Module: Communauts virtuelles, Agents intelligents C3: Collaborative Knowledge construction

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Module Communautés virtuelles,Agents
intelligentsC3 Collaborative Knowledge
construction knowledge sharing
KM-Master Course, 2005
Thierry NABETH
INSEAD CALT The Centre for Advanced Learning
Technologies, Fontainebleau, France
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How to manage knowledge in a community context

• The main issues of Collaborative knowledge
  construction Sharing knowledge.
• Motivation, resistance, etc
• Addressing the issues
• Rewarding contribution?
• Transparency
• Digital environments for Collaborative knowledge
  construction and knowledge sharing
• In wikis?
• In Blogs
• In knowledge management platforms?

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The main issues of Collaborative knowledge
construction Sharing knowledge.

• The motivational issue
• People do not see their interest in spending time
• Knowledge power, and resistance to change?
• People see knowledge sharing as a threat
• Effectiveness of the process
• Can be a time consuming activity with limited
  value
• Managing tacit knowledge
• We are talking here of the management of the
  tacit knowledge. (see tacit knowledge specificity)

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Addressing the knowledge sharing capitalization
issues

• motivation
• Self motivation (altruism, )
• Social Reputation, recognition, pressure,
• Economic Monetary reward, bonus
• Organizational roles
• Knowledge manager, Knowledge engineer, Community
  organiser, etc.
• Compulsion
• In which context can it work?
• What about the use of compulsion in network?
• Other?

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Addressing the knowledge sharing capitalization
issues

• Mechanisms,
• Transparency (translucence)
• Social pressure
• People recognition
• Economic mechanisms
• measuring and rewarding value creation
• Productivity help the individual work process
• Example of economic mechanisms
• Inkass (K trading) http//www.inkass.com/
• IQPort (did not work)

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Digital environments for Collaborative knowledge
construction and sharing

• The different categories of tools
• Description
• What are the supported processes
• Centralized versus decentralised, control (roles,
  etc.)
• People motivation
• Quality?
• Advantage/disadvantages?
• Different (complementary) tools
• Wikis, Forums, blogs, recommendation systems, KM
  management systems (such as CMS)
• Other?

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Some Theories that can be used for stimulating
contribution

• Theories
• Social exchange theory Thibaut Kelley (1959)
• Collective Effort Model (social loafing) Karau
  et Williams (1993).
• Goal setting and motivation Locke Latham
  (2002)
• Interpersonal Influence theories (psycho
  sociology) Cialdini and Sagarin (2005)
• Critical mass effects Bob Metcalfe laws (?),
  David Reed (1999).

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Social exchange theory

• DescriptionSocial Exchange theory (Thibaut
  Kelley, 1959) explains how we feel about a
  relationship with another person as depending on
  our perceptions of
• The balance between what we put into the
  relationship and what we get out of it.
• The kind of relationship we deserve.
• The chances of having a better relationship with
  someone else.

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Social exchange theory (2)

• The social exchanges theories considers that
  voluntary relationships depend on
• receiving satisfactory outcomes,
• and that a persons commitment to an existing
  relationship is proportional to his/her
  satisfaction in this relationship and to the
  investment he/she has already put in this
  relationship and it is inversely proportional to
  potential alternative relationships.

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The Collective Effort Model

• DescriptionCollective Effort Model (social
  loafing) Karau et Williams (1993). According to
  this theory, people work hard when they think
  their effort will help them achieve outcomes that
  they value.
• The collective effort model identifies conditions
  under which people will socially loaf less
• Believing that their effort is important to the
  group performance.
• Believing that their work is identifiable.
• Liking the group they are working with.

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Interpersonal Influence theories(psycho
sociology)

• Cialdini and Sagarin (2005)
• The six principles of influence of Robert
  Cialdini
• reciprocity felt obligation to "reimburse"
• social validation social conformance
• commitment / consistencytendency to act in a
  similar way than in the past
• friendship / liking
• scarcity
• authority

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Critical Mass effects

• The value of a social structure (Network / Group
  / Community) is proportional to the size of this
  social structure.
• Bob Metcalfes law (?) the value of a network
• the value of a network equals approximately the
  square of the number of users of the system
  n(n1).
• Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly (2005)
• the value of a network equals approximately
  nln(n)
• David Reeds law (1999)
• the potential utility of large networks,
  particularly social networks, can scale
  exponentially (2n) with the size of the network.

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Wikis

• Description
• Collaborative definition of terms linked with one
  another
• Mainly centralized, control open to everybody to
  post. reviewing process?
• Motivation recognition, altruisms?
• Advantage/disadvantages
• Ease of use, Scalability
• Lost control of the content by the user?
• Examples
• Wikipedia, VCAI wiki,

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Blogs

• Description
• Collection of stories, strong temporality
• decentralized, control each person control
  his/her blog.
• Motivation capture personal memory, support for
  the social network,
• Advantage/disadvantages
• Ease of use, easy capture of experiences
  (stories) and opinions
• No central space?
• Examples
• Expert blogs, VCAI blogs of the students,

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CMS

• Description
• Shared repository, project management
• Mainly centralized. Control usually limited to
  an organization (access control). Definition of
  roles K-worker, K-manager
• Motivation pressure from the organization,
  bonus, etc.
• Advantage/disadvantages
• Robust, possibility of strong control
  coordination (project), versioning, support for
  th work process
• Heavy
• Examples
• KM systems (1rst generation), SourceForge?,

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Collaborative knowledge construction and sharing.
The VCAI Case

• The different tools
• VCAI Wiki
• VCAI Blogs
• VCAI blog
• Blogs of the students
• - email, Yahoo group, etc.
• Discussion
• What worked, what didnt work?
• Students motivation. (some contributed, others
  didnt)

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Principles guidelines in a Wiki

• Principles, processes, policies and guidelines
  defined in Wikis.
• Wikis propose a set of principles, processes and
  guidelines that can be used to regulate
  coordinate the knowledge authoring and diffusion
  process in the community of the users making use
  of these Wikis.
• Issues
• Creating high quality content
• resolving disputes
• addressing vandalism
• Policies
• Access policies (open, close)
• Level of control of the content (Loose or strict)
• How to enforce the policies
• Explicit definition of guidelines
• Implicit definition of guidelines (Netiquette)
• Definition of Roles (for instance in Wikipedia)
• Easy fix of errors
• Exclusion

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Access and use policy of a Wiki

• Access to the Wiki
• Many Wikis (such as Wikipedia) rely on the
  concept of public and Open source content
  (creative common license), in which everybody is
  allowed to create or update the Wiki pages, and
  to make use of this content in various context
  (provided that proper citation of the author is
  done).
• In some other cases, more restricted Wiki can
  exist, which access is restricted to a particular
  group, or for which you need to authenticate
  before publishing.

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Practices styles

• The processes and guidelines include the
  description of the different practices (such as
  style policies, templates, etc.) to be described
  to create high quality content, or to address
  issues that can happen in collaborative authoring
  context.
• Example of guidelines (Wikipedia)
• Style guidelines (Manual of Style),
• How to structure the content
• How to write a great article
• correcting errors,
• disambiguating terms, naming convention