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Two Book Chapters Summarizing Context-Aware Workplace Learning Support Research

Recently, I have completed two book chapters that fairly comprehensively summarize the results of my research on how to support workplace learning with the notion of context awareness:

• The first focuses on the ontology-based modeling and overall methodological approach. It is placed within the context of Semantic Work Environments.
  Enabling Leaning on Demand in Semantic Work Environments, to appear in Rech, Decker, Ras (eds.): Emerging Technologies for Semantic Work Environments: Techniques, Methods, and Applications, IGI Publishing, 2008
• The second focuses on the architectural issues related to introducing context awareness into e-learning solutions. It describes my service-oriented approach, which is based on a ontology-centered design methodology for deriving services and ensuring their coherence.
  Impact of Context-Awareness on the Architecture of E-Learning Solutions, to appear in Pahl (ed.): Architecture Solutions for E-Learning Systems, IGI Publishing, 2007

Microlearning 2007 – A different type of conference

The last two days I was at Innsbruck for attending the Microlearning 2007 conference which deals with topics similar to our context-aware workplace learning support approach in LIP. The participants had a refreshing variety of backgrounds. The concept of conference was inspired by the unconference idea with getting rid of traditional paper presentations and having speedgeeking sessions and microcafé discussions. I presented the knowledge maturing idea and the concept of maturity awareness in a seven minute slot for eight times in a row (with changing audience of 3 to 6 people). This was quite an experience, and I liked the immediacy of contact with your audience, but the short slot made it hard to convey the idea. But most of all, it was exhausting… Nevertheless, I took a lot of inspiring ideas with me, probably much more than from other conferences. At some points, I would have liked to have more in-depth presentations in addition to the overview presentations and especially more in-depth discussions (also more critical ones).

The microlearning idea – as a gist – is a metaphor for a new form of learning that is flexible, fine-grained, integrated into everyday activities. The biggest challenge is how to retain guidance, certification etc., which are still important. The maturing idea, as far as I took from the discussions, perfectly fits to this metaphor of learning.

One critical thing about the conference concept: networking was not that easy because of short breaks in between. Still it was nice to meet some people again and to encounter some interesting new ones. But definitely, the confence was worth going to.

Technorati tags: microlearning, microlearning2007

SOPRANO State of the Art document

Within the SOPRANO project, we were working on compiling a comprehensive and interdisciplinary compilation and assessment of the state of the art in the domains relevant to creating an ambient assisted living system. It encompasses as diverse topics as Assistive Technologies, Smart Homes, Sensors, RFID, Radar Technologies, Software Architectures, Ontologies, and Context Modeling and Management. I was mainly contributing to the sections on ontologies and context modeling & management. The document is available from here.

Professional Knowledge Management Conference (WM 2007) at Potsdam

The last three days I was at the Professional Knowledge Management conference at Potsdam where the knowledge management community in the broad sense met. The FZI team (Simone Braun, Hansjörg Happel, Max Völkel and me) was very busy with five presentations, two poster presentations, and one organized workshop (ProKW – Productive Knowledge Work - together with Klaus North, Stefan Güldenberg and Tobias Ley).

The ProKW workshop was an interesting combination of the management perspective on knowledge work and the techological perspective. The implications of the characteristics, as it turned out, are currently hardly reflected. This leads to a situation – according to Klaus North – where only 2% of the potential of knowledge workers is actually made use of. In the technological track, which Tobias and I chaired, there were several interesting contributions, e.g. on a generalized notion of document (call knowledge models) from Max Völkel which enables informal exchange at a much earlier phase by lowering the barriers of exchange. Simone presented our approach to vocabulary or ontology engineering, and Andreas Rath from the Know-Center presented an approach to automatically capture the context of a learner.

Apart from that, it is interesting to see how our idea of maturing spreads. On the one side, we presented (as in a previous post) three papers on the model itself and applications to software engineering and ontology engineering. On the other side, Dr. Hofer-Alfeiss presented the Siemens approach to maturing support with “breeding strategies”.

There was also an interesting insight in the workshop on Convergence of E-Learning and Knowledge Management: whereas three years ago, I felt quite alone with my integration ideas, it is now commonsense although the concrete combination with mutual enrichment is still not clear.

Last but not least, the WM was again a good place for networking and interesting talks in the breaks – with people from very different background. However, the conference programme was a little bit too crowded and breaks were often too short.

OnToContent 2007 Workshop with HR Track

After contributing to the workshop in 2006, I am this year co-chair of the OnToContent 2007 workshop together with Mustafa Jarrar, Claude Ostyn and Werner Ceuters. The workshop will take place at the OTM 2007 conferences at the Algarve in Portugal in the week of Nov 25-29, 2007.

The workshop focuses on ontology content, i.e. on making use of the notion of ontology in real-world applications, especially in the areas of human resources (which includes staffing, development, competence management, learning technologies among others) and e-health. The workshop is organized by the Ontology Outreach Advisory and contributes to its mission of promoting the use of ontologies in enterprises.

Abstract submission deadline is July 14, the full paper is expected until July 22.

Ontology Maturing @ WWW 2007 Workshop CKC07, Banff

For the WWW 2007 Workshop on Collaborative Construction of Structured Knowledge, we have submitted a fairly comprehensive overview of our current ontology maturing research – and got accepted. The paper combines our activities in the EU project IMAGINATION on so-called Imagenotions and our social bookmarking tool SOBOLEO (developed with in the project Im Wissensnetz), which will also be evaluated and presented as a demo at the same workshop.

LearnTec 2007

The past three days I was at the LearnTec fair and congress in Karlsruhe. The location changed from the heart of the city to the new Karlsruhe fair facilities outside Karlsruhe. Apparently, the number of exhibitors at the fair has shrunk.

There was a clear trend aways from traditional e-learning towards more informal and collaborative forms of learning. The keynotes of Götz Werner and Martin Eppler (on visualization) were inspiring as was Hermann Maurer from Graz. The different sessions at the congress have embraced Web 2.0 and discussed the topics from different viewpoints.

Some insights for me:

• Finally, the disciplines of e-learning and knowledge management are approaching one another. Gabi Reinmann clearly pointed out, however, that we should not easily sweep away the differences of the environmental context (in formal educational settings vs. at the workplace). Although this was quite controversial in the discussion, I think that this is an important contribution. Also the model for personal knowledge management integrating KM and e-Learning is a concise conceptualization.
• Klaus Tochtermann presented the APOSDLE approach about work-integrated learning which is further developing and realizing ideas that can be seen as a continuation of what we tried to achieve within the LIP project.
• With the advent of social software, the constructivist pedagogy really gains ground in practice. Several examples on the use of Wikis and Weblogs were shown. It has also become clear, however, that we students and employees need to be educated on how to learn with such tools and within such settings: we need people with competencies to develop their competencies in interaction with others.
• In the future, we need to have a closer look at the findings of cognitive science. There were some interesting ideas by Hanna Risku, but also phenomena like “flow” and other motivational issues have come up here and there: we need intrinsically motivated learners and workers everywhere.
• There were also some interesting talks with practitioners from companies: there really is the need for maturing pathways that bring together bottom-up and top-down approaches (as we postulated within out knowledge maturing research).

Contributing to an HR Roadmap

Following a meeting at the OntoContent workshop at the OTM Federated Conferences in Montpellier, Christine Kunzmann and I were invited by Mustafa Jarrar to contribute to a roadmapping initiative on the application potential of ontologies and semantic technologies in the HR domain. This initiative is part of the Ontology Outreach Authority of which I have become a founding member. It is an interesting compilation of the state-of-the-art in the domain and identifies several open challenges. The roadmap document is still in draft state, but you can have a look.

SOPRANO IP-Kickoff at Sheffield, UK

From Jan 30 to Feb 2 I was at the kick-off meeting of the SOPRANO project, an Integrated Project funded by the European Commission under the eInclusion initiative consisting of 22 partners. It aims at an ambient assisted living solution that assists elderly people in sustaining an independent living. Within the project, we are responsible for context-aware service orchestration.