Finding value working for
real-world clients are, from left, Shoira Tahirova, Kevin Engelkamp, Matthew
Bentz and Jan Beier. Photo by Tim Fitzgerald/University Relations.
Building from scratch
Students thrive in
Applied Business Simulation Class
Officials at Avantas say that when they agreed
to serve as a real-world client for the teams of students in the spring
semester Applied Business Simulation class, they were hoping for, at the most,
a baseline model they could utilize as they determine the feasibility of taking
one of their products to a new city.
They got more.
"The students were creative and added pieces
in their models that are more complex than we expected," says Michelle Krapfl,
vice president of operations and administrative services at Avantas, an Omaha
company that works with health care organizations throughout the United States
to provide work strategies and products that address nursing staff shortages.
"In fact, we will be using one of the student
team's models as a starting point," Krapfl says. "It's 90 percent there, and
it's been built in such a flexible way that we can make the changes and tweak
the information as needed."
The first-time class is being taught by Dr.
Gerald Wagner, distinguished research fellow at UNO's College of Information
Science & Technology (IS&T). He says the class fills an immediate need
to provide students with intensive, real-life experiences of creating business
models."I feel that, for the most part, we have lost the art and the science of
teaching simulation modeling in our universities," Wagner says. "We teach Excel
with fill-in-the-blank examples, but we don't teach the students how to model
the decision processes associated with decision making.
"We don't teach how to build complex models
from scratch where they can ask 'What if?' questions and immediately see
answers. Every application is different and everyone sees a process
differently, and that's why canned applications fall short."
In the course, student teams work as
consultants with actual companies and organizations to build business
simulation models using the Planners Lab modeling software. The Planners Lab is
both intuitive and easy to learn, which allows the students to focus on
understanding the clients' needs and delivering useful results.
Teams of three to five students consult and
produce models for five clients over the course of the semester, spending three
weeks on each project. Four clients are situated in Omaha; one is in El Paso,
Texas, requiring the teams to communicate by phone and electronically.
Each student team works with the same client
at the same time. For example, all four teams worked with Avantas from January
18 until they presented their models February 8. The teams are reorganized for
each client.
Student proctors
Three students
familiar with the software and simulation modeling, Alex Bucevicius, Josh Saltz
and Ronnie Tyson, serve as proctors and assist teams with modeling needs.
In addition, several faculty members and area
business people act as "consulting mentors" for the teams. The consulting
mentors attend class while their particular client's model is being developed
and during the teams' presentations. The teams are allowed to schedule
additional time with their mentors as needed.
Each team keeps a weekly journal that is to be
a summary document of lessons learned, obstacles, breakthroughs, frustrations
and other experiences that document the overall experience for that client. The
journal is due at the time of client presentations.
"This is a very rigorous, intensive course,"
Wagner says. "It isn't easy to develop a business model and present it to a
different client every three weeks."
Dorest Harvey, executive-in-residence at
IS&T and a consulting mentor for the Avantas teams, says the course brings
together the academic and business worlds.
"There's a dual synergy here," Harvey says.
"It provides insight into real-world business problems that can be eye-opening
from the students' point of view. And the business community gains by being the
beneficiary of the students' fresh perspectives and ideas."
Class participants
The students in the
class and their major: Jan Beier, MBA; Matthew Bentz, MBA; Wesley Brown,
business management; Tim Corcoran, management information systems (MIS); Kevin
Engelkamp, MIS; Derek Jensen, MIS; Rick Knudson, computer science; Jonathan
McDermott, MIS; Ernie Miranda, marketing; Kamron Ochsner, MBA; Matthew Rogers,
business management; Shoira Tahirova, business finance; Robert Tisdel, business
management; and James Young, business management.
Tahirova says she didn't know what to expect
when she signed up for the course.
"It's a very practical class and very
challenging, too," she says. "Your work is judged by professionals, and it's
exciting and useful to get feedback from those professionals."
Bentz says he appreciates the opportunity to
work with real-life clients. "It's not all laid out for you like it might be in
a textbook," he says. "The needs and questions keep changing, and that requires
a lot of quick thinking and teamwork."
Beier agrees. "Working with a team on a
real-life problem is a completely different experience than you'd get in a
traditional class. The real-life problems are more complex than any basic
assignment."
Networking bonus
Engelkamp, a senior,
says working with a variety of local clients also provided the opportunity to
network with potential employees prior to graduation.
"Not only is it an awesome, hands-on
experience, the networking opportunities are incredible," he says. "For someone
who wants to stay in Omaha and work perhaps with one of these companies,
meeting these people and getting a chance to know each other is really
valuable."
Wagner says the students' final grades will be
largely determined by the clients' feedback regarding their satisfaction with
each team's results. The consulting mentors also judge final presentations, and
the students rate their peers within a team.
He says he hopes to teach the course on an
annual basis.
"I'd welcome any potential clients who are
interested in providing students with a problem to solve through business
simulation modeling to contact me about becoming part of the next course," he
says. "It really amounts to a win-win situation for the students and the
clients."
Krapfl says Avantas would not hesitate to take
part in the class in the future.
"It was a good way to get a jump-start on
building a business model to analyze the feasibility of a new product," she
says. "It was a great experience all around."
Wagner can be reached by telephone at 402-554-2562
or email him at grwagner@mail.unomaha.edu.
Utilizing small robots for research are, from
left, Fan, Cheng, Dasgupta and Jumadinova. Photo by Tim Fitzgerald/University
Relations.
SWARMING like ANTS
From tiny creatures
on the ground to tiny robots in space, the research being conducted by Computer
Science Associate Professor Prithviraj (Raj) Dasgupta and his students at the
College of Information Science & Technology (IS&T) is unique in the United
States, and perhaps the world.
Dasgupta and his
students are combining techniques from biologically-inspired swarmed systems
with techniques from computational economics to control a group of miniature
robots and enable them to perform complex tasks as a team.
The concept of game
theory, a branch of economics that deals with strategic decision making, and
swarm intelligence, a branch of biology that studies the collective behavior of
insect colonies, are the foundation for Dasgupta's research.
Dasgupta is director
of the Collaborative Multi-Agent Networked Technologies and Intelligence
Computation Lab (C-MANTIC) at IS&T. He and his students are applying their
research to mini-robots, mobile sensor platforms and other small,
resource-constrained components to enable them to perform complex tasks that
could not be performed if each robot had worked individually.
For example, a grant
Dasgupta has been awarded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) would put the knowledge to use by designing teams of unmanned spacecraft
to explore asteroid belts.
Another grant,
awarded jointly with 21st Century Systems by the Department of Defense
(DoD-Navair STTR), explores the use of swarming technologies to control
unmanned aerial vehicles and perform reconnaissance and targeting missions in
battlefield conditions.
"Within our setting
here at the college, obviously we cannot work with unmanned aircraft," Dasgupta
says, smiling. "So we test our techniques by using ground robots."
One of the robots they utilize is called the
e-puck. About the size of a tennis ball, they are inexpensive to build but the
amount of on-board memory and sophistication of their sensors are limited.
"The robots do not
have a lot of storage space on them and this limits the amount of computation
each robot can perform," he says. "To complete a task, we must use several
robots that coordinate their actions with each other so they perform the task
collaboratively."
The robots begin by
exploring their environment for tasks. "We have developed novel techniques for
different facets of the multi-robot coordination problem, including distributed
multi-robot task allocation, dynamic path planning and distributed terrain
coverage by the robot teams," he says.
An algorithm is an
established, recursive computational procedure for solving a problem in a
finite number of steps.
Algorithms are the
basis for most computer programming. Dasgupta and his current students - Ke
Cheng, Janyl Jumadinova and Li Fan - are testing their algorithms using a robot
simulator called Webots as well as on actual robots such as the e-puck and
Kephera.
"We simulate the
desired behavior of the robots using the software on the robot simulator,
fine-tune the performance under different simulated scenarios and then transfer
our software to the hardware on the robots," he says. "With a swarm, there are
no real-time guarantees on how the system will behave, and that behavior
emerges over time.
"Because of the
difficulty guaranteeing the system's behavior, we are applying more structured
techniques, such as those from game theory and market economics. Those tell us
how humans behave in strategic situations, and that is particularly useful to
design sophisticated robot behavior."
Dasgupta earned his
master's and Ph.D. degrees in computer engineering from the University of
California, Santa Barbara. He received his bachelor's degree in computer
science and engineering from Jadavpur University in India.
Interest in the
field of swarm intelligence has increased the past few years, in academia as
well as in industry. Some commercially available gaming systems already use
swarming, he says.
"Our technology is
novel," he says. "To the best of my knowledge, other researchers haven't
considered incorporating the aspects of game theory into swarmed intelligence
for multi-robot control.
"The problem is not
an easy one to solve and we are looking forward to the new challenges we will
encounter."
Jared Brower, a senior studying computer
science and MIS, and Sheila Korth, a senior majoring in MIS and economics, were
among 12 UNO interns with the Global Innovation and Strategy Center. Photo by
Tim Fitzgerald/University Relation
GISC internship
sharpens skills
College of Information Science &
Technology students Jared Brower and Sheila Korth are among the interns who
took part in research and analysis projects identifying potential national
security threats on behalf of the Global Innovation and Strategy Center (GISC).
Part of the U.S. Strategic Command, the GISC
utilized 12 students representing a cross section of UNO colleges for the
four-month internship program. The students investigated two topics: tunnel
detection and space debris. The student teams detailed their findings in
several presentations attended by government officials and some of the
military's top officers.
Korth, a senior majoring in management
information systems (MIS) and economics, worked on the tunnel detection project
team. Her concentration was on policy. She calls the internship "an amazing
experience.
"It definitely opened my eyes to the inner
workings of government, academia and industry," says Korth, who is a recipient
of a prestigious Truman Scholarship. "I was able, both inside the GISC and
outside, to speak with a lot of experts and gain their insight. It really
helped shape my knowledge regarding funding and policy."
Brower is a senior studying computer science
and MIS, with a concentration in information assurance and a minor in
mathematics. He worked on the space debris project team.
"For my part in the group, I got a good,
in-depth look at the aerospace industry and how contractors and the government
work together," he says.
Brower says he sharpened his report writing
and information delivery skills. "Once you present your findings to a
three-star general, other school presentations aren't so scary anymore."
Korth and Brower also detailed their
internships for professors and staff at The Peter Kiewit Institute Feb. 29 as
part of the IS&T Roundtable Series..
