ENGR 1271 Writing Assignment 4

This specification applies to a communication protocol for networked control systems. The protocol provides peer-to-peer communication for networked control and is suitable for implementing both peer-to-peer and master-slave control strategies. This specification describes services in layers 2-7. In the layer 2 (data link layer) specification, it also describes the MAC sub-layer interface to the physical layer. The physical layer provides a choice of transmission media. The interface described in this specification supports multiple transmission media at the physical layer. In the layer 7 specification, it includes a description of the types of messages used by applications to exchange application and network management data.

The paper presents an overview of techniques and algorithms for recognising scanned engineering images, with an emphasis on those for graphic element vectorisation and interpretation. Some background knowledge and basic issues regarding computerising scanned engineering documents are presented. Raster-to-vector conversion approaches are classified as interactive, semi-automatic or automatic, and they are discussed, respectively, with references to some of commercialised software. Various thresholding, segmentation and vectorisation methodologies are also discussed. A specific effort is made to provide information for evaluating and comparing techniques in the recent literature. Both strengths and weaknesses of these algorithms have been discussed, and the future trend envisaged.

Many books on preparing engineering documents tell us that the first and most important step is audience analysis. While we agree that audience analysis is important, do we have the appropriate tools and techniques for anlaysis? Surveys can be effective tools for audience analysis, but identifying the audience is a problem—not only because the audience can be drawn from a globalized and diversified society, but also because the audience often consists of people of different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. However, any attempt at audience identification is better than none. In this paper, I present a method to identify the audience using a multi-agent system (MAS) when preparing engineering documents.

This work sought to help inform the design of educational digital games by the studying the design of successful commercial videogames. The main thesis question was: How does a commercially and critically successful modern video game support the learning that players must accomplish in order to succeed in the game (i.e. get to the end or win)? This work takes a two-pronged approach to supporting the main argument, which is that the reason we can learn about designing educational games by studying commercial games is that people already learn from games and the best ones are already quite effective at teaching players what they need to learn in order to succeed in the game. The first part of the research establishes a foundation for the argument, namely that accepted pedagogy can be found in existing commercial games. The second part of the work proposes new methods for analysing games that can uncover mechanisms used to support learning in games which can be emplyed even if those games were not originally designed as educational objects. In order to support the claim that ‘good’ commercial videogames already embody elements of sound pedagogy an explicit connection is made between game design and formally accepted theory and models in teaching and learning. During this phase of the work a significant concern was raised regarding the classification of games as ‘good’, so a new methodology using Borda Counts was devised and tested that combines various disjoint subjective reviews and rankings from disparate sources in non-trivial manner that accounts for relative standings. Complementary to that was a meta-analysis of the criteria used to select games chosen as subjects of study as reported by researchers. Then, several games were chosen using this new ranking method and analysed using another new methodology that was designed for this work, called Instructional Ethology. This is a new methodology for game design deconstruction and analysis that would allows the extraction of information about mechanisms used to support learning. This methodology combines behavioural and structural analysis to examine how commercial games support learning by examining the game itself from the perspective of what the game does. Further, this methodology can be applied to the analysis of any software system and offers a new approach to studying any interactive software. The results of the present study offered new insights into how several highly successful commercial games support players while they learn what they must learn in order to succeed in those games. A new design model was proposed, known as the 'Magic Bullet' that allows designers to visualize the relative proportions of potential learning in a game to assess the potential of a design.