This week we were at the Professional Training Facts 2009 in Stuttgart (see here for a summary of MATURE activities at this event). This was a great opportunity to think and discuss about topics around competence development in company. One trend I have spotted was the increasing importance of indicators for competence development and the incorporation of those indicators into management instruments like management-by-objectives. At first sight, this always seems to be a good idea to “professionalize” the learning element in a company by making it measurable. This originates in the assumption that “you cannot manage what you cannot measure”, which is probably true when you want to manage things. The approach promises transparency and can be a step towards calculating an ROI for learning. The big problem, however, does not lie in the approach of defining indicators and measuring them, but rather in the concrete indicators themselves. These indicators do not naturally naturally derive from the topic at hand, but are actually always bound to a notion of an ideal state; they contain the statement: you should have a high score in this indicator – this would be the best option. This is not bad as such, but this fact is rarely reflected, especially because this ideal state is actually context-dependent. It can be different for large vs. small organizations, for innovation-focused vs. efficiency-focused organizations, for service vs. production etc. What happens is that somebody defines (probably with good reasons) a certain set of indicators, and other simply take those indicators and apply them without questioning their value for their context.

What does this have to do with knowledge and knowledge maturing? This has three aspects:

• This “ideal state” conception as such is a body of knowledge, and it has to be carefully examine if the underlying knowledge about the ideal state is has reached a level of maturity that allows for a standardization in which you usually simply take things and apply them (like, e.g., for many financial indicators). Or if we are on a lower level of maturity and have to develop from there our own answer to the question “what is the ideal state”. In this learning and maturing process we have to learn about the contextual factors that differentiate us from others. And even if we take and apply standardized things, we should allow and encourage questioning usefulness at any time.
• Indicators are not only about measuring, they are about management and guidance. They aim at changing the behaviour by explicitly or implictly encouraging to become “better”. Even if we know sufficiently about the ideal state, do we know enough how a certain set of indicators (potentially tied together with a complex formula) influences the behaviour? Is our knowledge about that mature enough to make them the basis for formalized instruments (like reward schemes, but also career decisions)? Can we differentiate between correlations and causal relationships? Can we separate external factors? Or should be modest enough to consider them what they are: indicators that measure something, but not the wealth of reality, and use them as a reflection instrument – and in the end maybe come to the conclusion that they measure nothing of interest.
• We are currently researching indicators for knowledge maturing both in the empirical and the technical-conceptual strand of the MATURE project. We should be aware that indicators always derive from a concept of ideal state, which is difficult to envision as a whole. So we will base those indicators based on our pre-conceptions (which has a lot to do with our value systems) – and we should carefully reflect on this problem.

As a conclusion: measuring can be very helpful for many aspects, also on the soft side, but we should understanding the development and application of such measuring instruments as a collaborative learning process which should involve many. Then this process and its result can be also a good guidance instrument.

On the other side, the event hosted the kick-off event for the Special Interest Group on Professional Learning (www.sig-protel.eu), which tries to increase the visibility of the topic on a European level, first by better networking among the concerned European research projects like MATURE, APOSDLE, ROLE, and others. In the discussion, it has turned out that despite the ambiguity of the term, professional learning seems to be umbrella term for KM and workplace learning. This SIG is a promising sign for a maturing community.

This year, Christine and I were giving a talk on integrating motivational aspects into the design of informal learning support, which reported on our findings on how to integrating motivational measures into tools for informal learning (the paper is available from here). Christine has done most of the work in ethnographic studies and their analysis. Currently, together with our colleague Athanasios, they are struggling to integrate their ideas into the four demonstrators of MATURE Year 2 demonstrators.

Well, apart from that, there were interesting keynotes on the first day: Michael Wesch, a anthropologist from Kansas presentedwho managed that his home-made YouTube video became an incredible success (and he has since then produced several interesting ones! – my colleague Valentin already recommended one of them in his recent blog entries), but also Norbert Bolz (who was less entertaining, but also had interesting ideas) like the importance of self-branding.

While there was no single big conference theme, I gained the impression that the two big topics were serious games and (with some distance) mobile learning. There was some reference to personal learning environments (e.g., by Fronter) and the obligatory reference to Web 2.0,  but few consequences could be seen.

I myself presented MATURE from an (almost) non-technical perspective, highlighting new approaches to guidance via the gardening metaphor and the necessity of a participatory culture:

Additionally, Gilbert Peffer from CIMNE organized a session on serious games for the financial domain (both for private financial decisions and for professional trader training), and provided a possibility to look into the upcoming xDELIA project (where FZI a is also involved both from the sensor side and from the perspective of experimental economics).

On the day before OnlineEduca, I participated in the ICOPER event on Competencies as the Currency for Learning, which aims at bootstrapping a standardization effort on competencies. More about that in the blog entry on the MATURE blog.

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

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.

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It was interesting to see that there is interest for semantic technologies from various sides, e.g., it is increasingly acknowledged that complex standards may need for their own coherence, but especially for interaction with other standards a conceptual layer on top. This is clearly inspired by model-driven ideas from software engineering. Despite this interest and remarkable awareness of ontological approaches, there is still a lot of doubt because semantic technologies still lack their applications. Probably, we need to continue to work on pragmatic and useful solutions instead of complex and powerful ones, just to show that it works and delivers a benefit.

E-Portfolios are a promising concept – for various purposed. However, I am not sure whether the single label portfolio actually denotes a shared concept and whether it is beneficial to consider all types of portfolios as instances of a single concept. For me, still, a reflective work portfolio a student at school/university actually uses as a way to organize learning is very different from a portfolio used for student assessment or for applying to a potential employer. Mixing different purposes may prevent effective usage. So for me, transfering portfolios from one system to another has no priority, but rather making it easy to transfer individual items makes sense. And this probably best in the context of a personal learning environment – and not restricted to transfer between portfolios, but also exchange with other systems so that maturing processes across individuals can take place. Anyway, I see a huge potential of bringing the e-portfolio community and the workplace learning/knowledge management community together – it can open up the perspective to holistic concepts.

The keynotes on the second day were very interesting. I was especially surprised about how quickly the Dutch government introduces innovative employability solutions, compared to the cumbersome German procedures and discussions. Especially the policy that you have to give a data about you only once to the government would be healthy. Some may have privacy concerns, but I think that much more annoying and dangerous is collecting data again and again, each time with the possibilty that a new error is introduced.

When I listened to Thomas Sporer’s talk on an eportfolio-based approach to university education, it came again to my mind how old-fashioned our university education system currently is: it does not help students in building competencies in setting goals on their own, working with uncertainty, social interaction within a project context, presentation competencies etc. Let’s hope that things will change with approaches like that one so that students become really employable at the end of their studies.

Finally, the conference was a good place for meeting interesting people with various backgrounds.

Technorati tags: eportfolio07, hcscit07

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.