Stefan Svetsky

IT support for knowledge management within R&D and Education

Knowledge plays a key role within research, development, innovations and education. This paper presents the use of a long term developed of in-house software that enables a manager and teacher to process and manage knowledge on their desktop computers in a user friendly way. The application WritingPad was originally developed for information processing in an industrial R&D laboratory. The further development of the application continued within the implementation of “Technology-enhanced learning” at the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology. This resulted in the development of a preprogrammed work environment called BIKE (Batch Information and Knowledge Editor). The environment works also as a teachers personalized knowledge management system. It is programmed by the lead author of this paper who is a teacher; therefore the outcomes into teaching bachelor students are implemented directly into the classroom. The paper also presents how such IT support complements, at a personalized level, the existing organizational knowledge management tool known as the universitys Academic Information System.

The implementation of digital technology for automation of teaching processes

The computer support of teaching and learning processes is still a large challenge for ICT. Namely, the actual level of human-computer interaction does not enable teachers or students to support the educational processes and automate them in a way that is natural for humans (e.g. solutions in natural language are missing). If they should be computerized, the crucial problem is that these processes, by the nature, are characterized by a continuous knowledge flow between teachers and students. Because knowledge is closely linked to mental processes of humans, they are uncertain and characterized by use of unstructured data. The state-of-the-art is prevailing by technology-driven approaches. This is more centered on how to create a technological infrastructure or tools, and how to have access to data on the internet, rather than how to process the knowledge flow. However, from a teachers point of view, computer support is more about processes, how to computerize teaching in the classroom, communication, feedback, how to write student works, the creation of teaching texts, and hundreds of other issues respectively. Thus, more sophisticated IT solutions and an innovative approach for knowledge abstraction and representation is needed for the automation of teaching processes. This paper deals with how these issues were solved in natural language within a long-term participatory action research on technology-enhanced learning when teaching bachelor students. The research outcomes — the technology-driven and educational-driven approach, in-house educational software with a personalized supportive system, and innovative approach to the abstraction of knowledge are briefly presented as examples from the practice. The abstraction of the virtual knowledge unit is a part of the registered utility model 7340/2015 (the patent classification IPC G06F17/30, G06Q 10/10).

The practice of CSCL in engineering education within the research on TEL

The practice of the computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) requires to solve not only the specific collaborative interactions of teachers and students, but also an additional design of the supporting IT background infrastructure for this kind of teaching. Because the practice of collaborative learning points to “collaboration” between the teacher and students, the didactics aspects (pedagogical methodologies), and informatics aspects (the supporting IT infrastructure) are more important in comparison with the traditional teaching and learning. In other words, the role of a teacher is essential in terms of both the design of the collaborative learning methodology and the tailor made informatics infrastructure. A feedback and communication is especially important when solving CSCL. In the actual scientific papers there is relatively little focus on the research on teachers role in the collaborative learning. The intentions of this contribution is to give an added-value to this research just from a position of a teacher who is moreover researcher and designer of the educational technology in one person. In this context, various didactic and informatics issues of the CSCL were solved within the research on technology-enhanced learning (TEL). When computerizing teaching and learning processes in teaching bachelors students, the most difficult problem is to create a suitable informatics collaborative platform for transmission and sharing information and knowledge between teacher and students. For this purpose, a concept of virtual knowledge unit was formulated, as well, a batch knowledge processing paradigm and in-house software were developed. This enables the teacher to solve different CSCL - issues on his personalized level, as is it demonstrated in this paper.

The Empirical Research on Human Knowledge Processing in Natural Language Within Engineering Education

The state-of-the art of the computer supported or enhanced teaching and learning processes is mostly focused on content acquisition, processing, and management; virtual learning environments; learning analytics; educational data mining. There is an absence of approaches based on knowledge exchange between machines and humans in knowledge based processes. This paper describes such an approach. Within an empirical participatory action research on technology enhanced learning the issue of knowledge is understood as a key element of any automation of human knowledge processing. Teaching is thus considered as a typical knowledge based process. In this context, the utility model is also used, which implemented “virtual knowledge” as a universal construct, which “interdisciplinarilly” bridges the mental processes of humans and the physical processes performed by computers. Examples of such solutions are briefly mentioned. It is also emphasized that a complex computer supported collaborative learning requires, in the real practice, to execute a combined pedagogic (didactic) and informatics research.

Some Barriers Regarding the Sustainability of Digital Technology for Long-Term Teaching

Computer support of teaching is linked to terms like e-Learning, Technology-enhanced learning and Educational technology. Despite the very high level of the global IT services, networks, and actual clouds, which are also used in education, from a personalized teacher point of view, this is mostly only technological infrastructure that can be used for handling a curriculum content. A set of successfully used educational IT tools could be also mentioned, however, these are often only single-purposed static solutions. One needs not to do a research review – he can simply ask his colleagues – how many barriers are caused by incompatibility of the software formats, and short life cycle of software, hardware and networks solutions. Paradoxically, it is automatically supposed in the actual scientific papers that digital technology functions without any problems. Additionally, many questions arise regarding the IT sustainability for long-term teaching within engineering education. This paper describes some categories of the barriers to embedding the digital technology into teaching and shows some key points derived from around 12 years of the practical experience related to solving the personalized IT support of teachers within teaching bachelors students. As for the long-term teaching, it also demonstrates that state-of-the-art of the IT support for university teaching is not yet suitable including indicated lower IT skills of students. In real life, to be sustainable, a teacher should be teacher, programmer and researcher in one person. Regarding elimination of the barriers within long-term teaching, an all-in-one universal approach is presented by using the in-house educational software BIKE(E), based on design of a “virtual knowledge”. This specific default data structure enables solving knowledge (educational data) transmission through the off-line and online environments. In comparison with other solutions, it seems to be the most universal and sustainable solution for personalized IT support.

The Universal Personalized Approach for Human Knowledge Processing

The processing of information for supporting human knowledge based processes still represents a big challenge. This is caused both by the abstract concept of the information and by missing a suitable information representation (how to represent human knowledge), which would enable a human—computer communication in natural language. However, any interdisciplinary definition of “information” or even “knowledge” does not exist until now. In the period 2010 to 2012, the authors presented their research approach to the automation of teaching processes as typical human knowledge based processes within the WCE’s International Conference on Education and Information Technology. The following research showed that solving the automation of the knowledge processes requires one to solve not only a content knowledge processing but also issues of communication, transmission and feedback. Actually, the research covers some areas of computer science (e.g. computer applications, computing methodologies, theoretical computer science). The question of the information was solved by the design of a specific default data structure so called virtual knowledge which enables an individual to communicate with computer in natural language. In this context, the virtual knowledge unit symbolizes an information representation for human knowledge which is readable both by a human and machine. Such approach enables one to input any kind of information from human resources into the virtual knowledge and to process human knowledge as it is typical for computers. This contribution illustrates how various kind of information from human sources are processed by the in-house software BIKE. It also enables one to understand why the software works as an all-in-one tool when processing human knowledge which is inputted into the virtual knowledge. In addition, the information transmission in the knowledge based processes was solved by a specific utility model for processing unstructured data.

The Practical Experiences with Educational Software for Modelling Interactive Collaborative Teaching

In comparison with the traditional learning, the CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) represents a combination of didactics and informatics approaches. This requires researchers to solve an additional design of specific educational software and suitable ICT infrastructure as was presented at previous ICL Conferences by the authors. This contribution describes a continuous progress under the umbrella of the research on technology-enhanced learning; and how the ICT integration is modelled for the collaborative writing and activities when using an educational beta-software BIKE(E)/WPad. The practical experiences are demonstrated with some examples of how the WPad is applied to the CSCL issues, in off-line mode or shared virtual space.