SEMANTICALLY INTEGRATED E-LEARNING INTEROPERABILITY AGENT

Educational collaboration through e-learning is one of the fields that have been worked on since the emergence of e-learning in educational system. The e-learning standards (e.g. learning object metadata standard) and e-learning system architectures or frameworks, which support interoperation of correlated e-learning systems, are the proposed technologies to support the collaboration. However, these technologies have not been successful in creating boundless educational collaboration through e-learning. In particular, these technologies offer solutions with their own requirements or limitations and endeavor challenging efforts in applying the technologies into their elearning system. Thus, the simpler the technology enhances possibility in forging the collaboration. This thesis explores a suite of techniques for creating an interoperability tool model in e-learning domain that can be applied on diverse e-learning platforms. The proposed model is called the e-learning Interoperability Agent or eiA. The scope of eiA focuses on two aspects of e-learning: Learning Objects (LOs) and the users of elearning itself. Learning objects that are accessible over the Web are valuable assets for sharing knowledge in teaching, training, problem solving and decision support. Meanwhile, there is still tacit knowledge that is not documented through LOs but embedded in form of users' expertise and experiences. Therefore, the establishment of educational collaboration can be formed by the users of e-learning with a common interest in a specific problem domain. The eiA is a loosely coupled model designed as an extension of various elearning systems platforms. The eiA utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology, which has been accepted as the knowledge representation syntax, to bridge the heterogeneous platforms. At the end, the use of eiA as facilitator to mediate interconununication between e-leaming systems is to engage the creation of semantically Federated e-learning Community (FeC). Eventually, maturity of the FeC is driven by users' willingness to grow the community, by means of increasing the elearning systems that use eiA and adding new functionalities into eiA

Research Information Management in Italy. The IRIS Platformised Infrastructure as a Sociotechnical Device

In an era of data deluge, the aggregation, curation, and utilisation of (meta) data about research is increasingly mediated by digital Research Information Management Systems (RIMSs). The aim of the contribution is to describe the effects of IRIS on the sphere of academia and explore the ‘invisible work’ it does through technical and social means on the fields of research and management. IRIS is examined as a platformised infrastructure and a sociotechnical device. On the one hand, IRIS exerts its technical agency by intra- and inter-connecting HE institutions, infrastructures and platforms through its internal and external interoperability capabilities. A digital ecological space of academia thus emerges – a space of standardisation which holds together the fields of research and its management. On the other, IRIS socially acts by conveying and naturalising ideas about what researchers and research should look like. Such ideas translate New Public Management logics of entrepreneurialisation and commensurative measurement. Thus, RIMSs cannot be considered as neutral and extra-social tools, as they orient practices and shape social arrangements. Methodologically, an ‘infrastructure inversion’ has been carried out through trace and digital ethnography, documentary analysis, interviews

SEMANTICALLY INTEGRATED E-LEARNING INTEROPERABILITY AGENT

Educational collaboration through e-learning is one of the fields that have been worked on since the emergence of e-learning in educational system. The e-learning standards (e.g. learning object metadata standard) and e-learning system architectures or frameworks, which support interoperation of correlated e-learning systems, are the proposed technologies to support the collaboration. However, these technologies have not been successful in creating boundless educational collaboration through e-learning. In particular, these technologies offer solutions with their own requirements or limitations and endeavor challenging efforts in applying the technologies into their elearning system. Thus, the simpler the technology enhances possibility in forging the collaboration. This thesis explores a suite of techniques for creating an interoperability tool model in e-learning domain that can be applied on diverse e-learning platforms. The proposed model is called the e-learning Interoperability Agent or eiA. The scope of eiA focuses on two aspects of e-learning: Learning Objects (LOs) and the users of elearning itself. Learning objects that are accessible over the Web are valuable assets for sharing knowledge in teaching, training, problem solving and decision support. Meanwhile, there is still tacit knowledge that is not documented through LOs but embedded in form of users' expertise and experiences. Therefore, the establishment of educational collaboration can be formed by the users of e-learning with a common interest in a specific problem domain. The eiA is a loosely coupled model designed as an extension of various elearning systems platforms. The eiA utilizes XML (eXtensible Markup Language) technology, which has been accepted as the knowledge representation syntax, to bridge the heterogeneous platforms. At the end, the use of eiA as facilitator to mediate interconununication between e-leaming systems is to engage the creation of semantically Federated e-learning Community (FeC). Eventually, maturity of the FeC is driven by users' willingness to grow the community, by means of increasing the elearning systems that use eiA and adding new functionalities into eiA

Defining interoperability standards: A case study of public health observatory websites

The Association of Public Health Observatories (APHO) is a group of region-based health-information providers. Each PHO publishes health-related data for their specific region. Each observatory has taken a national lead in one or more key health area - such as 'cancer' or Obesity'. In 2003, a project was initiated to develop 'interoperability' between public health observatory websites, so the national resources published by one lead observatory could be found on the websites for each other PHO. The APHO interoperability project defined a set of requirements for each PHO - websites should comply with the current government data standards and provide webservices to allow data to be searched in real-time between different PHOs. This thesis describes the production of an interoperable website for the North East Public Health Observatory (NEPHO) and the problems faced during implementation to comply with the APHO interoperability requirements. The areas of interoperability, e-Government and metadata were investigated specifically in suitability for NEPHO and an action list of tasks necessary to achieve the project aims was drawn up. This project has resulted in the successful introduction of a new NEPHO website that complies with the APHO and e-Govemment requirements, however interoperability with other organisations has been difficult to achieve. This thesis describes how other organisations approached the same APHO interoperability criteria and questions whether the national project governance could be improved

User response and organisational fit for information systems in Earth observation

A group of seventy six scientists and data managers in the Australian research agency CSIRO were surveyed to establish their needs and preferences in relation to information systems for Earth observation data. After study of available alternatives, three prototype Earth observation information management systems were installed and the user response was evaluated through interview of fifteen of the group. The prototypes consisted of web-based client servers which permitted users to interrogate databases of Earth observation datasets; to search for information about sensor or satellite performance, and to retrieve data and information products. The chosen systems were CILS, the CEOS (Committee on Earth Observation Satellites) Information Location System; IDN, the CEOS International Directory Network; and JMS, NASA\u27s Information Management System of EOSDIS, the Earth Observing System Data and Information System. For this study, no special effort was taken to populate the system directories and inventories with local data holdings, and the prototypes were essentially mirror sites of operational data management systems used in other parts of the world. While some of the interviewed scientists expressed enthusiasm for web based spatial information management approaches, all indicated that improvements should be sought in the prototypes to make them more user-oriented, intuitive, and responsive. Most of the interview group were experienced remote sensing researchers who had developed their own contacts with overseas peers and data providers. Several in this category expressed the vithem, unless the scientists changed discipline, application or geographic area of interest. On the other hand, several individual research projects or organisational units of CSIRO, as a result of these trials, were considering utilising one of more of the prototypes - particularly the IMS - to address their current unfulfilled requirements for data management. The study also found that while all fifteen of the interviewees felt they could benefit in some way from electronic information retrieval and spatial data management systems of the type assessed, it seemed unlikely that the target organisation would ever assign a sufficient priority to implement any of them in a systematic manner. The biggest impediment to an organisation-wide approach to spatial data management for Earth observation was the low priority assigned to information management, because this activity was considered supporting or non-core in relation to the central objective of scientific research. Results indicated that a piecemeal, decentralised or federated approach was the only means by which systems of this type could feasibly be introduced into the operating environment of CSIRO, in the absence of a major external forcing mechanism. This observation was compared to the evolution of EOSDIS, which had demonstrated a marked change from a centralised to a federated paradigm due to user preferences similar to those observed in the CSIRO case

Applications integration for manufacturing control systems with particular reference to software interoperability issues

The introduction and adoption of contemporary computer aided manufacturing control systems (MCS) can help rationalise and improve the productivity of manufacturing related activities. Such activities include product design, process planning and production management with CAD, CAPP and CAPM. However, they tend to be domain specific and would generally have been designed as stand-alone systems where there is a serious lack of consideration for integration requirements with other manufacturing activities outside the area of immediate concern. As a result, "islands of computerisation" exist which exhibit deficiencies and constraints that inhibit or complicate subsequent interoperation among typical MCS components. As a result of these interoperability constraints, contemporary forms of MCS typically yield sub-optimal benefits and do not promote synergy on an enterprise-wide basis. The move towards more integrated manufacturing systems, which requires advances in software interoperability, is becoming a strategic issue. Here the primary aim is to realise greater functional synergy between software components which span engineering, production and management activities and systems. Hence information of global interest needs to be shared across conventional functional boundaries between enterprise functions. The main thrust of this research study is to derive a new generation of MCS in which software components can "functionally interact" and share common information through accessing distributed data repositories in an efficient, highly flexible and standardised manner. It addresses problems of information fragmentation and the lack of formalism, as well as issues relating to flexibly structuring interactions between threads of functionality embedded within the various components. The emphasis is on the: • definition of generic information models which underpin the sharing of common data among production planning, product design, finite capacity scheduling and cell control systems. • development of an effective framework to manage functional interaction between MCS components, thereby coordinating their combined activities. • "soft" or flexible integration of the MCS activities over an integrating infrastructure in order to (i) help simplify typical integration problems found when using contemporary interconnection methods for applications integration; and (ii) enable their reconfiguration and incremental development. In order to facilitate adaptability in response to changing needs, these systems must also be engineered to enable reconfigurability over their life cycle. Thus within the scope of this research study a new methodology and software toolset have been developed to formally structure and support implementation, run-time and change processes. The tool set combines the use of IDEFO (for activity based or functional modelling), IDEFIX (for entity-attribute relationship modelling), and EXPRESS (for information modelling). This research includes a pragmatic but effective means of dealing with legacyl software, which often may be a vital source of readily available information which supports the operation of the manufacturing enterprise. The pragmatism and medium term relevance of the research study has promoted particular interest and collaboration from software manufacturers and industrial practitioners. Proof of concept studies have been carried out to implement and evaluate the developed mechanisms and software toolset

The Journal of Mine Action Issue 5.2 (2001)

Landmines in Central and South Americ

Augmenting applications with hyper media, functionality and meta-information

The Dynamic Hypermedia Engine (DHE) enhances analytical applications by adding relationships, semantics and other metadata to the application\u27s output and user interface. DHE also provides additional hypermedia navigational, structural and annotation functionality. These features allow application developers and users to add guided tours, personal links and sharable annotations, among other features, into applications. DHE runs as a middleware between the application user interface and its business logic and processes, in a n-tier architecture, supporting the extra functionalities without altering the original systems by means of application wrappers. DHE automatically generates links at run-time for each of those elements having relationships and metadata. Such elements are previously identified using a Relation Navigation Analysis. DHE also constructs more sophisticated navigation techniques not often found on the Web on top of these links. The metadata, links, navigation and annotation features supplement the application\u27s primary functionality. This research identifies element types, or classes , in the application displays. A mapping rule encodes each relationship found between two elements of interest at the class level . When the user selects a particular element, DHE instantiates the commands included in the rules with the actual instance selected and sends them to the appropriate destination system, which then dynamically generates the resulting virtual (i.e. not previously stored) page. DHE executes concurrently with these applications, providing automated link generation and other hypermedia functionality. DHE uses the extensible Markup Language (XMQ -and related World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) sets of XML recommendations, like Xlink, XML Schema, and RDF -to encode the semantic information required for the operation of the extra hypermedia features, and for the transmission of messages between the engine modules and applications. DHE is the only approach we know that provides automated linking and metadata services in a generic manner, based on the application semantics, without altering the applications. DHE will also work with non-Web systems. The results of this work could also be extended to other research areas, such as link ranking and filtering, automatic link generation as the result of a search query, metadata collection and support, virtual document management, hypermedia functionality on the Web, adaptive and collaborative hypermedia, web engineering, and the semantic Web

To what extent can knowledge management systems build and reinforce consensus around initiatives for change?: A self-reflective analysis of professional practice

This thesis reports on my attempts to \u27re-align\u27 the purpose, behaviour and underlying culture of a large military organisation through heuristic, self reflective enquiry - to \u27find its future\u27 - with and through its people. I use the word re-align with great care as I recognised that change would have been too ambitious and would (probably have) result(ed) in failure. Whilst I cannot claim total success, I have made new and valuable discoveries in knowledge elicitation and methods of integrating the views of a large number of people to \u27build and reinforce consensus around initiatives for change\u27. In the process of completing this research I developed a novel approach to strategic planning/policy making that advances the ends, ways and means construct of decision-making into a purer and more refined approach. One that anchors these elements firmly to the organisation and its environment simultaneously through a knowledge management system, enabling the strengths and weaknesses within the organisation to be drawn into sharp focus - an effects based planning approach. I have also fused together the more systematic and disciplined approaches embodied within a knowledge management system with existing and more creative scenario planning/future focussed methods. Thus allowing organisations to undertake \u27self-constructed\u27 audits that have an immediate interest or are situated well into their future, doubling its value as a planning device. As I report, the methods have been presented at the highest levels of Defence, attracting interest from the Australian Minister of Defence. The New Zealand Defence Force, Naval Warfare Development Command of the United States Navy and Australia\u27s Chief of Air Force have also expressed an interest in the potential of an effects-based orientation to planning and policy-making. Whether the concepts and underpinning ideas become established, leading to the discovery of a post-modem military is uncertain. What is clear is that there is a definite move away from a pre-occupation with the means, or the things that are done, towards a more comprehensive understanding of what are we trying to make happen as a guiding principle. This is certainly of value within military \u27organisations and has potential for others involved in complex problem-solving in social settings. A heuristic, self-reflective approach has enriched this search for focussed and \u27change-finding\u27 knowledge, allowing a more purposeful, complete and forthright account of the involvement of others