Based on the experiences in MATURE, we are trying to form an interdisciplinary community around the topic of motivational and affective aspects in technology-enhanced learning. Towards that end, we are organizing a workhop (MATEL 2010) at this year’s edition of the ECTEL conference, which takes place in Barcelona, Spain.

We invite contributions from the areas of psychology, sociology, computer science, CSCW, economics, among others.

http://ksm09.mature-ip.eu

Part of the Conference on Professional Knowledge Management (WM 2009)

Organizers & Contact

• Tobias Ley, Know-Center, Graz, Austria
• Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center, Graz, Austria
• Andreas Schmidt, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Karlsruhe, Germany

Important Dates

• October 31, 2008 Submission of workshop papers
• December 15, 2008 Notification of authors about acceptance/rejection
• January 10, 2009 Submission of camera-ready papers

Endorsed by

APOSDLE IP	MATURE IP

Introduction & Motivation

Large monolithic knowledge management systems as the one-for-all KM solution have largely failed to live up to their expectations. In particular, they have failed

• to integrate into work practices of the individual, thus lacking adoption by the individual
• to adapt to different types and sizes of companies, different type of employees as well as changing requirements of those
• to acknowledge that knowledge management is not an isolated activity within a company, but rather an activity of “networked individuals”

In line with the trend towards modular service-oriented architectures, we can observe that knowledge management solutions increasingly adopt more modular approaches. However, these developments are usually merely a decomposition into software components without taking into account the user of such systems. But the notion of service goes beyond components; it usually assumes that the granularity of functionality as well as packaging is motivated by usage patterns (e.g., business processes) and not purely technical (software engineering) considerations.

This means that the shift from integrated knowledge management solutions towards knowledge services is not only a question of modularity, but also requires rethinking offer and demand (by knowledge workers) of such services. And it also requires a thorough understand of knowledge work and new conceptual foundations for its support (e.g., the knowledge maturing model by Maier & Schmidt or the seeding-evolutionary growth-reseeding model by Fischer) to identify basic knowledge services and their interplay, which constitutes another issue of service-orientation: combination or orchestration of different services to provide higher-level functionality. That is the real power of service-oriented approaches.

In the context of Web 2.0 (which in itself is a user-oriented approach to web applications where the social ecology is explicitly considered), the notion of mashups has emerged as an integration paradigm which is lightweight and easy such that:

• end-users themselves can combine different services (like aggregating and filtering feeds of content, calendar information etc.)
• applications and services can easily participate and offer those feeds

This goes beyond service-orientation (which is about empowering the enterprise to creating their own solutions without relying on vendor prepackaging) and realizes end-user empowerment as well.

A recent development in the related field of learning support is constituted by personal learning environments, replacing LMS similar to services and mashups replacing KMS. They envision a work environment of individual tools (e.g., for communication, sharing, awareness, collaboration, networking) that allow the individual for organizing her learning in a very personal way. They offer a construction set of small services to be configured by the individual user.

The workshop aims at bringing these strands of development of service-oriented approaches to supporting knowledge management and learning together to go one step further beyond the enthusiasm about Knowledge Management 2.0, which is essentially about social software for knowledge management. The scope of the workshop ranges from theoretical and conceptual foundations (which might come from various disciplines), methodical contributions up to technical prototype development and gathering experiences from evaluations.

• Theoretical and conceptual foundations of knowledge services and mash-ups

• Notion of knowledge services and mashups
• Theories and concepts of knowledge work
• Requirements for knowledge services and mash-ups

• for personal knowledge management and learning (including personal learning environments)
• for supporting communities and social networking
• for organizational knowledge management

• Knowledge representations and models for services
• Semantic models and metadata

• Lightweight mash-up approaches to the combination of different knowledge services
• Semantic service descriptions
• Evaluation of knowledge services and mash-ups

Submission Instructions

All papers in the conference proceedings have to be formatted according to the following instructions under http://www.gi-ev.de/service/publikationen/lni/ (in German; Latex Template, Word Template). We solicit submissions of the following types:

• Research papers
• Case studies and experience reports from industry
• Position papers and work-in-progress
• Demonstrations

Paper submissions should should not exceed 10 pages, descriptions of demos should not exceed 5 pages.

For submissions, please use the electronic submission system under http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wm2009workshops and select the KSM workshop as track.

Programme Committee

Andreas Abecker, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Karlsruhe, Germany
Steffen Lamparter, Karlsruhe Service Research Institute (KSRI), University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Mathias Lux, University of Klagenfurt, Austria
Johannes Magenheim, University of Paderborn (TBC)
Ronald Maier, Leopold-Franzens-University of Innsbruck, Austria
Gregoris Mentzas, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Claudia Müller, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Sebastian Schaffert, Salzburg Research, Austria
York Sure, SAP AG, Germany
Robert Woitsch, BOC, Austria

Rethinking learning in enterprises in response to bottom-up participatory approaches is one of the main themes of the MATURE IP. So together with my colleague Simone Braun (FZI), Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu), Eric Ras (Fraunhofer IESE), Stefanie Lindstaedt (Know-Center), and Ronald Maier (University of Innsbruck) we are organizing a workshop at this year’s ECTEL conference in Maastricht on that subject: Learning in Enterprise 2.0 and Beyond.

Recently, we have seen a paradigm shift in technology support for learning towards more participatory approaches in which learners are seen as active contributors. Within enterprises, this new perspective brings together traditionally separated disciplines like e-learning, knowledge management, and human resources development, but also requires a fundamental change of the culture of the respective enterprise towards an enterprise 2.0, which is characterized by enhanced collaboration and a cultural of employee participation. The enterprise 2.0 needs to understand itself as a learning organization, needs to leverage bottom-up processes (from the employee towards the organization) and aim at closed-loop approaches where feedback, continuous improvement, and encouraging small and large-scale innovations at all levels is key.

In this workshop, we aim at exploring new ways of technology-enhanced learning within an enterprise on the way to enterprise 2.0, and the role of learning technology in the transformation process. This includes the exploration of individual perspectives in the form of personal learning environments (in contrast to traditional LMS or VLE), the community perspective, and the organizational perspective (new forms of guidance, e.g., as part of competence management strategies). There is a tension between these different perspectives, which has a huge impact on the success of learning technologies in the enterprise. Therefore, we are also looking for conceptual approaches addressing these issues.

One important aspect in this respect is the consideration of motivational factors affecting the engagement in learning activities and the contribution towards organizational goals: how can we leverage the intrinsic motivation of employees and create learning contexts that keep this motivation alive? What is the effect of social relationships?

An essential part of the workshop will be the interaction of the participants, aiming at a better definition/characterization of enterprise 2.0 and the implications for future research approaches. This will be facilitated by a larger discussion slot which will be moderated and guided by lead questions.

Topics

Topics include empirical, conceptual, and technical approaches in the following areas:

• Designing personal learning environments
  • Learner as consumer and producer and learner empowerment
  • Relevant tools, services, and architectures
  • Bottom-up approaches for work-integrated learning
  • Connecting knowledge assets, e.g. with mashups, semantic structures
• Exploring the tension between individual and organizational perspectives on learning
  • Scaffolding and guidance of individual learning processes towards organizational goals (business or competence development goals)
  • Exploring the transitions between individual, community, and organizational learning
  • Learning in distributed communities of practice and collaboration between different enterprises
  • Approaches bridging knowledge management, e-learning, and human resources perspectives
  • Employability, role of different types of e-portfolios
  • Collaborative and participatory competence management
  • Novel educational approaches and learning theories on technology-enhanced individual and organizational learning
• Motivational and social aspects
  • Motivational and social barriers to informal learning
  • Designing learning environments to leverage intrinsic motivation
  • Awareness of social relationships

Target Group

The workshop aims at bringing together researchers and practitioners concerned with learning in enterprises including includes researchers from different backgrounds like information technology, (vocational) pedagogy, psychology, and multiple fields of expertise like e-learning, knowledge management, human resources, among others.

Submission Types

• Research papers (up to 10 pages)
• Position papers (up to 5 pages)
• Experience reports (short up to 5 pages, long up to 10 pages)

Organization Commitee

Andreas Schmidt, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Germany  [main contact, email: aschmidt@fzi.de]
Graham Attwell, Pontydysgu, UK
Simone Braun, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Germany
Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Ronald Maier, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Eric Ras, Fraunhofer IESE, Germany

Programme Commitee

Alan Brown, University of Warwick, UK
John Cook, London Metropolitan University, UK
Knut Hinkelmann, University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland
Helen Keegan, University of Salford, UK
Barbara Kieslinger, ZSI, Austria (TBC)
Christine Kunzmann, Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung, Germany
Tobias Ley, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Johannes Magenheim, University of Paderborn, Germany
Torsten Leidig, SAP, Germany (TBC)
Jeanne Mengis, University of Lugano, Switzerland
Andrew Ravenscroft, London Metropolitan University, UK
Uwe Riss, SAP, Germany (TBC)
Luk Vervenne, Synergetics, Belgium
Amir Winer, Center for Futurism in Education, Ben-Gurion-University of the Negev, Israel
Martin Wolpers, Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
Volker Zimmermann, IMC, Germany

After a successful OntoContent 2007 workshop, we are now preparing a next instance of the OntoContent workshop series. This year will will concentrate on user-centered semantics (under the theme of Web 3.0) and on collecting experiences on ontology engineering and maintenance from the fields of Human Resources, and e-health/life sciences/ambient assisted living.

Ontology Content and Evaluation in Enterprise
with two Special Tracks on Human Resources and E-Health/AAL

in conjunction with OnTheMove Federated Conferences 2008, Monterrey, Mexico

http://ontocontent2008.mature-ip.eu

Under the buzz word Semantic Web a lot of research has been going on in recent years, exploring formalisms for expressing ontologies, reasoning algorithms for inferencing hidden knowledge in an open world, but also on “semantifying” different types of problems. But outside the Semantic Web research community, there has been little uptake so far. This is also due to the fact that the concept of ontology is more about content than formalism, and we are in dire need for content-related research and experiences. As Braun et al. 2007 stated, a “good” ontology is a balance of the degree of social agreement, the level of formality, and the appropriateness for the problem at hand that is supposed to be solved with ontologies. In line with this view, the workshop is looking for experiences and empirical results on which formalism is better suited, how to achieve or measure social agreement, and how to judge whether an ontology is appropriate. It is the mission of this workshop to report on these experiences and to reflect them back to the Semantic Web community.

In the area of system design, there is currently a major shift taking place towards user-centered design, and the workshop aims to foster use-centered ontology-based system design. Therefore, we also welcome research and experiences on participatory and evolutionary approaches (i.e., with a continuously high degree of involvement of the actual users) to building and maintaining ontologies that pave the way towards a Web 3.0, bringing together users and semantics.

We also strongly encourage to submit critical papers deriving lessons from failures with “ontologies in the wild”, not only stereotypical success reports!

Workshop Structure and Topics

The workshop will consists of three main parts: a general part on experiences with real-world ontology engineering and approaches to assessment of ontologies, a special track on ontologies in Human Resources and a special track on ontologies in e-health and ambient-assisted living.

• Towards Web 3.0: a user-centered semantic web
  • lessons from Web 2.0 for ontology engineering
  • experiences with participatory and evolutionary approaches to ontology engineering (e.g., based on social software)
  • lightweight ontology formalisms (e.g., SKOS) and microformats
  • experiences/empirical results on lightweight vs. heavy-weight ontologies
  • experiences/empirical results on graphical modeling of ontologies
  • experimental evidence (e.g., from cognitive science) on conceptual modeling
  • challenges/requirements for maintenance and evolution of ontologies
  • good, best, and bad practices

• Methods for assessing ontologies
  • Ontology evaluation
  • Quality measures for ontologies
  • assessment of ontologies with regard to social agreement, formality, and appropriateness
  • experiences with assessment and evaluations methods

• Ontologies in Human Resources (Recruiting, Development, Employability)
  • modeling and representation of: Jobs, CVs, Competencies, Skills, Employees, People, Organizations, Social Events, etc.
  • HR upper level concepts
  • E-Portfolio (standards) and ontologies
  • Semantics of HR-XML
  • Semantic metadata for HR applications
  • Semantics in job matching
  • Semantics in learning technologies
  • Good/Best practices for semantics in HR
  • Maintenance of ontologies in HR

• Ontologies in E-Health and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL)
  • Upper level concepts of healthcare and life sciences ontologies.
  • Ontologies of diseases, nursing, therapeutics, drug, etc.
  • Ontologies and ontology-driven approaches in Ambient-Assisted Living
  • Maintenance of ontologies in e-health and AAL

If you feel that something fits into the theme of the workshop, but is not listed here, just contact the organizers.

Submissions

Types of papers include:

• research papers (max. 10 pages)
• case studies experience reports (preferrably from industry) (max 10 pages)
• position papers, clearly analyzing current state of practice for future challenges of research (max. 6 pages)

Papers submitted to OntoContent 2008 must not have been accepted for publication elsewhere or be under review for another workshop or conference. All submitted papers will be evaluated by at least three members of the program committee, based on originality, significance, technical soundness, and clarity of expression.

Papers will be published in an LNCS volume by Springer as part of OTM 2008 proceedings. Excellent papers will be considered for a journal publication or as book chapters

Important Dates

Abstract Submission Deadline: June 15, 2008
Paper Submission Deadline: June 30, 2008
Acceptance Notification : August 15, 2008
Camera Ready Due: August 25, 2008
Registration Due: August 25, 2008
OTM Conferences: November 9 – 14, 2008

Organizers

Andreas Schmidt, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Karlsruhe, Germany [main contact]
andreas.schmidt@fzi.de

Mustafa Jarrar, University of Cyprus
mustafa@jarrar.info

Werner Ceusters, University of Buffalo, USA

Program Committee (partially to be confirmed and to be completed)

Bill Andersen, Ontology Works, USA
Keith Baker, University of Reading, UK
Ernst Biesalski, EnBW AG, Germany
Paolo Bouquet, University of Trento, Italy,
Simone Braun, FZI Research Center for Information Technologies, Germany
Christopher Brewster, University of Sheffield, UK
Michael Brown, Skillsnet.Com
Yannis Charalabidis, National Technical University of Athens, Greece
Ernesto Damiani, Computer Science Department, Milan University, Italy
Aldo Gangemi, Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy
Fausto Giunchiglia, University of Trento, Italy
Giancarlo Guizzardi, University of Twente, The Netherlands
Mohand-Said Hacid, University Claude Bernard Lyon 1 LIRIS – Villeurbanne, France
Martin Hepp, DERI Innsbruck, Austria
Stijn Heymans, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Christine Kunzmann, Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung, Germany
Jens Lemcke, SAP AG, Germany
Tobias Ley, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Stefanie Lindstaedt, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Alessandro Oltramari, Laboratory for Applied Ontology, ISTC-CNR, Trento, Italy
Viktoria Pammer, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Jeff Pan, University of Aberdeen, UK
Paul Piwek, Open University, UK
Christophe Roche, Université de Savoie, France
Peter Scheir, Know-Center Graz, Austria
Pavel Shvaiko, University of Trento, Italy
Miguel-Angel Sicilia, University of Alcalá, Spain
Barry Smith, State University of New York at Buffalo, USA
Silvie Spreeuwenberg, LibRT, The Netherlands
Armando Stellato, University of Roma, Italy
Andrew Stranieri, JUSTSYS, Ballarat, Australia
Karl Stroetmann, Empirica, Germany
Sergio Tessaris, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
Robert Tolksdorf, Free University of Berlin, Germany
Francky Trichet, University of Nantes, France
Luk Vervenne, Synergetics, Belgium

Sponsoring institutions/projects

This workshop is organized in a joint effort by the Ontology Outreach Advisory (OOA), the MATURE IP, and the SOPRANO IP.

• The OOA is an international not-for-profit association that consists of industry, government, and research leaders and innovators with respect to ontology development, use, or education. The general mission of the OOA is to develop strategies for ontology recommendation and standardization, and promote the ontology technology to industry.
• The MATURE IP is a large-scale integrating European project (FP7) in the field of technology-enhanced learning aiming at support of knowledge maturing processes within and across companies, including in particular ontology maturing.
• The SOPRANO IP is an integrated European project (FP6) in the field of ambient-assisted living and follows an ontology-driven service-oriented approach to construct a flexible and affordable platform for in-house ambient-assisted living solutions.

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.

Knowledge work is one of the main drivers of productivity for the knowledge society. Knowledge work, on an abstract level, includes a wide variety of activities that are concerned with information processing, thinking, and decision-making. Activities such as structuring of information and knowledge, articulation of new thoughts, and sharing with colleagues create knowledge and value. With the increasing importance of knowledge work, we are currently realizing that (1) we insufficiently understand the anatomy of knowledge work, (2) our current management approaches cannot deal with knowledge workers adequately and (3) knowledge work badly needs technology support, but methods and tools for technology-enhanced knowledge work are only in their infancy.

In a joint effort, the projects APOSDLE, Im Wissensnetz and NEPOMUK have organized an interdisciplinary workshop on knowledge work from economical, methodological and technological perspectives. The workshop will take place at the Professional Knowledge Management conference (WM 2007) at Potsdam.