A large portion of my research is at the intersection of social networking and social software solutions, and their capacity to help improve knowledge work. The following three papers may be of interest to others who are working in this space. An abstract for the first paper appears 'above the fold' on my weblog, please continue reading 'below the fold' for the remaining two papers.
Enabling Collective Knowledge Work Through the Design of Mediating Spaces: A Framework for Systemic Socio-Informatic Change (ResearchIndex)
By: David Ing and Ian Simmonds
ABSTRACT: We propose a framework for designers of business organizations and designers of information systems that portrays three forms of “space” that mediate social interactions: physical space, social space and informatic space. The framework aids organizational designers and information technology designers to understand some of the complexities of enabling knowledge work, by contrasting the properties of the spaces and their interactions:
* Social interaction enabled by physical spaces is the focus of architects of buildings and urban planners, managers locating individuals and team who work together, and conference organizers who plan events to encourage networking.
* Social interaction enabled by social spaces is the focus of organizational designers who develop supporting social structures such as centers of excellence or practitioner support networks.
* Social interaction enabled by informatic spaces is the focus of knowledge architects and process analysts, who administer and moderate groupware and workflow applications.
In addition,
* Informatic spaces hosted in physical spaces are the focus of Information Technology architects, who ensure appropriate geographical coverage, performance, availability and security through appropriate computer hardware and software (e.g. servers, access points and networks).
Since the ways in which knowledge work can be carried out vary from person to person across a community, and innovations are naturally introduced over time, an enabling infrastructure should be capable of adaptation to those changed needs. We draw on research in general systems theory, architectural theory, and social theory to inform our practices in advising on business design, and methods and tools for information modeling.
Information Retrieval Algorithms For Knowledge Management – The Challenge Continues (ResearchIndex)
By: Elaine Ferneley - E.Ferneley@salford.ac.uk, Brendan Berney - B.T.Berney@salford.ac.uk, and Yacine Rezgui - Y.Rezgui@salford.ac.uk
This paper considers Information Communication Technology (ICT) support for the knowledge creation process that takes place by the interaction of both tacit and explicit knowledge with the knowledge creating entities of the individual, group and organisation (or organisations). Attempts to provide ICT support for this process have tended to focus on two stages in the knowledge evolution cycle, firstly extraction and representation and secondly dissemination. In order to extract and represent knowledge a number of approaches have been used, these include: the use of knowledge bases and ontologies, the use of filtering and categorisation mechanisms to extract key terms and the development of various weighting mechanisms in an attempt to prioritise or cluster related entities. To support dissemination various approaches to user profiling have been used which usually incorporate some form of adaptive information filtering mechanism. This paper presents a critical evaluation of a number of the more well know extraction and representation techniques. It then presents a set of user profiling techniques appropriate for use in intra-organisation knowledge management portal applications.
SMILE Maker: Concept-Orientation in Agent-Based Architectures for Personal Assistance and Collaborative Problem Solving (ResearchIndex)
By: Svetoslav Stoyanov, Neli Stoyanova, Piet Kommers and Ivan Kurtev
The paper presents some experimentally validated design solutions on the groupware module ‘Partner’ of SMILE Maker for mobile and personal support facilities. Three types of scenarios for collaborative problem solving have been tested. Pin-cards, Delphi and BrainMapping modes proved to have a differential effect on learning and collaborative problem solving suggesting concrete design solutions.
SMILE Maker is a web-based knowledge support system promoting with just in time, just enough and just at point of need intelligent support in dealing with ill-structured problem situations. Conceptually SMILE Maker lies in a cross-section area of four recently strongly recognized paradigms: problem solving, concept mapping, collaborative learning and instructional design.
The module ‘Partner’ of SMILE Maker enables a shared group environment for distributing learning resources. It supports externalis ation and sharing the individual potential in terms of formal expertise and tacit knowledge, organised by the personalised meaningful perception of the problem space.