An integrated framework to classify healthcare virtual communities

Healthcare (HC) strives to improve service quality through its cost-effective social computing strategy. However, sudden rise in the count of virtual community of practices (VCoPs) introduced many choices for physicians; As a result, it is not surprising to observe current literature reporting lack of study to investigate ideas integration within and between VCoPs. VCoPs need to be categorized for HC physicians so they will be able to pin-point effective a VC to attain assistance from. This paper is one of the first investigative studies, in HC sector, that proposed a framework to classify and pin-point appropriate VCoPs, for physicians, after it reviewed and analyzed traditional and up-to-date theoretical, empirical and case study literature in the area of social computing, knowledge management (KM) and VCoPs. The implementation of this framework pinpointed professional VCoPs as most appropriate for physicians based on strict requirements, i.e. closed physician communities holding many participants, which are older than 5 years with high boundary crossing. This framework is also a “one-size-fit-all” formula to build an organizational VCoP, utilizable by other business sectors

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

The impact of enterprise resource planning system on Iranian firms performance

In the past two decades, there has been a significant growth market for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in developing countries. However, due to recent economic development of these countries such as Iran, the demand for ERP systems increased considerably. Besides these growths, failures in ERP implementation also have been increased. Therefore, there is an urgent need for understanding ERP implementation and post evaluation issues in developing countries. The main objectives of this study is to identify common ERP modules, critical success factors (CSFs) of ERP implementation among the manufacturing firms in Iran in order to assess the impact of ERP systems implementation on performance across four perspectives (financial, customer, internal process and learning) of the balanced scorecard (BSC). For this purpose, a theory-based model has been developed to examine the relationship between ERP system status and firms performance perspectives. Empirical analyses are based on survey data drawn from 93 Iranian manufacturing firms, which have adopted ERP systems for at least a year. Structural equation modeling (SEM) is employed to test the research hypotheses and Fuzzy DEMATEL method is applied to find the impact of ERP implementation modules and performance indicators. The result indicates that there is a positive significant relationship between ERP system status and changes in financial, customer and learning perspectives of performance. In addition, CSFs and ERP modules on performance perspectives indicated a positive interaction. On the other hand, fuzzy DEMATEL analysis shows, sale and distribution module of ERP had the strongest impact on performance within Iranian manufacturing firms. Consequently, the managers who want to implement ERP systems can use the ranking to choose suitable ERP modules. The results of the study suggest that firms that emphasize CSFs throughout the ERP implementation process achieve higher performance improvement. Further research should gather data from various sources and also from the service sectors

Examining the Under-Representation of Aboriginal Scholars in the Ontario Professoriate: Policy Implications for Faculty Recruitment and Retention

This case study was designed to investigate the under-representation of Aboriginal scholars in the Ontario professoriate, examining: 1) the current lack of Aboriginal scholars in the Ontario professoriate, and 2) the retention of these scholars within the system. To advocate social justice for this community, these issues were examined through an Aboriginal epistemic lens to develop principles with which to inform recruitment and retention policy and practice in the academy. Specifically, this study focused on the following areas: 1) the context of the participants\u27 educational experience as Aboriginal students; 2) participants\u27 perspectives about why Aboriginal scholars stay, or conversely why they leave, the Ontario professoriate; and 3) social justice and equity - implications for recruitment and retention policies in the academy. A transformative policy process is proposed which resulted from the grounded theory flowing from the data collected, and the extant literature. As an organizational tool for transforming the process of policy development and implementation in the academy, the policy process proposed utilizes a circle archetype relevant to many Aboriginal worldviews. The policy circle process is comprised of four integrative stages: the \u27Beginning\u27 stage; the \u27Consultation with Expert Knowledge\u27 stage; the \u27Taking Action\u27 stage; and, the \u27Reflection\u27 stage. Based on the findings of the study, equity principles which inculcate the tenets of respect, honour, truth and wisdom are proposed as guidelines for Aboriginal recruitment and retention policies in the academy. The rationale for proposing this change as a means of promoting social justice and equity, as well as to address the under-representation of Aboriginal scholars in the academy, is based on the perceived necessity of universities to assume their leadership role as socially responsible \u27agents of change.\u27 Finally, the study suggests that there is a continued need to develop and implement strategic educational policy reform in Canada to: support the success of Aboriginal students, to promote and facilitate the participation of Aboriginal educators and Elders in developing curricula and pedagogy which respect and honour Aboriginal epistemologies, and to spur provincial and federal governments\u27 provision of support in terms of investment of time and funding for the development of Aboriginal postsecondary programs

Finding usage patterns from generalized weblog data

Buried in the enormous, heterogeneous and distributed information, contained in the web server access logs, is knowledge with great potential value. As websites continue to grow in number and complexity, web usage mining systems face two significant challenges - scalability and accuracy. This thesis develops a web data generalization technique and incorporates it into the web usage mining framework in an attempt to exploit this information-rich source of data for effective and efficient pattern discovery. Given a concept hierarchy on the web pages, generalization replaces actual page-clicks with their general concepts. Existing methods do this by taking a level-based cut through the concept hierarchy. This adversely affects the quality of mined patterns since, depending on the depth of the chosen level, either significant pages of user interests get coalesced, or many insignificant concepts are retained. We present a usage driven concept ascension algorithm, which only preserves significant items, possibly at different levels in the hierarchy. Concept usage is estimated using a small stratified sample of the large weblog data. A usage threshold is then used to define the nodes to be pruned in the hierarchy for generalization. Our experiments on large real weblog data demonstrate improved performance in terms of quality and computation time of the pattern discovery process. Our algorithm yields an effective and scalable tool for web usage mining

WAQS : a web-based approximate query system

The Web is often viewed as a gigantic database holding vast stores of information and provides ubiquitous accessibility to end-users. Since its inception, the Internet has experienced explosive growth both in the number of users and the amount of content available on it. However, searching for information on the Web has become increasingly difficult. Although query languages have long been part of database management systems, the standard query language being the Structural Query Language is not suitable for the Web content retrieval. In this dissertation, a new technique for document retrieval on the Web is presented. This technique is designed to allow a detailed retrieval and hence reduce the amount of matches returned by typical search engines. The main objective of this technique is to allow the query to be based on not just keywords but also the location of the keywords within the logical structure of a document. In addition, the technique also provides approximate search capabilities based on the notion of Distance and Variable Length Don\u27t Cares. The proposed techniques have been implemented in a system, called Web-Based Approximate Query System, which contains an SQL-like query language called Web-Based Approximate Query Language. Web-Based Approximate Query Language has also been integrated with EnviroDaemon, an environmental domain specific search engine. It provides EnviroDaemon with more detailed searching capabilities than just keyword-based search. Implementation details, technical results and future work are presented in this dissertation

Communities of practice: getting to the heart of workplace learning, sharing and innovation

This literature review is intended to help establish a stronger forum of social housing asset managers across Australia and New Zealand. Introduction For some years I have been involved with a group of Australian and New Zealand social housing asset managers from the State, Territory and New Zealand housing authorities, who share information and research on public housing maintenance. Being a federation of States and Territories, under a common Australian social housing system with New Zealand a close cousin, comparisons are important for benchmarking and identifying best practice. Research carried out in one jurisdiction is usually very pertinent and applicable to others, for example where it might apply to management of health and safety risks such as management of asbestos or lead in paint. It seemed to me that this group, while usefully sharing information by occasional emails and meeting for two days each year when possible, had much more to offer. I wanted to see how the literature could help to guide the idea of establishing a stronger forum of social housing asset managers across Australia and New Zealand. On commencing a literature search along the lines of professional networking, knowledge management and epistemic communities, I was quickly drawn to the abundant writings on “communities of practice”. These writings focused on a broader range of groups than just mono-­‐ professional associations or practice networks within a single corporation. They also focused on the importance of interpersonal or social aspects of communities, which in my experience was a critical factor. My challenge then became to search the literature on communities of practice for insights into the dynamics of multi-­‐disciplinary networks, that would inform the establishment of a stronger social housing asset managers’ network. Also, this is a much broader problem across professional and research communities that are of interest to the Henry Halloran Trust. While demonstrating findings as they relate to social housing asset managers, the intention of the document is to provide a foundation for any group to improve its community of practice

Computing point-of-view : modeling and simulating judgments of taste

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-163).People have rich points-of-view that afford them the ability to judge the aesthetics of people, things, and everyday happenstance; yet viewpoint has an ineffable quality that is hard to articulate in words, let alone capture in computer models. Inspired by cultural theories of taste and identity, this thesis explores end-to-end computational modeling of people's tastes-from model acquisition, to generalization, to application- under various realms. Five aesthetical realms are considered-cultural taste, attitudes, ways of perceiving, taste for food, and sense-of-humor. A person's model is acquired by reading her personal texts, such as a weblog diary, a social network profile, or emails. To generalize a person model, methods such as spreading activation, analogy, and imprimer supplementation are applied to semantic resources and search spaces mined from cultural corpora. Once a generalized model is achieved, a person's tastes are brought to life through perspective-based applications, which afford the exploration of someone else's perspective through interactivity and play. The thesis describes model acquisition systems implemented for each of the five aesthetical realms.(cont.) The techniques of 'reading for affective themes' (RATE), and 'culture mining' are described, along with their enabling technologies, which are commonsense reasoning and textual affect analysis. Finally, six perspective-based applications were implemented to illuminate a range of real-world beneficiaries to person modeling-virtual mentoring, self-reflection, and deep customization.by Xinyu Hugo Liu.Ph.D