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Tech Report KMI-06-16 Abstract


Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective
Techreport ID: KMI-06-16
Date: 2006
Author(s): Simon Buckingham Shum
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Abstract: The complexity of the dilemmas we face on an organizational, societal and global scale forces us into sensemaking activity. We need tools for expressing and contesting perspectives flexible enough for real time use in meetings, structured enough to help manage longer term memory, and powerful enough to filter the complexity of extended deliberation and debate on an organizational or global scale. This has been the motivation for a programme of basic and applied action research into Hypermedia Discourse, which draws on research in hypertext, information visualization, argumentation, modelling, and meeting facilitation. This paper proposes that this strand of work shares a key principle behind the Pragmatic Web concept, namely, the need to take seriously diverse perspectives and the processes of meaning negotiation. Moreover, it is argued that the hypermedia discourse tools described instantiate this principle in practical tools which permit end-user control over modelling approaches in the absence of consensus.

Publication(s):

Buckingham Shum, S. (2006). Sensemaking on the Pragmatic Web: A Hypermedia Discourse Perspective. Proc. PragWeb'06: 1st International Conference on the Pragmatic Web, Stuttgart, 21-23 Sept. Springer-Verlag: Berlin. [PrePrint: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/publications/pdf/KMI-TR-06-16.pdf
 
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Knowledge Management is...


Knowledge Management
Creating learning organisations hinges on managing knowledge at many levels. Knowledge can be provided by individuals or it can be created as a collective effort of a group working together towards a common goal, it can be situated as "war stories" or it can be generalised as guidelines, it can be described informally as comments in a natural language, pictures and technical drawings or it can be formalised as mathematical formulae and rules, it can be expressed explicitly or it can be tacit, embedded in the work product. The recipient of knowledge - the learner - can be an individual or a work group, professionals, university students, schoolchildren or informal communities of interest.
Our aim is to capture, analyse and organise knowledge, regardless of its origin and form and make it available to the learner when needed presented with the necessary context and in a form supporting the learning processes.