presentation of the paper "Combining Dialogue and Semantics for Learning and Knowledge Maturing: Developing Collaborative Understanding in the 'Web 2.0 Workplace'" at ICALT 2010 conference, Sousse, Tunisia, July 5 2010
Reflections on knowledge modelling as a maturing and learning process
Combining Dialogue and Semantics for Learning and Knowledge Maturing
1. Combining Dialogue and Semantics for Learning and
Knowledge Maturing
Developing Collaborative
Understanding in the
‘Web 2.0 Workplace’
Andrew Ravenscroft,
Simone Braun,
Tobias Nelkner
http://mature-ip.eu ICALT 2010
Sousse, Tunisia, July 5, 2010
2. Motivation
We want to support communities of practice with a
shared semantic information repository
For that to work: Communities of practices need to
develop a collaborative understanding
We want to (partially) formalize this understanding in
an ontology in order to facilitate the effective
management of and access to the shared information
repository
MATURE - Continuous Social Learning in Knowledge Networks 22
3. Ontologies & Shared Understanding
An ontology in computer science is a
• „explicit specification of a conceptualization“ (Gruber 1993)
• „shared understanding of a domain of interest“ (Uschold & Grüninger 1996)
Ontologies as shared understanding support groups of
human actors (e.g. communities) in their negotiation
and collaboration processes bridge
• Ontologies as mediating artefact = puente
• Ontologies as boundary object
narrower
viaduct
= viaducto
water related aqueduct
supply = acueducto
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4. Agenda
Application Case
Concepts & System
Walkthrough
Evaluation & Conclusion
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5. The Classic Roman Civil Engineering
Community of Practice Case
A newly built up Spanish community of practice (CoP) of
practicing Industry Professionals
• All of them are alumni students of elearning courses about
Classic Roman Civil Engineering (CRCE)
The purpose:
• The CRCE CoP collaboratively develops a shared understanding
bridge of its domain
= puente
• by collecting and critically discussing information
o especially information in the internet about CRCE is often erroneous
narrower • by developing a common multilingual ontology
viaduct o lot of information in different languages relating to CRCE
= viaducto
aqueduct related water
= acueducto supply
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6. Approach
Key idea to develop such an understanding:
Interweaving the development of a shared information
repository, an ontology and dialogues about them
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7. Interweaving Development of Shared Information
Repository, Ontology and Dialogues about them
CoP collects, bookmarks & share web documents around their area
CoP jointly builds up a common ontology
The ontology is used to organize the web documents by annotating
them during the bookmarking process
Structured dialogues support critical inquiry, negotiations and
development of a collaborative understanding of their domain
• for negotiating ontology development
• for discussing and assessing content & quality of web resources
Performed (critical) dialogues are linked to related resources and
become resource themselves
• Supporting reflection and traceability of developments
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8. Combining Dialogue and Semantics with
InterLoc & SOBOLEO
is a web-based system that
• supports the development and refinement of ontologies
• enables groups of people to jointly structure web documents
and people in a domain
extended to support the creation, management and sustainable
storage of dialogues
B is a tool that
• supports reasoned and purposeful learning dialogue games
• provides structured rule-based interactions using pre-defined
dialogue features
specifically designed Moves & Openers in terms of key semantic
interactions in SOBOLEO
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16. Interesting Facts
Continuous connection between web documents,
ontology and dialogue processes within the CoP
Ontology & dialogues always reflect the current
knowledge of the CoP
Developments become traceable to collaborative
dialogues
Dialogues as new (searchable) form of knowledge
‘Dialogue state’ of ontological concepts/resources
provides awareness
• what is discussed or not, agreed, or in conflict
indicator for importance and validity 16
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17. Evaluation Activity
Set up as 4-week learning experience
• With 10 active participants + 1 moderator
The moderator, in order to animate the experience,
• provided once a week selected topics to the ontology
• initiated dialogue game related to these topics
The participants were asked to
• collect and share web documents around provided topics
• refine and extend the topics in the ontology
• engage in discussions
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17
18. Evaluation Activity
„Positive. Working with tools has been very satisfying for me”
“The tools enable collaborative work that is very useful for gaining
knowledge, applying to practice and comparing what you’ve learned. Lets
keep alive curiosity about a subject.”
“Surely you can increase knowledge. Sharing links, important
information, saves much work and improves outcomes.”
“Sometimes you fear to edit your colleagues work because you don’t
want to upset them”
“Being immersed in this type of initiative makes you active. Knowing that
your contributions will reach out to others, forces you to review, to
deepen, to better prepare your way of speaking.”
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19. Conclusion
The prototype enhances collaborative development of
a common ontology and knowledge base with specific
learning dialogue games
Dialogues as new (searchable) form of knowledge
Achieving a continuous connection between web
resources, ontology and dialogue processes within the
CoP
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20. Contact us for the Demonstrator System
Simone Braun
http://mature-ip.eu
FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik
Germany
braun@fzi.de
Andrew Ravenscroft
London Metropolitan University
United Kingdom
a.ravenscroft@londonmet.ac.uk
Tobias Nelkner
University of Paderborn
Germany
tobin@uni-paderborn.de
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21. Zone of Proximal Development &
Boundary Objects
From asymmetric Vygotsky’s ZPDs to symmetric ZPDpt –
peer co-learning using technology
• performing the dialogue games is clearly an engaging social
exercise that favors learning and co-developing higher levels of
understanding
• initiating a dialogue game demonstrates how the players have a
‘readiness to learn’ or ‘readiness to mature knowledge’
• learning or knowledge development is achieved through
scaffolding and reflection within a somewhat spontaneously or
responsively established ZPD
• resulting boundary objects - the formalized ontologies,
accepted resources, published dialogue game texts, and also
the dialogue games themselves – can be used by other CoP 21
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22. Knowledge Maturing Model
New ideas (topics) emerging from bookmarking
and the collaborative development of
ontologies
Proposal to initiate a dialogue game signals the
desire to express further ideas and develop the
collaborative understanding
Community becomes actively aware of new
resources, through refined ontological
classifications or collaboratively ‘working with’
the ontology
Achieved through directly using or modifying
the ontology, or indirectly, through Networks
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KM-DGs 22
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23. Knowledge Maturing Model
Community has performed gardening activities,
through directly amending the ontology or
performing KM-DG that lead to the development
of a mutually understood and shared ontology
Logical ‘deepening’ of the collective
understanding about the resources through the
performance of CDR-DG
Through linking the formalized structures
and resources to relevant courses and
practices
• both the ontologies and resources can serve as
boundary objects that serve related CoP 23
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