NetLogo Assignment After completing assignment 1 you should have a running Flocking – Alternative Visualisations NetLogo model. You would have explored the behaviours as they are affected by the sliders and so on. Now, your IT-manager wants you to demonstrate some thinking and imagination by extending the model. The IT-manager feels that birds (or boids) do more than just flock and flap about like senior managers. He has suggested you look at the wolf sheep predation (WSP) model and combine one or more aspects of WSP into the flocking model. Several approaches are suggested for consideration: Combine the two models together with no real changes to either model’s behaviours. This means there is no obvious interaction between the wolves/sheep and the birds. The challenge here is the visual display – it has to be made interesting and informative. The IT-manager wonders if a 3d display might be interesting? Birds need to feed. So in your flocking model introduce the behaviour of the birds landing (for a period determined by a slider for example), feeding and then taking-off. What happens if birds get hungry? The birds may or may not land where sheep are feeding. In this model, birds and sheep share the same food resource. You would use some of the code in the WSP as templates for adapting your flocking model. Birds get eaten by birds of prey like the peregrine falcon. In your model, introduce the peregrine falcon as the equivalent of a wolf in the WSP model. Peregrine falcons have acute eyesight and fly at high altitudes, identify their prey and swoop down to take a bird-in-flight. It is envisaged, that a falcon swooping on a flock will disrupt the flock while attempting to kill a bird. Introduce sliders to control the number of birds, falcons, breeding cycles and so on. The 3d display would need careful thinking. You may use one of the above suggestions for your assignment, combine them or perhaps come up with an interesting alternative – perhaps wolves might like to eat birds? What about an owl-mice predation model? You should consider and comment on what you can and can’t do in the time allocated for the assignment. Further, you should also comment on what the limitations of Netlogo 6.0 environment as installed for studying knowledge management. Suggest how you could overcome these limitations. You are required to submit a working model. Explain your choices and assumptions. What to Submit. You need to include documentation in the Info Tab, comment your code and provide a PDF file that includes screenshots, evidence of testing and answers to the questions in the brief. It is vital that you submit a working model. If you know of bugs, document them. Provide a small pull down menu of test scenarios that your IT-Manager can choose and run (each option would set the initial values of variables and sliders to highlight a behaviour). An example of a pull down menu is in the “Virus – alternative visualisation” model in the library. Have a look at the programming guide too. Submit the .nlogo model and the PDF documentation. Part 2 The part 2 task is to setup the Netlogo model of the knowledge creation collaboration that is the heart of the “Security Awareness” project given to the IT manager. The assignment will be submitted as a group assignment in Moodle (.nlogo file plus the PDF that is a log of the work and records testing, screen dumps and so on). Everyone in your group is expected to “have a go” at all aspects of the assignment, but it is acknowledged that there will be a division of labour within the group. The documentation and the Info Tab of the model must include the Group’s participants, student ID numbers and who is responsible for what. You should also mention any outside help you have received. I view seeking help as a positive experience and it is only right that it be acknowledged. Assignment Objective. The objective is to setup a NetLogo model that enables the study of the ideation involved in the security awareness project. This is about setting up: The world co-ordinates Visualisation, turtles and patches Coding – variables, initialisation, running and stopping the model Controls – Appropriate sliders, switches and pull-down scenario chooser. Tracking – monitors, totals, changes in turtle colours, messages, etc. The model should be capable of being run bug-free to show a representation of idea creation, refinement and assessment by the IT-Manager. The model will be based on the Collaborative Wellness Unit (CWU) and the SECI model of knowledge creation (refer to lectures). The model your group develops in this assignment will be used in assignment 4 to study an aspect of knowledge creation to come up with ways of facilitating knowledge creation for the “security awareness” project. The Project Brief In this section, the model structure and suggested approach referred to as the “project brief” will be discussed. Like all briefs from management, there are some vagaries, ill thought out assertions and contradictions. Furthermore, the lack of detail allows for some adaptive thinking on your part and you have much lee-way as long as what your group does is interesting and the decisions documented in your submissions. The Scenario. The participants in the groups are knowledge creators (refer to the lecture notes) who are independent, exercise free will and are not prone to sharing their knowledge. They see their knowledge as their competitive advantage in the organization. At the initialization of the model, one or more knowledge creators have an “idea”, that they consider potentially to be useful for inclusion in the security awareness plan. They reflect on their idea, meet with their group to socialise and refine the idea, knowledge resources are accessed, experts called in to help, other groups consulted and so on. During this process, the idea is refined to a point where it is included in the security awareness plan by the IT manager. During refinement, the IT-manager assesses the idea for its usefulness for inclusion in the security awareness plan. Refer to the collaborative wellness unit in the lectures. A role is a responsibility in a business plan. In the scenario, knowledge workers occupy and perform roles to interact with other roles occupied by knowledge workers. A knowledge worker may have multiple roles. An important consideration is to ask how well does a knowledge worker fit into a role and perform that role? Also, are the roles in the group compatible and encourage sharing knowledge? The NetLogo Model The model is not so much about the number of turtles but rather tracking and modelling the interaction between them. There are two primary measures that you can use. The first is a scale of usefulness as shown in Table 1 below. The IT-manager assigns a usefulness assessment to the idea. The second measure is that of “effective emergence” (Rose 2016, p. 116). Paraphrasing, the effective emergence of an idea is the measure of the number of assessments applied to the idea between the ancestral assessment that identified the idea and the current the current assessment. Table 1 Usefulness Assessment Usefulness Assessment Description 1 The idea is considered to of no use. 2 Usefulness poor 3 Satisfactory usefulness. Meets IT-manager’s expectations. 4 Rated good by senior management. 5 Exceeds all expectations of both IT- manager and senior management. It is suggested that your group use one of the Assignment 2 models developed by a group member as a basis for this group assignment. It is also recommended that you look at the Netlogo model library for inspiration. For example: the “Team Assembly” example in the networks section can be used to consider how people work together; use code examples to understand how to make turtles execute in a particular order. NetLogo Assignment 3 Model Guidelines: There are between 4 and 6 groups in the IT Team. The minimum group membership is 2 knowledge creators; the maximum is 5. You will need to initialise the group membership using a randomized algorithm. Your model could choose to focus on one group with its membership and just include other group turtles. This could help you make it easier to understand the dynamics of the model. The IT-manager is a special knowledge creator and is the only one who can make a usefulness assessment. The IT-Manager resides on a patch called the office. The office may be categorised as physical or virtual. For this assignment, all spaces will be physical. All of the assessments are “stored” in the office. Groups meet with the IT-manager in the office. Normally, all members of the group would be present on the office patch, but they can also communicate remotely (indicated by communication links between the members). You will need to think about how to take into account the differences between face-to-face and meetings using IT infrastructure such as video conferencing, and so on. In many organisations, people invariably find a “go to” person, one who knows “who knows what” and other knowledge. A facilitator, technically this person is a boundary spanner (see lecture notes). For the purpose of this model, we will refer to this boundary spanner as a ”librarian” and they reside on the library patch. If a group or participant token lands on the library patch then they are helped to improve their capabilities and their roles are more aligned to the task at hand. Other patches: Meeting room patch: The group meets here to refine ideas. Socialisation patch: Informal socialisation that is “out-of-office” hours. A relaxed collaboration. This may be the whole or part of the group meeting. Social barriers are relaxed. Reflective Patch: This is the private space for a knowledge worker. It may represent the library or home areas. It is a place conducive to reflective thinking. Other patches: You want to add other patches that are appropriate to your model. These may include a patch representing an external organisation like a potential client or a stakeholder. Groups and Knowledge creators move between the patches. The IT-manager stays in the office and the librarian stays in the library. In the scenario, knowledge creators have ideas and refine them with other members of their group. A knowledge worker may have an idea at any time in any patch. Ideas may come from reflecting over conversations or be triggered through interactions within the group or perhaps from mentoring by the IT-manager. Knowledge workers, working together, may synthesize their ideas with others to improve usefulness and alignments. Ideas may also be discarded. It is suggested that you concentrate on just the development of a single idea to start with. Things to take into account with Knowledge workers: A knowledge worker occupies and interacts through their role. How well do they fit the role? If they are a good fit (good alignment) then they are effective at idea creation. The alignment depends on capabilities and the wellness of the knowledge creator to use their capabilities. Knowledge workers interact through their roles. If roles have good alignment with other roles, then idea creation and refinement is good. Knowledge workers submit their idea(s) for assessment via the group to the IT manager for assessment. So the group, like it’s members has a role and the concept of alignment also applies. Utilisation. Resources, including the librarian, IT-manager, other members of your team and infrastructure may be busy some of the time and unavailable for your use. Some resources may be dedicated to other tasks and you will need to provide some sort of alternative that does not provide as good a quality service and takes longer. All activities take time (that is ticks). The better an alignment, the less time socialisation takes and the fewer the assessments to come up with a useful idea acceptable to the IT Manager. It is suggested that trust, role alignment and free-well are the minimum social aspects to include in the model. You can include more aspects as discussed in the lecture. The collaborative spaces have an effect on wellness. Think of questions like “how well do I work at home, or the library or while been assessed by the IT-Manager in his office?” Before finalising your model design, consult the Assignment 4 brief. You may prefer a scenario assignment over others and tailor the model here for that scenario.