Databases and Information Systems Commons^™

The Viability Of Is Enhanced Knowledge Sharing In Mission-Critical Command And Control Centers, Sameh A. Sabet

Dissertations

Engineering processes such as the maintenance of mission-critical infrastructures are highly unpredictable processes that are vital for everyday life, as well as for national security goals. These processes are categorized as Emergent Knowledge Processes (EKP), organizational processes that are characterized by a changing set of actors, distributed knowledge bases, and emergent knowledge sharing activities where the process itself has no predetermined structure. The research described here utilizes the telecommunications network fault diagnosis process as a specific example of an EKP. The field site chosen for this research is a global undersea telecommunication network where nodes are staffed by trained personnel …

Tacit Knowledge, Nonaka And Takeuchi Seci Model And Informal Knowledge Processes, Siu Loon Hoe

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The organizational behavior and knowledge management literature has devoted a lot attention on how structural knowledge processes enhance learning. There has been little emphasis on the informal knowledge processes and the construct remains undefined. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the importance of informal knowledge processes, propose a definition for these processes and link them to the socialization and internalization processes suggested by Nonaka and Takeuchi in the SECI model. The paper offers a fresh perspective on how informal knowledge processes in organizations help to enhance the organization’s learning capability. It will enable scholars and managers to have …

Text Mining With Exploitation Of User's Background Knowledge : Discovering Novel Association Rules From Text, Xin Chen

Dissertations

The goal of text mining is to find interesting and non-trivial patterns or knowledge from unstructured documents. Both objective and subjective measures have been proposed in the literature to evaluate the interestingness of discovered patterns. However, objective measures alone are insufficient because such measures do not consider knowledge and interests of the users. Subjective measures require explicit input of user expectations which is difficult or even impossible to obtain in text mining environments.

This study proposes a user-oriented text-mining framework and applies it to the problem of discovering novel association rules from documents. The developed system, uMining, consists of two …

Dynamic Measuring Tools For Online Discourse, Jeffrey S. Saltz

Dissertations

When evaluating participation within an Asynchronous Learning Network (ALN), current best practices include counting messages and reviewing participant surveys. To understand the impact of more advanced dynamic measurement tools for use within an ALN, a web-based tool, known as iPET (the integrated Participation Evaluation Tool), was created. iPET, which leverages Social Network Analysis and Information Visualization techniques, was then evaluated via an empirical study. This research demonstrates that using a tool such as iPET increases participation within an ALN without increasing facilitator workload. Due to the fact that active online discussion is a key factor in the success of an …

Using Content And Process Scaffolds For Collaborative Discourse In Asynchronous Learning Networks, Irene Wong-Bushby

Dissertations

Discourse, a form of collaborative learning, is one of the most widely used methods of teaching and learning in the online environment. Particularly, in large courses, discourse needs to be 'structured' to be effective. Historically, technology-mediated learning (TML) research has been inconclusive with often conflicting results. To address this issue, TML research needs greater breadth and depth in pedagogical grounding. The purpose of this research is to build and test an original, technology-mediated, discourse-centered model called the Asynchronous Learning Network Cognitive Discourse Model (ALNCDM) grounded in pedagogy. Cognitive discourse is defined as discourse on conceptual subject matter. The model is …

Development Of A Design Environment For End Users To Build The Target-Relevant Decision Support Tools In Rural Industry, Shah Jahan Miah

Dr Shah Jahan Miah

Decision support systems (DSS) developed by end users have had limited success in rural operations. This paper will discuss the development stages of a new tool for improving the DSS development process in the rural industries. The object of this project is to develop an end user enabled design environment (EUEDE) which will allow a non-technical computer user to build target-relevant decision support tools. The resultant design environment aims to allow the end user to re-use and share their knowledge within a specific business context. This approach will facilitate flexibility to build relevant DSS’s for an end user’s specific decision …

Dynamic Generation Of A Table Of Contents With Consumer-Friendly Labels, Trudi Miller '08, Gondy Leroy, Elizabeth Wood

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Consumers increasingly look to the Internet for health information, but available resources are too difficult for the majority to understand. Interactive tables of contents (TOC) can help consumers access health information by providing an easy to understand structure. Using natural language processing and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), we have automatically generated TOCs for consumer health information. The TOC are categorized according to consumer-friendly labels for the UMLS semantic types and semantic groups. Categorizing phrases by semantic types is significantly more correct and relevant. Greater correctness and relevance was achieved with documents that are difficult to read than with …

Health Information Text Characteristics, Gondy Leroy, Evren Eryilmaz '11, Benjamin T. Laroya

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Millions of people search online for medical text, but these texts are often too complicated to understand. Readability evaluations are mostly based on surface metrics such as character or words counts and sentence syntax, but content is ignored. We compared four types of documents, easy and difficult WebMD documents, patient blogs, and patient educational material, for surface and content-based metrics. The documents differed significantly in reading grade levels and vocabulary used. WebMD pages with high readability also used terminology that was more consumer-friendly. Moreover, difficult documents are harder to understand due to their grammar and word choice and because they …

Using A Digital Library Of Images For Communication: Comparison Of A Card-Based System To Pda Software, Trudi Miller '08, Gondy Leroy, John Huang '05, Serena Chuang '05

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Autism spectrum disorder has become one of the most prevalent developmental disorders and one of the main impairments is difficulty with communication. One method of augmentative and alternative communication is the use of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) to create messages using a series of images printed on cards and organized in binders. We are developing a digital alternative based on an image library that is displayed on a personal digital assistant (PDA). We conducted an initial user acceptance study that compared the effectiveness and usability of both systems. The study showed that the PDA system was able to …