Papers by Simon Buckingham Shum
Software design process Computer software Psychology Bionics Computer software Psychology Bionics.
Journal of Educational Technology and Society, 2012
We propose that the design and implementation of effective Social Learning Analytics (SLA) presen... more We propose that the design and implementation of effective Social Learning Analytics (SLA) present significant challenges and opportunities for both research and enterprise, in three important respects. The first is that the learning landscape is extraordinarily turbulent at present, in no small part due to technological drivers. Online social learning is emerging as a significant phenomenon for a variety of reasons, which we review, in order to motivate the concept of social learning. The second challenge is to identify different types of SLA and ...
International Journal of Intelligent Systems, 2005
This paper characterises key weaknesses in the ability of current digital libraries to support sc... more This paper characterises key weaknesses in the ability of current digital libraries to support scholarly inquiry, and as a way to address these, proposes computational services grounded in semiformal models of the naturalistic argumentation commonly found in research literatures. It is argued that a design priority is to balance formal expressiveness with usability, making it critical to co-evolve the modelling
Compendium, a graphical hypertext system, can be used to gather a semantic group memory when used... more Compendium, a graphical hypertext system, can be used to gather a semantic group memory when used in a meeting scenario. By way of a specifically designed ontology, this structure is applied as annotation to other forms of meeting capture, such as audio and video recordings, and further employed to navigate between and through these resources.
Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS- based approaches to design rationale... more Having developed, used and evaluated some of the early IBIS- based approaches to design rationale (DR) such as gIBIS and QOC in the late 1980s/mid-1990s, we describe the subsequent evolution of the argu- mentation-based paradigm through software support, and perspectives drawn from modeling and meeting facilitation. Particular attention is given to the challenge of negotiating the overheads of capturing this
Knowledge and Process Management, 2002
Many knowledge management (KM) efforts revolve around managing documents in a repository or enabl... more Many knowledge management (KM) efforts revolve around managing documents in a repository or enabling better real-time communication. An ideal approach would combine these with the ability to create knowledge content that can be either formal or informal in nature, in a rapid, real-time manner. We will call this Rapid Knowledge Construction (RKC). This paper describes the concepts underpinning our approach to RKC, and provides a case study of the approach in an industry context. The Compendium approach, which has been applied in projects in both industry and academic settings, facilitates the rapid creation of the content of a KM repository, by combining collaborative hypermedia, group facilitation techniques, and an analytical methodology rooted in knowledge acquisition and structured analysis. Compendium addresses key challenges for the successful introduction of KM technologies into work practice: (i) customization for different use contexts; (ii) integration of formal and informal communication; (iii) integration of both prescribed and ad hoc representations; (iv) validation and cross-referencing of the repository 'on the fly' at the point of entry;
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2006
This paper examines the representational requirements for interactive, collaborative systems inte... more This paper examines the representational requirements for interactive, collaborative systems intended to support sensemaking and argumentation over contested issues. We argue that a perspective supported by semiotic and cognitively oriented discourse analyses offers both theoretical insights and motivates representational requirements for the semantics of tools for contesting meaning. We introduce our semiotic approach, highlighting its implications for discourse representation, before describing a research system (ClaiMaker) designed to support the construction of scholarly argumentation by allowing analysts to publish and contest 'claims' about scientific contributions. We show how ClaiMaker's representational scheme is grounded in specific assumptions concerning the nature of explicit modelling, and the evolution of meaning within a discourse community. These characteristics allow the system to represent scholarly discourse as a dynamic process, in the form of continuously evolving structures. A cognitively oriented discourse analysis then shows how the use of a small set of cognitive relational primitives in the underlying ontology opens possibilities for offering users advanced forms of computational service for analysing collectively constructed argumentation networks.
München, Germany, 2005
NASA Ames' Mobile Agents Architecture is a distributed agent-based architecture, which integrates... more NASA Ames' Mobile Agents Architecture is a distributed agent-based architecture, which integrates diverse mobile entities in a wide-area wireless system for lunar and planetary surface operations. Software agents, implemented in the Brahms multiagent language, run in Brahms virtual machines onboard laptops for space suits, robots, and surface habitats. "Personal agents" support the habitat crew and surface astronauts, as well as the their robotic assistant. People communicate with their personal agents via a speech dialogue system and via a meeting-capture hyperlink database tool.
We discuss issues arising from the design, implementation and first use of a prototype infrastruc... more We discuss issues arising from the design, implementation and first use of a prototype infrastructure for distributed collective practice (IDCP), and reflect upon their intersection with some of the themes emerging from the Paris 2000 IDCP workshop. The problem of maintaining coherence in a distributed system is of central interest to us. We focus on the notion of representational coherence,
Participatory Spatial Planning is a collaborative governance practice in which different stakehol... more Participatory Spatial Planning is a collaborative governance practice in which different stakeholders, from different organizational levels are involved in a collaborative decision-making process. Capturing deliberation along collaborative decision-making processes is a challenging task. Several stakeholders deliberate in different moments, trying to accomplish different tasks, collaborating and communicating with different people and working in different environments. Knowledge derived from parallel processes,
This paper focuses on supporting knowledge management and exchange between web-based and traditio... more This paper focuses on supporting knowledge management and exchange between web-based and traditional collaborative environments. In particular we discuss the integration between a tool ( CoPe_it! ) supporting collaborative argumentation and learning in web-based Communities of Practices and a hypermedia and sense making tool ( Compendium ) acting as a personal and collective Knowledge Management (KM) system in traditional collaborative
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2004
Alternate track papers & posters of the 13th international conference on World Wide Web - WWW Alt. '04, 2004
We describe a strategy to support the semantic annotation of contested knowledge, in the context ... more We describe a strategy to support the semantic annotation of contested knowledge, in the context of the Scholarly Ontologies project, which aims at building a network of interpretations enriching a corpus of scholarly papers. To model such knowledge, which does not have 'right' and 'wrong' values, we are building on the notion of active recommendations as a means to sparkle annotators' interest. We finally argue for a different approach to the evaluation of its impact.
Proceedings of the twelfth ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia - HYPERTEXT '01, 2001
Hypertext research in the mid-1980s on representing argumentation for design rationale (DR) fores... more Hypertext research in the mid-1980s on representing argumentation for design rationale (DR) foreshadowed what are now dominant concerns in knowledge management: representing, codifying and manipulating semiformal concepts, the use of formalisms to mediate collective sensemaking, and the construction of group memory. With the benefit of 15 years' hindsight, we can see the failure of so many hypertext DR systems to be adopted as symptomatic of the more general problem of fostering 'hypertext literacy' in real working environments. Pursuing Englebart's goal of "augmenting human intellect", we describe the Compendium approach to collective sensemaking, which demonstrates the impact that a hypertext facilitator can have on the learning and adoption problems that plagued earlier hypertext systems. We also describe how conventional documents and modelling notations can be morphed into and out of Compendium's 'native hypertext' in order to support other modes of working across diverse communities of practice.
Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing, 2008
This chapter describes the sociotechnical embedding of a knowledge cartography approach (Conversa... more This chapter describes the sociotechnical embedding of a knowledge cartography approach (Conversational Modelling) within a prototype e-science work system. This was evaluated over two 2-week field trials, simulating collaborative Mars-Earth geological exploration. We believe this work is the first demonstration of a knowledge mapping tool embedded within a human/software multiagent work system, with humans and agents reading and writing structures amenable to agent understanding and autonomous agent execution, and human understanding, annotation and argumentation. Secondly, in terms of the applied problem, we have demonstrated how human and agent plans, data, multimedia documents, metadata, discussions, interpretations and arguments can be mapped in an integrated manner, and successfully deployed in field trials which simulated aspects of mission workload pressure.
Proceedings of the 10th international conference on Intelligent user interfaces - IUI '05, 2005
Annotating a document with an interpretation of its contents raises a number of challenges that w... more Annotating a document with an interpretation of its contents raises a number of challenges that we are hoping to address via the creation of a supporting environment. We present these challenges and motivate an approach based on the notion of suggestions to support document annotation, hoping these suggestions would act as leads to follow for annotators, therefore reducing some of the difficulties inherent to the task. The environment resulting from this approach, ClaimSpotter, is presented. Aspects of its evaluation are also given, using the findings of a study involving a group of participants faced with a document annotation task.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000
In their initial proposal for structural computing (SC), Nürnberg et al.
Information Technology for Knowledge Management, 1998
This paper describes an approach to capturing organisational memory, which serves to ground an an... more This paper describes an approach to capturing organisational memory, which serves to ground an analysis of human issues that knowledge management (KM) technologies raise. In the approach presented, teams construct graphical webs of the arguments and documents relating to key issues they are facing. This supports collaborative processes which are central to knowledge work, and provides a group memory of this intellectual investment. This approach emphasises the centrality of negotiation in making interdisciplinary decisions in a changing environment. Discussion in the paper focuses on key human dimensions to KM technologies, including the cognitive and group dynamics set up by an approach, the general problem of preserving contextual cues, and the political dimensions to formalising knowledge processes and products. These analyses strongly motivate the adoption of participatory design processes for KM systems.
Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing, 2008
In analysing controversies and debates-which would include reviewing a literature in order to pla... more In analysing controversies and debates-which would include reviewing a literature in order to plan research, or assessing intelligence to formulate policy-there is no one worldview which can be mapped, for instance as a single, coherent concept map. The cartographic challenge is to show which facts are agreed and contested, and the different kinds of narrative links that use facts as evidence to define the nature of the problem, what to do about it, and why. We will use the debate around the invasion of Iraq to demonstrate the methodology of using a knowledge mapping tool to extract key ideas from source materials, in order to classify and connect them within and across a set of perspectives of interest to the analyst. We reflect on the value that this approach adds, and how it relates to other argument mapping approaches.
Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '98, 1998
We are looking at how new forms of document interface can be used to support new forms of scholar... more We are looking at how new forms of document interface can be used to support new forms of scholarly discourse, and ultimately, new models of scholarly publishing. The vehicle we use to conduct this research is the Digital Document Discourse Environment (D3E). D3E is an experimental system supporting the publication of web- based documents with integrated discourse facilities and embedded
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Papers by Simon Buckingham Shum