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Springer Proceedings in Complexity

Paul Bourgine
Pierre Collet
Pierre Parrend Editors

First Complex
Systems Digital
Campus World
E-Conference
2015
Springer Proceedings in Complexity

Series editors
Henry Abarbanel, San Diego, USA
Dan Braha, Dartmouth, USA
Péter Érdi, Kalamazoo, USA
Karl Friston, London, UK
Hermann Haken, Stuttgart, Germany
Viktor Jirsa, Marseille, France
Janusz Kacprzyk, Warsaw, Poland
Kunihiko Kaneko, Tokyo, Japan
Scott Kelso, Boca Raton, USA
Markus Kirkilionis, Coventry, UK
Jürgen Kurths, Potsdam, Germany
Andrzej Nowak, Warsaw, Poland
Hassan Qudrat-Ullah, Toronto, Canada
Linda Reichl, Austin, USA
Peter Schuster, Vienna, Austria
Frank Schweitzer, Zürich, Switzerland
Didier Sornette, Zürich, Switzerland
Stefan Thurner, Vienna, Austria
Springer Complexity
Springer Complexity is an interdisciplinary program publishing the best research
and academic-level teaching on both fundamental and applied aspects of complex
systems—cutting across all traditional disciplines of the natural and life sciences,
engineering, economics, medicine, neuroscience, social, and computer science.
Complex Systems are systems that comprise many interacting parts with the
ability to generate a new quality of macroscopic collective behavior the manifes-
tations of which are the spontaneous formation of distinctive temporal, spatial, or
functional structures. Models of such systems can be successfully mapped onto
quite diverse “real-life” situations like the climate, the coherent emission of light
from lasers, chemical reaction-diffusion systems, biological cellular networks, the
dynamics of stock markets and of the Internet, earthquake statistics and prediction,
freeway traffic, the human brain, or the formation of opinions in social systems, to
name just some of the popular applications.
Although their scope and methodologies overlap somewhat, one can distinguish
the following main concepts and tools: self-organization, nonlinear dynamics,
synergetics, turbulence, dynamical systems, catastrophes, instabilities, stochastic
processes, chaos, graphs and networks, cellular automata, adaptive systems, genetic
algorithms, and computational intelligence.
The three major book publication platforms of the Springer Complexity program
are the monograph series “Understanding Complex Systems” focusing on the
various applications of complexity, the “Springer Series in Synergetics”, which
is devoted to the quantitative theoretical and methodological foundations, and the
“SpringerBriefs in Complexity” which are concise and topical working reports,
case-studies, surveys, essays, and lecture notes of relevance to the field. In addition
to the books in these two core series, the program also incorporates individual titles
ranging from textbooks to major reference works.

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11637


Paul Bourgine • Pierre Collet • Pierre Parrend
Editors

First Complex Systems


Digital Campus World
E-Conference 2015

123
Editors
Paul Bourgine Pierre Collet
Paris, France Univ de Strasbourg
Strasbourg, France
Pierre Parrend
ECAM Strasbourg-Europe
Schiltigheim, France

ISSN 2213-8684 ISSN 2213-8692 (electronic)


Springer Proceedings in Complexity
ISBN 978-3-319-45900-4 ISBN 978-3-319-45901-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45901-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958135

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017


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Contents

From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons . . . . . . . . 1


Francisco Antonio Pereira Fialho
POEM-COPA Collaborative Open Peer Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Pierre Collet, Raaj Seereekissoon, Isaac Abotsi, Marie Michaud-Maret,
Anna Scius-Bertrand, Emma Tillich, and Pierre Parrend
Ecological Dynamics: A Theoretical Framework for
Understanding Sport Performance, Physical Education
and Physical Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Ludovic Seifert and Keith Davids
A Multi-agent System Approach to Load-Balancing and
Resource Allocation for Distributed Computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Soumya Banerjee and Joshua P. Hecker
Is the Lean Organisation a Complex System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Pierre Masai, Pierre Parrend, Nicolas Toussaint, and Pierre Collet
An Artificial Immune Ecosystem Model for Hybrid Cloud Supervision. . . 71
Fabio Guigou, Pierre Parrend, and Pierre Collet
Analysis of a Planetary Scale Scientific Collaboration Dataset
Reveals Novel Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Soumya Banerjee
A Formal Model to Compute Uncertain Continuous Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Jérôme Dantan, Yann Pollet, and Salima Taibi
Bayesian Causalities, Mappings, and Phylogenies: A Social
Science Gateway for Modeling Ethnographic, Archaeological,
Historical Ecological, and Biological Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Douglas White, Paul Rodriguez, Eric Blau, Stuart Martin,
Lukasz Lacinski, Thomas Uram, Feng Ren, Wesley Roberts,
and Tolga Oztan

v
vi Contents

A General Approach to the Linear Stability Analysis of


Miscible Viscous Fingering in Porous Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Tapan Kumar Hota, Satyajit Pramanik, and Manoranjan Mishra
Viscosity Scaling in Hydrodynamic Instabilities in Porous Media. . . . . . . . . . 117
Satyajit Pramanik
MOOC as a Complex System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Natália Nakano, Mariana Cantisani Padua,
and Maria José Vicentini Jorente
Emerging Dance Movements Under Ecological Constraints
in Contact Improvisation Dancers with Different Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
C. Torrents, J. Coterón, A. Ric, and R. Hristovski
Adaptability in Swimming Pattern: How Do Swimmers Modify
Propulsive Action as a Function of Speed? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Christophe Schnitzler, Ludovic Seifert, Chris Button,
Gavin Kennedy, and Huub Toussaint
Emerging Collective Shared Behaviors from Individual
Exploration in Football Small-Sided Games . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
A. Ric, C. Torrents, and R. Hristovski
Matrimonial Patterns and Trans-Ethnic Entities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Philippe Ramirez
Are Innovation Systems Complex Systems? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
Emmanuel Muller, Jean-Alain Héraud, and Andrea Zenker
Dynamic Emissions Reduction from Vehicles with Technical
and Behavioral Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Mohammad Syafrizal, Estelle Bretagne, Nadia Hamani,
Bambang Sugiarto, and Setyo Sarwanto Moersidik
Frontal Systems as Mechanisms of Fish Aggregation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
Alberto Baudena, Francesco d’Ovidio, Guido Boffetta,
and Silvia De Monte
Science Information and the Complexity: Are We Oriented
to a Transdisciplinary Science? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Rafaela Carolina da Silva and Rosângela Formentini Caldas
Flexible Perception-Action Strategies: The Influence
of Segmental and Global Motion Information
on Follow-the-Leader Coordination . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Laurentius A. Meerhoff, Harjo J. De Poel, and Chris Button
Contents vii

Dynamic Process of Pulmonary Data Analysis: From


the Athlete Mouth to the Coach Hands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
A. Sousa, K. de Jesus, L. Machado, J.P. Vilas-Boas,
and R.J. Fernandes
Lyapunov Exponents and Oceanic Fronts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Francesco Toselli, Francesco d’Ovidio, Marina Lévy,
Francesco Nencioli, and Olivier Titaud
Software is Not Fragile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
William B. Langdon and Justyna Petke
Open Systems Science: A Challenge to Open Systems Problems . . . . . . . . . . . 213
Mario Tokoro
Open Systems Exploration: An Example with Ecosystems
Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Masatoshi Funabashi
Entropy, Earthquakes, and Tumors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245
Oscar Sotolongo Costa
Coarse-Grained Molecular Dynamics for Copolymer-Vesicle
Self-Assembly. Case Study: Sterically Stabilized Liposomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Alexander Kantardjiev and Pavletta Shestakova
Understanding and Modeling the Complexity of the Immune System . . . . . 261
Véronique Thomas-Vaslin
A Simple Paradigm for Nooconomics, the Economy of Knowledge . . . . . . . . 271
Idriss J. Aberkane
From Waste to Kwaste: On the Blue Economy in Terms
of Knowledge Flow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
Idriss J. Aberkane
Exploring the Synergy Between Motorists and Motorcyclists
in Urban Mobilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Juan C. Correa
Synergetic Economics. Scientifical Approaches of Synergistic
Economic Networks and Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Laura Melinda Stan
Synergy Drives the Evolutionary Dynamics in Biology and Economics . . . 311
Klaus Jaffe
A Case Study in the Emergence of Recursive Phrase Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Emília Garcia-Casademont
From “Traces” and “Human Trace” to “Human-Trace Paradigm” . . . . . . . 337
Béatrice Galinon-Mélénec
viii Contents

Foundation of CS-DC e-Laboratory: Open Systems


Exploration for Ecosystems Leveraging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
Masatoshi Funabashi, Peter Hanappe, Takashi Isozaki, AnneMarie Maes,
Takahiro Sasaki, Luc Steels, and Kaoru Yoshida
Product Lifecycle Management (PLM): A Key to Manage
Supply Chain Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 375
Imane Bouhaddou and Abdellatif Benabdelhafid
Performance Improvement of Baggage Handling System in the
Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 383
Dimas Novrisal, Nadia Hamani, A. Elmhamedi,
and Tresna Soemardi
Territory as a Narrative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 385
Eddie Soulier
Fractal Density and Singularity Analysis of Extreme Geo-Processes . . . . . . 395
Qiuming Cheng
Globalisation, Multilingualism and Multiculturalism in Mozambique . . . . 407
Sarita Monjane Henriksen
Lagrangian Approach to Phytoplankton Mesoscale
Biogeography in the Kerguelen Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Alice Della Penna, Simon Wotherspoon, Thomas W. Trull,
Silvia De Monte, Craig Johnson, and Francesco d’Ovidio
Erratum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . E1

Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421

The original version of this book was revised.


An erratum can be found at DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45901-1_44
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget,
Jung, and Commons

Francisco Antonio Pereira Fialho

1 Introduction

Butterflies won’t exist if life didn’t go through a silent and lonely metamorphosis processes
(Rubem Alves)

Education is a metamorphosis process. Assimilation, accommodation, as defined


by Piaget, and transcendence, the way toward the “self,” as stated by Jung, are stages
of this growing up process. The final goal is the realization of the promise present
in all young birds: the possibility of flying.
Individuation must be the education goal. We are fragmented beings, thousands
subpersonalities that must be united. We live inside conversation networks that are
both external and internal. We are never alone. Personas are the masks we use to
establish relations with the world outside. Animas are the subpersonalities existing
inside us. Education in the past was concerned in strengthening the “ego” in order
to avoid “schizophrenia.” As pointed out by Deleuze and Guattari1 we need to
empower the thousands of voices that share a living inside us. A flexible “ego”
is a goal to be achieved. We believe like Fernando Pessoa (poem “After All,” using
the Anima of Álvaro de Campos) that:
The more I feel, the more I feel like many people,
The more personality I have,
The more intensely, stridently I have them,
The more simultaneously to feel with all of them,

1
Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia is a 1972 book by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and
psychoanalyst Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus is a book of 1989.
F.A.P. Fialho ()
Santa Catarina Federal University, Florianópolis, Santa Catarina, Brazil
e-mail: fapfialho@gmail.com

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 1


P. Bourgine et al. (eds.), First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference
2015, Springer Proceedings in Complexity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45901-1_1
2 F.A.P. Fialho

The more unified diverse, sparsely attentive,


Are, feel, live, be,
Longer I’ll get the total existence of the universe,
More complete I’ll be by the entire space outside.
More analogous to God I will be, whoever could he be,
Because, whoever could he be, surely is Everything,
And outside Him there’s only Him, and All for him is little (less).

As pointed out by Professor Roeris Gonzáles Sivilla in revising this paper,


the first statement “There is no individual Cognition” is too “strong.” The social
historic cultural theory of Lev Vygotsky adopted by the scientific community’s
majority states that learning has two moments: An interpsychological and an
intrapsychological moment. Even in this theory he defends that learning processes
are social, he acknowledges that a stage of the learning of the individual develops
internally and not only in his interactions with others.
Besides human beings are not only social beings. We learn in our interaction with
the nature around us. How can social connections influence the sensation to please
that we experiment when we took a bath in a river, seeing the dawn from a hill or the
sunset in front of the sea? Can we deny that these experiences bring us an important
ethical learning?
I agreed both with Dr. Roeris and Vygotsky. I see no contradiction in this.
In accordance with Jung there is no “individual.” We are a social community
dominated by what is called “Ego.” Descartes is wrong, says Freud: “We are where
we do not think.” We also understand “social” as including people, animals, and
things, as actants (agents) in accordance with Algirdas Julien Greimas semiotics.
Things and animal live also inside us as subpersonalities.

2 Designing Education as a Flow Process

There are schools that are cages and there are schools that are wings. Schools like cages are
for the birds to unlearn the art of flight. Birds are caged birds under control. Caged, its owner
can take them wherever he wants. Caged birds always have an owner. Because the essence
of birds is flying, schools like wings do not deal with caged birds. What they love are birds
in flight. They exist to give courage to birds to fly. Teaching flight is impossible, because
the flight is born within the birds. The flight cannot be taught. It can only be encouraged.
(Rubem Alves)

Csikszentmihalyi [1] stated that: “Flow is characterized by one or more of the


following, but it is not yet clear which of these elements must be present so that
there is flow.”
(a) Challenge-Skill Balance
Children are naturally curious. Teaching is like giving the feather to Dumbo,
the magical elephant of Disney, encouraging him to do what he was born to: fly.
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 3

Fig. 1 Flow characteristics


(Source: Adapted from
Csikszentmihalyi [2, 3])

Plato believes that learning is remembering. The path of curiosity guides the
student in the process of remembering. Challenges are invitations to adventure.
While playing a wonderful game we record old forgotten skills.
Professors are gardeners. They prepare the soil, enriching it with the best
chemicals and natural fertilizer existing. Watch the small seeds grow and
flourish. Figure 1 suggests that we must adequate the level of challenge to
student’s skills.
(b) Merging Action and Attention
Life cannot be saved for tomorrow. Life happens always in the present. (Rubem Alves)

The path toward illumination demands reflection and action. Making mis-
takes is necessary. Piaget thinks that we learn more from our own errors then
when we are right. But the action that guides us to an error must be followed by
the act of reflection.
The professor must be a “Magister Ludi” like Joseph Knecht, the Castalia
Rector in Hermann Hess “The Glass Bead Game.” The pleasure of playing
games awakes in the student the passion for learning.
(c) Clear Objectives
The objectives must not be “curriculum.” It is not clear for us what we really
want. This is the work to be done, to help the student to make clear what he
really wants. The rest is magic, is the encounter of something you are looking
for, something you are in love with.
The professor here must be a “Dreams Interpreter.” If a dream can be
interpreted you will be able to learn (construct) what to expect in the future.
Ergonomics is the art of transforming a “ponein” (painful) life in “ergon”
(something wonderful).
You must not give way to desires which you don’t believe in.
I know what you desire. You should, however, either be capable of renouncing these
desires or feel wholly justified in having them. Once you are able to make your request
4 F.A.P. Fialho

in such a way that you will be quite certain of its fulfillment, then the fulfillment will
come. But at present you alternate between desire and renunciation and are afraid all
the time.
All that must be overcome.2

(d) Immediate Feedback


If I were to teach a child the beauty of music I would not start with scores, notes and
guidelines. Together we would hear the hottest tunes and learn about the instruments
that make the music. Then, enchanted by the beauty of music, he asks me who taught
him the mystery of those written black polka dots on five lines. Because black polka
dots and the five lines are just tools for the production of musical beauty, the experience
of beauty has to come first. (Rubem Alves)

Paulo Freire states that “dialogic is more than dialectics.. Dialogic is the
possibility of several interpretations. Piaget said that there is no mistake, only the
use of a different logic. A class is not a lot of non-meaningful knowledge that the
teacher deposit inside their students heads. Rubem Alves states that inside the
classroom there are three movements. Teacher teaches students; students teach
teachers; and students teach students. The last one in accordance with Rubem
Alver is the most powerful.
From a successful feedback, it becomes possible to develop an optimal
experience, one able to provide a flow state. There are many challenges to
achieve this, since individuals are different and may perceive the experience
in their own way.
Seminar comes from “semen.” A good seminar must eroticize the partici-
pants. The indicator here is the intensity of the orgasm. In a seminar all actors
must expose themselves sharing their knowledge.
We have here the Professor as a “Love Master,” teaching their students to
make love with words and ideas. The feedback is measured by the intensity of
the orgasm reached.
(e) Intense Concentration on the Task
All the words literally taken are false. The truth lives in the silence that exists around the
words. Pay attention to what has not been said, read between the lines. Attention floats:
play the words without being haunted by them. Beware the lure of clarity! Beware of
the deception of the obvious! (Rubem Alves)

Design Thinking suggests that the first “insight” is not (usually) the best.
One must say that Fernando Pessoa “Sheep Keeper” contradicts this assertive.3
Creative Thinking demands a wandering thought. Diverge and then converge, is
the trick.
Neuroscience talks about the importance of meditation. Focused Meditation
prevents age. More than this, it helps students to concentrate. Mindfulness is the
key to innovation, creative thought.

2
Hermann Hesse. Demian (1919).
3
Pessoa wakes up in a morning and wrote the entire poem at once. After a year he was not able to
change one line. It came complete.
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 5

The professor here acts like a “Meditation Master,” teaching their students the
art of meditation. Several schools around the world discovered the importance
of meditation for education.
(f) Absolute Actions Control
I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my
inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher
power but as the hope and product of my own strength.4

The locus of control must remain in the student’s hands. The professor is a
follower, a fellow traveler, nourishing the student adventure desires.
Professors as “Fellow Travelers” must encourage their student’s adventures.
(g) Loss of Self-Consciousness
The sacred sense of beyond, of timelessness, of a world which had an eternal value and
the substance of which was divine had been given back to me today by this friend of
mine who taught me dancing.5

To be in flow is like dancing a waltz, playing jazz, wave surfing, gliding


through strange spaces, and a total immersion in the pleasure of learning.
The professor here is the “Game Animator,” the one who provides the wave
and the air, the surfboard and the parachutes. He is also the partner you are
dancing with, and also the Master of Ceremony who brings to your attention
other partners. Lose yourself in the experience of dancing.
The loss of self-consciousness refers to the loss of representation that the
person has of herself and the lack of concern you have with your own personality
when engaged in activities that you like. The individual begins to forget who he
is being involved by the pleasure provided by the experience.
As pointed out by Professor Roeris Gonzáles Sivilla “lost of self-
consciousness” could make the individual vulnerable to manipulation by others.
It conflicts with (f) “absolute actions control.” In psychology we talk about
“transference” and its risks. The professor here must be a therapist. In other to
perform his job he demands “power.” This power must be freely given by the
student (f). It allows the professor to “manipulate” him. He sacrifices his free
will because he has confidence in the ability of his teacher to show him the way.
(h) Loss of Sense of Time
No wonder that Adelia Prado said “erotic is the soul”. They are wrong who think that
erotic is the body. The body is only erotic through the worlds walking inside it. Erotic
do not walk according to the directions of the flesh. She lives in the interstices of words.
There is no love that resists face a body empty of fantasies. A body empty of fantasies
is a silent instrument, which does not leave any melody. Therefore, Nietzsche said that
there is only one question to be asked when you want to marry, “I will continue to take
pleasure in talking to this person 30 years from now?” (Rubem Alves)

4
Hermann Hesse. Gertrude (1910, p. 4).
5
Hermann Hesse. The Steppenwolf (1927, p. 154).
6 F.A.P. Fialho

The loss of sense of time is another important aspect to be analyzed in an


experiment in culinary (education) flow (and complements the previous since
the loss of self-consciousness leads to the notion of time loss), since it clearly
demonstrates satisfaction of a customer (student), or at least the desire to remain
in a certain experience. It is clear that a customer (student) of a restaurant
(classroom) is enjoying the experience when it stays there for a long time.
(i) Autotelic Experience

What is essential is that which, if we were robbed, we would die. What cannot be
forgotten. Substance of our body and our soul : : : Poets are those who, in the midst
of ten thousand things that distract us are able to see the essential and call it by name.
When this happens, the heart smiles and feels at peace : : :
(The chronicle entitled: The Essential Things—Rubem Alves, from the book: The
Return and Suit)

“When experience is intrinsically rewarding, life is justified in the present,


instead of being held hostage by a hypothetical future gain.”
The autotelic experience occurs when “being there” is enough to make you
feel great. That is, the moment that stands on its own, without the need to seek
a goal beyond, or without creating expectations the next time.
According to Flusser [4, p. 182], the very word design “takes place in a con-
text of trickery and fraud. The designer is therefore a malicious conspiratorial
dedicated to engender traps.” A good instructional designer concentrates not in
“solving” but in “creating” problems, students must solve. Like a “gymkhana”
full of hurdles to be transposed or a “game” to be played. Something fun that
turns knowledge gathering in a wonderful adventure. Each obstacle results in a
“learning by discovering” experience.
In accordance with Brown [5] we live in an “economy of experience.”
Consumers participate actively, and no longer can be considered as passive
elements. This type of economy seeks a change going from basically functional
for emotional basically. Thus, an experiment must meet the primary need that
motivated his quest (kill hunger) and also go beyond satisfying emotional.
Teachers are storytellers. The rule is not to be true, but to charm, impress,
calls the attention. Through enchantment we learn. A good instructional designer
must think of himself at least as a demigod capable to create enchantment
worlds, full of glamor, imaginary, and ephemeral dimensions, where alumni
goes in search for light (the word alumni in Latin means without light). In this
sense “Alumni” is not an adequate word. Our students hide inside then the fires
of heaven. Teachers must perform like Michelangelo Buonarroti not “designing”
but revealing what is hidden.
Professors are (Fig. 2):
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 7

Fig. 2 Professor Metaphors (Source: The author)

3 Education as a Common

Siddhartha : : : had begun to suspect that his worthy father and his other teachers, the wise
Brahmins, had already passed on to him the bulk and best of their wisdom, that they had
already poured the sum total of their knowledge into his waiting vessel; and the vessel was
not full, his intellect was not satisfied.6

In accordance with Hess and Ostrom [6], Commons are resources shared by
a group of individuals subject to social conflicts. Knowledge Commons consists
of shared knowledge and can be organized around intellectual and cultural prac-
tices [7].
The tragedy of the commons is a type of social trap, usually economic, that
involves a conflict between public and individual interests in the use of finite
resources. It states that free access and unrestricted demand for a finite resource
ends up structurally condemning this recourse because of their over-exploitation.
This notion is not merely an abstraction, but its consequences manifest them-
selves literally on practical issues, such as the Pau-Brazil, where exploration has
made the Common no longer used due to the risk of extinction.
Associative Commons are those controlled by a group that involves rules,
regulations, and restrictions and can publicly articulate a comprehensive set of val-
ues. Religious congregations, universities, scientific organizations, and professional
groups are examples of Associative Commons and vary in its rules and structures,
but they often have the function to protect or improve something.
Free Commons are those that anyone has the right to use and contribute. By being
open, it is difficult to regulate, even though the vast majority of participants feel that
specific rules should be imposed. Squares and sites linked to nature as beaches,
lagoons, and also the culture of a place are examples of this type of Commons [8].
The concept of “community of practice” was coined by Etienne Wenger and, in
short, can be explained as a group of individuals who meet periodically, because
they have a common interest in learning and applying what has been learned.
Education is a “common.” Usually there are two models for exploring this human
need for completeness called education: private enterprises or treating it as a public
politics issue. Nevertheless, most of the examples of success, mainly in fundamental
and middle schools, come from a third possibility: “auto governance.”

6
Hermann Hesse. Siddhartha (1971, p. 5).
8 F.A.P. Fialho

A “community of practice” understanding knowledge as a “Free Commons,”


through an auto organization process, which includes open innovation and design
thinking find a “new and wonderful approach of how to provide the best possible
education.” All actors here must cooperate: citizens, authorities, and private
organizations.

4 Design Thinking, Cuisine, and Education

I suspect that our schools teach very accurately science to buy the tickets and packing. But I
have serious doubts that they teach students the art of seeing while traveling. (Rubem Alves)

Analyzing the use of the Design Thinking approach to education, we can see the
possibility of applying some of the concepts proposed by Brown [5]. These include
empathy, prototyping, and experiences design.
Empathy means becoming the other. Tim Brown says that we can build bridges
insights through empathy, trying to see the world through the eyes of others, of other
people’s experiences and emotions [5].
Savarin [9] has said that the discovery of a new recipe brings more happiness
than the discovery of a new star. This quote is relevant and refers to one of
education goals: pleasure. The pleasure of learning captures stars, recipes, dreams,
and expectations in a magical place called memory. “We do not see what we see, we
see what we are. Only see the beauties of the world, those who have beauty within”
(Rubem Alves).
In 1923 Célestin Freinet reinvented education. In 1915 he was recruited into the
French army and was wounded in the lung. Since his lung injury made it difficult for
him to talk for long periods he purchased a printing press, originally to assist with
his teaching. It was with this press that he printed free texts and class newspapers for
his students. Anticipating co-working and design thinking ideas, the children would
compose their own works on the press and would discuss and edit them as a group
before presenting them as a team effort. Designers must leave their comfort zones in
order to innovate. Freinet’s students would regularly leave the classroom to conduct
field trips.
Brown [5] states that an experiment should be designed in the same way
as any other product, and that the components of a product must fit to create
an excellent experience. The newspapers were exchanged with those from other
schools. Gradually the group texts replaced conventional school books.
In education, new opportunities need to be created so that people have access to
knowledge. In Manaus, a city placed within Amazon Forest, we found a school float-
ing above the Rio Negro (Black River). In Florianopolis (Santa Catarina—Brazil)
children living in “Costa da Lagoa” go and return to school in a boat. A good
example of design alternatives is the Boat School in Amapá (Brazil, near French
Guyana) (Fig. 3).
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 9

Fig. 3 Boat School

Anísio Teixeira was the inventor of public school in Brazil. A school for all
that must be a full-time school for teachers and students, as the Park School he
founded in 1950 in Salvador, who later would inspire the Integrated Centers for
Public Education (CIEPS) of Rio de Janeiro. It is a shame that the idea of the CIEPS,
created by Darcy Ribeiro7 and designed by Oscar Niemeyer8 was abandoned.
We think education as a COMMON. We don’t believe in the state or in the
private economy for providing good education. The example of the CIEPS is clear.
Implemented initially in the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, during 1983–1987 and
1991–1994, aimed to provide quality public education, the idea was abandoned and
not copied in other Brazilian states.
The class schedule stretched from 8 to 17 h, offering in addition to the regular
curriculum, cultural activities, directed studies, and physical education. The CIEPs
provided full meals to their students, as well as medical and dental care. The average
capacity of each unit was about a 1000 students.
A concept of design thinking that is present in gastronomy (not in education,
unfortunately) is prototyping. We can say that gastronomy, when practical, is
purely prototyping. Brown [5] states that prototyping is the culmination of a
design thinking project. In most post-graduation programs we have “special topics”
disciplines. Some of them stand for one period; others become permanent, living
a little longer. No new discipline is created without going through this prototyping
phase.
All schools should be “Experimental Schools,” learning by doing. Innovation
must become cultural. The world is changing and we need not just follow these

7
Darcy Ribeiro was a Brazilian anthropologist, author, and politician. His ideas of Latin American
identity have influenced several later scholars of Latin American studies. As Minister of Education
of Brazil he carried out profound reforms which led him to be invited to participate in university
reforms in Chile, Mexico, and others after leaving Brazil due to the 1964 coup d’état.
8
Oscar Niemeyer was a Brazilian architect who is considered to be one of the key figures in the
development of modern architecture.
10 F.A.P. Fialho

changes but be the cause of these changes. As pointed by Peter Drucker the best
way to foreseen the future is to construct it.
We need an “International Education Design Society,” a network of people, in
passion with education, contributing with better ideas for transforming this world
into a better one through education. There are good examples of this, like Riane
Eisler’s9 partnership education and others.

5 The Schools of the Future

It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link
at a time. (Winston S. Churchill)

It is perfectly plausible to suppose that the first places that most attracted
populations for a permanent settlement necessarily had to have water. Most of the
medieval cities have a mile of diameter with a water pool in the center. A mile was
the distance allowing transportation of water in a comfortable way.
Imagine the world mapped as a cooperative of medieval cities with a mile of
diameter. In the center of each of these we place a school: Water for the body and
knowledge for the soul.
Paulo Freire says that “worst then no school at all is this school we have.” We are
not talking about “just another school,” but a Walt Disney designed school similar
to the Tivoli Gardens in the center of Copenhagen (Fig. 4). Amusement Park School
where children within the mile perimeter goes each day by bike (no cars at all,
we need to educate for a sustainable environment) to have fun. Imagine children
walking toward these Gardens—Amusement Park—Restaurant like schools in order
to play, to have fun, to socialize, and to learn. Each day lived as an adventure to
be remembered. Emotions driving student’s minds toward a significant knowledge
inside a space designed for creation, for innovation, and for auto knowledge. We
need to reinvent the school and their users each morning.
Learning with “cooperatives” and “communities of practice” we will never build
something “big” (like the CIEPs for 1000 students), so big that forgets its builders
and acquires a new and ferocious identity just trying to get bigger and bigger even
with the prejudice of their founders.
Learning with inter-cooperatives we imagine middle school as attending at most
eight of fundamental schools living and breathing around then. Universities will be
created in the same scale. Amusement Parks.
All schools must be virtually connected. One school in a Florianópolis (Brazil)
neighborhood will be linked with other similar schools situated in “sister cities” like

9
http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?display=home.
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 11

Fig. 4 Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. A school designed for a wonderful learning experience

Wonju (Korea); Kisumu (Kenya); Pskov (Russia); Opole (Poland); Lijiang (China);
Saint-Lô (France), and Roanoke Valley (USA). Virtual activities will be performed
in order to create a family spirit between children from all these places.

6 Final Considerations

I want to unlearn to learn again. Scrape the paint that painted me. Emotions must be
unpacked, sensations must be retrieved. (Rubem Alves)

Good education requires teachers that acted like cookers and cookers that
performed like teachers. Prepare a good class demand a design thinking approach.
We propose a “co-design” process enrolling all stakeholders. The instructional
designer creates problems that the students must solve. A balance between challenge
and skills must be reached.
We must remember that: “Anyone who tries to help a butterfly emerging from
cocoons will kill it. Who tries to help a sprout out of the seed destroys it. There are
certain things that cannot be adjusted. It has to happen from the inside out” (Rubem
Alves).
Anísio Teixeira said: “You want democracy. Teach democracy.” Although what
we are proposing here seems an expensive utopia it is much cheaper than war,
violence, and corruption: “While happy society does not come, there is at least
future fragments where laughter is served as a sacrament, so that children learn
that the world can be different. The school, itself, is a fragment of the future : : : ”
(Rubem Alves).
12 F.A.P. Fialho

In accordance with Jung there will be no peace outside us if we do not conquer


the peace inside us: “What people want most is someone to listen in a calm and
quiet manner. In silence. Without giving advice. Unknown to say: If I were you
: : : ” (Rubem Alves).
This article does not have a conclusion. The author only asks for some time to
inhale, breath, and continue to attack their windmills. For this, the author has the
words. May the reader receive them fondly. Because:
(Weaving the Morning)
A rooster alone did not weave a morning:
he will always need other roosters.
One that take his cry
and bid it to another; another rooster
to pick up the cry of a rooster before him
and bid to another; and other roosters
than with many other roosters crossing
the sun rays of all rooster’s cries,
so that a new morning, from a fine web,
goes weaving itself between all the roosters.
(João Cabral de Melo Neto)

7 Scientific Validation

This paper has been unanimously validated in a collaborative review mode with the
following reviewers:
• Reviewer 1 Roeris Gonzalez Sivilla, Universidad de Camagüey “Ignacio Agra-
monte Loynaz.” Educación de la Ciencias Naturales, Cuba
• Reviewer 2 Angel Ric, Instituto Nacional de Educación Física de Cataluña,
Grupo de Investigación Sistemas Complejos y Deporte, Universitat de Barcelona,
Spain.

References

1. Csikszentmihalyi M (1991) Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. HarperCollins,


New York
2. Csikszentmihalyi M (1975) Beyond boredom and anxiety. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco
3. Csikszentmihalyi M (1990) Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row,
New York
4. Flusser V (2007) O mundo codificado: por uma filosofia do design e da comunicação. Org.
Rafael Cardoso. Trad. Raquel Abi-Sâmara. Cosac Naify, São Paulo
5. Brown T (2010) Design thinking: uma metodologia poderosa para decretar o fim das velhas
ideias. Campus, Rio de Janeiro
6. Hess C, Ostrom E (2007) Understanding knowledge as a commons, from theory to practice.
MIT Press, London
From Individual to Social Cognition: Piaget, Jung, and Commons 13

7. Ouma M (2014) The policy context for a commons-based approach to traditional knowledge in
Kenya. In: de Beer J et al (eds) Innovation and intellectual property: collaborative dynamics in
Africa. UCT Press, Claremont, pp 132–151
8. Levine P (2007) Collective action, civic engagement and the knowledge commons. In: Hess C,
Ostrom E (eds) Understanding knowledge as a commons, from theory to practice. MIT Press,
London
9. Savarin B (1995) A Fisiologia do gosto. Companhia das Letras, São Paulo
POEM-COPA Collaborative Open Peer
Assessment

Pierre Collet, Raaj Seereekissoon, Isaac Abotsi, Marie Michaud-Maret,


Anna Scius-Bertrand, Emma Tillich, and Pierre Parrend

1 Introduction

A long time ago, education was provided by personal tutors who were paid by rich
families to take care of 3 or 4 children. This type of education was of very high
quality, as the tutor could adapt his tuition to the capabilities and inclinations of each
student, therefore providing personalized education. Unfortunately, this was also
very expensive, meaning that very few people were educated. The advent of schools
allowed for many more people to learn how to read, write and count but this was
only possible through mass education, with classrooms of 30 pupils and national
education programmes that are identical for all. This means that slow students are
often left behind whilst bright students have to wait for the others. This is even more
so with the advent of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) [7], that are currently
invading the world of e-education. With MOOCs, a single course can be followed
by thousands of students.
The aim of the Personalised Open Education for the Masses (POEM) platform is
to use complex systems to create an intelligent Learning Management System that

P. Collet () • R. Seereekissoon • I. Abotsi • E. Tillich • P. Parrend


CSTB Team, ICUBE Laboratory, Strasbourg University, Strasbourg, France
e-laboratory on Education, CS-DC UNESCO UniTwin, Paris, France
e-mail: pierre.collet@unistra.fr
M. Michaud-Maret
Institut de Formation des Métiers de Santé du Nord Franche-Comté, Belfort, France
A. Scius-Bertrand
e-laboratory on Education, CS-DC UNESCO UniTwin, Paris, France
École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris, France

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 15


P. Bourgine et al. (eds.), First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference
2015, Springer Proceedings in Complexity, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-45901-1_2
16 P. Collet et al.

is able to educate hundreds of thousands of students along personalized trajectories,


depending on their previous knowledge, skills and experience, as with the personal
tutor of ancient times.

One could think that massive education and personalized education are
antagonistic objectives but on the contrary, they are in synergy.

A long time ago, personal tutors would use their teaching experience to find the
best series of exercises on topics adapted to each child they were in charge of. Then,
if they detected a particular skill or interest in literature, science or the arts in their
pupil, the tutors (who were often multifaceted) would adapt their teaching to nurture
and develop this inclination for a more personalized education.
Their pedagogic experience increased with the number of children they taught,
as trial and error improved their tuition skills. Having the opportunity to statisti-
cally study large numbers of educational trajectories, modern Intelligent Tutoring
Systems can draw conclusions on previous successes and failures to improve their
interactions with students online, and are in the position of predicting the best future
for a student.
More accurate predictions require assimilating data of a massive number of
such trajectories (which once more is what good professors do as their experience
increases). For this reason, the participation of everyone to such an educational
ecosystem is extremely desirable. Not only will it improve the system, but anyone
wanting to resume their education will be quickly learning things they do not already
know. Such synergy between massive and personalized education is only possible
within a social intelligent ICT platform. The aim of POEM is therefore to implement
an educational ecosystem responding to the objectives of 4P-education, i.e.:
– Participative (to collect data and reinforce the “experience” of the system),
– Predictive (to guide the student using the elaborated experience),
– Preventive (to avoid failure) and
– Personalized, thanks to multi-level Quality Measurements allowing for an
experience tailored to each student.
Many functionalities must be developed in order to develop such a comprehen-
sive platform, typically:
– Constructing and visualizing dynamic Knowledge Maps of domains, to help
students determine their objectives.
– Developing individual MOOC and curricula trajectories. POEM conjectures
that, given an individual profile, the best next incremental step is determined in
probability by the distribution of the choices of previous learners with similar
profiles. This conjecture is developed in the Personalized Educational Man-
Hill Problem, because of the similarity with ants’ collective behaviour, which
is known to quickly find optimal paths towards food sources [2–4, 6].
– Providing inter-tutoring between students, which is needed if direct Student-
Teacher interaction is impossible due to the very large number of students. In
such cases, POEM provides each student with a tutor, who is also a student but
POEM-COPA Collaborative Open Peer Assessment 17

more advanced in the same curriculum. The student can ask questions to his
tutor. If the tutor cannot provide an answer to a difficult question, he himself can
forward the question to his own tutor and so on, until there is no tutor anymore
and the question reaches a professor.
– Offering an automatic skill-level assessment system depending on suc-
cess/failure along the personalized trajectories of students. This is implemented
through Elo-points as in chess or Tennis ranking.
– Offering a high-quality assessment of open answers to open questions. This
is proposed through peer assessment, which is recognized to be of mutual benefit.
– Provide crowdsourcing by letting students bring new questions and new content
as part of their evaluations. Good questions and content will find their way
into participatively evolved trajectories, while poor content will eventually get
discarded.
This paper will focus on the two last points, implemented in the COPA (Collabo-
rative Open Peer Assessment) module of the POEM1 educational ecosystem of the
CS-DC (Complex Systems Digital Campus) UNESCO UniTwin.2

2 Peer Evaluation of Open Answers to Open Questions

Peer evaluation has been studied for a long time [16] but was only recently
experimented extensively, in distance learning with platforms such as Spark (Self
and Peer Assessment Resource Kit) or more recently in different MOOCs [9, 15]. It
is quite frequently used for operational teaching, such as management or software
development [10] but remains a top down approach, from the teacher to the learner,
as topics are not dynamic and imposed to students. In the evaluation of these
technical teachings, peer assessment shows a limited deviation that can be lower
than 3 % [11], which means that it is quite accurate (at least in computer science,
in which this experiment was published). It is also efficient for the assessment of
complex tasks such as composition, typically when associated with appropriate
coaching [12], which is more difficult to put into practice within MOOCs.
Peer assessment is often better accepted by students than an evaluation performed
by the teachers. It enables them to improve the content of the course as well as their
ability to evaluate others.
One of the current limitations of available solutions is the static character of
the set of questions, which increases the risk of cheating. By including in the
assessment the requirement to ask a question (that will be posed to other students),
COPA provides a solution to this problem by turning learners into producers of new
knowledge and analyses, that will feed the system to create a virtuous circle.

1
http://poem.unistra.fr.
2
http://cs-dc.org.
18 P. Collet et al.

COPA therefore inserts into xMOOCs the transmission of specific knowledge


[13], some dynamic elements of connectivist cMOOCs [14] based on individual
experience and interaction between learners.

3 Principles and Implementation of COPA

Implementation of a COPA evaluation needs several databases:


– A database containing the courses (videos, Powerpoint or PREZI presentations,
PDF or Word documents, etc.),
– A database containing questions,
– A database containing answers,
– A database containing students and professors.
Then, COPA evaluation uses three stages: a participative stage where students
must ask a question on the course, a more passive stage where they should answer
three questions and then, a third stage where they should evaluate the answers given
by other students.
Before the COPA evaluation takes place, students should have followed a course
(face-to-face or video) on which they are to be evaluated. If digital contents are
associated with the course, they can be stored in the courses database, so that
students can access them for reference during all stages of the COPA evaluation.
Interestingly enough, because COPA allows open questions and answers, topics
are not limited to hard sciences where one can expect exact answers to precise
questions. COPA can also be used to evaluate knowledge in social sciences, skills,
literature, arts, a.s.o.

3.1 COPA Phase 1

Write a question on the course and


Provide a model answer.

When opening phase one, students have access to the course but rather than
being asked to answer some questions, they are asked to pose a question on
the corresponding course. This activity is much more demanding than answering
a question because the students must be creative in order to ask relevant and
interesting questions. Indeed, the quality of their questions will be rated (by other
students) against questions from the pedagogic team, so if the question they imagine
is less interesting than the teacher’s questions, they will not get a good grade on the
exercise.
POEM-COPA Collaborative Open Peer Assessment 19

Then, after they have been asked to pose a question, an even more challenging
task is asked from them: they must provide a model answer for the question they
have imagined.
Here again, the quality of the provided model answer will be evaluated by other
students.

4 COPA Phase 2

Answer (and evaluate the quality of) three questions.

This phase has several purposes:


1. assessing if the students have understood the content of the course,
2. evaluating the quality of the questions posed by students in Phase 1 and
3. improving the quality of the database of student questions.
The contents of this phase are inspired by CAPTCHAs [1] and Re-CAPTCHAs
[7]. CAPTCHA is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell
Computers and Humans Apart”. Indeed, during 1950 Turing came out with a very
famous test [5] to allow humans to determine if an unseen interlocutor is a human
or a machine, a CAPTCHA can be seen as a reverse Turing test, created to allow
computers to determine whether their interlocutor is another computer or a human.
Re-CAPTCHAs make use of the time and energy given by humans to pass the
CAPTCHA test in a constructive way, i.e. to solve a problem for the computer
(cf. Fig. 1.) Because POEM-COPA is run by a computer, the algorithms used
in POEM-COPA are computer-oriented, not human-oriented, and therefore
CAPTCHA-like. As in re-CAPTCHAs, COPA is not only asking the students
to answer the questions, but also asking them to rate the relevance, originality and
quality of the formulation of the questions they are asked.

Fig. 1 Re-CAPTCHA: the computer not only tests whether its interlocutor is human or not (by
asking him to decipher the twisted text on the right) but also asks him what is the word on the left
(that it could not recognize via Optical Character Recognition because it was badly printed)
20 P. Collet et al.

However, because the aim of this phase is to evaluate how much of the course
has been understood by the student, it is important that most of the questions come
from the pedagogic team.

4.1 Answering 3 Questions

Re-CAPTCHAs are typically divided into two parts: a part to tell if the user is human
or not, and another “crowdsourcing” part where the collaboration of users is sought.
In COPA, 2 questions come from a database of questions validated by the
pedagogical team (providing for an approved evaluation), and one question comes
from another student (crowd-sourcing part, where the participation of the user is
sought) but of course, the user does not know which question among the 3 is by the
student.
This 2/3–1/3 proportion means that students are mostly evaluated on validated
questions (with model answers provided by the pedagogical team).
Each provided answer will be anonymously evaluated by 3 other students (peers),
following the current practice in scientific journals/conferences where the quality of
submitted research is also evaluated by peers.

4.2 Constrained Evaluation of Questions

In this collaborative part, students are asked to evaluate the relevance, originality and
formulation of the 3 questions they are asked, with the aim of evaluating the quality
of the student question that is posed along with 2 questions from the pedagogical
team.
The risk of self-assessment between students is to observe some bias induced by
the type of training undergone by the students: in competitive training (ending with
a competitive exam), it is in the interest of the students to give bad marks to the
others, in the hope of obtaining better relative marks. On the contrary, in courses
where all students above a certain grade pass the exam, there is no competitive
pressure so students may decide mark other students more generously than they
otherwise would.
In order to reduce such bias, students are not asked to give grades to the questions
but to rank them via a constrained rating, meaning that in effect, the question asked
by a student will be compared to the questions asked by the pedagogical team.
Students must give 0–5 points to each of the 3 questions but they only have
exactly 10 points that they must distribute entirely.
This method imposes that only the cases of Table 1 can be encountered. One can
see in this table that:
POEM-COPA Collaborative Open Peer Assessment 21

Table 1 Rating combinations and marking


Teacher Q1 Teacher Q2 Student Q Teacher average Difference Grade Mark/5
0 5 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
1 4 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
2 3 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
3 2 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
4 1 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
5 0 5 2:5 2:5 7.5 5
1 5 4 3:0 1:0 6 4
2 4 4 3:0 1:0 6 4
3 3 4 3:0 1:0 6 4
4 2 4 3:0 1:0 6 4
5 1 4 3:0 1:0 6 4
2 5 3 3:5 0:5 4.5 3
3 4 3 3:5 0:5 4.5 3
4 3 3 3:5 0:5 4.5 3
5 2 3 3:5 0:5 4.5 3
3 5 2 4:0 2:0 3 2
4 4 2 4:0 2:0 3 2
5 3 2 4:0 2:0 3 2
4 5 1 4:5 3:5 1.5 1
5 4 1 4:5 3:5 1.5 1
5 5 0 5:0 5:0 0 0

Col 3 and 4: The quality of the student question can never be equal to the average
quality of the 2 questions of the pedagogical team.
Col 5: In 11 cases, the student question gets better grades than the average of the
teacher questions, vs 10 cases when it is deemed worse.
Col 6: If one adds 5 points so that the student gets grades between 0 and 7.5 and if
Col 7: one multiplies by 5/7.5 in order to get the grades back into a [1,5] interval,
the student question gets a mark (Col 7) that is identical to the grade given to him
by the student undergoing the COPA evaluation.
Students whose question have been estimated as being of slightly lower quality
than the average of the teacher’s questions will get 3/5, which is fine as it can be
considered difficult for students to only obtain points if their question is better than
the questions of the teacher.
If the question of the student is used several times, it will get marked several
times. COPA will use the average mark, weighed by the number of evaluations.
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battlement of rocks. Here a grassy sward smooth and level as a
billiard table was used as a croquet ground, this being at that time a
universal outdoor game in England. He had a democratic park. It had
no wall, and wire fences were as yet unknown, so he could not keep
deer. But on his fields we saw many cattle grazing. He told us he
was raising blooded stock, and expected the next year to commence
annual sales. We observed the very pleasant house beautifully
located in the valley, but he told us he was planning to remove it and
build a baronial hall in its place. I learned afterwards from Mr. Hoyle
that he had for some time kept two London architects employed on
designs for this hall, which designs he then employed another
draftsman to combine into a plan to suit himself, but had not as yet
determined on anything. As he was an old man, and had no one in
the world to leave this estate to, I could account for his devotion to it
only by his restless temperament, that must always find some new
outlet for his energy.
I, however, did not want him to expend any of this energy in
getting a steam-engine to suit him, and so the passing months
brought us no nearer to an agreement. My experience with
Ducommen et Cie. confirmed me in my decision not to let the
mechanical control of the engine in England pass out of my hands,
and Mr. Hoyle told me that he could not advise me to do so. Mr.
Whitworth was at that time in the death agonies of his artillery
system, and I did not meet him, but I learned through Mr. Hoyle that
he was highly indignant at me for presuming to take the position I
had done, and was immovably fixed in his own.
CHAPTER XIV

Study of the Action of Reciprocating Parts. Important Help from Mr. Frederick J.
Slade. Paper before Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Appreciation of Zerah
Colburn. The Steam Fire Engine in England.

fter the close of the Paris Exposition I devoted myself


in earnest to the study of the action of the
reciprocating parts of the engine, and will here give a
sketch of its development. In the high-speed steam-
engine the reciprocating parts were found to be a most
essential feature. Besides transmitting the pressure of
the steam to the crank they perform quite another office. It is their
inertia, relieving the crank from shocks on the dead centers, and
equalizing the distribution of the pressure on it through the stroke,
that makes the high-speed engine possible. I employed this inertia
before I knew anything about it. I had been occupied with the subject
of balancing. I had demonstrated practically that the centrifugal force
of a weight equal to that of the reciprocating parts, opposite the
crank and at the same distance from the center as the crank-pin,
perfectly balanced a horizontal engine, and had shown this fact
conclusively at this exposition.
The problem before me was, “What is it that makes my engine run
so smoothly?” I am not a mathematician, and so could not use his
methods. I got along by graphic methods and study of the motion of
the piston controlled by the crank. My recollection of the several
steps of my progress is quite indistinct. One thing I do remember
distinctly, and that is the help that I got from my friend Frederick J.
Slade, who was younger than I, but who died several years ago. Mr.
Slade was a mathematical genius. The firm of Cooper, Hewitt & Co.
were at a later date the pioneer makers in the United States of
wrought-iron beams and other structural shapes; and all their
designs and computations were the work of Mr. Slade. I had formed
his acquaintance in London in ’63. I met him again in Paris in ’67. He
was then in France in the employ of Abram S. Hewitt, investigating
the Siemens-Martin process of steel manufacture. He took much
interest in the engine. One day he brought to me a diagram
representing the two now famous triangles, and a demonstration of
them which he had made, showing that the ordinates, representing
the acceleration or retardation of the piston motion at every point, if
erected on the center line of the engine, terminate in a diagonal line,
which, with a connecting-rod of infinite length, would cross this
center line at its middle point.
This exhibited at once the equalizing action of the reciprocating
parts in a cut-off engine, absorbing the excessive force of the steam
at the commencement and imparting it to the crank at the end of the
stroke. I feel myself more indebted to Mr. Slade than to any one else,
and would here record the tribute of my grateful acknowledgment.
On January 30, 1868, I had the honor of reading a paper on the
Allen engine before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. The
discussion of the paper was postponed until the next meeting, April
30, and the paper was ordered meantime to be printed and sent to
the members. The result was that on the latter date we had a very
interesting discussion. I may mention two things which occurred at
the first meeting, but do not appear in the report of the transactions.
When the secretary reached the statement that the acceleration of
the piston was greatest at the commencement of the stroke, the
president of the meeting, Sampson Lloyd, Esq., one of the vice-
presidents of the Institution, stopped the reading and said to me,
“You do not mean, Mr. Porter, that this is on the commencement of
the stroke, but at a point near its commencement.” I was obliged to
answer him that I intended to say that precisely on the dead center,
at the point where motion in one direction had ceased and that in the
opposite direction had not yet commenced, at that precise point the
stress on the crank was at its maximum, the crank having brought
the reciprocating parts to rest, and then by a continuance of the
same effort putting them in motion in the reverse direction.
Frederick J. Slade

After the reading was concluded, Mr. E. A. Cowper took the floor,
and stated that I was entirely mistaken in my explanation of this
action, that this had been investigated by a gentleman whose name
he gave but which I have forgotten, and who had demonstrated that
this retarding and accelerating action was represented by a curve,
which approximately he drew on the blackboard, but which he
excused himself from demonstrating there, as it would require the
use of the calculus and would take considerable time. For this
reason the discussion was postponed. At the next meeting Mr.
Cowper did not present this demonstration, and long afterwards he
wrote a letter to the editors of Engineering, stating that on full
investigation he had found the retardation and acceleration of the
piston to be represented by triangles and not by a curve. At the
discussion of the paper my view was supported by all the speakers
who addressed themselves to this point, except Mr. Cowper. An
especially careful and valuable exposition of the action of the
reciprocating parts was given Mr. Edwin Reynolds, then of the Don
Steel Works, Sheffield.
Zerah Colburn, the editor of Engineering, had always taken a
warm interest in my engine, and in the winter following the Paris
Exposition he invited me to furnish him the drawings and material for
its description in his paper. This I did, and from these he prepared a
series of articles written in his usual clear and trenchant style. These
will be found in Volume V of Engineering, the cuts following page 92,
and the articles on pages 119, 143, 158, 184, and 200.
Mr. Colburn’s articles in Engineering are so interesting in
themselves that I think I need make no apology for quoting from
them his remarks on this subject of the inertia of the reciprocating
parts, and those in which is depicted the revolutionary nature of the
high-speed engine, as viewed at that time.
After a prelude, with most of which the reader is already
acquainted, Mr. Colburn says:
“When a steam-engine is brought from abroad to the very spot
where the steam-engine originated, and where it has received, so far
at least as numbers are concerned, its greatest development, and is
claimed to be superior to those produced here, and to be able to run
advantageously at a speed hitherto deemed impracticable, its
promoters must not expect to have much attention paid to its claims
until such attention has been actually compelled, and then they must
be prepared for an ordeal of severest criticism....
“In employing a high grade of expansion, especially with the
considerable pressure of steam now usually carried in stationary
boilers, two serious practical difficulties are met with. The first arises
from the injurious effect of the sudden application of so great a force
on the centers, which the beam-engine, indeed, cannot be made to
endure, and the second is found in the extreme difference between
the pressures at the opposite ends of the stroke, which is such that
the crank, instead of being acted upon by a tolerably uniform force,
is rotated by a succession of violent punches, and these applied
when it is in its most unfavorable position....
“In the Allen engine the action of high speed causes all the
practical difficulties which lie in the way of the successful
employment of high grades of expansion combined with high
pressure of steam completely to disappear. The crank receives as
little pressure on the centers as we please; none at all if we like; the
force is applied to it as it advances, in a manner more gradual than
the advocates of graduated openings and late admission ever
dreamed of, and a fair approximation is made to a uniform rotative
force through the stroke. So that, in a properly constructed engine,
the higher the speed the smoother and more uniform and more silent
the running will be.”
After a page or more devoted to a demonstration of this action, Mr.
Colburn sums up the advantage of high speed in the following
illustration:
“Let us suppose that, in an engine making 75 revolutions per
minute, the reciprocating parts are of such a weight that the force
required at the commencement of the stroke to put them in motion is
equal to a pressure of 20 pounds on the square inch of piston. This
will not modify the diagram of pressure sufficiently to produce much
practical effect. But let the number of revolutions be increased to 150
per minute, the centrifugal force of these parts as the crank passes
the centers is now equal to 80 pounds on the square inch of piston,
and any pressure of steam below this amount acts only as a
relieving force, taking the strain of these parts partly off from the
crank. It makes no matter how suddenly it is admitted to the cylinder,
not an ounce can reach the crank; but as the latter advances, and
the acceleration of the reciprocating parts becomes less, the excess
of force not required to produce this becomes, in the most gradual
manner, effective on the crank.
“It will be observed how completely the designer has this action of
the reciprocating parts under control. He can proportion their speed
and weight to the pressure of steam in such a manner as to relieve
the crank from the blow on the center to whatever extent he may
wish. The notion that the reciprocating parts of high-speed engines
should be very light is therefore entirely wrong. They should be as
heavy as they can be made, and the heavier the better.
“The advantages of more rapid rotation are largely felt in the
transmission of power. Engineers understand very well that,
theoretically, the prime mover should overrun the resistance. Motion
should be not multiplied but reduced in transmission. This can
seldom be attained in practice, but high speed gives the great
advantage of an approximation to this theoretical excellence. On the
other hand, slow-speed engines work against every disadvantage.
Coupled engines and enormous fly-wheels have to be employed to
give a tolerably uniform motion; often great irregularities are
endured, or the abominable expedient is resorted to of placing the
fly-wheel on the second-motion shaft. Then comes the task of getting
up the speed, with the ponderous gearing and the enormous strains.
Slow motion also prevents the use of the belt, immeasurably the
preferable means of communicating power from a prime mover.
“But how about the wear and tear? The question comes from
friends and foes alike. The only difference is in the expression of
countenance, sympathetic or triumphant. The thought of high speed
brings before every eye visions of hot and torn bearings, cylinders
and pistons cut up, thumps and breakdowns, and engines shaking
themselves to pieces. It is really difficult to understand how so much
ignorance and prejudice on this subject can exist in this day of
general intelligence. The fact is, high speed is the great searcher
and revealer of everything that is bad in design and construction.
The injurious effect of all unbalanced action, of all overhanging
strains, of all weakness of parts, of all untruth in form or construction,
of all insufficiency of surface, increases as the square of the speed.
Put an engine to speed and its faults bristle all over. The shaking
drum cries, ‘Balance me, balance me!’ the writhing shaft and
quivering frame cry, ‘See how weak we are!’ the blazing bearing
screams, ‘Make me round!’ and the maker says, ‘Ah, sir, you see
high speed will never do!’
“Now, nothing is more certain than that we can make engines, and
that with all ease, in which there shall be no unbalanced action, no
overhanging strains, no weakness of parts, no untruth of form or
construction, no insufficiency of surface; in which, in short, there
shall be no defect to increase as the square of the speed, and then
we may employ whatever speed we like. ‘But that,’ interposes a
friend, ‘requires perfection, which you know is unattainable.’ No, we
reply, nothing unattainable, nothing even difficult, is required, but
only freedom from palpable defects, which, if we only confess their
existence, and are disposed to get rid of, may be easily avoided. It is
necessary to throw all conceit about our own work to the dogs, to lay
down the axiom that whatever goes wrong, it is not high speed, but
ourselves who are to blame, and to go to high speed as to our
schoolmaster.
“Among the many objections to high speed, we are often told that
the beam-engine will not bear it, and the beam-engine, sir, was
designed by Watt. In reverence for that great name, we yield to no
one. The beam-engine, in its adaptation to the conditions under
which it was designed to work—namely, a piston speed of 220 feet
per minute and a pressure of one or two atmospheres—was as
nearly perfect as any work of human skill ever was or will be; but we
wonder why the outraged ghost does not haunt the men who cling to
the material form they have inherited, when the conditions which it
was designed to meet have been all outgrown, who have used up
his factor of safety, and now stand among their trembling and
breaking structures, deprecating everything which these will not
endure.
“A journal and its bearings ought not only never to become warm,
but never even to wear, and, if properly made, never will do so with
ordinary care to any appreciable extent, no matter how great speed
is employed. It is well known that there exists a very wide difference
in bearings in this respect, some outlasting dozens of others. Now,
there need be no mystery about this: the conditions of perfect action
are so few and simple that it seems almost idle to state them. The
first is rigidity of a shaft or spindle between its bearings; but
everybody knows that if this is flexible, just in the degree in which it
springs, the journals must be cast in their bearings, though in actual
practice this perfect rigidity is not once in a thousand times even
approximated to. The point of excellence in the celebrated Sellers
bearing for shafting is that it turns universally to accommodate itself
to this flexure of the shaft, and the result is a durability almost
perfect.
“The second requirement, when we have a shaft capable of
maintaining perfect rigidity under all the strains it may be subjected
to, is abundant extent of bearing surface both in length and
circumference, a requirement, it will be seen, entirely consistent with
the first. It is a mistake to use journals of small diameter with the idea
that their enlargement will occasion loss of power on account of the
increased surface velocity, as, in fact, the coefficient of friction will
diminish in a greater ratio than that in which the velocity is increased.
In the Allen engine it is intended to make all shafts and journals too
large.
“But all is of little use unless the journal is round. High speed
under heavy pressure has a peculiar way of making it known when a
journal is not round, which, we suppose, is one of its faults. Now the
difference between a true cylindrical form and such an approximation
to it as a good lathe will produce in turning ordinarily homogeneous
metal is simply amazing; but when we compare with this the forms of
journals as commonly finished, the wonder is how many of them run
at all at any speed. When ground with a traversing wheel in dead
centers, which have themselves been ground to true cones, the only
known method by which a parallel cylindrical form can be produced,
their inequalities stand disclosed, and these are usually found to be
greater, often many times greater, than the thickness of the film of oil
that can be maintained in running. Then under pressure this film is
readily broken, the metal surfaces come into contact and abrasion
begins. But a true cylindrical journal swims in an oil-bath, separated
from its bearing at every point by a film of oil of uniform thickness,
and sustaining a uniform pressure, which cannot be anywhere
broken, and which has very little inclination to work out; and if it
revolves without deflection and the pressure per square inch of
surface is not sufficient to press out the lubricant, the speed is
absolutely immaterial and wear is impossible, except that due to the
attrition of the oil itself, which on hardened surfaces has no
appreciable effect.”
From the illustrations contained in these articles, I copy only the
following pair of diagrams with the accompanying note.

Pair of Diagrams from 18×30 Allen Engine at South Tyne Paper Mill, 108
Revolutions, Vacuum 28 Inches. Only Half Intended Load on Engine.

The winter of 1867-8 was devoted by me partly to watching the


dissolving view of my engineering prospects in England. It grew
more and more evident that through my difference with Mr.
Whitworth all my efforts and successes there would come to naught,
as they did.
But my friend, Mr. Lee, had even worse luck than I had. It will be
some relief from the monotony of my reverses if I go back a little and
tell of a reverse that befell another man. Curiously enough, Mr. Lee’s
reverse came from the overwhelming character of his success. The
English engineers had their breath quite taken away and lost their
heads, with the result that Mr. Lee lost his position. He was
ambitious to show his steam fire-engine doing its utmost. If he had
been wiser and had realized the limit of what his judges could stand,
he would have shown about one half its capacity and all parties
would have been happy.
To understand how naturally this most unexpected dénouement
came about, we must recall what the English people had been
accustomed to. In London fires were rare and trifling. Buildings were
low, built of brick with tile roofs. Open grates afforded the means of
cooking and of warming sufficiently for their climate. Every tenant of
a building who called in the fire department was fined five pounds,
which encouraged careful habits. The apparatus itself was
something quite ridiculous. It consisted of little hand-engines, worked
by about a dozen men. On the side of a corner building occasionally
one saw painted a distance in feet and inches. This meant that by
measuring this distance from this corner out into the street and
digging a little into the macadam pavement, a connection would be
found with the water-main. From this the water was permitted to flow
gently into an india-rubber saucer some 6 feet in diameter spread on
the ground. Out of this saucer the engine drew its water for a feeble
little stream.
Mr. Lee’s engine, with Worthington duplex pump, was, on its
completion, exhibited before a large company of invited guests,
principally officials of the fire department and prominent engineers.
The engine maintained a vertical column of water, delivered from a
much larger nozzle than had ever before been used in England, and
considerably over 100 feet high. There was also a corresponding
column of sparks from the chimney of the steam-pump. The
exhibition was made late in the afternoon of a short winter day, and
before it was over the coming darkness showed the column of
incandescent cinders to the best advantage. The few Americans
there enjoyed this miniature Vesuvius hugely. The Englishmen were
frightened out of their wits. Their unanimous verdict was that the
engine would evidently put out a fire, half a dozen of them for that
matter, but it would kindle twenty. And this where the engine had
been pushed to its utmost, and had not kindled one fire. Easton,
Amos & Sons instantly decided that they could never sell a steam
fire-engine under Mr. Lee’s management, and they discharged him
the next morning.
During the following season we had quite a steam-fire-engine
excitement. Some one, I have forgotten who, but think it was the
Duke of Sutherland, made a public offer of a thousand pounds
sterling for the best steam fire-engine, competition to be open to all
the world, the engines to be tested for six days in the park of the
Crystal Palace at Sydenham, in the month of July following. There
were a number of amusing incidents connected with that exhibition.
One was the following: The common council of New York City
determined that the city must have that prize, so they sent over
engine No. 7, a favorite engine, one of Mr. Lee’s make, and which
had been three or four years in service. A junket committee of the
city fathers accompanied it. The London Fire Department received
this delegation with great enthusiasm, and devoted itself to making
them happy. They took entire charge of their machine and exhibited
it in London to admiring crowds. A few days before the time fixed for
the opening of the trial they took the engine to Sydenham, where on
the way to its station it accidentally rolled down a hillside and was
pretty well broken up. Mr. Lee being in London was hurriedly sent for
to see if it could be repaired in time for the trial. He found that the
injuries were of so serious a nature that the repairs could not be
completed in less than three weeks. So that competitor was out of
the way. Their sympathizing friends were full of condolence, and
assumed all the cost of the repairs. They also proposed that when
the engine was put in proper order they should have an excursion
down the Thames to Greenwich and have there an exhibition of its
powers. So a steamboat was chartered and a large party
accompanied the machine to Greenwich. On arrival there it was
found that the two nozzles, a large one and a smaller one for long-
distance streams, which had been taken especial charge of by the
members of a fire company, had been accidentally dropped into the
Thames. The New York delegation were glad to get their engine
back to New York without further accident.
Easton, Amos & Sons also concluded that they would like that
prize. After they had taken the engine into their own hands, they
found a number of features which seemed to them to need
amendment, so they made some quite important changes. On the
second day of the trial this engine broke down and had to be
withdrawn.
I have forgotten how many competitors remained in the field, but
the prize was awarded to a London firm, builders of hand fire-
engines, who had only lately taken up this new branch of
manufacture. This successful firm applied to the government for an
order to supply steam fire-engines for the protection of the public
buildings. This application was referred to Easton, Amos & Sons, the
consulting engineers of the government. This firm concluded if
possible to have this order given to themselves, and applied to Mr.
Lee to recommend the changes in his engine necessary to put it in
proper working order. Mr. Lee replied that it was only necessary to
put the engine back in the precise condition in which he left it. They
finally agreed to do this, and employed Mr. Lee to direct the work.
When completed the engine was tried in the gardens of Buckingham
Palace, in competition with the prize winner, before a large body of
government officials. The Easton, Amos & Sons engine proved its
superiority on every point so completely that the government
immediately purchased it.
Some time before this, however, Mr. Lee had associated himself
with a capitalist for the manufacture of steam fire-engines in
England, and was then engaged on plans for them. His financial
associate was Judge Winter, by which title only he was known to us.
He was an American, and before the war was the proprietor of the
Winter Iron Works in Georgia (the precise location I have forgotten),
the most prominent engineering establishment in the Southern
States, in which business he had become wealthy. He will be
remembered by some gray heads as having been an exhibitor in the
New York Crystal Palace in 1853. He sent to it a steam-engine
bearing the name of “The Southern Belle.” This stood in the
machinery department, close to a Corliss engine, the two being the
only engines of any size which were exhibited there. This engine
was beautifully finished, polished pretty much all over, but its working
features were of the most ordinary character. Mechanically it was
valueless.
Judge Winter was a determined opponent of secession, and on
the adoption of that ordinance by the State of Georgia, was
compelled to fly from the country. He then took up his residence in
London, to which he had transferred such portion of his wealth as he
was able to convert into money.
He took a deep interest in the new steam fire-engine, and spent
part of nearly every day in the office where Mr. Lee and Mr. Taylor,
an American engineer whom Mr. Lee had associated with himself,
were engaged on their plans.
The point of interest to myself in this story lies here. The old judge
had no sound mechanical education, but was very fertile minded. He
came almost every morning with a new idea that he wanted
embodied. It was always absurd. He generally protested vigorously
against being overruled. When he was furnishing all the money he
could not see why he should not be allowed to have something to
say about it. I happened to be present in their office one morning
when he got particularly excited over their opposition. He was a stout
party, and on this occasion I had the fun of joining in the shout of
laughter that greeted him, when, after pacing the floor in silence for a
few minutes, he exclaimed, with his hand on the fabled seat of his
sympathies, “I thank my God that if there is one thing I am free from,
it is pride of opinion.”
My recollection of the above action of Easton, Amos & Sons and
of Judge Winter contributed materially to form my imagination of the
predicament in which I would certainly find myself, should I yield to
Mr. Whitworth the power to make whatever changes might occur to
him in my engine.
CHAPTER XV

Preparations for Returning to America. Bright Prospects.

aving but little practical work to occupy me that


winter, I devoted myself to getting out for Elliott Bros. a
second edition of my instruction book to accompany
the Richards indicator, and my paper for the Institution
of Mechanical Engineers and the illustrations and
material for Mr. Colburn’s articles on the Allen engine
published in Engineering.
I found in the library of the Manchester Philosophical Society a
copy of the twentieth volume of the “Memoirs of the French Academy
of Sciences,” containing the report of the experiments of M. Regnault
to determine the properties of steam, with the leaves uncut, of which
I was then able to make some use. I was anxious to obtain a copy of
this volume for myself, and also of Volume 21, containing other
memoirs by M. Regnault. This object I succeeded in accomplishing
when in Paris that winter through the kind interest of M. Tresca, the
well-known Sous-Directeur of the Ecole des Arts et Métiers. This
was a matter of so much difficulty, that a letter from M. Tresca to the
publisher was found not to be sufficient. It was necessary that M.
Tresca should personally identify me as the “savant” to whom he had
given the letter. I was then able to obtain both the volumes, which I
brought home with me on my return to America.
Now was the winter of my discontent made glorious summer, and
all the clouds that lowered about my enterprise in the deep bosom of
the ocean buried, by the receipt of a letter from Mr. Hope, telling me
that Mr. Allen’s report after his visit of inspection was of so entirely
satisfactory a character that, after full consideration, it had been
concluded to write me to leave everything in England in whatever
condition I might be obliged to, and return home and join with Mr.
Allen in the manufacture of the engines, for which ample capital
would be furnished. So in my ecstasy I went about quoting to myself
Shakespeare’s lines and applying them to my reviving fortunes. Mr.
Hoyle congratulated me warmly on this favorable turn in my affairs,
seeing clearly that I would never do anything with Mr. Whitworth,
unless on his own inadmissible terms.
After I had sobered down from my excitement, I began to consider
the matter carefully, and to determine upon the preparations that
ought to be made as a foundation for what, by judicious
management, should grow to be a great and profitable business. I
fully realized the responsibility that was devolved upon me, and
determined that both in foresight and prudence I would prove myself
equal to its requirements.
I wrote a glad acceptance of the proposition and expatiated on the
advantage we should enjoy from what I had learned in England. I
told them that the selection of a suitable location was of the first
importance, and suggested that a plot of twenty or thirty acres
should be purchased in the environs of a large manufacturing town,
affording a good labor market and having good railway facilities, and
where the land could be got at farm prices. I would plan shops on a
scale large enough for a great business and of a form adapted for
enlargement from time to time, and build at first a small part, which
as the business grew could be added to without alteration. I asked
them to look about for the best place, but do nothing further until I
got home, when I would have carefully studied plans, embodying the
most recent improvements in building and tools to lay before them.
I then entered with enthusiasm into the preparation of my plans.
The model shop, now in common use, had then lately been designed
by the firm of Smith & Coventry, tool makers of Salford, which is a
suburb of Manchester, separated from it only by a narrow stream,
the river Irwell, and their plan had been at once followed by the firm
of Craven Brothers of Manchester, also tool makers. It was, of
course, still unknown in the United States.
The general idea of this shop was taken from the nave and side
aisles of Gothic cathedrals. The central and wider portion, which we
may call the nave, was one story in height and was commanded by
the travelers, and its floor was occupied by the largest tools only, and
for erection. The side aisles were two stories in height. The smallest
work, of course, was on the upper story, and tools and work of
medium size on the floors below, the latter being transported by
carriages suspended from the floor above. No rails were laid or
gangways kept open on any floor. All transportation of heavy objects
was through the air. The great value of this improvement, made by
this firm in shop design, and which has brought this design into
general use, lay in its natural classification of the work. Travelers
were already quite common in England, but under them large and
small tools, often very small ones, were found mingled quite
promiscuously. Their shop had an entire glass roof, made on the
ridge and furrow plan, first used in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park
for the International Exhibition of 1851. That roof would not answer,
however, in this climate, on account of our snow in winter, so I had to
plan a different one. But in every other respect their plan was
perfect. The columns, of course, at that time were of cast iron. These
were cast in pairs connected by a web, the longer columns in each
pair supporting the roof, the short ones the rails for the travelers.
In Smith & Coventry’s shop the traveler was operated from the
floor by means of a loop hanging from a wheel on the crab. The
arrangement was exceedingly convenient in every respect.
I obtained full detail drawings of Smith & Coventry’s shop. The
accompanying outline presents a cross-section of this shop, and is
figured to the dimensions I proposed to adopt. I proposed to build a
length of only 75 feet, which by successive additions could be
extended to 500 feet if required. Moreover, at first the office,
drawing-office, pattern shop, and storeroom, besides the machine
shop, in short everything, except only the engine and boiler, smith
shop and foundry, were to be accommodated in this one building. I
was greatly pleased with my plan, and felt sure that it would
commend itself to my associates, as no shop possessing these
conveniences then existed in the United States. I, however,
introduced one modification of the English shops, or rather one
addition. I had observed that reliance on the traveler for local work
involved a serious loss of time. I had seen in various shops men
standing idle, sometimes from fifteen to thirty minutes, waiting for the
traveler to be at liberty to come and give them a lift. It appeared
evident to me that the province of the traveler was to fetch and carry;
not to perform local work, unless of the heaviest class. So for the
latter purpose I provided swing cranes, which could be operated by
the workman himself without assistance. This also enabled one
traveler to cover a much longer extent of floor.

Cross-section of Machine Shop Proposed by Mr. Porter in 1868, after the Design
of Smith & Coventry.

Smith & Coventry had made numerous improvements on Mr.


Whitworth’s tools. I have already mentioned their arrangement which
made it possible to take up the wear of the lathe spindle bearings. In
the radial drill, an invention of Mr. Whitworth’s, as made by him, in
order to bring the drill to the right position longitudinally, the workman
was obliged to go to the end of the arm and turn the screw. From this
point he could not see his work, and had to guess at the proper
adjustment. I have seen him in the Whitworth works go back and
forth for this purpose three or four times, and have always doubted if
he got it exactly right after all. Smith & Coventry introduced an
elegant device by which the workman was able to make this
adjustment without moving from his place. They also first made the
arm of the radial drill adjustable vertically by power. By simply
reversing the curve of the brackets under Mr. Whitworth’s shaper
tables, they made these unyielding under the pressure of the cut.
This firm also first employed small cutting tools set in an arm which
was secured in the tool-post, and put an end to tool-dressing by the
blacksmith, which had caused a fearful waste of time, and also
encouraged idle habits among the workmen. This improvement has
since come into common use. Their system of grinding these small
tools interested me very much. The workman never left his machine.
He was provided with a number of tools, set in compartments in a
box. When a tool became dull he took it out, set it in the box upside
down, and substituted another. A boy went regularly through the
shop, took up all the upside-down tools, ground them, and brought
them back. The grindstones were provided with tool-holders and a
compound screw feed, by which the tools were always presented to
the stone at the same desired angle, and were prevented from
wearing out the stone by running into grooves or following soft spots.
The whole surface of the stone was used uniformly and kept in
perfect condition.
I picked up in that shop the solid wrench made with the elegant
improvement of inclining the handle at the angle of 15 degrees from
the line of the jaws; enabling it, by turning the wrench over, to be
worked within a radial angle of 30 degrees. This adapted it for use in
tight places. I brought the idea home with me and always supplied
my engines with wrenches made in that way. I offered the plan to
Billings & Spencer for nothing, but they did not think it worth making
the dies for. Mr. Williams was more appreciative. I believe it is now in
quite common use.
At that time toolmaking in this country, which has since become so
magnificently developed, was in many important respects in a
primitive condition, and I proposed to introduce into my shop every
best tool and method, adapted to my requirements, that I could find
in England. For this purpose I visited and carefully studied all the tool
works of good standing, and my final conclusion was that the best
tools for design, strength, solidity, facility of operation and truth of
work were those made by Smith & Coventry. This may be guessed
from the few examples I have given of their fertile mindedness and
advanced ideas. So I prepared a careful list of tools that I proposed
to order from them in time to be ready for use as soon as my shop
should be completed. I found also the remarkable fact that I could
obtain these tools, duty and freight paid, decidedly cheaper than
corresponding inferior tools could then be got from American
makers.
Before bidding good-by to England, I must tell the luck I had in
endeavoring to introduce Mr. Allen’s double-opening slide valve,
shown in the general view of my London exhibit, now in common use
the world over. No locomotive engineer would even look at it. Finally
I got an order from Mr. Thomas Aveling for one of these valves with
single eccentric valve-gear, to be tried on one of his road
locomotives or traction engines. Mr. Aveling is known to fame as the
inventor of the road locomotive and steam road roller. He once told
me how he came to make this invention. He was a maker of portable
engines in Rochester, which was the center of a wheat-growing
district. These engines were employed universally to drive threshing
machines. Horses were used to draw both the machine and the
engine from farm to farm. The idea occurred to him that this was
almost as foolish as was the practice of the Spanish muleteers, in
putting the goods they transported on one side of the animal and
employing a bag of stones on the other side to balance them. Why
not make the engine capable of moving itself and drawing the
threshing machine, and dispense with the horses altogether? So he
applied himself to the job and did it. Then it was found that the self-
propelling threshing-machine engines could draw a great many other
things besides threshing machines, and the business grew to large
proportions.
Mr. Aveling made an engine with valve and valve-gear from my
drawings, and I took a ride with him on it from Rochester to London,
the engine drawing two trucks loaded with the two halves of a fly-
wheel. The performance was entirely satisfactory. He said the engine
was handled more easily than any other he ever made, and it
maintained its speed in going up hill in a manner to astonish him,
which was accounted for by the double valve opening. The little
engine ran very rapidly, about 300 revolutions per minute, being
geared down to a slow motion of the machine, about 4 miles travel
per hour. With a single opening for admission it had admitted only a
partial pressure of the steam, but the double opening valve admitted
very nearly the whole pressure and made a sharp cut-off, all which I

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