In Moodle you will be required to post one (1) contribution about a journal article you have found which relates to each one of the four discussion groups which are headed:-

The Discipline of Human Factors and Ergonomics;

Physical Ergonomics;

Cognitive Ergonomics; and

Organisational Ergonomics.

Your post should briefly inform the other students about the journal article, what the research was about and what the findings were.
You should keep your post to less than 150 words and you should not cite a journal article which someone else has already done.

This exercise is intended to give all students a brief overview of some of the research being conducted in the Human Factors/Ergonomics area and serve as a good starting point for the other assessments you will do. You are also required to post three general discussion replies to other students in the other discussion groups from which you have not done your journal article post.

The end result is that you will have made a contribution to each of the four discussion group areas as listed above. The contributions MUST pertain to the subject matter and ADD to the discussion of the ergonomics content in this unit.

The key assessment criteria used will be your 'genuine participation' and your 'contribution to the knowledge of the research in the area of Human Factors and Ergonomics' within the Moodle learning environment.

An important step in the overall human factors/ergonomics process is identifying work tasks which might result in Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD) risks. This assessment is about developing you understanding of the principles of assessment of these types of activities using human factors assessment tools.

Choose a manual task activity or task that might result in a Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) being performed in your workplace which is suitable for analysis by NIOSH and RULA or REBA.

Prepare a written report which covers:- The risk factors or problems, the analysis of the task using the appropriate tools, discusses the findings based on human factors and ergonomics and make recommendations for improvement to this task within the workplace.

Your assessment task will be assessed against the following criteria:

• Identifies context of workplace and/or other setting and people involved

• Describes the actual task being assessed • Describes MSD hazard or issues and potential effects

• Assesses the MSD risk score using a human factors or ergonomics tool (NIOSH and a REBA or RULA)

• Recommends changes based on assessment findings for MSD improvements to the workplace or other setting

• Presentation, Referencing and grammar

Your task is to perform an evaluation of an item of equipment with regard to COGNITIVE ERGONOMICS. You are required to conduct an ergonomic evaluation of an item of equipment using a Cognitive Task Analysis and prepare a formal report. The focus on the report will be on problem identification including:-

• How the equipment does or does not match the cognitive (i.e. information processing) characteristics of the users;

• How the equipment does or does not match the physical characteristics of the users (briefly—not major focus of report);

• Other problems; reference to relevant literature to support your analysis;

• Design recommendations (solutions to problems) for improving the match between the cognitive characteristics of the users and the design of the equipment;

• Any other recommendations from a Human Factors perspective.

Assessment is based on how well the report matches and addresses the assessment
requirements / criteria and further information will be provided in Moodle.