Integrating Working and Learning with APOSDLE Stefanie N. Lindstaedt1, Tobias Ley1, Harald Mayer2 1
Know-Center Graz {slind,tley}@know-center.at 2 Joanneum Research
[email protected]
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The APOSDLE Project
This contribution introduces the APOSDLE (Advanced Process-Oriented SelfDirected Learning Environment) project which has recently been accepted for funding within the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme under the IST Work Programme. APOSDLE is an Integrated Project jointly coordinated by Joanneum Research and the Know-Center, Austria’s Competence Centre for Knowledge Management. APOSDLE brings together 12 partners from 7 European Countries. The project is expected to commence in March 2006.
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Objectives and Outcomes of the Project
The goal of the APOSDLE project is to significantly enhance knowledge worker productivity by supporting informal learning and collaboration activities in the context of knowledge workers everyday work processes and within their work environments. It exploits synergies between learning and knowledge management by reusing content not originally intended for learning, and not require new content to be created. It will utilize contextualized communication for teaching, and not burden experts with additional tasks; and it will be based on knowledge sources available within an organization. The outcome of APOSDLE will be a methodology, software framework and reference architecture for workplace learning enhancing the learning processes for the individual and the organisation. In order to ensure the general applicability of this outcome an application-driven approach is used to cover the needs of three fundamentally different organizations: a network of SMEs, a public organization, and a large corporation.
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Three Roles of the Knowledge Worker
The key distinction of the APOSDLE approach as compared to more traditional elearning approaches is that APOSDLE will provide integrated support for the three roles a knowledge worker fills at the professional workplace: the role of worker, the role of learner, and the role of expert (Lindstaedt & Farmer, 2004). These roles
correspond to three main work packages within the project (WP I – III, see Fig. 1), within which possible support for the roles will be examined and developed. These will be discussed in the next three sections.
Fig 1. Overview of the R&D Work Packages
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Worker Support: Work Processes and Context
APOSDLE tightly incorporates learning and collaboration processes into the work processes in that it takes care of several aspects of workers’ work contexts such as worker’s competencies, work situation, and application domain. Workers are provided with context sensitive knowledge, thus raising their own awareness of learning situations, content, and people that may be used for learning. APOSDLE
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enables workers to access content from several diverse knowledge sources without having to change the environment. Three types of formal models are needed in order to capture the context of the user: a formal model of the learning domain, e.g. as offered through Ontologies (Guarino, 1998), formal work process descriptions (e.g. Karagiannis & Telesko, 2000), and the mapping of work situations to the competencies that are required to perform work process step, e.g. as used in the competence performance approach (Ley & Albert, 2003). A major scientific challenge is in the context acquisition for which some part can be captured automatically by monitoring a user’s work steps, e.g. current state in a workflow and currently opened documents. Other parts, however, need heuristic approaches or even explicit worker input. 3.2
Learner Support: Self Directed Learning
APOSDLE provides learners with support for self-directed exploration and application of knowledge. This is done within their work environment such that learning takes place within the learner’s current work context. APOSDLE provides learners with guidance through the available knowledge by applying novel learning strategies. Content from knowledge sources are presented to learners even if the content provided has originally not been intended for learning. Learning in the workplace is often referred to as informal learning (Garrick, 1997), implicit learning (Berry, 1997), or experiential learning (Towne, de Jong & Spada, 1993). Accordingly, the main learning strategies that we use in APOSDLE will be based on the principles of Cognitive Apprenticeship (Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989). This principle is widely recognised as a fruitful approach to learning in realistic situations (Bransford, Brown & Cocking, 1999). The tight integration of self-directed learning within the work processes bears the danger of causing a cognitive overload on the side of the user (Sweller, 1994). To reduce cognitive load, we will build on recent insight in the use of scaffolds for selfdirected inquiry learning (de Jong in press-a, in press-b, de Jong & Pieters 2005). 3.3
Expert Support: Contextualized Collaboration
APOSDLE acknowledges that most effective learning transfer happens during communication, collaboration and social interaction. APOSDLE lowers the hurdles for knowledge workers to informally transfer knowledge to others in that it captures the context of the creation, evolution and usage of artefacts. APOSDLE enriches artefacts with context information and therefore allows artefacts to be turned into true learning artefacts. For defining communication and collaboration methods we will build on the concept of scripted cooperation (O’Donnell 1999; Dansereau & Johnson 1994). A basis for the software framework exists with the ConcertChat framework (see http://www.ipsi.de/concertchat).
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Integrating the 3spaces
APOSDLE introduces the concept of ‘3spaces’ that incorporates the environments of business space, knowledge management and learning systems. All three environments are typically structured differently and implemented by different systems. The concept of 3spaces serves to provide an abstraction that allows conceiving the three different environments of a knowledge worker’s typical workplace as a unity. However, the knowledge from the 3spaces is typically treated independently and structured differently. APOSDLE will apply existing semantic web technologies (e.g., OWL, RDF, XML, MPEG-7 etc.), peer-to-peer knowledge management approaches, etc. to (semi-)automatically create an integrated semantic knowledge structure. This includes ensuring the interoperability of the individual semantic structures (e.g. ontologies) of the 3spaces and the creation of an associative network which relates the information objects contained in the different spaces to one another. In addition, knowledge from unstructured or ill-structured spaces (e.g. knowledge space) will be integrated by using knowledge discovery algorithms to automatically extract dynamic structures.
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Conclusions and Outlook
A research project such as APOSDLE involves many challenges, of which the largest will be: • How to acquire the current work context of the user so that what is being offered reflects actual needs and learning goals. • How to devise and update formal models of the domain, processes and competencies. • How to provide scaffolds for learning purposes tightly integrated in current work processes so that true learning can take place. • How to enrich communication artifacts with context information so that they can be reused. • How to achieve homogeneous access to underlying data repositories so that seamless integration into the work environment becomes possible. If successful APOSDLE has the potential to significantly contribute to the European research agenda. APOSDLE will devise a novel workplace learning paradigm which integrates individual learning and working on one hand and organizational learning and knowledge management on the other.
Acknowledgements APOSDLE is partially funded under the FP6 of the European Commission within the IST Workprogramme 2004 (FP6-IST-2004-027023). The Know-Center is funded by the Austrian Competence Center program K plus under the auspices of the Austrian Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology (www.ffg.at/index.php?cid=95) and by the State of Styria.
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