Research on Cross-Domain Study Curricula in Cyber-Physical Systems: A Case Study of Belarusian and Ukrainian Universities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This study analyzes the cross-Domain Study Curricula in Cyber-Physical Systems, doing a case study in Belarusian and Ukrainian universities. The paper discusses an interesting issue and it is very well structured.

 

Title: Research on cross-domain study curricula in cyber-physical systems: a case study of belarusian and ukrainian universities

 

Abstract: The abstract is clear and concise and it presents the objective of the paper, the used methodology and the achieved results. Maybe justifying the novelty in the introduction could be a good option and justify the ideas raised in the introduction with bibliographic references.

Method: The research methods are clear and objectives and follow a logical structure.

Language: the used language is easily understood and errors are barely detected in it.

Structure: The followed sequence is logical and facilitates the understanding of the content of the text.

Innovation: The issue addressed in the text is quite innovative if we understand that the

 Cyber-Physical Systems have become increasingly important in today's society.

In my view, some issues addressed are rather general and needs further explanations and clarifications:

1. It is important to reduce the percentage of plagiarism because it is high, as seen in the attached report (21%).
2. Perhaps it would be necessary to justify a little more the novelty of the subject analyzed in the article so that the reader is able to appreciate the research gap covered.
3. Introduction: In the introduction, the importance of Cyber-Physical Systems is justified, however, it would be good to add in the introduction a detail of the structure of the paper in order to guide the reader in their reading.
4. The literature review is very basic and needs to be expanded with recent citations from the last five or ten years, emphasizing the Cyber-Physical Systems and their importance and effectiveness for higher education. I advise the authors to extend the literature review to offer the reader a complete state of the art of these questions.

 

5. I congratulate the authors for the construction of section three where the main results obtained in the research are described.
6. It is appreciated that the evaluation results analysis, discussion and conclusions are scarce and reduced due to which the authors are advised to modify them by providing greater details and precision in them to respond to the initial research objective.

 

 

 

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Manuscript ID: education-930530

The reviewer 1.

1. It is important to reduce the percentage of plagiarism because it is high, as seen in the attached report (21%).

Any verification result obtained automatically requires additional analysis by an expert. Upon analysis, it is clear that all the coincidences in the 1% region are based on the established language turnovers (e.g. Cyber Physical Systems), official names of educational institutions, the names of education programs, academic disciplines, measurement units (e.g. Mean, St. dev., etc.).

Even formal parts of the MDPI manuscript, such as “Funding: This research received no external funding” or “Funding: This research received no external funding” also are included in the counting of the percentage of plagiarism.

Therefore, it is not clear, what to do with the references to the literature used for this research. Do we need to exclude the names of the literature from the list of references, if the system showed that it was used before in any other research, even if our purpose is to demonstrate a progress in comparison with our previous research?

However, in order to reduce a percentage of the plagiarism I propose to amend the wording of the paper:

Lines 27 - 28. The wording is changed:

Cyber-Physical Systems are complex systems; they consist of distributed and networked computing elements.

 

Lines 159–162. The wording is changed:

The questionnaire of open and closed type was developed and distributed among the stakeholders. Such aspects as educational and social-cultural traditions of Belarus and Ukraine as well as the experience gained while conducting multi-paradigm modelling of COST for Cyber-Physical Systems were taken into account while being developed.

 

Lines 207–210. The wording is changed:

A set of questions was included into the survey. The content of the questions revealed the subjectively expected value of the respondents upon the suggested topics according to Rensis Likert’s scale. Each question was treated from the point of (dis)agreement. Each position was evaluated from 1 to 5, where 1 means “not relevant”, 5 means “very relevant”, but 3 expresses the neutral attitude of the respondent to the subject matter.

 

Lines 222–230

I do not consider it advisable to change the wording, since typical approaches to the application of the Student's t-test are described. Maybe you should put a footnote?

 

Lines 403–411.

Here is a list of electronic textbooks being developed within the project.

2. Perhaps it would be necessary to justify a little more the novelty of the subject analyzed in the article so that the reader is able to appreciate the research gap covered.

Lines 158-161. Addition:

This was the first representative survey that embraced different industries: oil, electricity and heating energy production, transport maintenance, mining and processing plant, cargo delivery and other industries and research institutions located at three industrial regions of Ukraine, two regions of Belarus and in Belarusian capital Minsk.

 

3. Introduction: In the introduction, the importance of Cyber-Physical Systems is justified, however, it would be good to add in the introduction a detail of the structure of the paper in order to guide the reader in their reading.

Lines 162-168. Addition:

The paper is structured as follows. Authors summarize the materials and methods applied in this research in Chapter 2. The essence of the research offered in the paper is expressed in Chapter 3, which provides analysis of a perception of Belarusian and Ukrainian employers, regional impact on the perception of Ukrainian employers and evolution of the perception of Ukrainian employers concerning the fields of application of CPS and the tools to be applied. The main contribution of the research, general results, limitations and possible directions for future work are discussed in the Chapter 4 “Discussions and conclusions”.

4. The literature review is very basic and needs to be expanded with recent citations from the last five or ten years, emphasizing the Cyber-Physical Systems and their importance and effectiveness for higher education. I advise the authors to extend the literature review to offer the reader a complete state of the art of these questions.

The literature review is increased by 13 additional references dated by last 5 years. I painted them in blue color. 

5. I congratulate the authors for the construction of section three where the main results obtained in the research are described.

Thank you!

6. It is appreciated that the evaluation results analysis, discussion and conclusions are scarce and reduced due to which the authors are advised to modify them by providing greater details and precision in them to respond to the initial research objective.

Trying to answer your suggestions in inserted additional text after line 434 (483 a new line)

Reviewer 2 Report

Many thanks to the authors for the interesting paper, which fully reflects my views on the training of not only engineers, but also, in general, new generation specialists who have to continuously develop a wide range of competencies. Of course, the integration of cyber-physical systems issues into the training curricula for engineers is important and necessary.

In my opinion, the authors managed to prepare a high-quality introduction, describe the research methodology quite clearly and present its results in the third section. However, I am not satisfied with the completion of the paper.

1. I do not recommend combining Discussion and Conclusion into one section. In the discussion section you should pay attention to comparing your results with similar or related studies and approaches by other authors. This is the point of this section - you demonstrate to the reader that the results can be interpreted in different ways and that there are different views on the issues being studied, the solutions obtained and the ways of their implementation. In conclusion, you should collect together the key results, describe the existing limitations (this has already been done, and this is good!), and also outline the directions for further research.
2. The authors proved the need to include issues of CPS in the curricula for training engineers, and also highlighted the key topics of such training. Thus, the question "what to teach" is answered. At the same time, the question "how to teach" is touched upon very superficially. There are proposals for the preparation of e-books and the use of distance learning technologies. In my opinion, this is not enough, and the paper will really become stronger and more attractive for the reader if the arsenal of teaching methods is described more broadly. In fact, the T-shaped competence model itself assumes that online and offline methods, individual and team work, design, both conceptual and real, should be combined in training. Please pay attention to these issues in the "Discussion" section. Perhaps this paper will help you to expand on this topic: Gitelman, L., Kozhevnikov, M., Ryzhuk, O., Advance Management Education for Power-Engineering and Industry of the Future, Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 5930.
3. And one more small note: if you put forward scientific hypotheses, it is advisable to place them at the beginning of the study, or in the Introduction, or in the Materials and Methods section.

Author Response

Manuscript ID: education-930530

The reviewer 2.

 

1. I do not recommend combining Discussion and Conclusion into one section. In the discussion section you should pay attention to comparing your results with similar or related studies and approaches by other authors. This is the point of this section - you demonstrate to the reader that the results can be interpreted in different ways and that there are different views on the issues being studied, the solutions obtained and the ways of their implementation. In conclusion, you should collect together the key results, describe the existing limitations (this has already been done, and this is good!), and also outline the directions for further research.

Thank you for advise! I cannot agree with you, because interpretation and explanation of results partially has started in the Ch.3.  In case we try to distinguish interpretation and explanation of results in a separate chapter, we would be forced to rewrite the chapters 3, 4 and to develop a new chapter 5. I am not sure that the result would be worth to the efforts to be spent. Furthermore, it looks as a usual practice, when the authors of MDPI magazines use the name of a chapter “Discussions and Conclusions” (see references 7, 8, 9).

2. The authors proved the need to include issues of CPS in the curricula for training engineers, and also highlighted the key topics of such training. Thus, the question "what to teach" is answered. At the same time, the question "how to teach" is touched upon very superficially. There are proposals for the preparation of e-books and the use of distance learning technologies. In my opinion, this is not enough, and the paper will really become stronger and more attractive for the reader if the arsenal of teaching methods is described more broadly. In fact, the T-shaped competence model itself assumes that online and offline methods, individual and team work, design, both conceptual and real, should be combined in training. Please pay attention to these issues in the "Discussion" section. Perhaps this paper will help you to expand on this topic: Gitelman, L., Kozhevnikov, M., Ryzhuk, O., Advance Management Education for Power-Engineering and Industry of the Future, Sustainability 2019, 11(21), 5930.

Thank you for advise! We noted elements of Advance Education in the theoretical part of the paper and also in the Discussion and conclusions. Additionally, after the line 434 (483 a new line) we made an addition:

Just to form a T-shaped competence model of an expert who will have spacious mind and leadership skills and to introduce the elements of Advance Education [13], the techniques of modelling and simulating education should be used. These teaching techniques will allow the students to “face” the challenges which are typical for real professional activity. The students will get to know how to apply theoretical knowledge practically, how to find the appropriate solutions to any problem and to develop individual and effective strategies, how to form psychological readiness and professional Me-concept.

Mental capacity cards, some parts of the “Turned over class” technology, lectures – “immersions”, lectures – “paradox”, binary lectures are offered to be introduced into practical training of students. The following methods of training are suggested i.e. methods of situational exercise, case study method, shade/combined/ individual/ back-and-forth brain storm, brain-rating, method of inversion, method of dissolution for dead-locked situations, construction office, analytics and creative project, situational labyrinth, etc.

According to the project, plan the elements of developed courses will be tested by professors and students’ groups. For this purpose, several “training schools” will be conducted in Belarusian, Ukrainian and European partner’s universities. A feedback from the training schools will be collected and evaluated in order to make adjustments in the methods of teaching and content of the courses at the development stage, before formal accreditation of the courses and study programs.

 

3. And one more small note: if you put forward scientific hypotheses, it is advisable to place them at the beginning of the study, or in the Introduction, or in the Materials and Methods section.

Actually, we put a hypothesis at the chapter “Introduction” (see line 90 or 122 as new line). May be it is not enough visible?

 

The revised version of this paper comprises additions on behalf of two reviewers. It should be noted that suggestions of reviewers’ overlap in some way, and that is why, I tried to insert answers to the comments for both reviewers simultaneously in the text of the paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

After reviewing the proposed changes, I propose that the article be published.

Reviewer 2 Report

Thanks to the authors for working on the comments. I believe that at this iteration the paper has become better, and after checking that the text is formatted in accordance with the requirements of the Journal, the study can be published. I wish you success in your future work!