Juhana Salim

Framework for the evaluation of e-learning in Malaysian Public Sector from the pedagogical perspective

E-learning has emerged as an attractive alternative for the delivery of teaching and learning or training. It has the potential to benefit student, instructor and the society at large. The advent of Internet and multimedia has injected a paradigm shift in training, teaching and learning thus contributes to easier, flexible, attractive, meaningful and effective learning without the constraint of time and location. Nevertheless, most e-learning focused more on technical matters whereas less attention is given to the pedagogical aspect. Apart from that, unsatisfactory quality of e-learning hinders the learning effectiveness and resulting in no benefit or added value to its users. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of e-learning from the perspective of pedagogy and the criteria which contributes to the effectiveness. This study also attempts to propose an Evaluation Framework for the Public Sector E-learning from the pedagogical perspective. The said framework consists of five main evaluation criteria that influenced the effectiveness of e-learning from the perspective of pedagogy namely individual, knowledge, learning, content and relationship between instructor & learner. This is a preliminary study whereby the data collection has not been carried out yet.

A framework of knowledge sharing through ICT for teachers in Malaysia

It is widely recognized that the most critical part of knowledge management process is knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing is crucial to either profit or non-profit organizations. The first part of this paper introduces the concept and some definitions of knowledge sharing. Next, the paper describes the benefits of knowledge sharing to the education. Based on the preliminary study and observation,some issues on teachers and the Information Communication Technology (ICT) are highlighted. This paper seeks to review the existing models and theories that have been applied to identify the factors that affect the knowledge sharing process. Finally, by applying the combination of knowledge sharing and information system theories, this paper proposes a knowledge sharing framework for teachers in Malaysia.

Features Discovery for Web Classification Using Support Vector Machine

The ever fast-expanding web information resources pose a big challenge to internet users seeking the most relevant, latest and quality information. The sheer vast amount of web information has resulted in restructuring of the resources. Thus, an appropriate web classification method needs to be established in order for quality web information to be accessed. This paper intends to discuss the web document features that classify the web information resources. Six web document features have been identified which are text, meta tag and title (A), title and text (B), title (C), meta tag and title (D), meta tag (E) and text (F). The Support Vector Machine (SVM) method is used to classify the web document while four types of kernels namely: Radial Basis Function (RBF), linear, polynomial and sigmoid kernels was applied to test the accuracy of the classification. The studies show that the text, meta tag and title (A) features is the best features for classification of web document that employs the four kernels followed by the features on title and text (B) as well as the features on meta tag and title (C). The studies also found that the linear kernel is the best kernel in classifying the web document compared to the RBF, polynomial and sigmoid kernel.

The influence of individual, organizational and technological factors on knowledge sharing in the private sector in Malaysia

Knowledge sharing is the process of transferring knowledge from a person to another in organization. Knowledge sharing is important as a basic human daily activity to create opportunities in maximizing the capability of company to achieve performance. However, previous studies have indicated that employees are reluctant to share knowledge. Many factors influencing knowledge sharing were identified from different perspectives to solve the problem. Upon a critical review on factors affecting knowledge sharing, individual, organizational and technological factors are frequent mentioned in literature. This paper proposes a conceptual framework that takes into consideration the influence of the three factors; individual, organizational and technological on knowledge sharing in the private sector in Malaysia. This study will be followed by an empirical study to test the hypothesis and to validate the model. This study will improve the understanding on factors influencing knowledge sharing in organizations, specifically among employees in the private sector.

Information system success and acceptance theories: Towards developing a “virtual communities of practice” success model

Most organizations in the world including the health care sector are unsuccessful in getting the expected benefits of knowledge management initiatives (KM). One of the KM initiatives in health care sector is virtual communities of practice (VCoPs). But the effectiveness of its contribution towards the well publicized failure of numerous KM initiatives is questioned by many researchers. In health care sectors Virtual Community of Practice is one of the KM initiatives practiced where practitioners conduct discussions and share experience online. Presently, there is no overall or widely accepted framework that addresses the important aspects of KM to measure the KMS success in health care sector particularly virtual communities in KMS, reflecting the need to build a successful VCoPs model. Basically, VCoPs depends on the interaction between practitioners through the information and communication technologies (ICT). Past researches have identified the technological and social psychological features as some of the key factors for the success of VCoPs. This article reports on a study that proposes a multidimensional VCoPs success model based on the information systems (IS) success theories which focuses on the social psychological perspective. This study adopts the theory of planned behavior (TPB) combined with other social psychological factors derived from the literature. From the technological perspective, the study adopts the DeLone and McLean IS success model as well as the technology acceptance model (TAM). However, technological and social psychological factors are showing a causal chain starting with beliefs and main systems characteristics to expectations about usage and value of the VCoPs. The model is developed to give initial insights to potential factors affecting VCoPs success and effectiveness in health care sector.

A framework for building multilingual ontologies for Islamic portal

In recent years, there were a variety of difficulties that users have to face in searching for information through Internet. Past research had shown that in performing searches, users use query terms that consist of “everyday language, technical terms (with or without knowledge of underlying concepts) and various explanatory model, all influenced by psychosocial and cultural variations. Semantically annotated documents provide several advantages. One advantage is document specific representations no longer affect the search. This is extremely important in the case of multilingual representations. Keywords of several languages are mapped to the same concept in an ontology and are therefore given the same meaning. Multilingual search portal can be established to produce the same results, no matter which language is used for retrieval. This research aim to identify and analyze ontology that relates to Islam to enhance the use of exact vocabularies and to develop an ontology based Islamic semantic retrieval that can retrieve Islamic web in 3 different languages simultaneously through a multilingual search portal. This research emphasizes on semantic web technologies and the development of ontology using thesaurus such as Library Congress Subject Heading and other reference sources such as Index Islamicus, thesaurus, encyclopaedia, biographies etc. as the basis for implementing novel mechanism for retrieving Islamic web in 3 different languages simultaneously. In this research, existing knowledge sources such as documents, reports, etc. are mapped into the domain ontology and semantically enriched. This semantically enriched information enables better knowledge indexing and searching process and implicitly a better management of knowledge.

Quantitative evaluation of simplicity invisible domain in Islamic knowledge organizations

There are several invisible domains in knowledge organization system (KOS) that these domains need to investigate for improving our knowledge about them. Simplicity concept, which is emphasized by thesauri construction standards, is one of the important invisible domains in Knowledge organizations. Both the ISO 2788 and BS 5723 command leads thesaurus builders to the use of simple or unitary concepts in thesauri. In this research, invisible domain of simplicity was investigated by quantitative evaluation for analyzing simplicity in descriptors structure. Therefore, Simplicity and Factoring ratio were proposed for accessing this purpose. Here, we analyzed two levels of invisibility in the Islamic thesauri, which are Legal principles, Koran sciences and Theology thesaurus. Our research method was statistical and content analysis. MS-EXCEL was used for data gathering and analyzing. The results showed that there is an indirect relation between numbers of words in descriptors structure and simplicity. Simplicity increasing depends on decreasing two-word descriptors.

Exploring the role of transactive memory system (TMS) for knowledge transfer processes in Malaysia E-government IT outsourcing

Knowledge transfer has attracted much attention to researchers and practitioners in recent years since knowledge transfer has been considered as a critical determinant of an organizations capacity to confer sustainable competitive advantage. Despite extensive research on knowledge transfer issues, there is a dearth of research that has explicitly focused on the role of transactive memory in enabling intra-organizational knowledge transfer in information technology (IT) outsourcing context, particularly e-government IT outsourcing. Although the information systems literature has recently acknowledged the role of transactive memory plays in improving knowledge processes, most of the research is still in the basic concept of transactive memory which is emphasized more on the individual communication concept rather than integrating those concept with the existing organization memory system. Moreover, it is still at a conceptual level rather than practical action for a firm to address. Therefore, this paper attempts to fill this gap by examining the factors that have been cited as significant influences on the ability to transfer knowledge from the vendor to the client organizations in the context of e-government IT outsourcing, and examine the role of transactive memory system towards effective knowledge transfer process between organizations. Drawing on several theoretical streams, this paper will propose an integrated conceptual framework of inter-organizational knowledge transfer which further can be used for research enhancement.

Information and communication technology for decision-making in the Higher Education in Yemen: A review

Information and communication technologies (ICT) are increasingly becoming very important for supporting decision-making processes. In fact, the Ministry of Higher Education in Yemen recognizes such roles and therefore, initiated a process for development ICT Policy for Higher Education in Yemen. The overall goal of this paper is to review recent progress made at the policy and operational levels regarding the utilization of ICT in supporting decision making in the Ministry of Higher Education in Yemen. This paper tries to analyze whether policy and operational changes in the Higher Education sector in Yemen are adequately inspiring for positive impact to meet the challenge of ICT integration for decisionmaking. Furthermore, this paper seeks to figure out possible policy implication that put forward adequate emphasis on the integration ICT for supporting decision- making processes to ensure maximum use of ICT potentials in the Higher Education Systems in Yemen.

Cultural behavioural based model to a Holistic Knowledge Management System

Present knowledge management initiatives and systems failed or remained ineffective due to the lack of knowledge creation activities in organizations. It is hypothesized that emphasizing the knowledge creation activities and embedding such activities in the organization’s objective, mission and processes will directly enhance the effectiveness of the organization’s Knowledge Management System. In designing the Holistic Knowledge Management System (HiKMaS™), a new approach that focuses on a knowledge friendly culture and behaviour among the member of staff in an organization is used and supported by appropriate processes which is enabled through technology. This holistic KM system is designed to be more pragmatic and dynamic as opposed to a knowledge management system that has the expectation on its people in the organization to give their cooperation and contributions at times, unwillingly.