Knowledge Resources Management and Sharing in the TENCompetence Project G. Bo, A.M. Luccini, M. Dicerto GIUNTI Interactive Labs S.r.l. Presentation at: Open TENCompetence Workshop “Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development” Sofia – March 2006, 30-31

Outline –Knowledge Sharing and Management, in relation with… Emerging need TENCompetence approach Initial proposal

Why Knowledge Management? –Quick changes, which are normal in the modern society as well as in market’s strategic directions, may result in the loss of knowledge in specific areas. –Need of increasing competitiveness –Rising in innovation rate –Competitive pressure reduce the amount of people that holds valuable knowledge –Nowadays less time is available to experience and acquire knowledge –There is a need to manage increasing complexity –Early retirements and increasing mobility of workers lead to loss of knowledge –More and more informal knowledge has to be replaced with formal methods

Moreover …. –Most of human activities, as well as many aspects affecting normal life, are heavily information and knowledge-consuming Products and services are increasingly complex Products and services are endowed with a significant information component –Organizations compete on the basis of knowledge –Life-long learning is more and more an inescapable real and urgent need.

Knowledge Resource Sharing & Management in TENCompetence Main objective of WP5 is to make available an infrastructure suitable to manage and share any kind of information produced and exchanged within the TENCompetence system Expected results: –A standards-based set of components supporting the creation, storage, use, reuse and exchange of knowledge resources –An embedding of these components in an environment of many thousands of knowledge resources available in a variety of repositories –A set of rating and recommending systems (based on collaborative filtering techniques) allowing users of knowledge resources to feedback information on their quality into the competence development network –A set of reward mechanisms able to be tuned in order to stimulate the following of the policies (e.g. policies fostering knowledge resources re- use vs. new development) –A (light-weight) profile of specifications and standards to facilitate Knowledge Resource Sharing & Management

Major foreseen features Creation of knowledge resources (KR) Unique identification and indexing of KR through metadata (LOM, Dublin Core, etc.) Packaging of KR according to IMS-CP and/or SCORM specifications) Storage of KR in distributed and federated digital repositories Search and retrieval of KR Reuse and sharing of KR Quality rating of KR

“Material” Knowledge Resources In this category the most traditional kinds of multimedia resources can be listed: –text and hypertext (txt, doc, rtf, pdf, html, etc.) –images and 2D graphics (tiff, jpg, png, gif,.etc.) –3D graphics (cad, X3D, VRML, etc.) –audio (wav, mp3, etc.) –video (mpeg, avi, mov, qt, etc.) –animations (dir, osx, swf, etc.) Additionally, also the following heterogeneous resources can be collected under this category: –planning and design (mpp, etc.) –resources descriptors (xml, rdf, etc.) –references (libraries, publications, etc.) –executable programs (exe, etc.) –libraries (dll, etc.)

And also … More specifically for e-learning in general and for TENCompetence in particular, as already highlighted previously we could also consider at least: –metadata and related vocabularies –learning objects –learning courses –units of learning –units of assessment –learning activities –learning paths –learning networks

“Immaterial” Knowledge Resources Within this category some resources can be grouped that are normally underestimated : –Human resources (e.g. a projection of personal skills, acquired competencies, personal abilities, natural capabilities, personal field expertise) –Human Area Network (HAN) resources, i.e. communities of connected human beings and mobile terminals and devices (e.g. RedTacton) –“Environmental” resources (e.g. organizational know-how, training and lifelong learning policies at European/National/local level). These will require a specific effort to be properly modeled and are currently under investigation.

Research on models and methods Suitable policies to promote the creation and exchange of knowledge resources need to be defined. Tools able to analyze tracking data in order to proactively suggest knowledge resources: –by extending the description of KR in order to provide more powerful selection features. –by classifying KR from sources where classification is not available. Once strategies for facilitating KR exchange have been defined, they have to be made available by WP5 by means of proper services (e.g. exploiting location-based information and users position-based knowledge exchange). An important aspect is the introduction of the social dimension, for instance through the recording of multi-user interactions in order to stimulate further interactions.

KRMS Service Architecture The KRMS Service will provide other modules and services in the system with functionalities for managing and sharing KR The KRMS Service will be accessed through a limited number of well specified interfaces (e.g. users, TENCompetence client, UoL&LA Service) Internally the KRMS Service will have a service- oriented architecture suitable to support the requested features The idea is to design an "abstract" architecture and then to match the identified services to existing components.

Identified Services Knowledge Resources Management Service Knowledge Resources Packaging Service Knowledge Resources Indexing Service Knowledge Resources Creation Service Knowledge Resources Annotation Service Knowledge Resources Tracking Service Knowledge Resources Rating Service Knowledge Resources Personalization Service Knowledge Resources Customization Service Knowledge Resources Search Service Digital Repository Management Service Workflow Management Service Metadata Exchange Protocol Service Taxonomy Management Service Ontology Management Service (e.g. automatic extraction of an ontology)

Conceptual view KR Management Service KR Creation Service KR Packaging Service KR Indexing Service KR Search Service DR Management Service Digital Repository TENCompetence Client

Indexing and Metadata At each level the knowledge resources will be provided with the proper metadata in order to support the specific searches. This should allow supporting some semantic at each level (learning units, learning paths, etc.). Learning Networks Learning Paths UoL & LA Knowledge Resources Object

Generic P2P Architecture a central Index server: it does not contain files physically It only maintains the information about users who are logged on to the network, the IP address of the client and the list of files shared at any given moment by a user

The LionShare P2P project is an effort to facilitate legitimate file- sharing among individuals and educational institutions around the world In the role of provider, LionShare developed a Repository OSID that provides access to content on their Peer-to-Peer (P2P) server network. This allows application such as Sakai, Tufts University’s Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), and others to access content on the server network for no additional development effort beyond their initial adoption of OSIDs In the role of consumer, LionShare’s desktop client application can include any Repository OSID implementation as part of a federated search. By embracing the OSIDs, applications gain access to more content and content providers gain a wider market, all at a low marginal cost LionShare (1)

LionShare is written in Java and makes extensive use of Gnutella software and components of the Shibboleth architecture in the Lion- Share security protocol The OSIDs use a convention called a “Type” to specify data schema or algorithmic detail The Type, which is a set of labels, allows OSID providers and consumers to communicate more specifically In Lionshare Type definitions are emerging from communities of OSID providers and consumers LionShare (2)

Main features: Authentication and Authorization Directory Integration (LDAP) Verification of Sharer’s Identity Access Control Network File Storage and Sharing Automated Metadata Image Preview Federated Repository Search User Profile Support for Multiple Metadata Schemas Creative Commons Licensing LionShare (3)

Integration in the TENC System

The clients of this Network are: KMS (Lex, DSpace): can do search and also optionally share Knowledge Resources Generic Digital Repositories (Ariadne, Merlot, etc.): can only share resources Any client of the P2P network must have two OSID DR Implementations: one used for the connection to P2P network; it MUST be a common implementation for all clients one used to access Local Repositories: it should be a customized implementation for every client type Integration in the TENC system (2)

Thank you for your attention! For further information please contact: Dr. Giancarlo Bo R&D Project Manager Giunti Interactive Labs Via Portobello, Abbazia dell’Annunziata Sestri Levante – Italy Phone: Fax: