Collaborative tagging supported knowledge discovery

Web 2.0 has brought about a new sort of user centred services which rely a great deal on flexible organizational capabilities designed for user-supplied organization. Collaborative tagging is especially interesting in this context and this article explores what this kind of organization in connection with some Web 2.0 principles means for knowledge discovery in various ways. To fully explore this, the article defines collaborative tagging and gives an overview of collaborative tagging in general, of services using it and of tags themselves. It concludes with mechanisms this kind of approach to knowledge organization provides for knowledge discovery

USING WIKI AS A CORPORATE KNOWLEDGE SHARING SYSTEM

The business world is changing at a fast pace. The multinationals, the relocation of the production centers, the virtual integration trend of companies, the ubiquitous text, audio and video communication channels and devices, the overwhelming amounts of information, the power of the new consumer, are all signs of these changes. The economy is switching from a physical resources oriented, to an information and knowledge oriented one. The most important resource a company has becomes the human resource, the people of the organization, with the information and knowledge they possess and use to deal with the everyday challenges. Beginning with getting an insight into the concepts of information and knowledge, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the benefits of a Wiki as a collaborative knowledge sharing platform, able to harness the collective knowledge of a company in the highly competitive today’s knowledge economy.wiki; social networks; collaborative knowledge network; collective knowledge; web 2.0 technologies

Assessing the collaborative knowledge management of the market dominant organization

Dominant firms enjoy economic strengths which enable them to compete effectively in relevant markets through the use of collaborative knowledge management (CKM). While the literature is replete with general guiding principles for companies to adopt successful business strategies, there is very limited empirical research on effectively using CKM to improve company performance and market domination. The purpose of this study was to evaluate strategies for information sharing by companies to achieve better operations management and control, a wider range of customers, and stronger competitive edge in the global economy. Epistemological foundation for the study was provided by the literature on knowledge management and organizational dynamics. Data were collected by an electronically self-administered questionnaire on a convenience sample of 80 employees of three small businesses in Memphis, Tennessee. A quantitative method using Poisson regression was applied to test the hypotheses about relationships between six independent variables of value proposition, culture building, responsibilities, information technology, approaches and assessment and the dependent variable, collaborative knowledge management. Results indicate that value proposition, information technology, and building an organizational culture of responsibilities and best practices play significant roles in effective CKM. Social change implications of the study suggest that high-intensity collaborative knowledge management would produce creative leaders and workers, improved leader-worker collaboration, and more effective use of information technologies in organizational intelligence and decision making

Tagging, Folksonomy & Co - Renaissance of Manual Indexing?

This paper gives an overview of current trends in manual indexing on the Web. Along with a general rise of user generated content there are more and more tagging systems that allow users to annotate digital resources with tags (keywords) and share their annotations with other users. Tagging is frequently seen in contrast to traditional knowledge organization systems or as something completely new. This paper shows that tagging should better be seen as a popular form of manual indexing on the Web. Difference between controlled and free indexing blurs with sufficient feedback mechanisms. A revised typology of tagging systems is presented that includes different user roles and knowledge organization systems with hierarchical relationships and vocabulary control. A detailed bibliography of current research in collaborative tagging is included.Comment: Preprint. 12 pages, 1 figure, 54 reference

THE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – NECESSITY FOR THE MODERNIZATION OF THE ORGANIZATIONS

If individuals and technologies can harmonize their intelligence under various forms, only the intelligent organizations will have the capacity to transform and coordinate these abilities for their own advantage by using informational technologies, by combining the most advanced software technologies with the newest management instruments in order to produce extremely efficient organizations. The information excess is a chronic phenomenon for the modern organization, so that the lack of the capacity to filter and use relevant information is a consequence of the inefficiency to manage the knowledge fund, of the lack of a clear strategy with a common purpose for personnel and team. Today, almost the intelligent organizations must manage and apply the entire knowledge fund, they must use instruments and technologies in order to build an informational architecture, having as a purpose the competitiveness in a turbulent and changing environment. The apportion of the information and knowledge of the organization, the exchange of information between employees, departments and even other companies are facilitated by the information and communication technology. Not all information are valuable, but in order to establish what information respond to the questions What? Where? How? When? and Why? instruments of knowledge management are needed in order to determine what knowledge is qualified to be intellectually active.knowledge, knowledge management, intelligent organization, informational technologies, knowledge exchange, collaborative networks, apportion intelligent instruments

Time-varying Learning and Content Analytics via Sparse Factor Analysis

We propose SPARFA-Trace, a new machine learning-based framework for time-varying learning and content analytics for education applications. We develop a novel message passing-based, blind, approximate Kalman filter for sparse factor analysis (SPARFA), that jointly (i) traces learner concept knowledge over time, (ii) analyzes learner concept knowledge state transitions (induced by interacting with learning resources, such as textbook sections, lecture videos, etc, or the forgetting effect), and (iii) estimates the content organization and intrinsic difficulty of the assessment questions. These quantities are estimated solely from binary-valued (correct/incorrect) graded learner response data and a summary of the specific actions each learner performs (e.g., answering a question or studying a learning resource) at each time instance. Experimental results on two online course datasets demonstrate that SPARFA-Trace is capable of tracing each learner's concept knowledge evolution over time, as well as analyzing the quality and content organization of learning resources, the question-concept associations, and the question intrinsic difficulties. Moreover, we show that SPARFA-Trace achieves comparable or better performance in predicting unobserved learner responses than existing collaborative filtering and knowledge tracing approaches for personalized education

Social Networks, Learning, and Flexibility: Sourcing Scientific Knowledge in New Biotechnology Firms

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input -- scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal market contracts are rarely used to govern these exchanges of scientific knowledge. Our findings suggest that the use of boundary-spanning social networks by the two NBFs increases both their learning and their flexibility in ways that would not be possible within a self-contained hierarchical organization.

Students’ Self-Organization of the Learning Environment during a Blended Knowledge Creation Course

Learner-centered blended learning approaches, such as Knowledge Creation, emphasize the self-organizing characteristic of thought and action, and value the students’ autonomy and self-regulation during the engagement in collaborative learning tasks. In blended contexts, the students need to organize their learning paths within a complex environment, including multiple online and offline learning spaces. This process of self-organization during courses based on the Knowledge Creation approach is currently an overlooked topic of research. The present case study is aimed at addressing this research gap by providing an in-depth understanding of the collaborative self-organization of a group of five undergraduate students participating in an interdisciplinary media design course. The course was designed according to the Knowledge Creation approach and was carried out before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dialogical theory of the chronotope and the theory of cultural models constitute the main theoretical tools for the research. We used qualitative methods inspired by ethnography, including participant observation, in addition to the collection and analysis of audio-visual records, stimulated recall interviews, and learning diaries completed by the students. The findings show that the group self-organization changed across different phases of the collaborative task and involved the development of specific practices of self-organization. Cultural models associated with the task contributed to determine the students’ choices related to self-organization

Students’ Self-Organization of the Learning Environment during a Blended Knowledge Creation Course

Learner-centered blended learning approaches, such as Knowledge Creation, emphasize the self-organizing characteristic of thought and action, and value the students’ autonomy and self-regulation during the engagement in collaborative learning tasks. In blended contexts, the students need to organize their learning paths within a complex environment, including multiple online and offline learning spaces. This process of self-organization during courses based on the Knowledge Creation approach is currently an overlooked topic of research. The present case study is aimed at addressing this research gap by providing an in-depth understanding of the collaborative self-organization of a group of five undergraduate students participating in an interdisciplinary media design course. The course was designed according to the Knowledge Creation approach and was carried out before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dialogical theory of the chronotope and the theory of cultural models constitute the main theoretical tools for the research. We used qualitative methods inspired by ethnography, including participant observation, in addition to the collection and analysis of audio-visual records, stimulated recall interviews, and learning diaries completed by the students. The findings show that the group self-organization changed across different phases of the collaborative task and involved the development of specific practices of self-organization. Cultural models associated with the task contributed to determine the students’ choices related to self-organization