bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Economic Models for Distance Learning
Authors: Berg Gary A.
Published: May 2011

An understanding of the economic models for the use of computer-based learning is important for educators worldwide. Particularly in America, there seems to be a great deal of confusion regarding the potential profitability of distance learning in higher education today (Berg, 2002). This entry looks at distance learning economic models as primarily seen in America and Great Britain.
Educational Technology and Learning Theory
Authors: Berg Gary A.
Published: May 2011

This overview briefly reviews the history of educational technology and surveys relevant learning theory. In order to understand fully computer-based learning in the United States, one needs to have a more general sense of the history of educational technology (Berg, 2003). Common learning theories that have been applied to computer environments also need close examination because they provide the rationale for specific approaches and learning strategies. In this review, one sees the important influence behavioral and constructivist theoretical models have had on educational-software design in America. Finally, cooperative learning and learning-styles theories are outlined because of their relevance to specific computer-based teaching methods.
Effects of Computer-Mediated Communication
Authors: Gold Stuart S.
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this study was to answer the question: Is the level of achievement of working adult students in an online class directly related to the method of compute-mediated communication used by faculty? The study examined the relationship between the methods of computer-mediated communication utilized, the independent variable; and student outcomes, the dependent variable, among working adult students in online courses. Through an examination of course communication records and student final exam grades, the researcher developed course-based measures of the methods of computer-mediated communication and student outcomes. These measures were used to conduct statistically appropriate tests to determine if there was a statistically significant difference in the student final exam scores between classes that used only basic methods of computer-mediated communication as opposed to courses that employed both basic and advanced methods.
E-Learning and M-Learning Problems
Authors: Salter Graeme
Published: May 2011

The use of online teaching in education is expanding at a rapid rate. Some may be tempted to view technology as an educational panacea (Herrington & Herrington, 1998). However, the existence of any technology does not guarantee that good educational material will be provided or that effective learning will happen (Boddy, 1997). Online teaching has the “potential to be just as inflexible and inappropriate as any other form of poor instruction” (Bennett, Priest & Macpherson, 1999, p. 208). Problems associated with online learning are often overlooked or not fully investigated (Hara & Kling, 1999). It is important not to be blinded by technology. We need to recognize and study these problems to obtain a broader picture of the impact of technology in teaching. This author is an early and enthusiastic adopter of technology in teaching. However, he has learned through experience and research that it is important to identify problems, both real and perceived, in order to develop strategies to overcome them. For example, innovators are prepared to be relatively understanding of technical problems, but the bulk of users are not likely to be as forgiving (Freeman, 1997).
E-Learning as Organizational Strategy
Authors: Du Mont Rosemary
Published: May 2011

The global knowledge-driven economy is characterized by both structural and personnel changes that are driving new models of teaching and learning. Today’s workforce has to learn and process more information in a shorter amount of time. New products and services are emerging with accelerating speed. As production cycles and life spans of products continue to shorten, skills quickly become obsolete, leading to the need for almost constant re-training. Managers feel the urgency to have new knowledge delivered to workers rapidly and efficiently so that skill levels can be maintained. Just-in-time training is becoming a critical element of organizational success. Learning is becoming a continual process rather than a distinct event (Urden & Weggen, 2000).
E-Learning in the Network Marketing Industry
Authors: Wright David
Published: May 2011

The network marketing industry with its need to train home-based workers is in a unique position to benefit from e-learning. The large numbers of people involved with this industry creates a significant demand from the viewpoint of creators of e-learning content and the providers of e-learning software and services. This article identifies the fit of e-learning within the network marketing industry and the consequent benefits to network marketers and to e-learning developers. It is an updated version of an earlier article, Hugli and Wright (2000).
E-Moderating
Authors: Salmon Gilly
Published: May 2011

In this article, the term “e-moderating” is used to capture the wide variety of roles and skills that the online teacher, lecturer, or trainer needs to acquire (Salmon, 2004). Online human supporters have a wider range of expertise compared to working with face-to-face learning groups. The role of the lecturer or teacher in all educational contexts needs to change to include e-moderating to realize the development and potential of new online environments, and to create e-learning rather than e-publishing of materials.
Encouraging Participation in Voluntary, Online Staff Development
Authors: Salter Graeme
Published: May 2011

In order to determine what factors might lead to increased participation and effectiveness in voluntary online staff development, a case study was conducted. The results revealed a problem known as “churn.” That is, the majority of users went to the site only once or twice and then only for a short amount of time. The major barrier cited by staff was lack of time. This article examines approaches to overcomes involved for both users and developers of online learning activities.
Environments for Mobile Learning
Authors: Chao Han-Chieh , Wu Tin-Yu , Kao Michelle T.C.
Published: May 2011

As we enter the electronic age, technologies enabling e-learning have increased flexibility of learning location. Wireless communication technologies further increase the options for learning location (Johnson & Maltz, 1996; Wu, Huang & Chao, 2004). Advances in wireless communication technologies have recently provided the opportunity for educators to create new educational models. With the aid of wireless communication technology, educational practice can be embedded into mobile life without wired-based communication. With the trend of the educational media becoming more mobilized, portable and individualized, the learning form is being modified spectacularly.
Factors Affecting the Adoption of Educational Technology
Authors: Salter Graeme
Published: May 2011

There are many in education who appear to think that it is sufficient to purchase and install technology for it to be successfully used (Boddy, 1997). Another common belief is that teachers will “automatically seek to learn about new technology and instructional methods” (Dooley, 1999, p. 38). However, while the investment in technology is there, surveys have consistently found that very few teachers integrate technology into either the K-12 (Newhouse, 1999) or the university classroom (Spotts, 1999). One research study found that even when the technology is readily available and staff accept the functionality of it, they “might not anticipate their personal use of it” (Mitra, Hazen, LaFrance, & Rogan, 1999).
Faculty Support Systems
Authors: Baker Jason D. , Schihl Robert J.
Published: May 2011

One factor that has led institutions to develop online learning programs is the perception that they have lower production costs than campus-based courses, particularly as the numbers of students increase. Hülsmann (2004) noted that this view was a significant tenet in the argument supporting distance learning in developing nations. Specifically, he described the common belief that “distance education is able to deal with large numbers more cost-effectively than traditional education, and has proved to do so also in developing countries” (Introduction section, paragraph 3).
The Future of Teaching and Learning Technologies
Authors: Strauss Howard
Published: May 2011

The evolution of a few critical technologies has the potential to change the way teaching and learning is done is the near future. Among those technologies are biometrics, global positioning systems and real mobile computing. Previously unthinkable paradigms for education are now—or soon will be—affordable, as Moore’s Law slashes the cost of intelligent devices. This chapter presents some challenging ideas about how learning might be done in the future and what the future of colleges, classes and courses —if they still exist —might be.
Hypermedia Modules for Distance Education
Authors: Sala Nicoletta
Published: May 2011

The rapid development of digital, networked multimedia technology such as the Internet, e-mail and computer-based and video conferencing can open new educational opportunities. This article describes the use of hypermedia modules in distance learning. This educational experience has been developed by the Department of Electronics (Dipartimento di Elettronica) of the Politecnico of Torino (Italy) in the field of computer-based training in electronic instrumentation and measurements, where the author was a supervisor for the educational process. This project is a part of an Italian study of distance education named “Consorzio Nettuno” that involves different undergraduate courses (Electronic Engineering, Information Technology, and Economic Science). Several modules have been developed using multimedia technologies to assist the students to acquire the fundamentals of the basic electronic instrumentation. A client-server system has been designed in order to allow the students to operate in a remote laboratory for experimental training. The courseware includes lessons, exercises, and training on virtual instruments that emulate actual instruments. The students can also carry out several real laboratory experiments without actually being in the laboratory by using a client-server structure based on the Internet.
Inadequate Infrastructure and the Infusion of Technology into K-12 Education
Authors: Asher Gregg
Published: May 2011

Although the lack of adequate funding is probably the most significant barrier to the effective infusion of technology (since bundles of money could eliminate almost all other barriers), I will focus on “inadequate infrastructures” as the most impregnable obstacle in rural schools. According to the dictionary, an infrastructure is “an underlying base or foundation” (www.dictionary.com). As I see it, following this definition, a school’s infrastructure would include teachers, the physical requirements needed to support a robust network, and the community of recipients or users.
Innovation and Technology for 21st Century Education
Authors: Turoff Murray , Howard Caroline , Discenza Richard
Published: May 2011

What is happening to higher education? There is a search for increasing the effectiveness of learning and expanding educational opportunities by using a combination of information technology and distance education. Teaching with technology takes time. There is the challenge of choosing equipment, redesigning courses, learning software, and building new protocols for projects, quizzes, course administration, feedback routines, lectures, and course administration. Today, these efforts must be somehow carried out in addition to continuing to teach and update current courses via the traditional means. The challenge of each innovation is that it must be carefully measured against the successes of the traditional approaches. In addition, when dealing with technology, methods and techniques mastered last year or even last semester are often upstaged by new products that involve new time-consuming “re-learning” needs. Technology makes it easier for instructors to respond to students individually, even between classes and after the course is over. It also gives access to more course material, more media, more simulations, and more powerful indexing and search protocols. This article will review common tools and technologies used in distance education and demonstrate why they can facilitate learning and expand the educational opportunities for both distance and traditional students.
Knowledge Management as the Future of E-Learning
Authors: Pedreira Nieves , Dorado Julián , Rabuñal Juan , Pazos Alejandro
Published: May 2011

Since technological changes are touching many aspects of today’s society, education cannot stay behind; in a world where information is the key to progress, the education of its citizens should not be based on expositive means alone (Adell, 1997). The inevitable increase in complexity and quantity of the information that is available and necessary has led to a need for continuous learning. Information handling requires a profound transformation of learning and teaching methods: from a model in which the teacher is the monopolizing agent and the authorized representative of knowledge, we must move towards a model that offers the student room for individual exploration and self-learning. The student needs to build relations, discover the process from within, and feel stimulated to draw his own roadmap (Piaget, 1999). This way, he will not only learn, but learn to extract the relevant information, that is to say, he will “learn to learn” in actual society.
Learning-by-Doing Strategy Using ITC
Authors: Sala Nicoletta
Published: May 2011

The use of the information and communication technologies (ICT) in the learning process can help the constructivist theory because it is possible to build a “learning by doing” environment that combines the constructivist approach and also cooperative learning (CL). Students work together to reach an educational goal and the computers can play a central role in the learning environment (Kozma, 1991). The traditional learning theories are based on a dualism between the learner and the known; knowledge exists independently of the learner, and understanding is coming to know that which already exists. Knowledge is seen as contextualised so that it can be learned, tested, and applied more or less independently of particular contexts. Teaching is a matter of transmitting this knowledge, learning and receiving it accurately, storing it, and using it appropriately. The use of information and communication technologies to support engaged learning goes hand in hand with the learning-by-doing strategy. This is an approach in learning where it is possible to gain the ability to navigate a challenge or problem or even one’s life by implementing the learner’s own powerful natural process of exploration and discovery. John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher and psychologist that influenced education in the United States, focused his philosophy of education, instrumentalism (also called pragmatism), on learning by doing rather than rote learning and dogmatic instruction, the current practice of his day. Learning by doing also involves the philosophy of constructivism (Crotty, 1995; Sherry, 1998).
Learning Communities in Virtual Environments
Authors: Pöysä Johanna , Lowyck Joost
Published: May 2011

Recent research on collaborative learning and computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) holds an integrated and holistic perspective on learning, instruction and educational technology. Within this approach, learning activities and technological tools are seen as a merged unit, tailored to a particular context and for a particular group of participants (Crook, 2000). In line, current trends in higher education (e.g., Virtual University) set demands on developing novel educational practices that support collaborative learning in virtual environments (Häkkinen & Järvelä, in press). In this chapter, it is argued that in higher education virtual learning communities could be welcomed as a timely and innovative educational practice, with all nested complexity of relationships between individuals and collective needs, various motivations and personalized objectives (Lowyck & Pöysä, 2001; Lowyck, Pöysä, & Van Merriënboer, 2003).
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 University, Yale University, and John Hopkins University, were offering these nontraditional 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.
The Most Dramatic Changes in Education Since Socrates
Authors: Schmieder Allen
Published: May 2011

This is an urgently needed topic. It is the author’s conviction that, currently, there are no 21st century schools and, even worse, there is no substantive and widely held vision about what such schools should look like, and what the role and competencies of teachers in those schools should be. So, the tendency of most educators writing about needed 21st century teaching competencies will be to pretty much “rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.” Most will be driven by another equally repugnant cliché, “Technology is only a tool,” and they will try to determine how this misunderstood tool can best enhance out-of-date and fast-aging approaches to K-12 curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This is not to say that the wonderful array of traditional teaching competencies and skills that have enabled teachers to have generally done such an impressive job of teaching our children over the last century will cease to be important. The ability of teachers to understand and connect with students; to impart considerable knowledge and wisdom about their subject; to provide them with good adult role models; to cultivate their motivation for learning; to encourage their sensitivity toward, and appreciation of, individual and cultural differences; to prepare them for post-secondary education and/or the world of work; and even, to sometimes be “the sage on the stage,” will remain critical competencies as long as there is a teaching profession. But just as technology has dramatically transformed society, the way we work, the way we live, even the way we think about things, schools must be dramatically transformed in the way they work, in the way content is processed, and maybe most importantly, in the way teachers teach and students learn.
The Open University, United Kingdom
Authors: Berg Gary A.
Published: May 2011

The British Open University has been a leader in nontraditional higher education for years and has influenced the development of distance learning programs in many countries including America. The origins of the open university movement generally and the British Open University specifically can be traced to the University of London. The University of London began conducting examinations and the offering of degrees to external students in 1836. This paved the way for the growth of private correspondence colleges that prepared students for the University of London’s examinations and enabled them to study independently for a degree without enrolling in the university. Described in an internal history document as the “world’s first successful distance teaching university” (British Open University, 2004, p. 1), its origin can be traced to a university of the air proposal that gained support in the early 1960s. By the 1970s the university was up and running, planning on 25,000 students per year. At the end of the 1970s, the British Open University had over 70,000 students, and currently has more than 180,000 students. The stated purpose of the university was to break the so-called link between excellence and exclusivity.
Shareable Learning Objects
Authors: Stavredes Tina
Published: May 2011

As we look to the future, we are poised at the edge of an ever-expanding universe of opportunities to learn. The Internet has opened the door for access to a vast amount of knowledge available to different users in different locations at the same time. The educational landscape is also changing to expand opportunities to learn at any time and any place through distance education. Additionally, Internet access is opening doors for a new population of learners who previously could not continue their education due to location, work, and time constraints. However, without new instructional design processes and standards, the time and effort it takes to utilize disparate resources for learning inhibits the ability to utilize the resources available.
Speech/Text Alignment in Web-Based Language Learning
Authors: Lee Sheng-Wei , Lin Hao-Tung , Chen Herng-Yow
Published: May 2011

After the extensive development of network technology and explosive progress of computing, it is now possible that instructors and students need not meet at the same place to begin the classroom experience. In recent years, there have been many efforts devoted to developing effective online learning systems, including tele-teaching with automated support and learning with presentation of vivid classroom experiences. As to the automated support for teaching, the primary issues lie in a robust, ubiquitous computing application to support capturing everything including teaching behaviors, multimedia authoring, and content generation. In practice, the ability to record every thing or event such as a mouse movement, clicking, and typing during a tele-presentation or a class is the key factor to reconstructing vivid classroom experiences. Most of the previous studies focused on the issues such as explicitly recording the synchronized replay (Abowd, 1999; Muller & Ottmann, 2000), but few efforts looked at the special properties of speech and pre-prepared transcript. The explicitly recorded media streams can be audio, video, slides, and whiteboard, and all streams have the property of time dependency. Time dependency is that each stream should be synchronized with a global clock when played back. However, with regard to language lectures or broadcasting news program, there are temporal relations that have existed between speech and text and need not be recorded explicitly. Such an existing but hidden relationship is regarded as an implicit relation; the relation recorded explicitly by automated supporting tool is an explicit relation. Explicit relations mean that the correlations between different media are pre-orchestrated as a scheduled scenario or could easily be captured by a recording tool. The Synchronized Multimedia Integrated Language (SMIL) enables simple authoring of interactive audiovisual presentations (W3C, 2004) and an SMIL-based document defines the playback scenario, including temporal, spatial, and content information to present multiple media. In contrast, implicit correlations are usually hidden and therefore could not easily be determined by a simple detecting process, so further computational analyses are needed to discover them. Suppose that the implicit relation between content and speech can be analyzed and that the structure of the recorded speech is also extracted. We can then design a friendly interface for such multimedia document navigation that is much more convenient than the traditional VCR-like navigation mechanism. The speech/text alignment is the tool that analyzes the implicit relation of time between speech and text content. The proposed Web-based Synchronized Multimedia Lectures (WSML) (Chu & Chen, 2002; Chu, Hsu, & Chen, 2001) system can exploit the combination of implicit relation (analysis) and explicit relation (capture) to provide an effective integrated presentation for teaching English as Second Language (ESL) lectures and broadcasting news programs.
There are So Many More Than Three Barriers
Authors: Krueger Rick
Published: May 2011

One major barrier is that educators often view themselves as “people persons” and not “technology persons,” which ends up being an excuse for not familiarizing themselves with new tools. Ironically, the actual research in other industries related to people who employ a high level of information technology in their jobs is that the technology liberates them to be more interactive with other people, not machines.
Traditional Education and Distance Learning
Authors: Karoulis Athanasis , Pombortsis Andreas
Published: May 2011

The main concern of this article is the comparison of Open and Distance Learning (ODL) with the traditional, face-to-face educational approach. It aims to pinpoint the advantages and disadvantages, as well as the similarities and differences of both approaches, and answer the question of when and under what circumstances one particular method has an advantage over the other. This question makes educationalists anxious when it comes to designing a new curriculum, so in this article we consider Open and Distance Learning as a multidisciplinary evolution and part of a broader framework.
Understanding Different Categories of Attrition in Distance Education Program
Authors: Chung Seung Youn (Yonnie)
Published: May 2011

Distance learning is often referred to as taking training or education courses that are either synchronously or asynchronously delivered via various media such as audio, video, or computer, especially Internet technologies in recent years. The number of corporate training programs delivered via Internet technologies (a.k.a., e-learning) has dramatically increased over the last several years. According to ASTD reports (2002, 2003), the percentage of e-learning programs delivered in the Benchmark Service companies in the U.S. increased from 8.8% of total training hours in 2000 to 10.5% in 2001. The number of distance programs offered at degree-granting educational institutions in the U.S. has also gradually increased each year. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (2003), 56% of two-year or four-year degree-granting educational institutions offered distance education (DE) courses during the 12-month 2000-2001 academic year, and during the time period, about 2.8 million students were enrolled in college-level credit-granting DE courses, the majority of which were Internet-based courses. Internet-delivered instruction has gained credibility during recent years as well. Research has shown that there seems to be no significant difference in terms of the effectiveness of instruction delivered in traditional classroom settings and the effectiveness of instruction delivered via the Internet (van Schaik, Barker & Beckstrand, 2003). Such research findings, coupled with potential benefits such as cost-effectiveness and convenience, have likely contributed to the increasing popularity of Internet-delivered distance learning programs.
Web Conferencing in Distance Education
Authors: Panton M. Michelle
Published: May 2011

Web conferencing is a technology that allows groups of individuals in a variety of diverse locations to communicate and share information without having to leave their desks. It provides features such as whiteboarding, screen sharing, chat, and polling. It eliminates the need to travel, reduces downtime, increases efficiency, and reduces costs. AT&T worked on proofs of concepts and prototypes for personal conferencing systems for 20 years and finally released its product in 1993 (Perey, 2003). Microsoft released NetMeeting in about 1995. Wooley now lists 95 real-time collaboration products and Web sites on his Web site, ThinkofIt.com. The growth of real-time collaboration has grown significantly and been more successful in the last few years, as the CPUs in PCs are faster, the PCs have more memory, and more bandwidth is available and cheaper. Frost and Sullivan’s 2002 report estimates that by 2008, $2 billion will be spent on Web conferencing (as cited by Perey, 2003). This technology allows a business to conduct training simultaneously, globally creating a collaborative learning environment while keeping costs down.
Web-Based Synchronized Multimedia Lecturing
Authors: Liu Kuo-Yu , Chen Herng-Yow
Published: May 2011

Over the last decade, the emerging Web technologies have opened a new era for distance education, where online courses can be created and accessed in a very easy way not previously available. Many online courses based on HTML pages thus are now available in cyberspace for synchronous or asynchronous distance learning (Anderson, Beavers, VanDeGrift, & Videon, 2003; Gregory, 1999; Muller & Ottmann, 2000; Shi et al., 2003; Siddiqui & Zubairi, 2000). However, without the support of multimedia, the static HTML pages can only serve as different kinds of simple “dumb” lecture notes on a network. Thus most students may lose interest quickly and eventually give up self-learning (Zimmer, 2003). Furthermore, this kind of unguided, static HTML pages are clearly insufficient for diverse learning needs and for different knowledge domains. With the dramatic development of multimedia technologies, we can integrate various media and provide students with vivid multimedia lectures on the Web. For example, the presentation techniques of online language courses should stress the importance of multimedia (e.g., voice and video) and document interaction flexibility (e.g., random access and repeated play of a specific speech segment) much more than other courses do (Brett, 1998; McLoughlin, Hutchinson, & Koplin, 2002).
An Adaptive Multi-Agent Environment
Authors: Pinheiro Rejane , Furtado Elizabeth
Published: May 2011

This article aims to develop a new environment of collaborative learning, by taking into account the criteria of construction of knowledge by the apprentices and the adaptative management of that knowledge by artificial agents. The multi-agent technology has been chosen due to the possibility of having artificial agents with internal decision processes to help students in the construction of their own projects and enabling learning objects available in accordance with the cognitive characteristics of the students and of their group. In this multi-agent system, exchanges of messages between the agents can occur so that they can perform theirs tasks in the best possible way.
Aspects and Issues of Communities of (Mal)practice
Authors: Pemberton Jon , Stalker Brenda
Published: May 2011

The concept of community of practice (CoP) is now embedded within all areas of public- and private-sector organisations, although the term has different connotations dependent on its context. It is not a new concept, and it could be argued that many of the developments in this area are evolutionary rather than cutting-edge innovations. Informal groupings have always existed, but in the quest to harness and develop knowledge and ‘add value’ to organisations, the CoP has been embraced and developed, as various strands of management practice have fused and merged. Typically, these incorporate knowledge management, management strategy, complex adaptive systems, and latterly, knowledge ecology. Whether they exist as a social gathering or technological network, the sharing of expertise and the creation of new knowledge, often tacit in nature, is a central tenet of a CoP’s existence (Lave & Wenger, 1991). There are clear parallels with organisational learning and the knowledge-centric organisation, and few would dispute the potential benefits that CoPs can bestow on the individuals making up these communities and the organisations that these CoPs reside in (Wenger & Snyder, 2000; McDermott, 2002).
Community of Practice and the Special Language "Ground"
Authors: Ahmand Khurshid , Al-Sayed Rafif
Published: May 2011

The creation of new knowledge is essential for survival in a global economy, for providing better public services, and for maximising profits over long timeframes. People in an organisation create knowledge, and the organisation facilitates or hinders the creation. Knowledge is created through interaction, and this interaction often results in the emergence of a community. The community invariably develops a common social, philosophical, and cognitive ground amongst the members of an organisation, and helps members to share and learn knowledge of others. In an organisation people learn and share knowledge by watching each other, by talking to each other, by reading documents written by each other to gain a common understanding. Common understanding helps in creating a community. The community is a dynamical eco-system where new ideas are nurtured, existing ideas pruned, and some ‘killed off’. The understanding supports quiescent changes and paradigm shifts as well. A community is defined as a body of people “organized into a political, municipal, or social unity”—a body that shares values, beliefs, and aspirations and creates its own icons. All communities have an exchange system—rewards for good behaviour and opprobrium for bad. And language is amongst one of the important icons for communities as diverse as national and regional communities, and scientific and technical communities. A specialist community uses the language of the populace and then starts to specialise the meaning of certain words within the existing stock of words of the parent language, creates its own words, and places similar restrictions on the grammar of the populace at large when used within the community. This specialisation process results in the language of the community, and the language is called language for special purposes (LSP), language for specific purposes, or just special language of X, where X refers to a specific branch of human enterprise—language of physics, of business, of sports. There are further specialisations: LSP of nuclear physics, financial trading, and football. Special languages can be differentiated from the language of everyday usage at the level of vocabulary; the differences are increasingly less discernible at the levels of grammar, syntax, and semantics. Special languages are in many ways a social phenomenon: consciously created to foster a sense of common purpose amongst a group of people and sometimes used to exclude. Special languages are key instruments of personal and group promotion. A specialist community, individually and collectively, weaves a fabric of facts and imagination (Goodman, 1978); in essence, the weave is a collection of specialist texts. We attempt to relate the development of an LSP to a specific community (of practice).
The Contribution of Communities of Practice to Project Manamgement
Authors: Ragsdell Gillian
Published: May 2011

More and more organisations are using projects as a means of managing their business; increasingly, ‘new initiatives’ are the focus of organisational life. Such initiatives could include cultural change programmes, organisation redesigns, or process improvements. Tackling the sociological and psychological aspects of the project is a great enough challenge, but there is often a requirement to develop a technological dimension too. Accelerating technical advancements brings an extra level of complexity to the projects so that, in general, projects have become more complex—not only do they tend to have a wider variety of customers to satisfy, but they also tend to utilise more sophisticated technology and have more far-reaching implications than ever before. It is not too surprising that some projects ‘fail’; the increased complexity of projects brings an obvious rise in the associated risks. However, the increased complexity of projects also brings a rise in the opportunities for learning through the management of knowledge therein. These are opportunities that are not being fully exploited at present, as illustrated by the continuation of the ‘failure-to-learn’ and ‘learning-to-fail’ themes in the literature (e.g., Lyytinen & Robey, 1999; Cannon & Edmondson, 2004); a more active stance would consciously draw lessons from projects, from ‘successes’ and ‘failures’ alike. Parallel to the growing emphasis on projects in organisational life and their changing nature, there is growing recognition of the interplay between the fields of project management (PM) and knowledge management (KM). Reference has already been made to the opportunities for more effectively managing knowledge within a project setting. This article operates at a finer level of detail and draws attention to the potential synergy between project teams and a much popularised social network derived from the KM arena—that of communities of practice (CoP). In doing so, the disciplines of PM and KM are explicitly bridged and, it is put forward, the prospect of breaking the ‘learning-to fail’ and ‘failing-to learn’ loops is raised.
Economic Issues of Online Professional Communities
Authors: Bolisani Ettore , Scarso Enrico , Di Biagi Matteo
Published: May 2011

The term online professional community (OPC) is employed here to identify groups of professionals sharing information and knowledge for business purposes by means of Internet-based technologies (see also Plant, 2004). It is not our aim to thoroughly discuss the concept of community, but since this term may be used with various shades of meaning, it is thus convenient to indicate more precisely where our definition can be placed in the broader picture (Figure 1). This will be made by discussing two important dimensions that are relevant here.
Exploring the Selection of Technology for Enabling Communities
Authors: Patrick Keith , Cox Andrew , Abdullah Rahman
Published: May 2011

Communities, whilst represented and apparent in their members, are most evident in the technological entity—the technology and tools that support the common and communal activities. Technology acts as the enabler linking a group of individuals who are most likely dispersed, in terms of time and place, and facilitates their interaction. So you have decided or been asked to create or facilitate the activities of a community, but how do you select an appropriate solution for the requirements of a particular community and its members? Do you follow a traditional systems and software acquisition route: establish the requirement, develop the system, approach a consultant, call the IS department to see how you can adapt existing technologies? Or do you adopt an approach that can also be viewed as part of the community development process through the generation of involvement, engagement leading to ownership of the community and therein its future activities?
Formal Work Groups and Communities of Practice
Authors: Yan Ji , Assimakopoulos Dimitris
Published: May 2011

Knowledge and innovation management scholars (see, for example, Leonard-Barton, 1995; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) have recently emphasized the role of formal work groups, in particular, project teams, in organizational innovation and learning. In the late 1990s, the concept of communities of practice (CoPs) has also become a key concept in understanding the creation, sharing, and application of knowledge within and across organizational boundaries. This article discusses the relationship between CoPs and formal work groups, such as project teams, based on the authors’ recent empirical research in software development work in China (Yan & Assimakopoulos, 2003a, b). Moreover, this article discusses how the division of formal work groups in project teams influences the knowledge activities in CoPs.
Identifying Knowledge Flows in Communities of Practice
Authors: Rodriguez-Elias Oscar M. , Martinez-Garcia Ana I. , Vizcaino Aurora , Favela Jesús , Piattini Mario
Published: May 2011

Knowledge sharing is a collective process where the people involved collaborate with others in order to learn from them (Huysman & de Wit, 2000). This kind of collaboration creates groups of people with common interest called communities of practice where each member contributes knowledge about a common domain (Wenger, 1998). Communities of practice enable its members to benefit from the knowledge of each other (Fontaine & Millen, 2004). To achieve this, different techniques and technologies can be used, such as shared documentation, groupware tools, lessons learned systems, and so forth. Therefore, to increase and improve knowledge sharing in communities of practice, it is important to study the mechanisms used by a particular community and understand how the knowledge flows through its members (Guizzardi, Perini & Dignum, 2003). This article presents a qualitative approach for studying and understanding how knowledge flows in communities of practice within organizations. The goal is to provide a methodological guide for obtaining useful information for the development of knowledge management tools for supporting knowledge flows in these communities. The content of the article is organized as follows. First the importance of supporting knowledge flows in communities of practice is highlighted. Then, a qualitative methodology for identifying knowledge flows in communities of practice is described, followed by some examples from a study conducted in the field of software maintenance. Finally, we present our conclusions of this work and future research.
Inter-Organisational Knowledge Transfer Process Model
Authors: Chen Shizhong , Duan Yanqing , Edwards John S.
Published: May 2011

Knowledge management (KM) is an emerging discipline (Ives, Torrey & Gordon, 1997) and characterised by four processes: generation, codification, transfer, and application (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). Completing the loop, knowledge transfer is regarded as a precursor to knowledge creation (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) and thus forms an essential part of the knowledge management process. The understanding of how knowledge is transferred is very important for explaining the evolution and change in institutions, organisations, technology, and economy. However, knowledge transfer is often found to be laborious, time consuming, complicated, and difficult to understand (Huber, 2001; Szulanski, 2000). It has received negligible systematic attention (Huber, 2001; Szulanski, 2000), thus we know little about it (Huber, 2001). However, some literature, such as Davenport and Prusak (1998) and Shariq (1999), has attempted to address knowledge transfer within an organisation, but studies on inter-organisational knowledge transfer are still much neglected. An emergent view is that it may be beneficial for organisations if more research can be done to help them understand and, thus, to improve their inter-organisational knowledge transfer process. Therefore, this article aims to provide an overview of the inter-organisational knowledge transfer and its related literature and present a proposed inter-organisational knowledge transfer process model based on theoretical and empirical studies.
Knowledge Management in Civil Infrastructure Systems
Authors: Jeong Hyung Seok , Abraham Dolphy M. , Abraham Dulcy M.
Published: May 2011

This article reviews current research and practice of knowledge management (KM) in the management of Civil infrastructure systems. Civil infrastructure systems, such as energy systems (electric power, oil, gas), telecommunications, and water supply, are critical to our modern society. The economic prosperity and social well being of a country is jeopardized when these systems are damaged, disrupted, or unable to function at adequate capacity. The management of these infrastructure systems has to take into account critical management issues such as (Lemer, Chong & Tumay, 1995): • the need to deal with multiple, often conflicting objectives; • the need to accommodate the interests of diverse stakeholders; • the reliance of decision making on uncertain economic and social issues; • the constraints in data availability; and • the limitations posed by institutional structure.
The Life Cycles of Communities of Practice
Authors: Ray Deepa
Published: May 2011

Today more and more companies are realizing the value of knowledge, and the benefits of capturing and leveraging it among all employees. Knowledge in the form of data, symbols, facts, and figures has been captured, but knowledge that is tacit (implicit) still continues to pose a challenge. How does such knowledge exist and where exactly does it thrive? The answer to that is “people”—the soft aspect of a company’s asset. Thus intellectual capital (IC), which represents the human intelligence asset of a company, is where both tacit and explicit knowledge reside. With technology advancing to connect different people across the world, support groups, developer forums, and message lists are probably the most immediate resources that professionals look to for knowledge or solutions to issues at work. This could very well be the first step a person takes to be a part of a community of practice (CoP). Interactions, discussions, exchange of ideas, and solving each other’s problems is in itself a source of knowledge, and although no attempt is made to hold onto such knowledge or guard it as a secret, the wealth of information remains privy to the community that shares it. Thus we can see that the continuum of informal discussions to a structured process of knowledge sharing can be represented by different stages in a lifecycle of a CoP. This article is an attempt to look at the lifecycle of a CoP, not just in terms of knowledge creation at each of its stages, but also as an example of how social networks are born and how they thrive. Understanding the lifecycle of CoPs will give greater insight into the knowledge sharing process resulting in more companies recognizing the importance of CoPs.
Linking Organisational Culture and Communities of Practice
Authors: Huq Anzela , Raja Jawwad Z. , Rosenberg Duska
Published: May 2011

The purpose of this article is to identify a link between organisational culture and communities of practice. We propose that the informal nature of communities of practice places great limitations in terms of management and control and that for their purpose—which is primarily to share tacit organisational knowledge and enhance organisational learning—it is fatalistic to try to impose and enforce control. Rather, these communities ought to be left alone to formulate their knowledge sharing activities, and management comes in to provide the support, both cognitive and practical in terms of resources, to ensure that time spent at work is productive, and the knowledge is well spread and used throughout. So, not only do we intend to identify a link between culture and communities of practice, but we will demonstrate that the former has great implications in the survival and success of the latter. A review of the most prolific literature is provided, followed by a debate about the relationship between these two distinct concepts, followed by our visions for the future.
The Living Tradition of "Yaren Talks" as an Indigenous Community of Practice in Today's Knowledge Society
Authors: Medeni Tunç
Published: May 2011

The “corporations” of craftsmen and guilds of artisans can be considered as the communities of practice of ancient times and the Middle Ages. The “Ahi (Brotherhood) Organization” in the Ottoman Empire is an example of these. Today, although the Ahi Organization itself has ceased to exist, the “Yaren (Friend) Talks” still continue in certain parts of Turkey as a living tradition of the Ahi principles and practices. Viewing the continuing custom of the Yaren Talks as a precious practice of society and a unique community of practice, in this short article, we will first provide some background information about this tradition and then address some related discussions, mainly about how to make this tradition continue. We believe that the Yaren Talks will provide a rich source that can be fruitful for improving the understanding and use of communities of practice in a knowledge society.