Integrating organizational, social, and individual perspectives in Web 2.0-based workplace e-learning

From the issue entitled 'Special Issue: Emerging Social and Legal Aspect'E-learning is emerging as a popular approach of education in the workplace by virtue of its flexibility to access, just-in-time delivery, and cost-effectiveness. To improve social interaction and knowledge sharing in e-learning, Web 2.0 is increasingly utilized and integrated with e-learning applications. However, existing social learning systems fail to align learning with organizational goals and individual needs in a systemic way. The dominance of technology-oriented approaches makes elearning applications less goal-effective and poor in quality and design. To solve the problem, we address the requirement of integrating organizational, social, and individual perspectives in the development of Web 2.0 elearning systems. To fulfill the requirement, a key performance indicator (KPI)-oriented approach is presented in this study. By integrating a KPI model with Web 2.0 technologies, our approach is able to: 1) set up organizational goals and link the goals with expertise required for individuals; 2) build a knowledge network by linking learning resources to a set of competences to be developed and a group of people who learn and contribute to the knowledge network through knowledge creation, sharing, and peer evaluation; and 3) improve social networking and knowledge sharing by identifying each individual's work context, expertise, learning need, performance, and contribution. The mechanism of the approach is explored and elaborated with conceptual frameworks and implementation technologies. A prototype system for Web 2.0 e-learning has been developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach. © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2009.postprin

Is a history of school bullying victimization associated with adult suicidal ideation? A South Australian population-based observational study

The objective of this research was to determine whether a history of school bullying victimization is associated with suicidal ideation in adult life. A random and representative sample of 2907 South Australian adults was surveyed in Autumn, 2008. Respondents were asked "When you were at school, did you experience traumatic bullying by peers that was particularly severe, for example, being frequently targeted or routinely harassed in any way by 'bullies'?" Depression was determined by the mood module of the PRIME-MD which includes a suicidal ideation question; "In the last 2 weeks, have you had thoughts that you would be better off dead or hurting yourself in some way?" The overall prevalence of suicidal ideation in postschool age respondents was 3.4% (95% confidence interval: 2.8%-4.2%) in 2008. Bullying by peers was recalled by 18.7% (17.2%-20.3%). Respondents with a history of being bullied were approximately 3 times (odds ratio: 3.2) more likely to report suicidal ideation compared with those who did not. The association between being bullied and suicidal ideation remained after controlling for both depression and sociodemographic variables (odds ratio: 2.1). The results from the present research suggest that there is a strong association between a history of childhood bullying victimization and current suicidal ideation that persists across all ages. Bullying prevention programs in schools could hold the potential for longer lasting benefits in this important area of public health.Leigh Roeger, Stephen Allison, Rebecca Korossy–Horwood, Kerena A. Eckert and Robert D. Goldne

Supporting Competency Development in Informal Workplace Learning

Abstract. This paper seeks to suggest ways to support informal, self-directed, work-integrated learning within organizations. We focus on a special type of learning in organizations, namely on competency development, that is a purposeful development of employee capabilities to perform well in a large array of situations. As competency development is inherently a self-directed development activity, we seek to support these activities primarily in an informal learning context. AD-HOC environments which allow employees context specific access to documents in a knowledge repository have been suggested to support learning in the workplace. In this paper, we suggest to use the competence performance framework as a means to enhance the capabilities of AD HOC environments to support competency development. The framework formalizes the tasks employees are working in and the competencies needed to perform the tasks. Relating tasks and competencies results in a competence performance structure, which structures both tasks and competencies in terms of learning prerequisites. We conclude with two scenarios that make use o

Comparing two CbKST approaches for adapting learning paths in serious games

International audienceCompetence-based Knowledge Space Theory (CbKST) is considered a well-fitting basis for adapting Serious Games (SGs). CbKST relies on the domain model associated to a given SG to infer the so-called competence structure. However, building such a model can be time-consuming and a tough task for experts. We propose another approach to overcome this issue by considering the Q-Matrix that contains the mapping between the SG activities and the addressed competences. We compare the two approaches, one based on the domain model and the other on the Q-Matrix, in three SGs. We apply both approaches to two SGs, while in a third one, we apply only the Q-Matrix approach since no domain model is available. The main findings when comparing both approaches refer to the issues derived from the generated competence structures and the definition of competences at a suitable granularity level. This exploratory work can provide meaningful insights when applying CbKST for adapting SGs