bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Cognitive Approaches to Understanding the Challenge of Computer-Based Learning
Authors: Wishart Jocelyn M.
Published: May 2011

Increased motivation amongst pupils has been readily observed in schools when they are allowed to use computers and other forms of information and communications technology (ICT) (Cox, 1997; Denning, 1997; Wishart & Blease, 1999). In fact, Denning reports almost universal enthusiasm amongst students for the use of ICT to support their work in schools. Many psychologists (Light, 1997; Loftus & Loftus, 1983) have used behaviourist theories originating from the work of Thorndike (1898) to describe positive extrinsic reinforcements generated by or associated with the computer software. For instance, children find the use of a computer rewarding; they get nearly immediate feedback from the programs on their efforts, which often include entertaining sound effects, graphics, and animations. Therefore, they are more likely to take up opportunities to use ICT in and outside of lessons. What is more, as described by Loftus and Loftus, these rewards arrive in the variable-ratio schedule of reinforcement, which Skinner (1938) believes is the most compelling.
Collaborative Tele-Learning Issues and Observations
Authors: Wild Rosemary H.
Published: May 2011

Teamwork is a fact of modern organizational life. College graduates are expected to be able to work productively in teams. The ubiquity of information and communications technologies, particularly the Internet, has contributed to the globalization of education as well as business (Adam, Awerbuch, Slonim, Wegner, & Yesha, 1997), and has added a challenging dimension to the management of teamwork. Specifically, it poses the question, “How can remote team members collaborate effectively?” With access to the Internet and communication technologies, students can now engage in activities that require remote team collaboration. Thus, it is important to understand the issues associated with creating a learning environment in which university students might best learn to be productive and effective team members in a remote collaborative setting.
Constructivist Teaching and Learning in a Web-Based Environment
Authors: Morphew Valerie N.
Published: May 2011

Web-based teaching and learning is on the rise in education and industry, challenging teachers and trainers to deliver instruction in new ways with the same or better results. To maximize the potential of Web-based delivery, instructors can avail themselves of the rich body of research that supports constructivist teaching and learning in the traditional setting. Applying the constructivist approach to Web-based teaching and learning can help instructors establish learning environments and practices that encourage growth and development in their students.
Cooperative Agents in Web-Based Distance Learning
Authors: Barolli Leonard , Koyama Akio
Published: May 2011

In the last few years, we have observed an explosive growth of multimedia computing, communications, and applications. This revolution is transforming the way people live, work, and interact with each other, and is impacting the way businesses, education, entertainment, and health care are operating. Due to the opportunities provided by the Internet, more and more people are taking advantage of distance learning courses.
Creating Opportunities and Barriers in Distance Learning Courses
Authors: Burgstahler Sheryl
Published: May 2011

nternet-based distance learning courses have the potential to make learning opportunities available to anyone. People in rural areas, from poor communities, and who have disabilities are among those underrepresented in the group of people who benefit from new technological developments.This potential cannot be realized, however, unless everyone can truly access course offerings. The rapid development of assistive technology makes it possible for almost anyone to operate a computer (2003 Closing the Gap, 2003). Yet many individuals with disabilities do not have access to these empowering tools (Kay, 2000).
Designing a Distributed Learning Experience
Authors: Ketelhut Diane Jass , Whitehouse Pamela , Dede Chris
Published: May 2011

With the availability of Internet and digital technologies, many universities are integrating new interactive media into course curricula, both to enhance conventional classroom-based learning and to enable remote students to overcome barriers of time and distance. Although the focus of computer-mediated communication in teaching and learning has traditionally been on distance education—delivering courses to students in remote locations—colleges are increasingly using interactive media to enhance on-campus courses, with positive outcomes. “Distributed learning” describes educational experiences that combine face-to-face teaching with synchronous and asynchronous mediated interaction (Dede, Brown-L’Bahy, Ketelhut, & Whitehouse, 2004). This instructional strategy distributes learning across a variety of geographic settings, across time, and across various interactive media. This study extends prior research findings on the design and educational outcomes of a Harvard Graduate School of Education course, Learning Media that Bridge Distance and Time, as a prototypical distributed learning experience.
Developing Online Faculty Competencies
Authors: Sales Gregory C.
Published: May 2011

The use of technology in education and the associated professional development are relatively new phenomena. Even so, they have gone through several stages of evolution. Each stage has been influenced by both the available technologies, our understanding of the psychology of learning, and the readiness of faculty to use technology with their students.
Distance Education Associations
Authors: Chen Irene
Published: May 2011

Most of the distance learning professional associations were founded in the 1990s, at a time when most Internet backbone speeds were T1 or slower. Although scientists in universities, corporations, and the military used the Internet for supercomputing capabilities, the predominant academic application was electronic mail. The public was generally unaware of the Internet’s existence. The explosive growth of information and telecommunications has combined to strengthen and diversify the options for school, skills development, technical and professional training, postsecondary credit courses, and special interests. New associations are established everyday to promote innovative educational strategies, as well as ways to leverage technology to provide new ways of learning online. Each of the strategies suggested below have some measure of support amongst the professional association participants and represents a way to improve opportunities for distance education and training. 1. Developing strategic alliances to support and encourage project-oriented coalitions amongst members as the need and opportunity arises 2. Recommending standards of quality 3. Institution promotion under a common logo within the region and beyond marketing 4. Identifying and supporting markets that are currently underserved 5. Sharing technological and human resources for development and delivery 6. Conducting applied research and development of distance education technology and instructional design 7. Developing and maintaining a system to provide a central source of current and relevant information on courses and programs, the credit-transfer system, and student-assistance programs
Distance Education in Small Island Nations
Authors: Shareef Ali Fawaz , Kinshuk  , Kinshuk
Published: May 2011

Small island nations, especially Maldives, encounter a number of limitations in providing services to their people due to their size. These services include education, health, communications, and many other public services. These island nations consist of very small islands with a very low population density on most islands. The low population density on the islands limits the infrastructure developments mainly due to the lack of the economies of scale. For example, building a secondary school on an island with a population of less than 500 people does not provide economies of scale, but rather makes it economically a wastage of resources. An island this size would not have an adequate number of students per teacher, and particularly in developing countries, the public expenditure budget is so much deflated that this cannot be considered an alternative. Distance education is seen as an appealing alternative to traditional face-to-face education in these countries as it can provide education from a central location without having to spend a lot in developing infrastructure on several islands. Although it is easier to achieve economies of scale through distance-mode delivery of education, this alternative poses additional barriers that need to be addressed prior to establishing a distance-mode education system. This chapter looks at these barriers and describes a distance education model that addresses most of these barriers.
Distributed Learning Sequences for the Future Generation
Authors: Rahman Hakikur
Published: May 2011

Distributed learning can be conceived as a means of providing learning opportunities beyond the boundaries of the traditional education system, through utilization of an available range of information technologies. Distributed learning sequences comprise e-mail, Internet, WWW, videoconferencing (virtual conferencing), groupware, newsgroups, simulations, e-groups, chatrooms, and interactive and instructional software utilities. A distributed learning platform facilitates a learner-centered educational paradigm rather than a tutor-centered system, and promotes interactive learning, where the learner can initiate the learning processes.
Enhancing Learning and Teaching Wireless LAN Design
Authors: Sarkar Nurul I.
Published: May 2011

Wireless communication and networking courses are becoming increasingly popular in universities, polytechnics, postsecondary colleges, and private training institutions around the globe. This is partly because of rapid developments in wireless communication-network technology and the high demand for wireless networking skills in the industry, both nationally and internationally. Unfortunately, it has often proven difficult to motivate students to learn about wireless local-area-network (WLAN) design because they find the subject dry and theoretical. A Web-based software tool (named WLAN-Designer) has been developed at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) that gives students an interactive, hands-on learning experience in WLAN design. The WLAN-Designer is suitable for classroom use in introductory-level courses in wireless networking. The effectiveness of the WLAN-Designer has been evaluated both formally by students (student-evaluation forms) and informally through discussion within the teaching team. This chapter describes the WLAN-Designer and its effectiveness as an aid to learning and teaching about WLAN design. The conclusions drawn are based on survey data collected from students. The feedback from students indicates that the development and implementation of the WLAN-Designer were successful. The chapter concludes by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the WLAN-Designer and its future development. The impact of the WLAN-Designer on students’ performance is also discussed.
Evaluation Strategy for Online Courses
Authors: Waddington Tad , Aaron Bruce , Sheldrick Rachael
Published: May 2011

Any program that includes online learning, or indeed any type of training, benefits from a strong evaluation strategy. Collecting evaluation metrics enables an organization to measure against and report on Kirkpatrick’s four levels of evaluation (participant reaction, learning gain, transfer of knowledge back to the job, and achievement of business results) (Kirkpatrick, 1994), as well as determine the return on investment (ROI) for the program. Any organization should be able to justify the existence of its training program, not only to ensure that the quality of the training is acceptable and maintained, but also to assure stakeholders that the money spent on such a program is defensible. This can mean the difference between having funds for the program increased or losing those needed resources.
The Future of University and Organizational Learning
Authors: MacDonald Colla J. , Stodel Emma J. , Farres Laura G.
Published: May 2011

In this article, we examine some of the issues surrounding the use of technology and how it may impact the future of university teaching and organizational training. We conclude that educators need to become proactive in the development and use of technology in the teaching process. To this end, and in an effort to address the concerns of learners and educators in the climate of online learning, we developed a framework - the Demand Driven Learning Model (DDLM) (MacDonald, Stodel, Farres, Breithaupt, & Gabriel, 2001). This framework is a timely response to rapid technological advances that may affect education and provides both support and guidance for educators in an effort to ensure the most serious challenges of e-learning are anticipated and met in practice. The development of a successful and comprehensive model provides a foundation for the design of future online courses and programs and will ultimately set the quality standard for e-learning.
High School Online Learning
Authors: Jesness Renee
Published: May 2011

The question is not whether high school students should be taking online courses. It is whether they should get out of high school without taking one. As students negotiate the 21st century, the skills that students employ in taking an online course are the ones they need to negotiate their productive working lives and 21st century citizenry.
Integrating Library Services into the Web-Based Learning Curriculum
Authors: Raisinghani Mahesh S. , Hohertz Cherie
Published: May 2011

According to the U.S. Department of Education (1998-1999), 78% of all four-year public institutions offer distance education courses. According to the same survey, 67% of all students at these institutions have enrolled in one of these courses. Are university libraries keeping up with the trend of distance education? What programs and policies are in place to ensure access to library services for Web-based learning students? Must services to distance learners be equal to services provided to traditional students?
Interaction in Web-Based Learning
Authors: Bodomo Adams
Published: May 2011

At the beginning of the 21st century, we are faced with an age of rapid technological development in information and communication. Issues of educational reform have never been more urgent than now. One of the major challenges is how to design our educational system, in general, and our methods of instruction, in particular, to produce graduates who are better prepared to take up jobs in a knowledge-based environment characterized by a pervasive use of information communications technology (ICT). ICTs, especially modern digital ones, include various types of computers; digital cameras; local-area networking; the Internet and the World Wide Web; CD-ROMs and DVDs; and applications such as word processors, spreadsheets, tutorials, simulations, e-mail, digital libraries, computer-mediated conferencing, videoconferencing, and virtual reality (Blurton, 1999). Four main features of these modern digital ICTs make them stand out as very useful educational tools. These are integration of multimedia, flexibility of use, connectivity, and interactivity (Blurton, 1999). The main focus
Introduction to Learning Management Systems
Authors: Chapman Diane
Published: May 2011

Formal university-based distance education has been around for over 100 years. For example, Cornell University established the Correspondence University in 1882, and Chautauqua College of Liberal Arts in New York was awarding degrees via correspondence courses in 1883 (Nasseh, 1997). Soon many other educational institutions, including the University of Chicago, Penn State, Yale University, and Johns Hopkins University were offering these non-traditional learning options for their students. Many institutions then moved to instructional telecommunications as the technology matured. With the entry of the personal computer into homes and workplaces in the 1980s, learning started to become more technology driven. But it was not until the 1990s, with the proliferation of the World Wide Web, that the concept of technology-enhanced education began to change drastically.
K-12 Online Learning Policy
Authors: Glick David B.
Published: May 2011

We cannot contort the character of the Internet to suit our familiar notions of regulation; do not dumb down the genius of the Net to match the limited vision of the regulator. (Michael Powell, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission) (Powell, 2004) The Internet and its applications have challenged policy makers in seemingly all areas of public life, and as one of the applications of the Internet, online learning is no exception. Online learning policy has tentacles throughout education policy, from union politics to technology infrastructure. Perhaps this complexity contributed to the lack of action that led the National Association of State Boards of Education to warn in its now oft-quoted statement:
The New "Space" of the University in the Digital Age
Authors: Raschke Carl A.
Published: May 2011

While critics of the new computer-mediated learning styles utter jeremiads about the impending apocalypse of higher education in general, technophiles argue that the changes are all salutary. In fact, some see no difference between faculty cultures and online and traditional schools (Johnstone, 2001). In the same vein, the proliferation of digital classrooms across the instructional spectrum and online learning have touched off a firestorm of controversy concerning the “effectiveness” of new computer-mediated pedagogies versus traditional face-to-face, or “presential,” instruction. Various studies have been conducted and the findings circulated (Smith, Smith, & Boone, 2000).
Organizing Faculty for Distance Learning
Authors: Marcinkiewicz Henryk , McLean Jennifer
Published: May 2011

The process of organizing faculty for distance learning shares characteristics with planning for classroom instruction. It is necessary to understand faculty and their characteristics as a group. This includes knowing and understanding their expectations, their general work conditions, the type and level of education that is typical, as well as the general professional personality and culture of the faculty body. Consider well the faculty-learners’ characteristics, and based on those select the most fitting assessment techniques, media, and methods.
Problems and Possibilities of Virtual Schools
Authors: Russell Glen
Published: May 2011

Virtual schools are an alternative to the “bricks-and-mortar” schools that have been synonymous with school education for hundreds of years. Traditionally, students have, for the most part, attended a school building for their education, where they have been in the physical presence of a teacher. There are, of course, exceptions to this understanding of education in which students have been involved in a form of distance education or distance learning by correspondence, or have used technologies such as radio and television. These developments have been particularly useful for students living in isolated communities or those unable to attend a conventional school. Virtual schools are also a form of distance education or virtual instruction. Typically, they use online computers, and students are able to complete their schoolwork when it is convenient for them, without having to meet with their teacher and other students in a school building.
Social Comments and Online Problem-Solving Groups
Authors: Molinari Deana L.
Published: May 2011

The study of face-to-face (F2F) group problem solving began during World War II. Scholars in business, psychology, education, and psychiatry have tried to understand group process (Bales & Strodtbeck, 1951; Gersick, 1988; Poole, 1983). Scholars attempted to identify those characteristics and processes that could be facilitated for optimal performance. Research findings influenced how groups operate today. As groups migrate to the Internet, a similar body of knowledge is needed.
SSM-Based IS Support for Online Learning
Authors: Vat Kam Hou
Published: May 2011

Imagine attending a class where the instructor, after giving an introduction of what the course is entailed, invites you to visit the Web-based course support environment (Vat, 2001). On entering the online environment, you are offered the privilege of creating your own personal space in the form of a customizable information system (IS), guarded by your personal self-assigned identifier and password. Within the personal electronic space, you are furnished with a whole set of tools to experience your learning in the subsequent course enactment (Vat, 2000). Perhaps, you may discover that this support environment is just one of the many environments available for each course offered. Indeed, each such environment is embedded inside the course organizational space, and your personal space is designed such that once inside your own electronic space, you can manage as many courses as you want. Your personal space is like your private workspace, in which you have to perform, keep track of and manage your learning activities. More excitingly, you are given the opportunity to participate in teamwork in the course you are enrolled. This is demonstrated by the provision of possible group spaces associated with the course. Each group space is often called the course collaborative space. Consequently, in your personal space, you can have access to many course organizational spaces, and the respective collaborative spaces installed for such courses (Vat, 2004). Let us further assume that group-based project work is considered as an essential component of the course you are taking. And your instructor has just uploaded the latest information on problem-based learning (PBL) to the course organizational space for your first research assignment. Thereby, it should be worthwhile to begin exploring the context behind the IS support (Vat, 2002a, 2002b), which aims to develop in the learners their abilities to learn, to engage in collaboration, to appreciate multiple perspectives, to evaluate and to actively use and construct knowledge in such an environment.
Teaching Style in the Online Classroom
Authors: Campbell Debra , Berge Zane
Published: May 2011

As with the long line of learning technologies that preceded it, the integration of online classrooms has progressed beyond the experimental stage and entered the mainstream at many colleges and universities. Today, more than three-fourths (76.6%) of campuses offer online course registration, compared to 70.9% in 2002, half in 2001, and a fifth (20.9%) in 1998 (Campus Computing Project Survey, 2003). It should be noted that the larger the institution, the greater the percentage offering distance education courses, with 87% of institutions with over 10,000 students offered distance education in 1997-1998 (U.S. Department of Education, 1999). In addition to classes offered entirely online, it is projected that 50% of all college courses will be hybrids (i.e., include both online and classroom elements) within a decade (Arnone, 2002). Many proponents of online learning see hybrid or blended learning as a way to correct mistakes of the past and to create a new and better form of active learning (Gold, 2001; McDonald & Postle, 1999).
Technology Integrated Activities in the Elementary Curriculum
Authors: Judd Diane L.
Published: May 2011

This chapter presents four technology-integrated activities for use in elementary curriculum. These educational activities were designed to be easily duplicated by teachers and to encourage students to be creative and use problem-solving skills. Most of the technology-integrated activities were developed using the Internet and Microsoft programs that are commonly available, such as Microsoft Word (2001), Excel (2001) and Paint (2001).
Universal Design for Learning
Authors: Smith Frances G. , LeConte Pamela
Published: May 2011

Buckminster Fuller, a multi-talented innovator of the 20th century, contributed to society as a scientist, engineer, and inventor (left hemisphere/brain dominance), and as a philosopher, psychologist, and essayist (right hemisphere/brain dominance). The multi-faceted dimension that defined Fuller (and other such inventors and leaders) contributed greatly to his successes. Yet, in traditional academic environments, indeed in current ones (which are defined by rigorous standards, high-stakes assessments, and accountability for all), these preeminent leaders of innovation would not have been recognized for their talents or contributions—during their school years. Einstein, who was labeled a failure by his grade school math teachers, proceeded to change how we view and operate in our world—despite his limitations. The educational system did not know how to accommodate his way of learning; yet, he excelled in spite of the failures of public education. In today’s educational climate, many potential Fullers and Einsteins may be experiencing the same failures of our system. This is often true of students who learn differently from how they are taught, including students with disabilities (Smith, 2001).
Communities of Learners in Paleography and ICT
Authors: Cartelli Antonio
Published: May 2011

Mankind studied and analyzed knowledge and learning since its first history and two main ways of thinking imposed very early: idealism, interpreting reality as the construction of human mind, and empiricism, looking at knowledge as the effect of the human-reality interaction. Recently three ways of interpreting thinking and knowledge intervened in changing the above perspective: relativism (it is impossible to objectively, universally, and absolutely know), critical theory (knowledge is mediated by social, political, cultural, economical, ethnical, and gender agents), and constructivism (knowledge is built by individuals and groups, and it is socially and experientially founded). Among the above theories, constructivism played a great role in interpreting both individual and social learning and had a great influence on hypotheses explaining knowledge construction and evolution in communities, including communities of practice. The bases for today’s constructivist theories can be found in many studies. Dewey (1949), for example, was the first scientist looking at the teaching-learning process in a pragmatic way. The inquiry was for Dewey the essential element of the subject-reality interaction; the experimental method had to guide teachers’ work and students’ learning, and at the basis of the knowledge process, there had to be the theory of research. Individuals’ knowledge was continuously developing from common sense (traditions, popular misconceptions, etc.) to scientific knowledge. Main consequences of Dewey’s educational project were activism with school-laboratories and active schools. Dewey’s ideas were collected and amplified by Kilpatrick, who introduced the project as a general method of learning (i.e., problem-finding had to be used together with problem-solving in everyday teaching). The hypotheses of Dewey and Kilpatrick were born in North America, but soon spread in Europe, where they found a rich soil and differentiated in at least two threads. Binet, Decroly, and Claparède privileged the psychological aspects of activism; on the contrary, Freinet and Freinet favored its social aspects (Varisco, 2002). “Modern School” was the name that Freinet and Freinet gave to their educational project; they hypothesized the creation of a cooperative school within which the social techniques and practices—like typography, correspondence, and cooperative catalogues—had a special relevance (their experiences had counterparts in many countries, and the case of don Milani in Italy is just an example for them).
Creating Value wit Regional Communities of SMEs
Authors: Mason Cecily , Castleman Tanya , Parker Craig
Published: May 2011

This article provides a conceptual argument that the knowledge management (KM) approach of communities of practice (CoPs), and their virtual equivalents (VCoPs), can create value for clusters of regional small and medium enterprises (SMEs). The article firstly shows that value creation in regional clusters occurs by encouraging collective learning and reciprocal knowledge exchange. The article then shows that CoPs, and VCoPs in particular, have been the most successful value creation mechanism in large organisations. We argue that VCoPs hold considerable potential for value creation in regional clusters of SMEs by promoting innovation, more effective knowledge sharing, and recognising the value of VCoPs as capital. The strategic integration of SMEs in regional clusters is analogous to large organisations’ global operations. In this environment VCoPs combine industry-specific knowledge with firm specific knowledge and emerge as a new source of social capital.
Information Security as a Community of Practice
Authors: Drake Paul
Published: May 2011

This entry concerns a live application in which the principles of communities of practice have been used to supplement the delivery of a critical business process. The company concerned is a multinational pharmaceutical organization with annual sales in the order of £20bn and a workforce of 100,000 employees worldwide. One of the more critical IT services provided is that which defends the organisation’s computer systems against attack by malicious software (commonly called computer viruses). This service draws significant direct and indirect resources to provide an acceptable level of defence for the organization. The service manages the provision of this defence from the gathering of intelligence concerning latest threats through deployment of protective measures to reporting of metrics showing service performance and adequacy of defences.
IT Perspective on Supporting Communities of Practice
Authors: Dotsika Fefie
Published: May 2011

An increasing number of organisations have come to recognise the fact that encouraging and maintaining communities of professionals with common interests, aims, and objectives can reduce costs and increase profits. From enhancing customer responsiveness to increasing innovation and preventing reinvention, communities of practice (CoPs) are seen as an important vehicle to the improvement of organisational performance. Even as the role of CoPs has been gaining momentum, the information technology (IT) community has become aware of the evolving opportunities and is consequently involved in attempting to provide the relevant software tools. This article investigates the requirements for the efficient IT support of CoPs, explores the advantages and pitfalls of supporting ‘computerised’ versions of these communities, reviews a number of existing software tools, and looks into emerging technologies considering their role and appropriateness.
Knowledge Communities, Communities of Practice and Knowledge Networks
Authors: Müller-Prothmann Tobias
Published: May 2011

In the last few years, the social perspective has emerged as the dominant paradigm in information and knowledge management studies. First-generation knowledge management, characterised by a technical and technological process view, has given way to new approaches that examine social dimensions of knowledge creation, transfer, and management. This shift of focus takes into account the perspective that the majority of individual knowledge transfer does not follow formal hierarchies or processes, but is instead driven by personal and informal communications. Such a social constructionist view of knowledge exchange considers not only single individuals, but also social aggregates and their structural patterns. Even so, despite a growing literature on the socially derived related concepts of knowledge communities (see, e.g., Botkin, 1999; Erickson & Kellog, 1999; 2001; Lesser, Slusher & Fontaine, 2000; Schmidt, 2000), communities of practice (see, e.g., Brown & Duguid, 1991; Lesser, 2001; Wenger, 1999), and knowledge networks (see, e.g., Collinson & Gregson, 2003; Liyanage, Greenfied & Don, 1999; Nohria & Eccles, 1992; Powell, 1998; Seufert, von Krogh & Bach, 1999), there is confusion over their conceptual and applied distinctiveness. Could it be, for example, that they are just different labels for the same phenomenon? Or are there justifiable and valid differences that demand a more careful and reflective use of terminology? This article provides basic steps to the exploration of similarities and differences between the concepts of knowledge communities, communities of practice, and knowledge networks.
Strategic Objectives of CoPs and Organizational Learning
Authors: Tremblay Diane-Gabrielle
Published: May 2011

There is more and more interest in different forms of knowledge creation and management, and the conditions necessary to succeed in such initiatives from the point of view of individuals and organizations. A great deal of this interest stems from the fact that organizations expect substantial gains from knowledge. Knowledge management is seen in many organizations as a source of potential competitiveness and innovation. The concept of communities of practice stems from this interest, but is viewed as a specific form of knowledge development, in principle more centred on the individuals and their exchanges than on “management” by the firm, although the firm does seem to have a role to play in fostering such initiatives. Thus, the use of communities of practice has emerged as a way to develop collective skills and organizational learning, in order to foster innovation and success for the organization. Organizational learning is part of a broader concern related to the development of collective skills. We know that a large proportion of effective relations within organizations are informal, a characteristic that relates to the concerns of the communities of practice, which are usually based on informal relations. Organizational learning goes beyond individual learning, which can lead to relatively permanent changes in the individual’s behavior, because it results in the development of a knowledge base which could translate into a more significant change of another kind within the organization. The knowledge is disseminated throughout the organization, is transmissible between members, is subject to consensus, and is integrated into the work processes and the structures of the organization. From this perspective, organizational learning is closely linked with “meaningful” organizational processes, which are basically routines used by decision makers to detect certain problems, define priorities, find solutions, and attempt to improve performance. In this article, we will present research results on some strategic objectives of CoPs and the attainment of these objectives, from the viewpoint of organizational learning.
Virtual Role-Playing Communities, "Wold" and World
Authors: Medeni Tunç , Medeni Tolga I.
Published: May 2011

The increasing popularity of online role-playing games, and the virtual communities they create, are attracting much attention from business and academics. These virtual communities and environments provide invaluable opportunities for researchers to investigate various social and psychological aspects and issues. In this short article, we would like to share our views on some of these issues and opportunities in establishing a community identity with various virtual and real aspects, and transferring knowledge between these two aspects.
Application of Data Mining to Recommender Systems
Authors: Schafer J. Ben
Published: May 2011

In a world where the number of choices can be overwhelming, recommender systems help users find and evaluate items of interest. They connect users with items to “consume” (purchase, view, listen to, etc.) by associating the content of recommended items or the opinions of other individuals with the consuming user’s actions or opinions. Such systems have become powerful tools in domains from electronic commerce to digital libraries and knowledge management. For example, a consumer of just about any major online retailer who expresses an interest in an item – either through viewing a product description or by placing the item in his “shopping cart” – will likely receive recommendations for additional products. These products can be recommended based on the top overall sellers on a site, on the demographics of the consumer, or on an analysis of the past buying behavior of the consumer as a prediction for future buying behavior. This paper will address the technology used to generate recommendations, focusing on the application of data mining techniques.
Automatic Muscial Instrument Sound Classification
Authors: Wieczorkowska Alicja A.
Published: May 2011

The aim of musical instrument sound classification is to process information from audio files by a classificatory system and accurately identify musical instruments playing the processed sounds. This operation and its results are called automatic classification of musical instrument sounds.
Bayesian Networks
Authors: Bashir Ahmad , Khan Latifur , Awad Mamoun
Published: May 2011

A Bayesian network is a graphical model that finds probabilistic relationships among variables of a system. The basic components of a Bayesian network include a set of nodes, each representing a unique variable in the system, their inter-relations, as indicated graphically by edges, and associated probability values. By using these probabilities, termed conditional probabilities, and their interrelations, we can reason and calculate unknown probabilities. Furthermore, Bayesian networks have distinct advantages compared to other methods, such as neural networks, decision trees, and rule bases, which we shall discuss in this paper.
Building Empirical-Based Knowledge for Design Recovery
Authors: Tan Hee Beng Kuan , Zhao Yuan
Published: May 2011

Although the use of statistically probable properties is very common in the area of medicine, it is not so in software engineering. The use of such properties may open a new avenue for the automated recovery of designs from source codes. In fact, the recovery of designs can also be called program mining, which in turn can be viewed as an extension of data mining to the mining in program source codes.
Categorization Process and Data Mining
Authors: Amoretti Maria Suzana Marc
Published: May 2011

For some time, the fields of computer science and cognition have diverged. Researchers in these two areas know ever less about each other’s work, and their important discoveries have had diminishing influence on each other. In many universities, researchers in these two areas are in different laboratories and programs, and sometimes in different buildings. One might conclude from this lack of contact that computer science and semiotics functions, such as perception, language, memory, representation, and categorization, reflect our independent systems. But for the last several decades, the divergence between cognition and computer science tends to disappear. These areas need to be studied together, and the cognitive science approach can afford this interdisciplinary view.
Comprehensibility of Data Mining Algorithms
Authors: Zhou Zhi-Hua
Published: May 2011

Data mining attempts to identify valid, novel, potentially useful, and ultimately understandable patterns from huge volume of data. The mined patterns must be ultimately understandable because the purpose of data mining is to aid decision-making. If the decision-makers cannot understand what does a mined pattern mean, then the pattern cannot be used well. Since most decision-makers are not data mining experts, ideally, the patterns should be in a style comprehensible to common people. So, comprehensibility of data mining algorithms, that is, the ability of a data mining algorithm to produce patterns understandable to human beings, is an important factor.
Computation of OLAP Cubes
Authors: Abdulghani Amin A.
Published: May 2011

The focus of Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) is to provide a platform for analyzing data (e.g., sales data) with multiple dimensions (e.g., product, location, time) and multiple measures (e.g., total sales or total cost). OLAP operations then allow viewing of this data from a number of perspectives. For analysis, the object or data structure of primary interest in OLAP is a cube.
Concept Drift
Authors: Maloof Marcus A.
Published: May 2011

Traditional approaches to data mining are based on an assumption that the process that generated or is generating a data stream is static. Although this assumption holds for many applications, it does not hold for many others. Consider systems that build models for identifying important e-mail. Through interaction with and feedback from a user, such a system might determine that particular e-mail addresses and certain words of the subject are useful for predicting the importance of e-mail. However, when the user or the persons sending e-mail start other projects or take on additional responsibilities, what constitutes important e-mail will change. That is, the concept of important e-mail will change or drift. Such a system must be able to adapt its model or concept description in response to this change. Coping with or tracking concept drift is important for other applications, such as market-basket analysis, intrusion detection, and intelligent user interfaces, to name a few.
Data Reduction and Compression in Database Systems
Authors: Thomasian Alexander
Published: May 2011

Data compression is storing data such that it requires less space than usual. Data compression has been effectively used in storing data in a compressed form on magnetic tapes, disks, and even main memory. In many cases, updated data cannot be stored in place when it is not compressible to the same or smaller size. Compression also reduces the bandwidth requirements in transmitting (program) code, data, text, images, speech, audio, and video. The transmission may be from main memory to the CPU and its caches, from tape and disk into main memory, or over local, metropolitan, and wide area networks. When data compression is used, transmission time improves or, conversely, the required transmission bandwidth is reduced. Two excellent texts on this topic are Sayood (2002) and Witten, Bell, and Moffat (1999).
Data Warehousing and Mining in Supply Chains
Authors: Mathieu Richard , Levary Reuven R.
Published: May 2011

Every finished product has gone through a series of transformations. The process begins when manufacturers purchase the raw materials that will be transformed into the components of the product. The parts are then supplied to a manufacturer, who assembles them into the finished product and ships the completed item to the consumer. The transformation process includes numerous activities (Levary, 2000).
Drawing Representative Samples from Large Databases
Authors: Hou Wen-Chi , Guo Hong , Yan Feng , Zhu Qiang
Published: May 2011

Sampling has been used in areas like selectivity estimation (Hou & Ozsoyoglu, 1991; Haas & Swami, 1992, Jermaine, 2003; Lipton, Naughton & Schnerder, 1990; Wu, Agrawal, & Abbadi, 2001), OLAP (Acharya, Gibbons, & Poosala, 2000), clustering (Agrawal, Gehrke, Gunopulos, & Raghavan, 1998; Palmer & Faloutsos, 2000), and spatial data mining (Xu, Ester, Kriegel, & Sander, 1998). Due to its importance, sampling has been incorporated into modern database systems.
Heterogeneous Gene Data for Classifying Tumors
Authors: Fung Benny Yiu-ming , Ng Vincent To-yee
Published: May 2011

When classifying tumors using gene expression data, mining tasks commonly make use of only a single data set. However, classification models based on patterns extracted from a single data set are often not indicative of an entire population and heterogeneous samples subsequently applied to these models may not fit, leading to performance degradation. In short, it is not possible to guarantee that mining results based on a single gene expression data set will be reliable or robust (Miller et al., 2002). This problem can be addressed using classification algorithms capable of handling multiple, heterogeneous gene expression data sets. Apart from improving mining performance, the use of such algorithms would make mining results less sensitive to the variations of different microarray platforms and to experimental conditions embedded in heterogeneous gene expression data sets.
Intelligent Data Analysis
Authors: Liu Xiaohui
Published: May 2011

Intelligent Data Analysis (IDA) is an interdisciplinary study concerned with the effective analysis of data. IDA draws the techniques from diverse fields, including artificial intelligence, databases, high-performance computing, pattern recognition, and statistics. These fields often complement each other (e.g., many statistical methods, particularly those for large data sets, rely on computation, but brute computing power is no substitute for statistical knowledge) (Berthold & Hand 2003; Liu, 1999).
Microarray Data Mining
Authors: Fu Li M.
Published: May 2011

Based on the concept of simultaneously studying the expression of a large number of genes, a DNA microarray is a chip on which numerous probes are placed for hybridization with a tissue sample. Biological complexity encoded by a deluge of microarray data is being translated into all sorts of computational, statistical, or mathematical problems bearing on biological issues ranging from genetic control to signal transduction to metabolism. Microarray data mining is aimed to identify biologically significant genes and find patterns that reveal molecular network dynamics for reconstruction of genetic regulatory networks and pertinent metabolic pathways.
Mining Frequent Patterns Via Pattern Decomposition
Authors: Zou Qinghua , Chu Wesley
Published: May 2011

Pattern decomposition is a data-mining technology that uses known frequent or infrequent patterns to decompose a long itemset into many short ones. It finds frequent patterns in a dataset in a bottom-up fashion and reduces the size of the dataset in each step. The algorithm avoids the process of candidate set generation and decreases the time for counting supports due to the reduced dataset.
Mining Quantitative and Fuzzy Association Rules
Authors: Shen Hong , Horiguchi Susumu
Published: May 2011

The problem of mining association rules from databases was introduced by Agrawal, Imielinski, & Swami (1993). In this problem, we give a set of items and a large collection of transactions, which are subsets (baskets) of these items. The task is to find relationships between the occurrences of various items within those baskets. Mining association rules has been a central task of data mining, which is a recent research focus in database systems and machine learning and shows interesting applications in various fields, including information management, query processing, and process control.
Pattern Synthesis for Large-Scale Pattern Recognition
Authors: Viswanath P. , Murty M. Narasimha , Bhatnagar Shalabh
Published: May 2011

Two major problems in applying any pattern recognition technique for large and high-dimensional data are (a) high computational requirements and (b) curse of dimensionality (Duda, Hart, & Stork, 2000). Algorithmic improvements and approximate methods can solve the first problem, whereas feature selection (Guyon & Elisseeff, 2003), feature extraction (Terabe, Washio, Motoda, Katai, & Sawaragi, 2002), and bootstrapping techniques (Efron, 1979; Hamamoto, Uchimura, & Tomita, 1997) can tackle the second problem. We propose a novel and unified solution for these problems by deriving a compact and generalized abstraction of the data. By this term, we mean a compact representation of the given patterns from which one can retrieve not only the original patterns but also some artificial patterns. The compactness of the abstraction reduces the computational requirements, and its generalization reduces the curse of dimensionality effect. Pattern synthesis techniques accompanied with compact representations attempt to derive compact and generalized abstractions of the data. These techniques are applied with nearest neighbor classifier (NNC), which is a popular nonparametric classifier used in many fields, including data mining, since its conception in the early 1950s (Dasarathy, 2002).