way to Bridge Academic Research and Practice
T. Grandon Gill, Matthew Mullarkey
Pages: 116-121
ABSTRACT:
The paper presents an over view of a new type of degree program that is rapidly emerging and gaining acceptance in the U.S.: the business doctorate for executives. Roughly a dozen of these programs currently exist at institutions accredited by AACSB International, the nation’s premier accrediting agency. Although they are research-focused, like their Ph.D counterparts, they are quite different in a number of ways. Among the most important of these: they target applicants with substantial executive experience, they are part time and assume their participants will continue working while in the program, they are interdisciplinary in focus and their emphasis is generally on applying research methods to practical business problems, as opposed to producing published research articles. As a consequence, they are well-positioned to serve as a bridge that increases partnering between academic research and practice. After summarizing the general nature of these programs, the paper considers the structure and objectives of the new Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) program being offered by the Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida.


Concept Mapping and Knowledge Modeling: A Multi-Disciplinary Educational, Informational, and Communication Technology
John W. Coffey
Pages: 122-128
ABSTRACT:
Concept maps are useful in many disciplines for the representation and communication of structured knowledge. This article contains a description of concept mapping and knowledge modeling based upon concept maps that are used for a variety of purposes. It describes applications of concept mapping and knowledge modeling for education, for knowledge preservation and sharing, for knowledge creation, as an efficient means of creating documentation, and for the creation of knowledge formalisms from informal knowledge representations. Examples are drawn from several different knowledge domains.


Multi-Disciplinary Research Experiences Integrated with Industry –Field Experiences
Suzanne Lunsford, Corrie Spradlin, Mary Sullivan, Phuong Khanh Quoc Nguyen
Pages: 129-131
ABSTRACT:
The purpose of this environmentally inquiry-based lab was to allow the students to engage into real-world concepts that integrate industry setting (Ohio Aggregate Industrial Mineral Association) with the academia setting. Our students are engaged into a field trip where mining occurs to start the problem based learning of how the heavy metals leak in the mining process. These heavy metals such as lead and indium in the groundwater are a serious concern for the environment (Environmental Protection Agency) from the mining process. The field experiences at the mining process assist in building our students interest in developing sensors to detect heavy metals of concern such as lead and indium simultaneously by a unique electrochemistry technique called Square Wave Anodic Stripping Voltammetry (SWASV). The field experience assists building the students interest in real –world application and what qualities do they want the electrochemical sensor to possess to be successful for real world usage. During the field trip the students are engaged into learning novel instrumentation such as an SEM (Scanning Electron Microscope) to study the working electrode sensor developed to understand the sensor surface morphology properties better as well. The integration of industry setting with academia has been a positive experience for our students that has allowed their understanding of real-world science research needs to succeed in an industrial setting of research.


Consulting Informs Best Practice in Academia
Risa Blair
Pages: 132-133
ABSTRACT:
The Conversational Plenary Session began with a clear agenda of describing the process and challenge of developing eLearning and eTraining. After a brief discussion of the benefits and challenges of the modality, the conversation quickly segued to a highly spirited conversation related to consulting and the negative implications when one calls oneself a consultant. In fact, this became an integral theme of multiple discussions throughout the rest of the conference. This author strives to identify a selection of literature which supports the viewpoint that consulting does indeed inform best practices in academia. Those professors with up-to-the-minute consultancies in their fields offer an enriched experience for their students.


Consulting by academics: Many forms, many opinions
Jan A. C. Klakurka, Bill Irwin
Pages: 134-140
ABSTRACT:
In early 2015 the authors were invited to deliver a keynote address at a business-educator conference. As both were late entrants to the Academy they decided to speak on the value of how their previous professional experience enhanced theory in the classroom, creating a more grounded learning environment for their students. As they prepared their presentation, it became apparent to them that some aspects of their previous professional life were still active; both are still engaged in professional consulting in addition to their academic lives. As they worked through their presentation they had a gestalt moment, their experiences as Consulting Academics were near identical in nature. They chose to speak on the benefits and challenges of the Consulting Academic in the field of management education as this practices related to the students, their academic peers, the academy and themselves and their own academic practice. The following reflective paper highlights the benefits and challenges of the Consulting Academic.