Teacher's guide for Hunting for ways to reduce design-induced end user error

by Yvonne Toft

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Introduction

Use this Knowledge Hunt to help university level interdisciplinary, engineering, OHS and ergonomics students learn about reducing design-induced end user error. The goal is to get students acquiring defined knowledge about ergonomic design principles. The hunt takes them back to basic theory and application of cognitive ergonomics.

Overview

Main Topic:	Reducing design-induced end user error
Subtopics:	Introducing ergonomics, People think, People respond, Engineers can optimise
Grade Level:	University
Subject(s):	Interdisciplinary
Learning Goal:	acquiring defined knowledge

Vision and Reality

If the learning goal were achieved in the most ideal of perfect worlds it would look something like:

Engineering and other educators will understand and champion the human element in system design. The educators will feel motivated to work through the activities together with others or on their own but will also find it exciting to consider the possibility of integrating the activities into their own class rooms to help their students gain some foundation knowledge in human factors. The learning activities might also be used in a workshop format.

However, what I anticipate probably looks more like:

Based on the Vision set for this activity, the actual reality is more likely to be that the educators will only engage if the activities require a short time to complete and have maximum punch. The activities will need to be very usable for students without much tinkering for the educators to use them in that way.

The What - If Inventory

To give the activity its best chance at helping students learn, I assembled this list of possible resources:

Technology Resources

This Knowledge Hunt will require individual participant access to LAN or broadband internet capable computers. Ideally the participants would be able to cut and paste into word processing software on the same computer. Access via modem can be successful with a little patience. Access to a common discussion board / blogg or other will be required if there is no opportunity for participants to debrief face to face.



Internet Potential

There is lots of potential for extending the learning activities with current events. On line news reports have huge potential for presenting multimedia catalyst material for helping participants understand their need to learn about this. Take time to explore the potential of How Stuff Works and Bad Human Factors Design pages to further supplement learning.



Possible Collaborations

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia has a very active ergonomics community who would love to collaborate. If you would like to bounce ideas off the 'real world' then visit http://www.ergonomics.org.au/erginfomail.htm and subscribe to one of the email lists.



Special Events

AaeE conference, HFESA conference and CRC Centre for Integrated Engineering Asset Management workshops are all coming up in 2005. Contact the author for more information.



General Resources

End user resources are likely to be LAN / library electronic resources. A variety of software capability and understanding / experience of learning opportunities via the web.



Standards

These learning activities are congruent with engineering professional competency standards & HB59 The Human Factor (Australian Standards Association).

Conclusion

This activity would be best used for a 'face to face' class activity or an 'online learning community' by having individuals or student groups seek answers to the questions, debrief as a class, then individually (or pairs / groups) try to answer the 'big question', students could then bring back their contribution to a class debrief of the 'big question' and conclusions. This activity could be used very effectively pre, post or concurrently with companion activities:
Conceptualising people as integral elements in system design
at http://web-and-flow.com/members/ytoft/ergoeng/builder.htm
and / or
'Putting People Power into Design' WebQuest
at http://web-and-flow.com/members/ytoft/ergoeng/webquest.htm

created by Yvonne Toft email: y.toft@cqu.edu.au http://web-and-flow.com/members/ytoft/folder4/hunt.htm