Information Science Reference

Table of Contents:

Chapter I: Exploring a Professional Social Network System to Support Learning in the Workplace

The authors of this chapter explore how professionals can network, collaborate and capture informal learning in an online work-based environment. It addresses the pedagogical approaches that underpin emerging Web 2.0 technological trends and provide recommendations for future use of such online environments.

Chapter II: Knowledge Producing Megamachines: The Biggest Web 2.0 Communities of the Future

This chapter addresses the control crisis of science whose resolution requires radical social innovation. The only possible way for achieving this is the partial fusion of certain portions of scientific activity with the system of public education, by means of organizing scientists, teachers, as well as middle and highschool students into hybrid, knowledge producing mega-machines. The authors of the chapter subsequently argue that doing so will at the same time bring about a pragmatic shift in public education, for which professionals in the field of pedagogy have long been ready in principle and in theory.

Chapter III: Web 2.0 Driven Sustainability Reporting

Web 2.0 driven sustainability reporting describes an emerging digital approach powered through Web 2.0 technologies for companies communicating sustainability issues. Such a computer-based application of semantics overcomes the limitations of orthodox methods and provides an array of specific capabilities to improve sustainability communication both, for companies (reporters), and their various stakeholders (report readers), that is, along interactivity, customisation ,and reporting à la carte, stakeholder dialogue, and participation. This chapter gives an outline on this up-and-coming sustainability reporting approach along three categories: (i) Media-specific trends in sustainability reporting are observed. (ii) New opportunities

Web 2.0 technologies are offering for corporate sustainability reporting are identified. (iii) The concept and implementation of a software tool for sustainability reporting à la carte is presented making clear the movement away from early reporting stages towards the advanced one of a Web 2.0 driven approach.

Chapter IV: Mailing Lists and Social Semantic Web

Electronic Mailing lists are a key part of the Internet. They have enabled the development of social communities who share and exchange knowledge in specialized and general domains. In this chapter the authors describe methods to capture some of that knowledge which will enable the development of new datasets using Semantic Web technologies. In particular, the authors present the SWAML project, which collects data from mailing lists. The authors also describe smushing techniques that normalize RDF datasets capturing different resources that identify the same one. They have applied those techniques to identify persons through the mailing lists of open source communities. These techniques have been tested using a dataset automatically extracted from several online open source communities.

Chapter V: Web 2.0 Social Networking Sites

This chapter describes one of the Web 2.0 technologies, Social Networking Sites (SNS). A definition of SNS is offered, as is a short history of these sites. The existing research is reviewed and organized to summarize what we know about SNS usage (from the perspectives of student use, general population use and organizational use), and what people know about the antecedents and outcomes of SNS use. The chapter concludes with discussion of new developments, challenges and opportunities. There are many opportunities for future research and organizational applications of SNS as SNS adoption grows at incredible rates.

Chapter VI: Teachers’ Personal Knowledge Management in China Based Web 2.0 Technologies

Knowledge is taken as core competitive power in the current society. The teacher as an educational operator often touch much knowledge, if they could manage knowledge efficiently, the work efficiency will be increased greatly. To mine knowledge and make tacit knowledge explicit, teachers should manage personal knowledge. By the survey of teachers’ personal knowledge management in China, the study finds some problems in terms of Chinese teachers’ personal knowledge management, especially many Chinese teachers are not good at making use of Web technologies to assist them on managing knowledge and communicating with other teachers. One studying focus of Web 2.0 technologies is personal knowledge management, and Web 2.0 provides a series of effective tools and platforms for personal knowledge management. The chapter discusses on the concept of teachers’ personal knowledge management, and presents the strategies of teachers’ personal knowledge management based Web 2.0 technologies, using for reference for teachers’ personal knowledge management practice.

Chapter VII: CUSENT: Social Sentiment Analysis Using Semantics for Customer Feedback

The current chapter introduces CUSENT, a tool for semantics-enhanced sentiment analysis of customer opinions expressed in corporate blogs. The research work presents the examination of emotions and sentiments from the perspective of information systems, and, in particular, provides a review of the principal efforts for the conceptualization of emotions and sentiments in texts. Subsequently, a description of the proposed architecture of the platform is outlined. The authors aim to contribute a solution which automates the analysis of customer opinions in company blogs that relies on existing techniques, but further exploits these methods to store and reuse customer feedback. The novel combination of opinion mining with an ontology of emotions can thus be used in organizational creation and innovation processes, which characterize the new forms of communication derived from the institutional and commercial use of Web 2.0.

Chapter VIII: Can Knowledge Management Assist Firms to Move from Traditional to E-Commerce: The Case of Greek Firms

This chapter is to define the firm’s innovative core and create frameworks to integrate innovation throughout the management of knowledge by generating implementing ideas, strategies and plans applied that cultivate a thinking organization aims to associate innovation with business targets. It argues that companies which manage and transform the knowledge effectively reap the rewards of scientific and technological achievement in order to adopt innovation concept in their operation. Furthermore, the author hope that firms understanding the information received from the current global business world and transmit it to reap the rewards of scientific achievement will increase their competitiveness competition not only for sales, but also for technical know – how and skills. At the company level depends on the speed with which new products can be brought to the market place and on the importance of achieving new cost – saving improvements.

Chapter IX: Knowledge Management and Lifelong Learning in Archival Heritage: Digital Collections on a Semantic Scope for Educational Potential

Archives have a key role to play in underpinning learning in its broadest sense, both as a formal activity within an institution and informally within the community. This is becoming especially important in an increasingly KM-based environment. This chapter provides an overview of technologies that can be applied to archival knowledge management. Furthermore, it assesses their actual or potential contribution to the basic processes of knowledge sharing within archival organizations, with a focus on lifelong learning. The scope of the first section (the screens) is to identify new developments that seem to be significant and to relate them to technology research in the archival field. The second section (the frames) discusses the concepts supporting digital collections by integrating collections of digitized archival resources to create new services and infrastructures. The third section (the agendas) analyses-from the educational perspective of lifelong learning-important social benefits, both quantitatively and qualitatively, of developing new infrastructures for accessing and using archival resources.

Chapter X: Application of Web 2.0 Technology for Clinical Training

In clinical training, students plan, implement and evaluate their learning activities by themselves. They apply theories and concepts in a real clinical environment and learn through social interaction and reflective thinking to experience, conceptualize, apply and create new knowledge to solve clinical problems. Since students are sent to different clinical locations for training and are mentored on a one-to-one basis, it is difficult for students to share their knowledge, make enquiries or interact with their peers and mentors for social and reflective learning. Web 2.0 provides a collaborative and social interactive platform that allows learners to exchange, share, acquire, codify, distribute, and disseminate knowledge. Its functions and features are able to construct a virtual and distributed environment for learners to gather, filter and update the knowledge over different internet sources. This paper thus aims to discuss the functions and features of Web 2.0 technology and its applications to clinical training.

Chapter XI: Pattern Matching Techniques to Identify Syntactic Variations of Tags in Folksonomies

Folksonomies offer an easy method to organize information in the current Web. This fact and their collaborative features have derived in an extensive involvement in many Social Web projects. However they present important drawbacks regarding their limited exploring and searching capabilities, in contrast with other methods as taxonomies, thesauruses and ontologies. One of these drawbacks is an effect of its flexibility for tagging, producing frequently multiple syntactic variations of a same tag. In this chapter we study the application of two classical pattern matching techniques, Levenshtein distance for the imperfect string matching and Hamming distance for the perfect string matching, to identify syntactic variations of tags.

Chapter XII: Insights into the Impact of Social Networks on Evolutionary Games

The chapter explores the use of evolutionary game theory (EGT) to model the dynamics of adaptive opponent strategies for a large population of players. In particular, it explores effects of information propagation through social networks in evolutionary games. The key underlying phenomenon that the information diffusion aims to capture is that reasoning about the experiences of acquaintances can dramatically impact the dynamics of a society. The chapter presents experimental results from agent-based simulations that show the impact of diffusion through social networks on the player strategies of an evolutionary game and the sensitivity of the dynamics to features of the social network.

Chapter XIII: Application of Semantic Web Based on the Domain-Specific Ontology for Global KM

This chapter introduces an application of the Semantic Web based on ontology to the tourism business. Tourism business is one promising area for Semantic Web applications. To realize the potential of the Semantic Web, we need to find a killer application of the Semantic Web in the knowledge management (KM) area. The ontology as a key enabler is deigned and implemented under a framework of the Semantic- Web-driven KM system in a tourism domain. Finally, we discussed the relationship between the Semantic Web and KM processes.

Chapter XIV: Designing Online Learning Communities to Encourage Cooperation

This chapter is concerned with how to design an online learning community in such a way as to encourage cooperation, and to discourage uncooperative or antisocial behavior. Rather than restricting design to visual and interface issues, the author takes a wide view, touching on aspects of the governance, social structure, moderation practices, and technical architecture of online learning communities. The first half of the chapter discusses why people behave antisocially in online learning communities, and ways to discourage this through design. The second half discusses why on the other hand people behave cooperatively in online learning communities, and ways to encourage this through user-centered design, applying some results of experiments in social psychology. The chapter is intended to be of practical use to designers of online learning communities.

Chapter XV: Building Virtual Learning Communities

This chapter introduces the concept of virtual learning communities and discusses and further enhances the theory and definitions presented in related literature. A model comprising four criteria essential to virtual learning communities is presented and discussed in detail. Theory and case studies relating to the impact of virtual learning communities on distance education and students from diverse cultural groups are also examined. In addition, this chapter investigates the enabling technologies and facilitation that is required to build virtual learning communities. Other case studies are used to illustrate the process of building virtual learning communities. Emerging technologies such as Wikis and video lectures are also analysed to determine the effects they have on building and sustaining effective virtual learning communities.

Chapter XVI: Support Networks for Rural and Regional Communities

Using a case study approach, this chapter examines the role of organizational networks in the success and failure of information and communications technology projects. Within a framework informed by the literature of information systems failure, the diffusion of innovation and social network analysis; it argues that information systems projects must take into account the social context in which they are implemented. To be successful such networks require a mix of extended and locally based support networks, because they provide access to much needed resources, including innovations, strategic advice, training, and support at the appropriate level. It further argues that the people who are working in a regional setting felt themselves to be in an extremely disadvantageous situation because they typically lacked support from similar networks. The author hopes that highlighting the importance of such support networks will lead to a better understanding of systems failure and success, and will contribute to improved policy formulation and practice.

Chapter XVII: Building Virtual Communities through a De-Marginalized View of Knowledge Networking

The chapter investigates an actionable context of knowledge networking, from the perspective of sustainable development which should accommodate the building of communities in cyberspace so much exemplified in today’s Internet and World Wide Web. The premise of this exploration is that members, or participants, in any community are engaged in learning that is critical to the survival and reproduction of that community. Through community participation, learners find and acquire models and have the opportunity themselves to become models and apprentices of others. This investigation provides a basis for thinking about the possibilities of a virtual community and the dynamics of its construction across a variety of computer-based contexts. The design and refinement of technology as the conduit for extending and enhancing the possibilities of virtual community building is an essential issue, but the role of the individuals as participants in such a community is as important. The idea of sustainable knowledge networking is to bring about continual learning and change for the community in need. The emergent challenge of such a mission is to demarginalize many of the non-technical issues of building virtual communities for knowledge transfer and learning. The chapter concludes by reiterating the challenge of expositing what it means to create an appropriate context of knowledge networking through which purposeful actions can be supported with the elaboration of suitable information technologies.

Chapter XVIII: A Basis for the Semantic Web and E-Business: Efficient Organization of Ontology Languages and Ontologies

This chapter introduces how to effectively organize ontology languages and ontologies and how to efficiently process semantic information based on ontologies. In this chapter the authors propose the hierarchies to organize ontology languages and ontologies. Based on the hierarchy of ontology languages, the ontology designers need not bear in mind which ontology language the primitives exactly come from, also we can automatically and seamlessly use the ontologies defined with different ontology languages in an integrated environment. Based on the hierarchy of ontologies, the conflicts in different ontologies are resolved, thus the semantics in different ontologies are clear without ambiguities. Also, these semantic-clear ontologies can be used to efficiently process the semantic information in Semantic Web and E-Business.

Chapter XIX: User-Centered Design Principles for Online Learning Communities: A Sociotechnical Approach for the Design of a Distributed Community of Practice

This chapter aims to introduce user-centered design and its basic concepts associated with online learning communities. Another aim is to search for guidelines to ensure quality in online learning. Human-computer interaction for education provides the missing holistic approach for online learning. Functioning in a sociotechnical framework, online learning communities combine information and knowledge stores situated in shared social spaces using social learning software. In recent years, educational technologists linked theory and systems design in education. However, several disciplines combine in online learning. User-centered design provides the cross-disciplinary approach that appears to be essential for quality in online learning design and engineering. Thus, seven guidelines for experts’ evaluation are proposed as signposts: intention, information, interactivity, real-time evaluation, visibility, control, and support.