A Complex Sociotechnical Systems Approach to Provisioning ...

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Procedia Computer Science 00 (2014) 000–000 www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

Conference on Systems Engineering Research (CSER 2014) Eds.: Azad M. Madni, Barry Boehm, University of Southern California; Michael Sievers, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology; Marilee Wheaton, The Aerospace Corporation Redondo Beach, CA, March 21-22, 2014

A Complex Sociotechnical Systems Approach to Provisioning Educational Policies for Future Workforce *Michael Richeya, Marcus Nancea, Leroy Hannemana, William Hubbarda, Azad M. Madni,b and Marc Spraragenc a The Boeing Company University of Southern California c Intelligent Systems Technology, Inc. b

Abstract

Reforming the U.S. educational system and workforce is a national challenge. Both industry leaders 30 and academics 2,28 concur that improving the quality, quantity [and alignment] of U.S STEM graduates are national imperatives. Models of the U.S. educational system, using complex sociotechnical systems’ approaches and tools that instill systems thinking, offer a holistic perspective to the educational and workforce challenges we face as a nation and allow us to identify and understand challenges associated with workforce preparedness, and increasing the number and technical excellence of STEM graduates 9,13,29. These models represent a sociotechnical system of systems with various sub-systems, each one representing an inherently complex and interdisciplinary problem of maintaining bi-directional, non-linear feedback relationships between one another. Each system involves multiple disparate stakeholders that need to collaborate within a time- and resource-intensive process while embedded in a larger sociotechnical system, aligned with the people, ideas, and support required to support desired global outcomes, of the system of systems, society and industry in particular 11. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the University of Southern California. *Corresponding author. E-mail address:[email protected] Keywords: Socio-technical Systems, Systems Engineering Education, Engineering, Worldbuilding and Workforce Development

1877-0509 © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the University of Southern California.

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Introduction Reforming the U.S. educational system and workforce is a national challenge. Both industry leaders 30and academics 2,28 concur that improving the quality, quantity, and alignment of U.S STEM graduates are national imperatives. Models of the U.S. educational system, using complex sociotechnical systems approaches and tools that instill systems thinking have high payoff in that they offer a holistic perspective of the educational and workforce challenges that we face as a nation. They also allow us to identify and understand challenges associated with workforce preparedness and increasing the number and technical excellence of STEM graduates 9,13,29. These models essentially represent a sociotechnical system of systems in which each system confronts an inherently complex, nonlinear, interdisciplinary problem of maintaining bi-directional feedback relationships with one another. Each system involves multiple disparate stakeholders that need to collaborate within a time- and resource-constrained process which is embedded in a larger sociotechnical system comprising people, ideas, and support required to address desired global outcomes of the system of systems that are aligned with society and industry needs 11. Our premise is that sustained competitive advantage for an industry or country results from developing a culture that supports lifelong learning. In support of this premise, we present examples of design-based implementation research that investigates persistent structural-behavioral problems from the perspective of the different stakeholders, i.e.,., academia, government, and industry. We argue that these perspectives are key ingredients of collaborative solutions that are developed to address thorny, complex issues including the integration of these concepts into engineering education research conducted within industry 3,21. We argue that achieving this change in the educational arena requires systems thinking, focus, aligned industry-/academia collaboration, and reflective, cross-disciplinary research. By applying systems engineering approaches, typically used to examine and model complex systems dynamics, to questions of educational practices, researchers can potentially benefit from insights about fundamental relationships within the system and its components, , and examine ways in which the complex system can employ feedback loops to adapt as needed over time. While several disciplines have investigated aspects of this education challenge, we suggest that their impact is likely to be limited and long in coming unless they are purposefully brought together within an engineering systems mandate. Within this complexity framework, multi-system design solutions can be used to investigate how different scales and hierarchical levels are bound to each other to facilitate effective and robust solutions, and to encourage participants to articulate the rational, theory-of-action that informs their decision-making. Our postmodern perspective on reality engages with lifelong learning and a way of being that is governed by adaptive expertise. Learning is succinctly described by the National Research Council publication: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School. Being in today’s world is a little more complex: one has to understand and actually live the difference between an expert and an Adaptive Expert 6,. Both learning and being are challenging elements of a culture that often seems to function on a pragmatic level for survival.. Viewed through the multiple lenses of Complex Sociotechnical Systems, Engineering Education including How People Learn we draw from the literature on elegant design, systems thinking and advanced modeling to formulate a vision for education reform that drives workforce needs and human and societal obligations for the future. It is important to note that the current model invests in individual research projects where research and policies that examine STEM education reform are largely focused on individual aspects of a problem.. However, the education/workforce system is a complex system, with multiple feedback loops, iterative cumulative risk, and longtime delays. What this means is that solutions that focus on a single point in the system are likely to be ineffective in solving (much less addressing) the problem. We argue for a deeper, multi-perspective investigation of the system to arrive at meaningful solutions 8. Effects-based projects, done in the past, 13 have met with partial success. These projects focus on understanding particular problems usually by examining effects of particular

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programmatic changes on student outcomes. They tend to focus exclusively on “formal” education (K1 through K12), often excluding “informal” resources (e.g., workforce, community and outside school programs). Similar arguments can be made for embracing complexity thinking in higher education. Higher education can be understood in complex systems terms—the system is dynamic; operates at and on different levels, including different timescales, stakeholders, and loosely connected feedback loops. And, finally, the system is open to external environmental influences. We posit that identifying and understanding the challenges of preparing the STEM workforce, and the potential impacts of initiatives aimed at increasing the number and quality of STEM graduates can be significantly improved by considering education as a complex, adaptive system 9,28,29. We propose to integrate advances in computational modeling, complex adaptive systems, and educational research to: a) examine data and results gathered by researchers funded by the Engineering Education Centers (EEC) program; b) develop a framework that enables the coordination of variables and outcomes across research projects; and c) foster collaborative translational research partnerships with policy, research, education leadership, and community stakeholders. Such an approach can produce guidelines and principles for establishing validity and scalability of the approach, and assessing the contributions of systems engineering principles and practices to established value propositions. By framing education problems from a complexity perspective, the project will help in establishing a means of understanding the implementation of interventions, thereby accelerating the translation of extant research into effective practice.

System Constraints and their Influence on Complexity Understanding the dynamics of the educational system, workforce and employment trends, and policy investments can help stakeholders frame behaviors and rigorously explore constraints and effectiveness of the educational system. This has to be accomplished with the constraints of aging demographics, low STEM performance and enrollments, ongoing financial constraints within higher education that limit the ability to increase STEM yield, and a persistent skills gap, that collectively point to instabilities that are not likely to dissipate. The Georgetown report 2, NAE Rising Above the Gathering Storm, and the NSB Science & Technologies Indicators 15 all project an aging work force, slowing growth rate and further tightening of labor markets. Understanding the temporal dynamics of the educational system and workforce requirements can help stakeholders frame behaviors over time and rigorously explore misalignments. Technological advances and globalization have rewritten business marketplace realities exposed the structural – behavioral misalignment and growing weakness in the school/workforce pipeline from traditional educational establishments. Specifically, complexity in individual and group learning spaces, coupled with the impact of learning curves towards organizations’ goals, have uncovered unintended consequences 14 and structural misalignments between society’s needs and current educational systems capacities to produce 29. Figure 1 presents a graphical depiction of constraints on STEM input quality and quantity.

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Error! Reference source not found. shows STEM input quality/quantity is constrained by man-made values and U.S. Education System (Stephens & Richey, 2011) systemic deferments at a number of Key junctures in the continuum include: a) number of incoming students, b) “fixed” STEM seats available within the university system, and c) cyclic behavior of business oscillatory responses to hiring. This industry perspective, viewed through the lens of complex adaptive systems, has a potential to offer key solutions to traditional “stuck points” by bringing all stakeholders to the table 28,29, and asking the critical question “where would you invest for transformative change?” Systems Perspective on Engineering Education Research and Industry Partnerships The National Academy of Engineering Rising Above the Gathering Storm and other reports project an aging labor force, slowing growth rate, and tightening labor market. From an industry perspective, systems thinking and complexity management are critical — they are about feedback dynamics and their behavior over time. And they are multiplicative and determinate. Understanding dynamics of the educational system, workforce and employment trends, and policy investments can help stakeholders frame behaviors and rigorously explore constraints and effectiveness of the educational system. Most would agree that the educational–workforce system is complex, with multiple feedbacks and lengthy delays. So solutions that focus solely on a single point in the system are invariably ineffective, and cannot be expected to solve the problem 8,9,13,28. To be successful, the information, methods and tools from disparate disciplines, sources, and systems need to be integrated locally and shared nationally to generate the knowledge needed to sustain improvements over the long-term…a classic challenge for the discipline of systems engineering and the systems approach.

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A systematic systems approach is needed to take into account feedback loops that enable education and workforce systems to “adapt” to global and technological changes in ways that produce positive change and, at times, anticipates radical, or unpredictable change. This socio-technical systems approach to learning integrates curriculum, teaching, assessment, and technology that go beyond task-specific practice and one-time summative assessments, whether in the workforce or in education. Today several learning scientists and industry researchers view learning as a social process, whereby knowledge is co-constructed within a socio-technical network, mentored by peers, workplace experts and university faculty through both face-to-face and on-line learning environments 7,20. If, as we assume, lifelong learning is the keystone to sustaining competitive advantage, we need to appreciate how people learn , i.e., (1) how the sensory mechanisms observe, capture and store stimuli, (2) how that stimuli is converted to learning, (3) how the material learned is compartmentalized in memory, (4) how their assembly (curriculum – experience) transitions to knowledge, (5) how that knowledge is stored and retrieved on demand and (6) how understanding the interfaces between those building blocks of knowledge enables us to become more effective learners. Recognizing that multiple modalities, languages, indeed dialects exist by which this knowledge is communicated, the challenge is to find an approach to integrating these building blocks as a means to creating an elegant “library of knowledge” that serves the needs of all stakeholders with minimum structural complexity 10. For lifelong learning to produce a vibrant workforce and sustainable workforce pipelines, innovations at the micro scale of how people learn must also be augmented with methods that align educational policies with the desired educational system and outcomes. By educational system, we mean more than just formal education. The system also includes policy, communities, families, and social dynamics that collectively impact various levels of the educational system. In this paper, we argue for the development of an elegant systems framework, within which changes to various educational systems parameters can be systematically explored and their impact assessed on desired outcomes. Such a framework would employ a metaphoric or literal multi-sensory environment constructed from real-world structure, behavior, logic, and narrative ingredients. To support the exploration of interactions and sensitivities, concepts from system dynamics can be exploited to not only acquire insights about fundamental relationships within the system, but also to understand the evolution and adaptation of the system over time. One approach to addressing such a grand challenge is to combine system dynamics modeling and storytelling in virtual worlds, to uncover and rectify structural-behavioral alignment of strategic workforce needs within the educational system. In this broader research landscape, workplace learning, an industry interest area, is also receiving considerable attention. The gap, between what is taught within the formal educational systems and the skills that companies need to compete globally, continues to grow. Scaling up investment in workforce training is a new reality for many companies. This constant investment in training and re-tooling skills reduces margins and competitiveness of large organizations, and is difficult or impossible for small businesses to absorb. This current situation is clearly untenable. To address this problem today, more and more industry-university collaborative research projects are underway that focus on interdisciplinary complex systems problems, leveraging social networking and technological gaming innovations to energize young engineers and technologists 23,31. While the value propositions addressed may differ somewhat from industry to industry, and even within an industry, this higher-level synoptic picture of an integrated, industry-aligned approach to strategic workforce development incorporating experiential knowledge of that industry is continuing to gain favor when it comes to enabling the development of life-long learners. Conclusion: Reaching beyond today’s thinking to architect elegant sociotechnical systems 10 will require cross-disciplinary thinking 12 and a thematic vision of the future among stakeholders who can tolerate ambiguity and are yet passionate about

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transformative change 10,11. While education has received significant investment in broad areas over time, little funding has been directed to studying the complex, organizational dynamics of the socio-technical educational complex. This effort will require a new field of socio-technical study, a multidisciplinary endeavor leading to elegant solutions that include engineers, behavioral scientist, neuroscientists, economists, organizational-, network-, social theory experts, parents, academics, and government leaders to pursue implementation in real-world contexts. Intellectual collisions among members of this group can be expected to create breakthrough contributions from these groups. In addition, educational policy studies are needed to judge the feasibility of such an initiative and chart the most promising course. In several aspects of the problems discussed, there are already researchers at work and a growing body of findings that, if and when brought together, can help assess the feasibility of applying several different complex system approaches to studying education as a system. The subsystem interfaces within and between education systems are both complicated and unpredictable. To become transformative, what is needed is a deep understanding of social dynamics and structures, and the exponential complexity encountered as new knowledge is distributed throughout the system. This new knowledge is key to transcending sub-cultural boundaries and to developing breakthrough innovations. This approach can be expected to foster collaborative, translational research partnerships among stakeholders representing policy making, educational reform, and educational methods. By framing the educational system reform problem from a complexity perspective, we can establish a means for developing interventions and exploring their impact on desired outcomes and thereby accelerating the translation of research concepts into effective practices. A central theme in this paper is to model the educational system as a socio-technical system embedded within the larger socio-politicaleconomic system of systems on which it relies for resources, support and also ideas, while serving the needs of societies and communities. Within this framework, various interventions can be explored not only in terms of impact on desired outcomes but also in terms of their longer term viability. The focus of the research team is to understand how new stable processes emerge from the dynamics of innovation and, in turn, enable the system and its actors to evolve. By applying concepts from system dynamics (e.g., emergent phenomena, feedback loops within the system, and with its environment), to questions of education practice and policy, researchers can gain critical insights into fundamental relationships (and risks) within the system and, most importantly, examine and understand the ways by which the system and its components can potentially adapt over time. By framing education challenges from a complexity perspective, the project will help establish a means of understanding the implementation of interventions, identifying the communication obstacles associated with those interventions, and thereby accelerating the translation of extant research into effective practice. Within the proposed complexity framework, multi-system, multidisciplinary design solutions can be explored and used to investigate how different scales and hierarchical levels are bound to each other to realize effective and robust solutions and to encourage participants to articulate their rationale (theory of action) on the importance of their decision models. This journey is not going to be necessarily easy or straightforward. Even the larger socio-political-economic system of systems is subject to emergent global phenomena that influence the national education and workplace system. Systems engineering, systems thinking and systems modeling of the education system provides stakeholders with the flexibility and adaptability to continuously find “levers” e.g., near optimal solutions based on deviations from the current model, whether at the micro level through improvements in student learning, or at the macro level through structural improvements to education infrastructure. The intended result is clarification of, better alignment with, and measurable achievement of value proposition objectives. The proposed research will evaluate the contributions of other research and interventions carried out at various levels of the educational system, and will incorporate the findings with the workforce development system, thereby achieving a single body of knowledge that is greater than the sum of its parts…giving new meaning to Murray Gell-Man’s eloquent refrain: “You don’t need something more to get something more” 5.

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