Distributed Semantic Wiki: Kolflow Project -Task 5- State of the art (D5.1)

This paper presents the state of the art on Distributed Semantic Wikis. This work is part of the Kolflow project, more precisely it is part of the task 5, {\bf D(5.1)}

The role of social networks in students’ learning experiences

The aim of this research is to investigate the role of social networks in computer science education. The Internet shows great potential for enhancing collaboration between people and the role of social software has become increasingly relevant in recent years. This research focuses on analyzing the role that social networks play in students’ learning experiences. The construction of students’ social networks, the evolution of these networks, and their effects on the students’ learning experience in a university environment are examined

Global Diffusion of the Internet XV: Web 2.0 Technologies, Principles, and Applications: A Conceptual Framework from Technology Push and Demand Pull Perspective

Web 2.0, the current Internet evolution, can be described by several key features of an expanded Web that is more interactive; allows easy social interactions through participation and collaboration from a variety of human sectors; responds more immediately to users\u27 queries and needs; is easier to search; and provides a faster, smoother, realistic and engaging user search capability, often with automatic updates to users. The purpose of this study is three-fold. First, the primary goal is to propose a conceptual Web 2.0 framework that provides better understanding of the Web 2.0 concept by classifying current key components in a holistic manner. Second, using several selective key components from the conceptual framework, this study conducts case analyses of Web 2.0 applications to discuss how they have adopted the selective key features (i.e., participation, collaboration, rich user experience, social networking, semantics, and interactivity responsiveness) of the conceptual Web 2.0 framework. Finally, the study provides insightful discussion of some challenges and opportunities provided by Web 2.0 to education, business, and social life

An extensible framework for automatic knowledge extraction from student blogs

This article introduces a framework for automatically extracting knowledge from student blogs and injecting it into a shared resource, namely a Wiki. This is motivated by the need to preserve knowledge generated by students beyond their time of study. The framework is described in the context of the Bachelor of Creative Technologies degree at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand where it is being deployed alongside an existing blogging and ePortfolio process. The framework uses an extensible, layered architecture that allows for incremental development of components in the system to enhance the functionality over time. The current implementation is in beta-testing and uses simple heuristics in the core components. This article presents a road map for extending the functionality to improve the quality of knowledge extraction by introducing techniques from the artificial intelligence field

The Open Practises E-Science Network (OPEN)

A grant proposal submitted for support to fund a research network focussed on identifying and dealing with the practical issues of enabling open practise in research. The text of the proposal was written by a large number of people and coordinated by Cameron Neylon

The CKC Challenge: Exploring Tools for Collaborative Knowledge Construction

The great success of Web 2.0 is mainly fuelled by an infrastructure that allows web users to create, share, tag, and connect content and knowledge easily. The tools for developing structured knowledge in this manner have started to appear as well. However, there are few, if any, user studies that are aimed at understanding what users expect from such tools, what works and what doesn't. We organized the Collaborative Knowledge Construction (CKC) Challenge to assess the state of the art for the tools that support collaborative processes for creation of various forms of structured knowledge. The goal of the Challenge was to get users to try out different tools and to learn what users expect from such tools /features that users need, features that they like or dislike. The Challenge task was to construct structured knowledge for a portal that would provide information about research. The Challenge design contained several incentives for users to participate. Forty-nine users registered for the Challenge; thirty three of them participated actively by using the tools. We collected extensive feedback from the users where they discussed their thoughts on all the tools that they tried. In this paper, we present the results of the Challenge, discuss the features that users expect from tools for collaborative knowledge constructions, the features on which Challenge participants disagreed, and the lessons that we learned