Effects of an ontology display with history representation on organizational memory information systems

Ontologies, as a possible element of organizational memory information systems, appear to support organizational learning. Ontology tools can be used to share knowledge among the members of an organization. However, current ontology-viewing user interfaces of ontology tools do not fully support organizational learning, because most of them lack proper history representation in their display. In this study, a conceptual model was developed that emphasized the role of ontology in the organizational learning cycle and explored the integration of history representation in the ontology display. Based on the experimental results from a split-plot design with 30 participants, two conclusions were derived: first, appropriately selected history representations in the ontology display help users to identify changes in the ontologies; and second, compatibility between types of ontology display and history representation is more important than ontology display and history representation in themselves.     

Ontologies application in organizational learning: A literature review

Although ontologies and organizational learning are issues that have been discussed for many years, there is not an approach on literature that gives an overview about how both issues have been applied together. This literature review has the objective of exploring how ontologies are being applied in the organizational learning process recently; as a consequence, only studies from the year of 2005 onwards have been searched. The identification process produced 353 papers from 11 different databases. After applying the exclusion criteria, the set was reduced to 11 papers, which clearly fitted to the criteria defined for accomplishment of the systematic review, which were then analyzed and classified. The papers have been classified according to the structure and level of the ontologies. Furthermore, the Information Technology (IT) used in conjunction with ontology was identified, as well as the way ontologies and IT can act as a means of facilitating the organizational learning process. It was observed that although ontologies are rather important, a very few number of researches have applied ontologies in the organizational learning processes. In a general way, ontologies and IT encourage the sharing of knowledge and formalization.     

A study on development of cognitive support features in recent ontology visualization tools

Ontologies are currently emerging as representation techniques for overlapping compatibility context domains. The continuing need for more effective information retrieval has lead to the creation of the notions of the semantic web and personalized information management. Subsequently, the need for effective ontology visualization for design, management and browsing has arisen. Several ontology visualization tools have come out to strengthen the users’ cognitive support. The primary goal of this paper is to present a survey on recently implemented ontology visualization tools and their contributions in the enrichment of users’ cognitive support. This work also presents the preliminary results of an evaluation of three visualization tools to determine the suitability of each method for end user applications where ontologies are used as browsing aids.     

产品配置领域本体学习方法研究

针对大多数本体构建工具只支持手工构建,造成本体构建效率极低、工作量大、容易出错、知识的动态及时更新和维护困难等问题,提出一种领域本体自动构建的框架系统,通过对企业已有数据库及相关领域中大量的知识进行本体学习,实现配置领域本体自动（或半自动）构建,给出不同数据源结构中的本体概念抽取、概念间语义关系抽取等关键技术。     

Investigating organizational learning in eGovernment projects: A multi-theoretic approach

Organizational learning is essential during eGovernment implementation to leverage the benefits of such efforts. However, there is a lack of holistic understanding of organizational learning in IT-related change in public organizations. Motivated by such concerns, we construct a structurational framework that inter-relates elements pertinent to IT-related change from four theoretical perspectives: organizational politics, organizational culture, institutional theory, and organizational learning itself. Inter-relationships between elements of these perspectives are explicated through the notions of structures, modalities, and actions from structuration theory. Guided by the framework, we conducted a case study to examine the organizational learning occurring during a successful eGovernment project. The analysis indicates the inextricable interactions between elements from the different perspectives during the project implementation. The proposed framework offers both theoretical and practical benefits for understanding and facilitating organizational learning in eGovernment projects.     

ICT-supported knowledge representation for development of routines in industry

Organizational Learning (OL) is important for a firm’s productivity growth. According to some literatures, information and communication technology do not support organizational learning and therefore not enhanced productivity. This research however has demonstrated that in the case of manufacturing companies some computer-based systems representing organizational knowledge—knowledge management systems (KMS) do support organizational learning. For OL to take place through KMS, our findings suggest that a deliberate organizational learning structure must be in place within the organization. This article demonstrates how knowledge management systems deliberately developed and implemented by management, can support the development of operating routines for manufacturing industries. KMS, if deliberately implemented for the purpose of empowering employee participation, may be a supporting mechanism for process and product improvement and innovation in manufacturing organizations. Such a structure may results, as our case demonstrates, in a dynamic and iterative employee—management knowledge development process resulting in productivity enhancement.     

A methodology for constructing of philosophy ontology based on philosophical texts

An ontology is a crucial factor for the success of the Semantic Web and other knowledge-based systems in terms of share and reuse of domain knowledge. However, there are a few concrete ontologies within actual knowledge domains including learning domains. In this paper, we develop an ontology which is an explicit formal specification of concepts and semantic relations among them in philosophy. We call it a philosophy ontology. Our philosophy is a formal specification of philosophical knowledge including knowledge of contents of classical texts of philosophy. We propose a methodology, which consists of detailed guidelines and templates, for constructing text-based ontology. Our methodology consists of 3 major steps and 14 minor steps. To implement the philosophy ontology, we develop an ontology management system based on Topic Maps. Our system includes a semi-automatic translator for creating Topic Map documents from the output of conceptualization steps and other tools to construct, store, retrieve ontologies based on Topic Maps. Our methodology and tools can be applied to other learning domain ontologies, such as history, literature, arts, and music.     

Fuzzy ontologies-based user profiles applied to enhance e-learning activities

Nowadays, the impact of technological developments on improving human activities is becoming more evident. In e-learning, this situation is no different. There are common to use systems that assist the daily activities of students and teachers. Typically, e-learning recommender systems are focused on students; however, teachers can also benefit from these type of tools. A recommender system can propose actions and resources that facilitate teaching activities like structuring learning strategies. In any case, a complete user’s representation is required. This paper shows how a fuzzy ontology can be used to represent user profiles into a recommender engine and enhances the user’s activities into e-learning environments. A fuzzy ontology is an extension of domain ontologies for solving the problems of uncertainty in sharing and reusing knowledge on the Semantic Web. The user profile is built from learning objects published by the user himself into a learning object repository. The initial experiment confirms that the automatically obtained fuzzy ontology is a good representation of the user’s preferences. The experiment results also indicate that the presented approach is useful and warrants further research in recommending and retrieval information.     

Perceived usefulness of podcasting in organizational learning: The role of information characteristics

Podcasting has been used widely to support individuals' learning activities. However, most of the research focuses its use in formal educational contexts. Little attention has been paid to the use of podcasting in organizational settings to support employees' learning activities. To address this gap, this research investigates employees' perceived usefulness (PU) of podcasting to facilitate their learning activities within organizational settings. Using a global company as the case study, the data collected through semi-structured interviews were analyzed using qualitative techniques. The study finds that the characteristics of the information delivered by the podcasts (i.e., information overload, information privacy, and information relevance) play an important role in shaping employees' PU to adopt podcasting for learning. Excitement toward the technology and tenure are also found to have an impact. In fact, contrary to prior findings, which showed the importance of emotions occurring during the use of technologies, towards their ultimate adoption, this study finds that emotions (excitement in our case) in anticipation of podcasting implementation plays a significant role in individual's PU towards adoption. Further, we develop a set of propositions to discuss the relationships between these factors and the PU of podcasting in organizational settings. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

教育测评知识图谱的构建及其表示学习

知识图谱旨在描述现实世界中存在的实体以及实体之间的关系.自2012年谷歌提出“Google Knowledge Graph”以来，知识图谱在学术界和工业界受到广泛关注.针对教育领域中信息缺乏系统性组织的不足，本文构建了面向高中的教育测评知识图谱（Educational Assessment Knowledge Graph，EAKG），其中EAKG的构建包括基于本体技术的知识图谱模式层构建和依托于模式层结构的知识图谱数据层构建.与传统通过网页爬虫等技术手段构建的知识图谱相比，本文构建的知识图谱优点在于逻辑结构清晰，实体间关系的刻画遵循知识图谱模式层的定义.EAKG为领域内知识共享，知识推理，知识表示学习等任务提供了良好的支撑.在真实模考数据上的实验结果表明：在试卷得分预测，知识点得分预测的实体链接预测和三元组分类嵌入式表示学习任务上，引入领域本体作为模式层构建的EAKG的性能优于没有领域本体模式层单纯由数据事实构成的EAKG，实验表明，领域本体的引入对知识图谱的表示学习具有一定的指导意义.     

Supporting continuous learning in a large organization: the role of group and organizational perspectives

Many organizations recognize the need to continuously adapt and learn in order to survive and remain competitive. Learning and therefore change in organizations is driven in two ways. First, there is strategically driven learning, motivated by high-level factors such as market changes, company mergers and newly emerging approaches to organizational management and workplace learning. These changes reveal themselves in the introduction of new training programmes, recruitment strategies and knowledge management methodologies. Second, there is local, continuous learning occurring from the ground up. This is revealed as workers become more adept at their job through experience and collaboration with colleagues. Continuous learning is more gradual and requires local autonomy. This paper describes an experiment in supporting local, continuous learning, and its dissemination, but driven by a strategic initiative of the organization. This work raised many issues concerning the difficulty of integrating local and global organizational influences on learning. We outline lessons learned and suggestions as to the extent to which it is possible to align continuous learning with a company-wide perspective.     

Interface methods for using intranet portal organizational memory information system

In this paper, an intranet portal is considered as an information infrastructure (organizational memory information system, OMIS) supporting organizational learning. The properties and the hierarchical structure of information and knowledge in an intranet portal OMIS was identified as a problem for navigation tools of an intranet portal interface. The problem relates to navigation and retrieval functions of intranet portal OMIS and is expected to adversely affect user performance, satisfaction, and usefulness. To solve the problem, a conceptual model for navigation tools of an intranet portal interface was proposed and an experiment using a crossover design was conducted with 10 participants. In the experiment, a separate access method (tabbed tree tool) was compared to an unified access method (single tree tool). The results indicate that each information/knowledge repository for which a user has a different structural knowledge should be handled separately with a separate access to increase user satisfaction and the usefulness of the OMIS and to improve user performance in navigation.     

安全本体研究进展

本体概念已经被广泛地应用到人工智能系统、计算机科学、信息技术、生物医学等众多学科领域。对不同领域的本体分析构成了该领域知识表示体系的核心,同时本体研究促进了知识的共享和重用。将本体的概念应用在信息安全领域就形成了安全本体。主要从以下几个方面描述了安全本体:安全本体研究的现状及发展过程,构建安全本体的原则、方法和意义,现有的安全本体及分类,安全本体的描述语言,安全本体的应用。接着依据对现有的安全本体及其应用的分析,总结了安全本体的结构体系,描述了安全本体的知识表示及推理能力,并指出在构建安全本体、本体评估、本体学习和安全本体的应用等方面依然有待完善。     

Value Webs: using ontologies to bundle real-world services

Real-world services - that is, nonsoftware-based services - differ significantly from Web services, usually defined as software functionality accessible and configurable over the Web. Because of the economic, social, and business importance of the service concept in general, we believe it's necessary to rethink what this concept means in an ontological and computational sense. We deal about the OBELIX (ontology-based electronic integration of complex products and value chains) project has therefore developed a generic component-based ontology for real-world services. This OBELIX service ontology is first of all a formalization of concepts that represent the consensus in the business science literature on service management and marketing. We express our service ontology in a graphical, network-style representation, and we've developed support tools that facilitate end-user modeling of services. Then, automated knowledge-based configuration methods let business designers and analysts analyze service bundles. We've tested our ontology, methods, and tools on applications in real-world case studies of different industry sectors.     

Content-Dependent Question Generation Using LOD for History Learning in Open Learning Space

The objective of this research is to use current linked open data (LOD) to generate questions automatically to support history learning. This paper tries to clarify the potential of LOD as a learning resource. By linking LOD to natural language documents, we created an open learning space where learners have access to machine understandable natural language information about many topics. The learning environment supports learners with content-dependent questions. In this paper, we describe the question generation method that creates natural language questions using LOD. The integrated data is combined to a history domain ontology and a history dependent question ontology to generate content-dependent questions. To prove whether the generated questions have a potential to support learning, a human expert conducted an evaluation comparing our automatically generated questions with questions generated manually. The results of the evaluation showed that the generated questions could cover more than 80% of the questions supporting knowledge acquisition generated by humans. In addition, we confirmed the automatically generated questions have a potential to reinforce learners’ deep historical understanding.     

A language learning support system using course-centered ontology and its evaluation

This paper presents a course-centered ontology for assisting learning support systems to embody the relations among knowledge points and also among the learning materials for those knowledge points. An “individual-class-individual” ontology design (first an individual-class design, then an innovative design about relations among bottom individuals), was applied to the construction of a course-centered ontology for an existing Japanese grammar course. Furthermore, a customizable language learning support system was built to manipulate the course-centered ontology to provide an interface for the learning objects arrangement which displays the visual representation of knowledge points and their relations. The intention underlying the development of the system is to encourage instructors to orient their teaching materials to specific knowledge points and even directly to relations between knowledge points. With these orientations, the learning support system is able to provide an environment in which learners can readily distinguish between related knowledge points. Finally, based on the result of a preliminary evaluation, a study to explore the impact of learning styles and learning habits on learning performance was conducted to further evaluate our ontology-based learning support system. The results of the study suggest three main points: (a) the experimental students who learned with our system achieved significantly better learning achievement than those who just did self-study with textbooks after studying the same target contents for 60 mins; (b) the learning achievement of experimental group was not related to either their learning style in Sequential/Global dimension or their habit of “learning from comparison”; (c) in terms of the learning perception of experimental group, compared to “Sequential learners”, most “Global learners” had a stronger feeling that the comparison function is useful in improving their learning performance, and the learners who don't habitually “learning from comparison” were more likely to suffer from lack of the attention and feel more pressure than those who do habitually “learning from comparison”.     

Extending the Unified Modeling Language for ontology development

There is rapidly growing momentum for web enabled agents that reason about and dynamically integrate the appropriate knowledge and services at run-time. The dynamic integration of knowledge and services depends on the existence of explicit declarative semantic models (ontologies). We have been building tools for ontology development based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). This allows the many mature UML tools, models and expertise to be applied to knowledge representation systems, not only for visualizing complex ontologies but also for managing the ontology development process. UML has many features, such as profiles, global modularity and extension mechanisms that are not generally available in most ontology languages. However, ontology languages have some features that UML does not support. Our paper identifies the similarities and differences (with examples) between UML and the ontology languages RDF and DAML+OIL. To reconcile these differences, we propose a modification to the UML metamodel to address some of the most problematic differences. One of these is the ontological concept variously called a property, relation or predicate. This notion corresponds to the UML concepts of association and attribute. In ontology languages properties are first-class modeling elements, but UML associations and attributes are not first-class. Our proposal is backward-compatible with existing UML models while enhancing its viability for ontology modeling. While we have focused on RDF and DAML+OIL in our research and development activities, the same issues apply to many of the knowledge representation languages. This is especially the case for semantic network and concept graph approaches to knowledge representations. Initial sbmission: 16 February 2002 / Revised submission: 15 October 2002 Published online: 2 December 2002     

Overcoming the pitfalls of ontology authoring: Strategies and implications for tool design

The process of authoring ontologies appears to be fragmented across several tools and workarounds, and there exists no well accepted framework for common authoring tasks such as exploring ontologies, comparing versions, debugging, and testing. This lack of an adequate and seamless tool chain potentially hinders the broad uptake of ontologies, especially OWL, as a knowledge representation formalism. We start to address this situation by presenting insights from an interview-based study with 15 ontology experts. We uncover the tensions that may emerge between ontology authors including antagonistic ontology building styles (definition-driven vs. manually crafted hierarchies). We identify the problems reported by the ontology authors and the strategies they employ to solve them. These data are mapped to a set of key design recommendations, which should inform and guide future efforts for improving ontology authoring tool support, thus opening up ontology authoring to a new generation of users. We discuss future research avenues in light of these results.