The WebForum

Abstract

Introduction

Books and journals tend to have a wide distribution but a long publishing lead-time. For example it often takes more that a year for an article to be peer reviewed and published in a learned journal. Journals have a shelf life of about a month or so, and then can be hard to locate for study. Technical books have a long lead time, of the order of a year, but may have a shelf life or several years, however in general, they tend to sell relatively few copies unless they are widely adopted as college text books.

The traditional face to face conference only lasts for a few days. Conferences contain panel forums and paper presentations. The panel discussions can provide the audience with information that is current at the time the panel takes place, however, once the session is over, the contents are lost to the world at large. The papers are published in the conference proceedings; documents with very limited distribution. Consequently ideas and methodologies published in conference proceedings do not received wide distribution. This results in a situation where the idea or methodology gets rediscovered every year or so, instead of being used as a basis for further exploration. Thus, while technical books and conference papers meet the publishing needs in academia, the "real need" which is to not only to spread the ideas, and develop methodologies, but to discuss them, and determine their suitability in different application domains is not met in an effective manner.

In addition, conference peer reviewers may reject publishable papers because either the papers do not fit in the theme of the conference, or there were too many submissions for the few days of the conference.

The World Wide Web (WWW) has been used to enhance conferences by:

• Advertising the conference.
• Providing prospective delegates with information about the conference and local areas.
• Publishing abstracts of the papers to be presented.
• Providing after the event copies of the presentations and papers presented at the conference. The AusWeb99 [HREF2] web site is a prime example of this enhancement. However, while the conference papers are available on the web site, the hyperlinks to referenced papers tend to vanish over time. This fading away of hyperlinks reduces the research potential of the site because the sources are no longer available to the researcher who wishes to follow up a reference.

• The CPUniverse Forum at http://www.cpuniverse.com/forum/ [HREF3]
• The Institution of Electrical Engineers Computer Forum at http://forumpreview.iee.org.uk/ [HREF4]
• The Research Working Paper Series at http://business.city.unisa.edu.au/isworld/workingpapers/ [HREF5]

The WebConference

• Systems Engineering,
• Multi-disciplinary research,
• Software Engineering,
• Test and Evaluation,
• Asynchronous Distance Learning Seminars

• The conference on Distance Education: an Open Question [HREF12], hosted by the University of South Australia in September 2000. So selected Forum panellist's presentations at the Distance Education: an Open Question conference will also be used to seed the WebForum. Thus the baseline SEEC WebForum will provide a valuable research resource for the topics listed above.
• The Systems Engineering Test and Evaluation (SETE) 2000 Conference [HREF13] to be held in Brisbane in November 2000. The plan for this conference is to mix face to face synchronous presentations with asynchronous distance mode presentations in the technical sessions. These presentations will also be used to seed the WebForum.

Concept of Operations for the WebForum

Submissions

Each submission is posted before being peer reviewed. Posting the submission establishes the initial date of publication to the credit of the original author. Once the submission is peer reviewed the reviewer's comments and ratings are also published.

There are four classes of submissions:

• Academic - the submission is peer reviewed to the requirements of the Australian Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA).
• Practitioner - the submission is peer reviewed to ensure that the content is making a contribution to the body of knowledge. For systems engineers, this will be one way to fulfil one of the requirements for the proposed certified systems engineer status.
• Students - The instructors in graduate level classes in accredited academic institutions make submissions on behalf of the student. The instructors select their best student's efforts and certify each submission as having met the instructor's standards. Student submissions would tend to be case studies, evaluations of tools for specific applications, and new concepts.
• Unreviewed - the submitter requests that the submission not be reviewed.

• If the content is not appropriate to the topics carried on the WebForum.
• If the submission or the submitter do not meet the standards of the WebForum. For example, the submitters have failed to take part in the discussion of their previous submission.

When participants connect to the site, they are presented with the options listed below:

• Sessions - the area in which the topics are discussed. After participants select the "sessions area" they can review all submissions (papers or presentations), search on topic, title or author, download an item for local viewing and enter an asynchronous dialogue with the submitter (the presenter in a traditional conference) and other interested parties. The participants can also rate the submission based on a number of parameters.
• Exhibits - the exhibit area, containing graphics and links to exhibitor's web sites. This is a way to acknowledge sponsors and possibly fund the WebForum.
• What's new - a synopsis of the submissions posted in the previous calendar month. This speeds up the participant's access to new information.
• Tutorial - a tutorial on how to use the WebForum to download and view submissions, and how to take part in the discussion threads. In particular the participant needs to be shown when to respond in an existing thread and when to open a new one.
• Registration - participants are required to register their degree of expertise on the topic, with a link to their personal web site (if they have one). This allows other participants to determine how much credibility to give the postings of a particular person in a discussion thread.

As an example, a submitter may propose an alternative to the Capability Maturity Model. The concept may look good on paper, and some organization may decide to implement it on a new project. At the same time, other participants may discuss the proposal and tailor it to different industries or different organizational cultures. Thus in the space of a few weeks, the proposal could get a wringing out that might take several years using current approaches.

Example of an application in the defence acquisition organization

Advantages of the WebForum

• The time to publication of a submission is very fast because the time is set by the web master. Since peer review can take time, the submission is posted in parallel with the review process.
• The interchange of ideas is fast.
• Plagiarism is minimized because each posting is time stamped so that the submitter gets credit for both the material and the time it was presented.
• All submissions and discussion exchanges are stored for study.
• Minimizes the amount of discussion on basic concepts, because the source document is available for study.
• The WebForum becomes the major source of material for students researching the topic because:
• Graduate students have access to both current and what would have been "out of print" publications on a topic.
• Graduate students can take part in the dialogue with the submitter while in a class on the topic.
• Discussion material may be combined, summarized and submitted to conferences and journals in the manner of (Sheard 1998) and the International Council of Systems Engineering (INCOSE) Listserver.
• Society chapter newsletter editors will have a ready source of technical material. They can contact the submitter and request permission to publish the material in their local publication.
• Technical committees in organizations such as INCOSE could use a WebForum to discuss projects in progress and share manuscripts. This is the way students in the Graduate School of Management and Technology at UMUC collaborate on team projects.
• Society chapters could spend some time at each meeting synchronously discussing a recent posting after all members have viewed the posting prior to, or even at the meeting. This function would facilitate the task of the program chair in finding speakers.
• Society chapters could also arrange for a synchronous discussion with the presenter using telephone technology. This is the same concept as the transatlantic participation in a panel presentation in the INCOSE 1999 international symposium. The presentation was made asynchronously as far as the presenter was concerned - he produced it and stored it on a CD-ROM and on a web page [HREF16]. The participants at the panel viewed it in real-time during the session and then the question and answer discussion took place synchronously over the Internet using the PhoneFree [HREF17] software.
• The evolution of ideas is documented for future study.
• The student area becomes a showcase of the quality of the product of different academic institutions.
• Participants in the discussion threads are calibrated. In the traditional Listserver, there is no way for a new participant to determine which of the other participants is worth listening to, and which is not. By having access to the participant's registration information, the student can make an informed determination.
• The experts are identified. By viewing postings from specific people over time, it should become easy to identify the experts, the visionaries, those with their feet firmly planted on the ground, and those with their feet firmly planted in mid air. This feature should allow the quality of academic institutions and consulting organizations to be compared.
• There is no time limit on a presentation. Unlike in a conference, in which the session is time limited, in the WebForum a submitter can take as much time as is needed to explain the topic. The audience is free to stop viewing the presentation or reading the paper at any time.
• The quality of the discussions will tend to be higher than that on the Listserver. By using the threaded conference discussion approach, each posting is stored for posterity. Participants should be cautioned in the manner of the British Police - "Anything you say will be taken down and may be used in evidence."

Conclusions

The WebForum has the potential to change the way practitioners communicate ideas. It will probably not replace face to face conferences because it does not provide a means for some of the face to face peer to peer networking that takes place at conferences. It may however be the forerunner of a new type of web based applications that could replace the printed journals and some of the conference functions of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.
 

References

Kasser, J.E., panel presentation in "Expanding Systems Engineering using the Internet", The 9th INCOSE International Symposium, Brighton, England, 1999 [HREF9].

Kasser, J.E., Cohen, D. MacKenzie, G., Rosenbaum, A., "Producing Audio Presentations for Asynchronous Distance Education", University System of Maryland Web Initiative in Teaching Conference and Showcase, College Park, MD, 1999 [HREF16].

Sheard, S.A., "Systems Engineering for Software and Hardware Systems", The 8^th INCOSE International Symposium, Vancouver, BC., 1998

Hypertext References

HREF1

http://www.seec.unisa.edu.au/personnel/Jk/JoeHomepage.html

HREF2

http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/ausweb99.htm

HREF3

http://www.cpuniverse.com/forum/

HREF4

http://forumpreview.iee.org.uk/

HREF5

http://business.city.unisa.edu.au/isworld/workingpapers/

HREF6

http://polaris.umuc.edu/~jkasser/classes/m6179902/mswe617.htm

HREF7

http://nova.umuc.edu/prog/gsmt/mswe.html

HREF8

http://www.umuc.edu

HREF9

http://www.umuc.edu/~jkasser/SE2S/Webconf.ram

HREF10

http://www.seec.unisa.edu.au/

HREF11

http://www.unisa.edu.au

HREF12

http://www.com.unisa.edu.au/cccc/

HREF13

http://www.seecforum.unisa.edu.au/Sete2000/SETE2000.htm

HREF14

http://www.seecforum.unisa.edu.au

HREF15

http://www.seecforum.unisa.edu.au/SETE2000/PresPrep/PresPrep.htm

HREF16

http://www.umuc.edu/~jkasser/distance/halfwit.ram

HREF17

http://www.phonefree.com

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