Minhong Wang

Integrating organizational, social, and individual perspectives in Web 2.0-based workplace e-learning

E-learning is emerging as a popular approach of education in the workplace by virtue of its flexibility to access, just-in-time delivery, and cost-effectiveness. To improve social interaction and knowledge sharing in e-learning, Web 2.0 is increasingly utilized and integrated with e-learning applications. However, existing social learning systems fail to align learning with organizational goals and individual needs in a systemic way. The dominance of technology-oriented approaches makes e-learning applications less goal-effective and poor in quality and design. To solve the problem, we address the requirement of integrating organizational, social, and individual perspectives in the development of Web 2.0 e-learning systems. To fulfill the requirement, a key performance indicator (KPI)-oriented approach is presented in this study. By integrating a KPI model with Web 2.0 technologies, our approach is able to: 1) set up organizational goals and link the goals with expertise required for individuals; 2) build a knowledge network by linking learning resources to a set of competences to be developed and a group of people who learn and contribute to the knowledge network through knowledge creation, sharing, and peer evaluation; and 3) improve social networking and knowledge sharing by identifying each individual’s work context, expertise, learning need, performance, and contribution. The mechanism of the approach is explored and elaborated with conceptual frameworks and implementation technologies. A prototype system for Web 2.0 e-learning has been developed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach.

On-demand e-supply chain integration: A multi-agent constraint-based approach

With e-business emerging as a key enabler to drive supply chains, the focus of supply chain management has been shifted from production efficiency to customer-driven and partnership synchronization approaches. This strategic shift depends on the match between the demands and offerings that deliver the services. To achieve this, we need to coordinate the flow of information among the services, and link their business processes under various constraints. Existing approaches to this problem have relied on complete information of services and resources, and have failed to adequately address the dynamics and uncertainties of the operating environments. The real-world situation is complicated as a result of undetermined requirements of services involved in the chain, unpredictable solutions contributed by service providers, and dynamic selection and aggregation of solutions to services. This paper examines an agent-mediated approach to on-demand e-business supply chain integration. Each agent works as a service broker, exploring individual service decisions as well as interacting with each other for achieving compatibility and coherence among the decisions of all services. Based on the framework, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.

From process logic to business logic: a cognitive approach to business process management

The unpredictability of business activities means that business process management should provide a way to adapt to change. The traditional workflow approach, based on predefined process logic, offers little support for todays complex and dynamic business environment. Therefore, a cognitive approach is proposed to help manage complex business activities, based on continuous awareness of situations and real-time decisions on activities. In this approach, the business environment is seen as capturing events that occurred and the state of tasks and resources; business logic involving process routing, operational constraints, exception handling and business strategy is used to determine which actions are appropriate for the current situation. By extending process management from process logic to business logic, the methodology offers flexibility, agility and adaptability in complex business process management.

Agent-based negotiation and decision making for dynamic supply chain formation

Modern businesses are facing the challenge of effectively coordinating their supply chains from upstream to downstream services. It is a complex problem to search, schedule, and coordinate a set of services from a large number of service resources under various constraints and uncertainties. Existing approaches to this problem have relied on complete information regarding service requirements and resources, without adequately addressing the dynamics and uncertainties of the environments. The real-world situations are complicated as a result of ambiguity in the requirements of the services, the uncertainty of solutions from service providers, and the interdependencies among the services to be composed. This paper investigates the complexity of supply chain formation and proposes an agent-mediated coordination approach. Each agent works as a broker for each service type, dedicated to selecting solutions for each service as well as interacting with other agents in refining the decision making to achieve compatibility among the solutions. The coordination among agents concerns decision making at strategic, tactical, and operational level. At the strategic level, agents communicate and negotiate for supply chain formation; at the tactical level, argumentation is used by agents to communicate and understand the preferences and constraints of each other; at the operational level, different strategies are used for selecting the preferences. Based on this approach, a prototype has been implemented with simulated experiments highlighting the effectiveness of the approach.

The design of intelligent workflow monitoring with agent technology

In recent years, workflow technology has been widely used in business process management. With the increased complexity, uncertainty and risks in business operations, workflow monitoring is gaining growing attention in business process controlling and supervision. However, monitoring functions provided in traditional workflow systems lack flexibility, and provide little support for managing complex and dynamical changes in business process. In this paper, we propose a novel workflow monitoring approach, in which various intelligent agents work together to perform flexible monitoring tasks in an autonomous and collaborative way. By using customized monitoring plan and proactive monitoring process, the workflow monitoring activities can be executed flexibly and efficiently. The application of intelligent agents for such flexible, adaptive and collaborative workflow monitoring is investigated through an intelligent monitoring system in securities trading.

Creating a performance-oriented e-learning environment: A design science approach

E-learning is now being used by many organizations as an approach for enhancing the skills of knowledge workers. However, most applications have performed poorly in motivating employee learning, being perceived as less effective due to a lack of alignment of learning with work performance. To help solve this problem, we developed a performance-oriented approach using design science research methods. It uses performance measurement to clarify organizational goals and individual learning needs and links them to e-learning applications. The key concept lies in a Key Performance Indicator model, where organizational mission and vision are translated into a set of targets that drive learning towards a goal of improving work performance. We explored the mechanisms needed to utilize our approach and examined the necessary conceptual framework and implementation details. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach, a prototype workplace e-learning system was developed and used to evaluate the effectiveness of our approach.

An interval set model for learning rules from incomplete information table

A novel interval set approach is proposed in this paper to induce classification rules from incomplete information table, in which an interval-set-based model to represent the uncertain concepts is presented. The extensions of the concepts in incomplete information table are represented by interval sets, which regulate the upper and lower bounds of the uncertain concepts. Interval set operations are discussed, and the connectives of concepts are represented by the operations on interval sets. Certain inclusion, possible inclusion, and weak inclusion relations between interval sets are presented, which are introduced to induce strong rules and weak rules from incomplete information table. The related properties of the inclusion relations are proved. It is concluded that the strong rules are always true whatever the missing values may be, while the weak rules may be true when missing values are replaced by some certain known values. Moreover, a confidence function is defined to evaluate the weak rule. The proposed approach presents a new view on rule induction from incomplete data based on interval set.

A web-service agent-based decision support system for securities exception management

Abstract With rising trading volumes and increasing risks in securities transactions, the securities industry is making an effort to shorten the trade lifecycle and minimize transaction risks. While attempting to achieve this, exception management is crucial to pass trade information within the trade lifecycle in a timely and accurate fashion. For a competitive solution to exception management, a web-service-agent-based decision support system is developed in this paper. Agent technology is applied to deal with the dynamic, complex, and distributed processes in exception management; web services techniques are proposed for more scalability and interoperability in network-based business environment. By integrating agent technology with web services to make use of the advantages from both, this approach leads to more intelligence, flexibility and collaboration in business exception management. The effectiveness of this approach is evaluated through a use case and demonstration feedback.

Intelligent Agent Supported Flexible Workflow Monitoring System

The unpredictability of business process requires workflow systems to support workflow monitoring functions with the ability to flexibly adapt to the changing environment. Traditional approaches to handling this problem have fallen short, providing little support for monitoring flexibility. In this paper, we will describe a flexible workflow monitoring system, in which a society of intelligent agents work together to perform flexible monitoring processes based on various monitoring requests.

A conceptual model of personalized virtual learning environments

The Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is one of the fastest growing areas in educational technology research and development. In order to achieve learning effectiveness, ideal VLEs should be able to identify learning needs and customize solutions, with or without an instructor to supplement instruction. They are called Personalized VLEs (PVLEs). In order to achieve PVLEs success, comprehensive conceptual models corresponding to PVLEs are essential. Such conceptual modeling development is important because it facilitates early detection and correction of system development errors. Therefore, in order to capture the PVLEs knowledge explicitly, this paper focuses on the development of conceptual models for PVLEs, including models of knowledge primitives in terms of learner, curriculum, and situational models, models of VLEs in general pedagogical bases, and particularly, the definition of the ontology of PVLEs on the constructivist pedagogical principle. Based on those comprehensive conceptual models, a prototyped multiagent-based PVLE has been implemented. A field experiment was conducted to investigate the learning achievements by comparing personalized and non-personalized systems. The result indicates that the PVLE we developed under our comprehensive ontology successfully provides significant learning achievements. These comprehensive models also provide a solid knowledge representation framework for PVLEs development practice, guiding the analysis, design, and development of PVLEs.