The Team Balancing Act - Enhancing Knowledge - Building Activity in On-Line Learning Communities

Online learning in the university sector is a given. Constructivist views of learning (often team based) and the notion of knowledge-building, mediated through the use of ICTs seemingly address many of the imperatives to equip individuals for emergent knowledge-age work practice. While teamwork has many perceived advantages, teams also inexplicably fail despite the apparent quality of the participants. Teams are successful when members address what is a relatively narrow range of actions. However, even within this limited range of actions individuals demonstrate definite preferences towards certain activities and roles. This paper reports on the findings from a study that investigated if knowledge-building activity can be enhanced in tertiary education CSCL environments through the use of groups balanced by Team Role Preference (Margerison & McCann, 1995, 1998). The study found that higher quality knowledge-building activity was more likely to occur in balanced groups than in random groups. The analysis of data revealed that a diversity of ideas was more likely to emerge from within balanced groups than from within random groups particularly when the random groups were heavily skewed towards one team role preference. This provided a compelling reason for explaining why balanced groups may lead to better knowledge-building activity

Individual emergence in contextual analysis

Located within the tradition of Hermeneutic Dialectics (HD) this paper offers an approach which can further an analysis of a fit between information and organizational systems. Drawn upon Information Systems Development projects a relationship between theory and practice is aided through a multi-disciplinary approach to sense making activity. Using a contemporary version of contextual analysis to understand a way in which individuals construct adapt and create meaning from their environment offers a route to improve a systems analysis process. This type of enquiry into contextual dependencies of knowledge creation can help direct a development of systems that have the intention to serve specific organizational actors and their needs. Combining methods outside of a traditional polar divide, sense making research undertaken within a systems thinking arena can enrich understanding by complementing qualitative and / or quantitative analysis with reflective depth. Drawing together interdisciplinary strands through a critical systems thinking approach offers new levels of professionalism for computer- and management-, practitioners or researchers in the 21st Century

Together we stand, Together we fall, Together we win: Dynamic Team Formation in Massive Open Online Courses

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offer a new scalable paradigm for e-learning by providing students with global exposure and opportunities for connecting and interacting with millions of people all around the world. Very often, students work as teams to effectively accomplish course related tasks. However, due to lack of face to face interaction, it becomes difficult for MOOC students to collaborate. Additionally, the instructor also faces challenges in manually organizing students into teams because students flock to these MOOCs in huge numbers. Thus, the proposed research is aimed at developing a robust methodology for dynamic team formation in MOOCs, the theoretical framework for which is grounded at the confluence of organizational team theory, social network analysis and machine learning. A prerequisite for such an undertaking is that we understand the fact that, each and every informal tie established among students offers the opportunities to influence and be influenced. Therefore, we aim to extract value from the inherent connectedness of students in the MOOC. These connections carry with them radical implications for the way students understand each other in the networked learning community. Our approach will enable course instructors to automatically group students in teams that have fairly balanced social connections with their peers, well defined in terms of appropriately selected qualitative and quantitative network metrics.Comment: In Proceedings of 5th IEEE International Conference on Application of Digital Information & Web Technologies (ICADIWT), India, February 2014 (6 pages, 3 figures

The Role of Group Learning in Implementation of a Personnel Management System in a Hospital

A new HR system was introduced in a Dutch hospital. The system implied collaborative work among its users. The project planning seemed to be reasonably straightforward: the system's introduction was intended to take place gradually, including pilots in different departments and appropriate feedback. After some time, the system was successfully adopted by one group of users, but failed with another. We conceptualize the implementation process of groupware as group learning to frame the adoption of the system, and analyze the qualitative data collected during the longitudinal case study. We found that in the user group with strong group learning, adoption of the system occurred effectively and on time. In another user group with rather weak group learning, the use of the system was blocked after a short time. The results provided a first confirmation of our assumption about the importance of group learning processes in the implementation of groupware

Understanding the effect of IS change: A social capital perspective

This paper argues that by adopting a social capital perspective of the effects of Information Systems (IS) implementation we are able to provide insights into both human and technological aspects of change interventions. This theoretical paper is firmly embedded within socio-technical approaches and aims to conceptualise and address concerns relating to organisational issues of systems and technology management. IS implementation inevitably impacts upon the existing work and social relationships within organisations where there is the potential experience of reduced system effectiveness through a periodic lack of coordination and control. It is evident, in this respect, that the adoption of IS produces challenges to human collaboration which clearly add a social dimension to systems management. The paper broadly outlines how a social capital perspective may determine the areas of focus from IS-driven organisational change and provide indications about potential ways to improve system and technology adoption. This may support more appropriate designs for change interventions that enable organisations to accrue more value from IS

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Differentiating KMS Strategy from Business Strategy, KM Strategy and IS/IT Strategy

The era of the new millennium has witnessed a wide range of the revolutionized technology that affects our lives and the way an organization is conducted. The contemporary business sectors start to recognize the potential use of knowledge management in the new organizational processes. As a result, increasing numbers of organizations pay attention to the creative value of leveraging knowledge as one of their potential assets. Therefore, organizations start to focus on knowledge as one of the important elements in competitive advantage that needs to be utilized efficiently and effectively. They have shown a great attention of knowledge management in their business strategy incorporated with technology. The role of technological tools and applications is essential in supporting and enhancing knowledge management strategy. There has been a transition from traditional information system to new a concept of knowledge management system employed by organization to sustain competitive advantage in dynamic and unstable environment. Further, to shift the paradigm of knowledge management systems concept from business sectors, this study focused on the KMS applications and tools particularly in Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) environment. The purpose of this study is to (a) identify the relationship of business strategy, knowledge management (KM) Strategy, knowledge management systems (KMS) strategy, information system (IS) strategy and information technology (IT) strategy, particularly in the context of IHE, (b) describe those strategies and their relationship based on the context of IHE. This will provide guidance and effective methods for formulating the KMS strategy with the aim to align it with business strategies and ensuring success of its implementation

Deferred Action: Theoretical model of process architecture design for emergent business processes

E-Business modelling and ebusiness systems development assumes fixed company resources, structures, and business processes. Empirical and theoretical evidence suggests that company resources and structures are emergent rather than fixed. Planning business activity in emergent contexts requires flexible ebusiness models based on better management theories and models . This paper builds and proposes a theoretical model of ebusiness systems capable of catering for emergent factors that affect business processes. Drawing on development of theories of the ‘action and design’class the Theory of Deferred Action is invoked as the base theory for the theoretical model. A theoretical model of flexible process architecture is presented by identifying its core components and their relationships, and then illustrated with exemplar flexible process architectures capable of responding to emergent factors. Managerial implications of the model are considered and the model’s generic applicability is discussed