MATURE IP blogs

MATURE in 5:30 - the video

Andreas.Schmidt — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:40:58 +0000

The TELMap project has interviewed major TEL projects for a rich picture of the advances in Technology Enhanced Learning. As former coordinator, I had the pleasure and challenge to present a brief summary of what MATURE has achieved.

TELMap has compiled an overview as an ebook (currently only iBooks, but other formats are promised): http://bit.ly/tel-advances

Here is the chapter on MATURE.

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

MATURE in the International Innovation Report by ResearchMedia

Andreas.Schmidt — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 18:21:56 +0000

MATURE has been recently covered by the International Innovation magazine.

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Successful Final Review

Andreas.Schmidt — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 19:33:50 +0000

After weeks of intense preparations, we have had a very successful (and inspiring) MATURE Final Review. We presented the results of the fourth year and extensive reflections on our achievements and future research avenues. The engagement of the team has not diminished, we have so many ideas in stock, both for the model development and so the review had little of an end to a journey, and more of a starting point for future activities, both on the research strand, and on the commercial exploitation through the Knowledge Maturing Consulting Network.

According to the review panel, we "demonstrated capacity to learn and to dynamically build and share a common vision", "prepared high quality publications and reports", "scientific management was excellent", and MATURE is an "example of an excellent FP7 integrating project" to be recommended to the EC. And finally, the knowledge maturing model has been approved to be "mature".

We are still working on the final report and on a whitepaper summarizing the knowledge maturing model - so stay tuned. And the website http://knowledge-maturing.com will be the future anchor for all activities around knowledge maturing.

Videos explaining MATURE and the Knowledge Maturing Approach

Andreas.Schmidt — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 06:57:26 +0000

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Knowledge Maturing Consulting Network started

Andreas.Schmidt — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 07:00:00 +0000

The Knowledge Maturing Model Landscape has already proven to be a valuable tool for providing advice to organizations interested in improving their knowledge processes and the supporting tool infrastructure. It helps analyzing and understanding problems and developing solutions. And in contrast to most consulting methodologies, it is also grounded on a sound and empirically as well as practically validated concept. A group of experienced individuals from the MATURE consortium and its Associate Partner Network has formed a European consulting network in recent months. It provides its tailored services to all kinds of organizations, and each of the consultants brings in their own special expertise in a certain business sector (e.g., healthcare, financial services, IT services) and country (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, United Kingdom).

The network is coordinated by Christine Kunzmann.

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Christine Kunzmann

Graham Attwell

Pablo Franzolini

Ronald Maier

Video introduction into SIMPLE - Social Interactive Mashup Personal Learning Environment

Andreas.Schmidt — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 16:30:17 +0000

The objective of SIMPLE is to actively support higher quality of knowledge work and to foster informal learning. By means of this software we provide new ways how to support the collaborative creation of high quality and reliable content-based knowledge artefacts in a self-organised way. The main focus of SIMPLE is on the first four phases of the knowledge maturing model.

SIMPLE is based on a widget approach especially for supporting work-integrated learning based on a concrete use case. It is designed to combine web based information access and desktop integration for a seamless integration into the familiar work environment of the user. An underlying communication infrastructure allows for exchanging data and events between widgets in order to improve workflows and usability, and avoid media disruptions.

The main desktop application is called Activity Based Sidebar, which needs to be installed on the target machine. It is an Adobe AIR application, which runs in the according runtime environment. It provides an application which enables knowledge workers to create their learning and maturing environment independently and contextually fitting. Moreover, the prefix Activity Based refers to the possibility users have, to classify and group a subset of their used widgets into activities according to individual tasks. Widgets are deployed in a web-based widget repository. The sidebar loads the widgets in a list of all widgets as selected by the user.

Initially, we provide 6 widgets and the matureFox Firefox plugin. These are:

Collection Widget
Tagging Widget
Tag Cloud Widget
Search Widget
Discussions Widget
Tag Editor Widget

More information on knowledge-maturing.com

Organizations:

TU Graz

University of Paderborn

Persons:

Nicolas Weber

Tobias Nelkner

1st knowledge management days Krems “Knowledge in dialogue”

Andreas.Schmidt — Thu, 24 May 2012 17:01:32 +0000

The event took place for the first time and has immediately attracted almost 200 participants and thus grown up to a major event. The knowledge management days were organized by the magazine „Wissensmanagement. Magazin für Führungskräfte“ and the Danube University Krems. Keynote Speaker and knowledge managers from academia and industries, amongst others Ronald Maier (University of Innsbruck, Department of Information Systems ) shared their experiences.
Ronald Maier gave an invited talk on: “From idea to mature knowledge [Knowledge management post user-generated content, collaboration and social networks?” which attracted more than 100 participants who engaged in a lively discussion.

Organizations:

University of Innsbruck

Persons:

Ronald Maier

People Tagging Tool / SOBOLEO release as open source

Andreas.Schmidt — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 21:55:19 +0000

The people tagging tool, which is based on the SOBOLEO framework, has been released as open source under GPLv3. We offer hosting, development, and consulting services that facilitate the customization and opereration of the system at the workplace.

The source code as well as a convenient installer that creates customized packages is available from our new site under http://knowledge-maturing.com/services-and-tools/tools/people-tagging

Organizations:

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Simone Braun

Recent and forthcoming 2012 LTRI dissemination of MATURE outcomes

john.cook — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 08:27:06 +0000

Journals:
Cook, J. and Pachler, N. (2012). Online People Tagging: Social (Mobile) Network(ing) Services and Work-based Learning. British Journal of Education Technology. Due Summer 2012. (email john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk for final draft)

Ravenscroft, A., Schmidt, A., Cook, J. & Bradley, (2012). Designing Socio-Technical Systems for Informal Learning and Knowledge Maturing in the ‘Web 2.0 Workplace’. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL).

Invited talks:
Cook, J. (2012). Social Network(ing) and Mobile Learning in Workplace Practice. Invited talk, 12th June, University of Paderborn, Germany.

Cook, J. (2012). Online People Tagging: Social Mobile Network(ing) Services and Work-based Learning. Invited talk 4th July at University of Augsburg, Germany.

Cook, J. (2012). Social Media and Mobile Technologies in Workplace Practices: Interpretations of What Counts as Good Research. Lecture, 8th Joint European Summer School on Technology Enhanced Learning (JTEL), 21-25th May, Estoril, Portugal.

Cook, J. (2012). What is the Potential for the Use of Social Media and Mobile Devices in Informal, Professional, Work-Based Learning? Invited talk at Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada on 16th April. Slides available at http://tinyurl.com/6lhlrwu or

What is the potential for the use of social media and mobile devices in informal, professional, work-based learning?

View more PowerPoint from London Metropolitan University

Conferences (accepted):
Cook, J. and Pachler, N. (2012). Online People Tagging: Social Mobile Network(ing) Services and Work-based Learning. British Educational Research Association (BERA) Annual Conference. 4 - 6 September, University of Manchester, UK.

Cook, J. and Pachler, N. (2012). Online People Tagging: Social Mobile Network(ing) Services and Work-based Learning. European Conference on Educational Research (ECER) 2012, Cadiz, Spain, 18 - 21 September.

New LTRI publication on our innovative work at the European work-based learning level

john.cook — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:45:35 +0000

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to feature two European projects that have explored innovative approaches to using Educational Technology to mediate “informal learning” in a variety of contexts. The paper is structured as follows. Firstly, it briefly delineate what the author means by “informal learning”, opting for the term ‘task-conscious learning’. This will be followed by a succinct distillation of the key design oriented outcomes from two European projects that the author has worked on as a partner: CONTSENS (Using Wireless Technologies for Context Sensitive Education and Training) and MATURE (Social Learning in Knowledge Networks). The paper concludes by exploring the design implications for sustainable approaches to designing educational technology for mediating informal task-conscious learning.

Cook, J. (2012). Using Educational Technology to Mediate Informal Task-Conscious Learning: Design Innovations in Two European Projects. Invited paper for Educational Technology Magazine, Special Issue on 'Educational Technology in Europe'.

"Educational Technology Magazine is the world's leading periodical publication covering the entire field of educational technology, an area pioneered by the magazine's editors in the early 1960s. Read by leaders in more than one hundred countries, the magazine has been at the forefront of every important new trend in the development of the field throughout the past five decades. Its list of published authors is a virtual "who's who" of the leading personalities and authorities from all over the world active in educational technology research, development, and application."
http://asianvu.com/bookstoread/etp/

As the magazine is subscription only email John for a 'final proof' john.cook@londonmet.ac.uk

"A refreshing new perspective on learning": MATURE raises interest at Learntec 2012

Andreas.Schmidt — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 22:09:12 +0000

Learntec 2012 was a surprising success for MATURE. Both the knowledge maturing model and the tools, especially the people tagging solution, has attracted considerable interest by fair visitors. MATURE has been able to show well-grounded and practically relevant approaches to knowledge management and learning that set a refreshing antipole to many products and services offered by other exhibitors: while these solutions often appear to be stuck in the last decade, the discussions and reactions from visitors have shown that MATURE has been able to incorporate the lessons learnt from previous approaches.

The knowledge maturing model has proven its potential to quickly involve people in thorough reflections about knowledge and learning. Particularly consultants were interested in cooperations to apply it in their projects. It is seen as a communication instrument that can also bring about changes in attitude of customers towards more holistic, more participatory forms of learning support. Learntec 2012 was also to announce the knowledge-maturing.com platform that presents the solutions and offerings resulting from four years of MATURE research to a wider audience.

SOBOLEO was interesting as a lightweight alternative to intranet approaches for several international software companies. Follow-up activities will explore the possibilities to integrate it into their approaches.

Organizations:

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Pontydysgu

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Christine Kunzmann

Graham Attwell

Nicolas Weber

Simone Braun

LTRI pitches MATURE to Prince Andrew in Shoreditch, London

john.cook — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:35:12 +0000

Just had a surprisingly engaging visit to Shoreditch Accelerator #AccTheDuke & Learning Technology Research Institute #LTRI by HRH the Duke of York, Prince Andrew. I made a 2 minute elevator pitch for #mature-ip http://slidesha.re/y9nyqW But wide ranging discussions were had with our Vice-Chancellor looking on. Here is the text of my 2 minute pitch (from a People Tagging perspective):

Welcome again to LTRI. I believe there are 2 key trends that are reshaping how we understand learning:
- People expect to be able to work, learn, and study whenever and wherever they want to.
- The world of work is increasingly collaborative, driving changes in the way student projects are structured.
The handout summarizes MATURE, a big EC funded project that involves LTRI, other universities and industrial partners like SAP.
‘Knowledge maturing’ is a new perspective on learning in the workplace emerging from the project. It looks at how individual activities and learning processes contribute to overall progress of the organization, its innovativeness and agility. MATURE examines how social network tools (similar to Facebook) amplify learning in the workplace. For example, the people tagging tool provides an approach to capturing the expertise of work colleagues; this can be used later when you have a problem that needs solving.
MATURE creates value because it unveils barriers where 'Knowledge maturing’ doesn’t happen, and it shows ways to overcome them. Thus the people tagging tool can be seen as one advanced functionality supporting the learning process within personal networks.
Our studies with UK Careers Guidance have shown that the people tagging tools is seen by employees as the “Facebook for the workplace”. However, we need more funding to test the approach elsewhere.
For example, people tagging has potential to be applied to new areas such as young entrepreneurs who want to build business networks (regional focus) or students in HE wanting career advice (this could be a shared city wide/regional service e.g. for London).
Thank you.

"Breaking the ice" http://yfrog.com/nvwnmujj

Organizations:

Learning Technology Research Institute @ London Metropolitan University

Persons:

John Cook

knowledge-maturing.com launched for releasing MATURE results

Andreas.Schmidt — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:40:34 +0000

Right for the LearnTec 2012, we have launched the first version of our knowledge-maturing.com web site that presents the offerings of our project to interested companies and other organizations. It shows our offering in terms of technology solutions (most of which are or will be available as open source), consulting approaches and training offerings as well as publications for the scientific community.

We have not yet been able to include the whole wealth of material and offerings, but will continue to augment the site during the next weeks.

New Flyer on Knowledge Maturing Model

Andreas.Schmidt — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:01:13 +0000

Two journal articles accepted

Andreas.Schmidt — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:53:51 +0000

Recently, two journal articles have been accepted after a lengthy reviewing process. They summarize two major areas of contribution of MATURE: iterative and agile design processes/design-based research and agile competence management and ontology maturing.

Simone Braun, Christine Kunzmann, Andreas Schmidt
Semantic People Tagging & Ontology Maturing: An Enterprise Social Media Approach to Competence Management
International Journal on Knowledge and Learning

Semantic People Tagging is an Enterprise 2.0-style approach to making expertise and individual capabilities transparent. By combining it with a collaborative ontology editor and thus the possibility to construct a shared vocabulary and understanding, it can be a supplement for cumbersome competence management, or expert finder solutions, which lack acceptance among employees, and suffer from outdated data. It gives human resources a timely overview of available and required competencies based on peer reviews and actual usage. However, it also needs to be tailored to the cultural characteristics of a specific company. Therefore, we have developed a design framework for semantic people tagging.

We want to present the general approach based on the ontology maturing concept of gradual formalization and its implementation based on a social semantic bookmarking system. Focus group interviews with HR experts have further have yielded insights into the wider context and validated the concept. The system has been introduced and evaluated at a company for career advising, and is being rolled out to additional contexts.

Andrew Ravenscoft, Andreas Schmidt, John Cook, Claire Bradley
Designing Socio-technical Systems for Informal Learning and Knowledge Maturing in the ‘Web 2.0 Workplace’
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning

This article presents an original approach to designing socio-technical technology enhanced learning (TEL) to realise informal learning and knowledge maturing. It is being conducted as part of a large-scale EC project called MATURE. In addressing the challenge of designing work integrated TEL systems within the „Web 2.0 workplace‟, we have developed and tested an agile and „federated‟ approach to the design of social and semantic technologies. This has followed an original design based research approach that has been adapted to conform with a new framework of deep learning design. Two design cycles are reported that incorporated: early technical and conceptual „design studies‟; Use Cases of envisaged scenarios; Demonstrator prototypes that synthesise the technical and user requirements; and, a flexible Evaluation Framework that coordinates and assesses the related activities. In this article we will present this design approach and describe the socio-technical systems that it has produced along with their formative evaluation. Finally, we offer some conclusions about designing socio-technical systems for the work-place of the future.

Contact me if you are interested.

STELLAR Roundtable on Social Mobile Networking for Informal Learning (SoMobNet)

Andreas.Schmidt — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:12:48 +0000

MATURE contributed to the STELLAR (The European Network of Excellence in TEL) Theme Team on “Social Mobile Networking for Informal Learning” (SoMobNet) International Roundtable at the Institute of Education in London on 21st November 2011. Both John Cook and Graham Attwell presented results from the MATURE demonstrators.

Graham Attwell: Using Mobiles for Networked Learning and Knowledge Sharing for Careers Information, Advice and Guidance

Online People Tagging: Social Mobile Networking Services in Work-based Learning

Persons:

Graham Attwell

John Cook

Knowledge Maturing for Organizational Development: A Workshop with IFIP

Andreas.Schmidt — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:14:53 +0000

MATURE organized a joint workshop together with the IFIP AGORA initiative to explore the potential of applying the knowledge maturing model landscape to organizational development problems.

The International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) is a world wide acting umbrella organization to the National Societies of Computer Science. IFIP is associated to UNESCO and is also part of the Associated Partner Network of MATURE. IFIP’s president Leon Strous, who emphatically invited the representatives of the different technical committees of IFIP to participate in the workshop, stressed that there is a growing need for collaboration between the various IFIP groups and with international acting partners (international bodies and institutions, industry and business, key decision makers, member societies). In order to accommodate such collaboration, TC-3 of IFIP launched the AGORA initiative that aimed to implement a dynamic methodology for initiating cooperative projects for individual competence development in conjunction with Lifelong Learning.

Together with MATURE the workshop in Barcelona should support those goals. Furthermore, the workshop should contribute to a process of evolutionary change inside IFIP in order to improve the cooperation between the TCs and to generate synergy of action especially with regard to transversal themes of the information and knowledge society, that are not just technology based. Examples are besides Lifelong Learning e.g. the themes of Security and Trust, E-Governance and Ethics that have been also discussed at the Summits on the Information Society during the last years.

During the workshop members of the MATURE consortium presented the results of their research on knowledge maturing and related IT-Software-Tools, developed so far. In detail

Based on the results of three years of empirical research efforts (ethnographic study, representative study, in depth study) with hundreds of European and globally acting companies from different economic sectors, an analysis of real-world maturing practices, and derived knowledge maturing services were presented.
The presented results were consolidated in a sound general conceptual model of knowledge maturing (the so-called knowledge maturing model landscape), which consists of the identification of phases of knowledge maturing and its characteristics, indicators for observing knowledge maturing, identification of key knowledge maturing and guidance activities to be supported by tools, and motivational and social barriers and ways to overcome them.
A widget-based, Web 2.0 inspired Learning & Maturing Environment, integrating personal and organizational perspectives (PLME /OLME), embedded into the working environment of application partners was also presented and their functionalities were discussed.

In plenary and break-out sessions during the workshop the participants discussed the possible impact of the conceptual findings and the technical developments of the MATURE project on AGORA’s future work and the organizational cooperation within IFIP. Participating members of IFIP presented and discussed academic and professional fields where transversal initiatives could create new possibilities of knowledge maturing and activities that enhances efficient ways of working within the framework of IFIP.

Besides the attendees of MATURE, IFIP participants from Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Norway, Poland and Switzerland, representing different TCs, were attending the workshop.

Organizations:

CIMNE

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

TU Graz

University of Innsbruck

University of Paderborn

Persons:

Alexander Sandow

Andreas Kaschig

Andreas Schmidt

Barbara Kump

Christine Kunzmann

Johannes Magenheim

Pablo Franzolini

Tobias Nelkner

MATURE work presented to UK Gov Department for Business Innovation and Skills

john.cook — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 13:49:09 +0000

John Cook from MATURE & LTRI joined the UK Research Council funded TEL Group visit to UK Government's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) at the Department’s HQ in Westminster. The visit was well received and took place on 3rd November, 2011. Messages put over on the day by John:

John Cook’s work on EU projects like MATURE is pointing to the values of social network tools amplifying learning in the workplace

Repurposing Cultural Contexts ... But it’s not just learning & teaching ... in the workplace…

situated workplace learning, both formal and informal, is being given the same priority as motorways by the EC, which is why Horizon 2020 is getting €80 billion.

We need ‘Facebook for the workplace’

Challenges for TEL are the need to address impact and scale

Below are the links to blog 1 and 2 provided by Richard Noss of the London Knowledge Lab for the BIS owned public sector innovations blog :

Blog 1: http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/publicsectorinnovation/2011/10/31/innovation-conversations-on-technology-part-1/
Blog 2: http://blogs.bis.gov.uk/publicsectorinnovation/2011/11/02/innovation-conversations-on-technology-%E2%80%93-part-2/

Slides used on the day :
http://slidesha.re/TechCurate

MATURE at WikiSym 2011

Andreas.Schmidt — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:32:09 +0000

The success of wikis depends very strongly on the user participation and the willingness to edit. Athanasios Mazarakis and Clemens van Dinther from MATURE presented results at the WikiSym conference in San Francisco how to foster participation with feedback mechanisms. WikiSym is the International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration, the premier conference on open collaboration and related technologies for researchers, industry, entrepreneurs and practitioners worldwide.

The results about the feedback mechanisms have been collected in field experiments about course wikis. With different experimental treatments it was possible to show that:

Feedback can help to prioritize to knowledge maturing activities
Foster participation in wikis
A social ranking can even more help to raise awareness for knowledge exchange

Contacts to the Wikimedia Foundation have been established as these result seem promising as well for the Wikipedia project.

Organizations:

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Persons:

Athanasios Mazarakis

MATURE and competence development: Professional Training Facts 2011

Andreas.Schmidt — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 12:28:32 +0000

MATURE has once again been invited to this year's Professional Training Facts 2011. Christine Kunzmann has organized a session on Motivational and Affective Aspects in Competence Development in joint initiative with the MIRROR project. In this session, Verónica Rivera Pelayo presented approaches to capturing affective state from the MIRROR project, associate partner Josef Hofer-Alfeis presents his experiences on employee motivation, and Christine Kunzmann presented conclusions from the research in MIRROR and MATURE.

Andreas Schmidt: The Role of Motivational & Affective Aspects: Introduction
Josef Hofer-Alfeiss: Improving Employee Motivation and Innovation Performance
Verónica Rivera Pelayo: Personal Informatics for Capturing Emotions
Christine Kunzmann: The Role of Motivational & Affective Aspects: Empirical Results and Future Directions

Furthermore Graham Attwell gave an inspiring talk on Mobile Learning: Using Mobiles for Learning, Developing and Sharing Knowledge

During the breaks, the MATURE team discussed with participants of the event at the booth and gave explanations on MATURE results and possibilities for future collaboration.

Organizations:

Dr.-Ing. Josef Hofer-Alfeis

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Pontydysgu

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Christine Kunzmann

Graham Attwell

2nd Workshop on Motivational and Affective Aspects in TEL

Andreas.Schmidt — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:49:49 +0000

In a joint activity with the MIRROR and the IntelLEO projects, MATURE has organized a second edition of the MATEL workshop at this year's ECTEL 2011 in Palermo, Italy.

Based on results from these projects and a discussion with the workshop participants, the following research challenges were identified:

Future research should not aim at general "motivational" or "affective aspects", but should explore them in a concrete context. Workshop participants were rather sceptical whether a general framework could be established that could form the basis of systematic motivational design approach ("motivational design models").
A lot of potential was seen in the analysis of concrete existing systems and their appropriation. Especially the comparison - or even interaction - of challenge-based and goal-driven systems could lead to new insights.
While motivation has so far mainly been analyzed on an individual level, it would be promising to research the group-level and whether we need completely different concepts on that level. That includes also aspects of scaling.
Furthermore, it could be very helpful to systematically identify user roles/user types and their characteristics with respect to motivational and affective aspects.

The papers and a more extensive summary can be found on the workshop page: http://matel.professional-learning.eu/index.php/2nd_MATEL_Workshop_at_European_Conference_for_Technology_Enhanced_Learning_(ECTEL_2011)

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Christine Kunzmann

Careers Talk - a new web site for career guidance published

Andreas.Schmidt — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:38:09 +0000

As a result of the work conducted within MATURE, Pontydysgu and the Institute for Employment Research, Warwick University, announce a new web site (CareersTalk), providing access to the ongoing research and development into careers guidance and in particular, the use of new technology to support careers guidance. Much of this work has been also supported by the G8WAY project.

“The web site is designed to provide leading-edge ideas for careers work – including information-advice-and-guidance, careers education, career counselling, mentoring, coaching, personal-and-social development, learning for well-being, for a changing world, portfolio development and individual action-planning. In particular it focuses on the use of technology for careers information, advice and guidance. Technology has already influenced, and will continue to influence, not only the ways in which guidance services are accessed by clients, but how they are used by them.”

The web site also provides links to working versions of our data visualisation tools.

Organizations:

Pontydysgu

University of Warwick

Persons:

Alan Brown

Graham Attwell

Jenny Bimrose

Sally-Anne Barnes

Associate Partner Event for the Careers Sector at Warwick

Andreas.Schmidt — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 20:16:29 +0000

On September 29, 2011, MATURE has invited career guidance decision makers, researchers, and practitioners to Warwick, UK for an interactive demonstration of MATURE tools. Almost 50 participants discussed with the MATURE team on the usefulness and potential of the people tagging demonstrator, the widget-based environment for developing and sharing LMI related content, the LMI visualization tool, and learning and development modules. The participants have been very interested in using the tools, and as part of the plenary discussion, many interesting ideas for further development have come up that the MATURE team will explore further.

The slides and additional material are available from http://mature-ip.eu/event/warwick2011

Organizations:

Connexions Northumberland

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Pontydysgu

TU Graz

University of Paderborn

University of Warwick

Persons:

Alan Brown

Andreas Schmidt

Barbara Kump

Christine Kunzmann

Graham Attwell

Jenny Bimrose

Sally-Anne Barnes

Workshop on Motivational and Cultural Barriers to Knowledge Sharing at M&C 2011

Andreas.Schmidt — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:00:00 +0000

Together with the Institute for Software Technology at the Bundeswehr University in Munich, Germany and Joanneum Research in Graz, Austria, MATURE organized a workshop at the Mensch & Computer conference 2011 in Chemnitz, Germany.

The main goal of the workshop was to identify challenges and opportunities of motivational and cultural barriers for Enterprise 2.0 settings. At the end of the day the participants created a Social Software Guideline for the introduction and implementation of social software in organizational settings. Some of the points of this guideline are outlined below:

Efficient communication as a goal of Enterprise 2.0 can lead to significant benefits regarding to avoid information overload and thus leading to less frustration
Efficient knowledge transfer can help to connect experts and therefore help to let the knowledge and information be spread more easily among the interested individuals. This can support in terms of optimization the team building process and the identification of critical resources e.g. at the beginning of a project.
Participation of employees can help to foster communication and build an innovation-friendly organizational culture to raise autonomy and competence, besides awareness and transparency

A complete coverage of the workshop (in German) can be found at the workshop web site.

Organizations:

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

Persons:

Athanasios Mazarakis

Diary of an open journey. A personal open odyssey ...

john.cook — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 11:51:37 +0000

Comments welcome. See slidesha.re/kwiFVz Comments welcome ... #openness

Structure
1. Vision & position
2. Open Journey
- Focus on open design, open research and open practice
- Briefly look at open scholarship, open teaching, open learning, open pedagogy and open policy.
3. Open Questions

Extract:

Open design questions

“What would a vision of a truly open approach to design mean; beyond open educational resources towards a more explicit representation and sharing of the whole design process?” (Conole, 2010)
What is the relationship between open design and other forms like Design Based Research (DBR)? Just make DBR transparent?
How do we factor in institutional & organisational issues into open design?
Design for who and by who? Is it just about teachers? Where is the locus of control? Who decides what learning is?
Do we include participatory design? If so, is there scope in an intervention for users to adapt the content elements of a Mobile Augmented Reality system?
Inclusive research with people with learning disabilities. What do we mean by individualized risk? Risk to who?
RE MATURE’s work-based learning (WBL) DBR model
- ‘Learn and problematize about experience and constraints in context’.
- Is there is a tension between scientific innovation and user needs?
- Sharing theory with all stakeholder is complex?
What about open design for WBL contexts?
- How do we support transition between contexts as work-based, informal and formal learning contexts merge?
During their continuing learning activities, what will the learning trail left behind by learners tell us as they move from one learning context to the next?
How can we improve our understanding of how elements of context can be maintained over time, so as to scaffold a perceived continuity of learning?
How do we to make explicit to society at large what new abilities are needed to design for the world we live in?
- How do we place the means for learning these skills at the heart of society?
- Is the alternative the gradual curtailment of democratic processes as people lose their power to contribute to debates about their future?

Organizations:

Learning Technology Research Institute @ London Metropolitan University

Very successful 3rd Annual Review Meeting

Andreas.Schmidt — Mon, 23 May 2011 14:11:01 +0000

Last week, the project team, the expert reviewers and the project officer were in Innsbruck to assess the outcome of the third year of MATURE and to give guidance on the fourth and final year of MATURE. We had long and very interesting and constructive discussions, and we are happy that the review panel thinks that we have continued to make excellent progress, particularly by a sustained and successful agile approach to project management (which is not seen frequently in EU projects). The knowledge maturing model landscape is seen as unique in the field of knowledge management and workplace learning, and MATURE has the potential to become the benchmark project in the field.

We will soon publish the year 3 deliverables, and further activities are upcoming, such as associate partner meetings, workshops at various conferences etc. Stay tuned...

Workshop on Motivational, Social, and Cultural Aspects of Knowledge Management

Andreas.Schmidt — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 21:34:08 +0000

The MATURE team organized an exciting workshop on Motivational, Social, and Cultural Aspects of knowledge management at this year's Professional Knowledge Management conference in Innsbruck.

The goal of this workshop was to bring together the various disciplines that explore the "human factor" of knowlegde management, ranging from psychology, via CSCW to Human Resource Management, among others.

Christine Kunzmann moderated the workshop with 20-30 participants.

Andreas Schmidt introduced into the workshop topic and presented results from the empirical study in the MATURE project. This introduction triggered an interesting discussion on completely different understanding of leadership in the age of knowledge workers, e.g., with respect to autonomy.

Motivationale, soziale und kulturelle Faktoren im Wissensmanagement

Ingo Bildstein then presented his contribution on "A Proposal for a New Framework for a Great Place to Work: A Socio-Cognitive View on Knowledge Work Motivation". This particularly stirred discussion about the "dark side of knowledge management".

The workshop block on motivation was continued with a presentation of Stefan Thaler on "SpotTheLink: Playful Alignment of Ontologies", which resulted in a discussion on the role of games and game mechanisms for knowledge management in companies. While it became clear that the contribution is a good example for crowdsourcing tedious tasks, it was less obvious how games could play a role beyond their use in training. Game mechanisms were more seen in ambivalent way, e.g., competition can have positive, but also quite negative effects.

In the afternoon, the workshop continued with a contribution from Julia Müller on Elements of an Interactive Knowledge Culture, which was based on empirical research. This was followed by an experience report from René Peinl on applying the knowledge maturing model in Sharepoint projects. This started a discussion on the knowledge maturing model and its role for determining appropriate tools.

After the talk from Christiane Zehrer on the introduction of social media, with particularly focus on cross-cultural experiences in a team in Japan, the workshop concluded with a challenging discussion on how to move forward from here. We discussed open issues in the field. The current state of the art appeared to be not mature yet as there is little generalizable knowledge. Some ideas were brought up on bridging the gap between model-level variables and observable indicators, but there was doubt that this is feasible.

It is planned to continue the formation of a community around those subjects, and we are looking forward to the next editions of this workshop series.

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Athanasios Mazarakis

Christine Kunzmann

talkIT Workshop on Entrepreneurial Knowledge Management

Andreas.Schmidt — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:13:13 +0000

Organized by the Tyrolean "Standortagentur" and hosted by Ronald Maier at the University of Innsbruck, the talkIT workshop centered around the topic of entrepreneurial knowledge management and how it affects the competencies required by IT employees.

Andreas Schmidt presented his perspective on the new role of IT in knowledge management based on the knowledge maturing approach, which require much more interdisciplinary competencies for understanding the application domain and for bridging between the different perspectives in an enterpise. Moreover, he stressed that the new generation of knowledge management requires much more participatory approaches - and less hierarchy.

Christoph Holz from Holzweg also emphasized in his talk the new understanding of leadership, which is based on a much more optimistic and trustful idea of man than previous understandings of leadership. He presented his own company as an example how such leadership can work.

The workshop concluded with a lively discussion on these new ideas.

Here are the German slides

Verstehen, einbinden, verändern - Wissensreifungsprozesse gestalten

View more presentations from Andreas Schmidt

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt

Ronald Maier

MATURE @ Professional Knowledge Management Conference

Andreas.Schmidt — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 08:09:40 +0000

Beginning of this week, the biennial knowledge management conference WM 2011 took place in Innsbruck, Austria, organized by Ronald Maier and his team. It provided a great opportunity to discuss about MATURE concepts and solutions with experts in the field and practitioners from industry, both large companies and SMEs. Among them were also several associate partners of MATURE's network. MATURE's stand provided a forum for this, and the whole MATURE team among the participants of the conference took a chance for informing and discussing during the coffee and lunch breaks.

The MATURE team also contributed to the conference with keynotes at the talkIT workshop (Andreas Schmidt), a tutorial on enterprise modelling (Knut Hinkelmann), the organization of the MSKWM workshop (Christine Kunzmann, Athanasios Mazarakis, Andreas Schmidt) and a contribution in the E20SUCCESS workshop (Nicolas Weber).

Organizations:

FZI Research Center for Information Technologies

University of Innsbruck

Persons:

Alexander Sandow

Andreas Kaschig

Andreas Schmidt

Athanasios Mazarakis

Christine Kunzmann

Knut Hinkelmann

Michael Kohlegger

Nicolas Weber

Ronald Maier

Two new MATURE posters available on Knowledge Maturing models and tool landscape

Andreas.Schmidt — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 08:49:21 +0000

For the upcoming conference in Innsbruck on Professional Knowledge Management, we have prepared two new posters that explain the knowledge maturing model and the tool landscape.

MATURE IP: Knowledge Maturing Model

MATURE IP: Knowledge Maturing Tools

Persons:

Andreas Schmidt