Noël Conruyt

Defining E-Services Using a Co-Design Platform: Example in the Domain of Instrumental E-Learning.

Purpose – One of the aims of expert knowledge management via information and communication technology is to improve the efficiency of knowledge transfer to non‐specialists, and to facilitate the implementation of service‐products that are adapted so as to be truly used. The aim of this paper is to describe an example in the domain of instrumental e‐learning.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on activity theory, this article describes a methodology that aims to guide the design process along the lines of the usage process.Findings – The co‐design platform (CDP) allows the service designers and users to determine service‐product definitions together, to facilitate the emergence of their uses.Research limitations/implications – Some of the experiments are still in progress as the development is iterative.Practical implications – To illustrate this method, the authors have designed and implemented an instrumental learning e‐service for guitar music (e‐guitare).Originality/value – The CDP gives a greater un...

E-co-innovation for making e-services living labs as a human-centered digital ecosystem for education with ICT

To make responsible products and e-services with people and not only with specialists, a new eco-citizen vision of innovation is necessary, called e-co-innovation. In Reunion Island, we have introduced Semiotic Web as a human-centered method to manage sustainable development with ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). The signification or semiosis is the key psychological process that gives sense to e-co-innovation for making ICT usage-based research, rather than technology-based. The scene develops itself in partnership with end-users to exchange data, information and knowledge. In this sharing frame, the Living Labs (LL) concept allows to emphasize the importance on political and methodological principles to practice open innovation guided by usages. On more pragmatic, scientific and technical plans, we have set up a conceptual method for making products/services based on Sign management, and a tool called the Creativity or Co-design platform, used to build iteratively e-services with pilot users (lead-users). These resources have been applied for ten years at University of Reunion Island (UR) to help to manage tropical biodiversity (coral reefs and forests) and develop instrumental e-learning in music (guitar and piano) in order to satisfy the desires of target users in the domain of education by Teaching and Learning (TL).

An Ontology for Musical Performances Analysis: Application to a Collaborative Platform Dedicated to Instrumental Practice

Performance analysis is a common issue in the musical field, especially for instrument teachers and musicologists. That is why we present in this paper an ontology (technical aspect) and a descriptive model (pragmatic aspect) to allow music teachers and students to create semantic annotation on musical performances. As such, we start by studying recorded piano lessons and analyze the required concepts and roles. We then propose a general performance description model based on these lessons and detail how musicology rules can be used to automatically infer new information on a given piece. Lastly, we discuss the integration of our work to an e-learning web-based collaborative platform for musical education.

Online Multimedia Database for Communities of Practice in Biology: A Real Use Challenge

The ETIC scientific program aims to enhance insular tropical environment research contents from biologists to general public through information and communication Web technologies. In this frame, online multimedia databases are convenient Web applications that allow communities of practice in Biology for environmental protection to share different types of documents (text, photo, video, sound, etc.). But the way to design them needs to be adapted to researchers practices, in order to be really attractive and useful. By applying a user-centered development process and an appropriate human resources project management based on a co-design platform, our team has been able to develop an online multimedia database that matches users expectations. An important effort has been devoted to deliver a usable interface close to offline standard applications. Indeed, Web applications will have to extract themselves from Web interface rigidity without imposing users to download additional plugins. Moreover, interoperability between Web applications allowing the creation and the online modification of files stored in the multimedia database is also a priority challenge.

Managing Complex Knowledge in Natural Sciences

In many fields dependant upon complex observation, the structuring, depiction and treatment of knowledge can be of great complexity. For example in Systematics, the scientific discipline that investigates bio-diversity, the descriptions of specimens are often highly structured (composite objects, taxonomic attributes), noisy (erroneous or unknown data), and polymorphous (variable or imprecise data). In this paper, we present IKBS, an Iterative Knowledge Base System for dealing with such complex phenomena. The originality of this system is to implement the scientific method in biology: experimenting (learning rules from examples) and testing (identifying new individuals, improving the initial model and descriptions). This methodology is applied in the following ways in IKBS: 1 - Knowledge is acquired through a descriptive model that suits the semantic demand of experts. 2 Knowledge is processed with an algorithm derived from C4n.5 i order to take into account structured knowledge introduced in the previous descriptive model of the domain. 3 - Knowledge is refined through eth use of an iterative process to evaluate the robustness of the descriptive model and descriptions. The IKBS system is presented here as a elif science application facilitating the identification of coral specimens of the family Pocilloporidae.

From knowledge transmission to sign sharing: semiotic web as a new paradigm for teaching and learning in the future internet

In the 21st century, with the advent of ultra high-speed broadband networks (1Gb per second), the Internet will offer new opportunities for innovators to design qualitative services and applications. Indeed, the challenge of such e-services is not only on the technological aspects of Internet with new infrastructures and architectures to conceive. The reality is also on its human and multimedia content delivery, with innovative philosophies of communication to apply in this digital and virtual age. In the context of Teaching and Learning as a human-centered design approach, we propose a new paradigm for thinking the Web, called the Web of Signs, rather than the Web of things. It focuses on the process of making knowledge by sharing signs and significations (Semiotic Web), more than on knowledge transmission with intelligent object representations (Semantic Web). Sign management is the shift of paradigm for education with ICT (e-Education) that we have investigated in such domains as enhancing natural and cultural heritage. In this paper, we will present this concept and illustrate it with two examples issued from La Reunion Island projects in instrumental e-Learning (@-MUSE) and biodiversity informatics (IKBS). This Sign management method was experimented in the frame of our Living Lab in Teaching and Learning at University of Reunion Island.

Sign Management for the Future of e-Education: Examples of Collaborative e-Services in a Living Lab (Invited Paper)

From a European technological and industrial perspective of the 20th century, Knowledge Management (KM) was viewed as the next step towards reaching a smart knowledge-based economy. But today, in the 21th century of big data and fast moving information, we argue that KM is not enough for reaching a qualitative human-based post-industrial society. We need a broader view in order to understand user needs and respond to their personal desires. In this endeavor, Living labs are a good way to reposition creative people at the center of technologies. But we need also methodologies and tools to accompany the transition from a competitive economy to a more sustainable society. We experimented this move at University of Reunion Island in the domain of e-education. We conceived a new paradigm called Sign Management (SM) for enhancing content producers with multimedia tools on a Creativity Platform. A methodology for co-designing educational e-services was applied in both natural (biodiversity) and cultural (music) domains in order that linear knowledge transmission lets place to an iterative know-how sharing approach between teachers and learners. This sign-based methodology serves as a condition for opening the era of Semiotic Web (Web of Signs) over Semantic Web (Web of Things). The objective is to co-create qualitative educational e-services with people based on a more natural/artificial and intelligent approach in the frame of Living labs.

From knowledge to sign management on a Creativity Platform

In the field of E-learning, the goal of researchers in knowledge acquisition and transmission is to produce e-services that are genuinely useful, that is to say, perfectly adapted to their end-uses. Here, we will deal with the specificities of learning how to play a musical instrument for which the quality of learning depends on the quality of teaching methods. In this context, semantic management of tacit and explicit knowledge from experts and books is not enough. Knowledge engineers must also capture live interpretations of expert musicians to illustrate the lesson to be learned. To enhance these significations, Sign management is a concept that has more relevance than Knowledge management: it aims at indexing multimedia contents (i.e. annotations) on different on/off-line supports with formalized textual information (i.e. scores) in order to better share interpretations and viewpoints. In this paper, we explain our concept of Sign management in the new digital and relational ecosystem. We then describe an iterative method based on a Creativity Platform that establishes end-uses as the criterion by which e-services are developed. The Creativity Platform serves to better understand the transformation of a given tool (proposed offer) into an instrument (motivated demand), which, in turn, motivates the supply that is produced to meet the demand. We illustrate our method based on activity theory by using an example of instrumental e-learning, the e-guitar project. Finally, we discuss the pragmatic results of our co-design experience with end-users.

Designing an Information System for the Preservation of the Insular Tropical Environment of Reunion Island

Decision-makers who wish to manage Insular Tropical Environments more efficiently need to narrow the gap between the production of scientific knowledge in universities, or other labs, and its pragmatic use by the general public and administrations. Today, one of the main challenges concerning the environment is the preservation of the biodiversity of ecosystems that suffer from urban and agricultural pressure. As we can only protect what we know, it is all the more important to share expert knowledge about habitats and species by using Internet in order to educate the public about their wealth and beauty. Based on Reunion Island, and taking into consideration an expected population growth of over 30% in the next twenty years, we are working to predict the human impact on this closed territory. To help tackle these two questions about biodiversity and land consumption, we have designed an Information System (IS) in the framework of the ETIC program. Our aim is to enhance insular tropical environment research in order to help the Reunion National Park to manage its protected territory. On the one hand, biodiversity research is handled statically, using knowledge bases and databases, to enhance Systematics and ecological university research. On the other hand, spatial planning concerns are treated dynamically, using multi-agent systems to simulate population densification movements. These software technologies have been implemented and integrated through a common architectural system in the ETIC program. They were conceived using Web Services that allow each module to communicate its functionalities and information with one another, as well as with external systems.

Knowledge Management in Environmental Sciences with \( \mathcal{I}\mathcal{K}\mathcal{B}\mathcal{S}: \) : Application to Systematics of Corals of the Mascarene Archipelago

Systematics, the scientific discipline that deals with listing, describing, naming, classifying and identifying living organisms is a central point in environmental sciences. Expertise is becoming rare and for future biodiversity studies relying on species identification, environmental technicians will only be left with monographic descriptions and collections in museums.