The application of social software in higher education is often restricted to dedicated learning contexts, namely lectures or seminars. Thus their inherent potentials for fostering knowledge management and self-directed learning are usually chained to the narrow restrictions of Learning Management Systems based virtual classroom walls. This paper’s focus has a different perspective: The provision of social software as an information and communication infrastructure that goes beyond lectures and encompasses the whole institution and all members of the university, respectively. Thereby an online space is provided for self-expression, information access and knowledge exchange on manifold social levels. Following this prospect, the technical and organisational concept of CollabUni, a social information and communication infrastructure, is described. First results from the implementation of CollabUni that is currently underway, delivers a differentiated, overall encouraging picture. With respect to acceptance and use of this environment, the importance of an elaborate community building approach as well as the need for gaining information and communication literacy on part of the students are evident.
Knowledge, innovation and practice are interrelated, but the management of their relations is far from an easy and straightforward task. Facilitating knowledge services are needed. This paper explores the theory of converging knowledge, innovation, and practice, and the implications for its facilitation. A trialogical approach to knowledge creation is presented as a viable theoretical starting point. Theoretical considerations are complemented with two examples of novel knowledge services: Opasnet and Innovillage. Eventually, conclusions are drawn upon the main issues to address in future development of services to support convergence of knowledge, innovation, and practice.
The paper explores the application of Web 2.0 technologies in the engineering product development domain. Growing on data collected from a number of industrial development projects, related to several different products in various industry segments, the paper analyses the dichotomy between the prevailing hierarchical structure of CAD/PLM/PDM systems and the emerging principles of the Social Web, e.g. the self-organization of its users. It introduces the concept of Engineering 2.0, intended as a more bottom up and lightweight knowledge sharing approach supporting early stage design decisions within cross-functional product development teams. A set of scenarios related, for instance, to the application of blogs, wikis, forums and tags in the engineering domain are eventually presented, highlighting opportunities, challenges and no-go areas.
A mining method for egocentric and polycentric queries in multi-dimensional networks is proposed. The method allows fast search for objects in sufficient proximity of other object(s) where the proximity is defined in terms of multiple relationships between objects. The method uses spreading activation technique. Other potential uses of spreading activation technique are also outlined and, in particular, include applications to collaborative filtering (community detection based on tag recommendations, expertise location, etc). Moreover, the spreading activation technique is combined with so-called ambient navigation. The advantages of such approach are high performance and high scalability in terms of size of multidimensional network. The proposed method is very practical and is implemented in IBM LanguageWare software products.
The importance of comprehensive annotations for learning resources is widely recognized. However, it is often unclear how these annotations should be created. A promising solution might be that learners annotate learning resources during execution of learning processes. This paper examines tagging as a learner-driven approach that can be used to get annotations on a collaborative level. The characteristics of learner-generated annotations in learning scenarios and the applicability of these annotations to describe learning resources are investigated. As empirical grounding, the results of three independent experiments are presented in order to inform decisions concerning the establishment of stitutionalized settings deploying tagging approaches.