Collective Intelligence for OER Sustainability

To thrive, the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement, or a given initiative, must make sense of a complex, changing environment. Since "sustainability" is a desirable systemic capacity that our community should display, we consider a number of principles that sharpen the concept: resilience, sensemaking and complexity. We outline how these motivate the concept of collective intelligence (CI), we give examples of what OER-CI might look like, and we describe the emerging Cohere CI platform we are developing in response to these requirements.

OERopoly : A Game to Generate Collective Intelligence around OER

Collective Intelligence (CI ) is a phenomenon that emerges at the crossroads of three worlds: Open Educational Resources (OER), Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities. Building CI for the OER movement means capturing the richness of information, experiences, knowledge and resources, that the movement is constantly generating, in a way that they can be shared and reused for the benefit of the movement itself. The organisation of CI starts from collecting the knowledge and experiences of OER's practitioners and scholars in new creative forms, and then situating this knowledge in a collective 'pot' from where it can be leveraged with new 'intelligent' meanings and toward new 'intelligent' goals. This workshop is an attempt to do so by engaging participants in a CI experience, in which they will contribute to, and at the same time take something from, the existing CI around OER, Web 2.0 technologies and Online Learning Communities.

The role of collective intelligence in crowdsourcing innovation

Social insects are known for their ability to display swarm intelligence, where the cognitive capabilities of the collective surpass those of the individuals forming it by orders of magnitude. The rise of crowdsourcing in recent years has sparked speculation as to whether something similar might be taking place on crowdsourcing sites, where hundreds or thousands of people interact with each other. The phenomenon has been dubbed collective intelligence. This thesis focuses on exploring the role of collective intelligence in crowdsourcing innovations. The task is approached through three research questions: 1) what is collective intelligence; 2) how is collective intelligence manifested in websites involved in crowdsourcing innovation; and 3) how important is collective intelligence for the functioning of the crowdsourcing sites. After developing a theoretical framework for collective intelligence, a multiple case study is conducted using an ethnographic data collection approach for the most part. A variety of qualitative, quantitative and simulation modelling methods are used to analyse the complex phenomenon from several theoretical viewpoints or ‘lenses’. Two possible manifestations of collective intelligence are identified: discussion, typical of web forums; and the wisdom of crowds in evaluating crowd submissions to websites. However, neither of these appears to be specific to crowdsourcing or critical for the functioning of the sites. Collective intelligence appears to play only a minor role in the cases investigated here. In addition, this thesis shows that feedback loops, which are found in all the cases investigated, reduce the accuracy of the crowd’s evaluations when a count of votes is used for aggregation.

Collective intelligence on dynamic manufacturing scheduling optimization

Swarm Intelligence (SI) is a growing research field of Artificial Intelligence (AI). SI is the general term for several computational techniques which use ideas and get inspiration from the social behaviours of insects and of other animals. This paper presents hybridization and combination of different AI approaches, like Bio-Inspired Techniques (BIT), Multi-Agent systems (MAS) and Machine Learning Techniques (ML T). The resulting system is applied to the problem of jobs scheduling to machines on dynamic manufacturing environments.

Negotiation mechanism for self-organized scheduling system with collective intelligence

Current Manufacturing Systems challenges due to international economic crisis, market globalization and e-business trends, incites the development of intelligent systems to support decision making, which allows managers to concentrate on high-level tasks management while improving decision response and effectiveness towards manufacturing agility. This paper presents a novel negotiation mechanism for dynamic scheduling based on social and collective intelligence. Under the proposed negotiation mechanism, agents must interact and collaborate in order to improve the global schedule. Swarm Intelligence (SI) is considered a general aggregation term for several computational techniques, which use ideas and inspiration from the social behaviors of insects and other biological systems. This work is primarily concerned with negotiation, where multiple self-interested agents can reach agreement over the exchange of operations on competitive resources. Experimental analysis was performed in order to validate the influence of negotiation mechanism in the system performance and the SI technique. Empirical results and statistical evidence illustrate that the negotiation mechanism influence significantly the overall system performance and the effectiveness of Artificial Bee Colony for makespan minimization and on the machine occupation maximization.

Collective intelligence

Estudio e implantación de algoritmos de recomendación, búsqueda, ranking y aprendizaje.

Applying collective intelligence to idea evaluation at the front end of innovation

The study focuses on the front end of innovation process. Due to changes in innovation policies and paradigms customers, users and shopfloor employees are becoming increasingly important sources of knowledge. New methods are needed for processing information and ideas coming from multiple sources more effectively. The aim of this study is to develop an idea evaluation tool suitable for the front end of innovation process and capable of utilizing collective intelligence. The study is carried out as a case study research using constructive research approach. The chosen approach suits well for the purposes of the study. The constructive approach focuses on designing new constructs and testing them in real life applications. In this study a tool for evaluating ideas emerging from the course of everyday work is developed and tested in a case organization. Development of the tool is based on current scientific literature on knowledge creation, innovation management and collective intelligence and it is tested in LUT Lahti School of Innovation. Results are encouraging. The idea evaluation tool manages to improve performance at the front end of innovation process and it is accepted in use in the case organization. This study provides insights on what kind of a tool is required for facilitating collective intelligence at the front end of innovation process.

Development and implementation of a web-enabled 3D consultation tool for breast augmentation surgery based on 3D-image reconstruction of 2D pictures

Producing a rich, personalized Web-based consultation tool for plastic surgeons and patients is challenging.

Use of Dynamic Technologies for Web-enabled Database Management Systems

In this paper we consider two computer systems and the dynamic Web technologies they are using. Different contemporary dynamic web technologies are described in details and their advantages and disadvantages have been shown. Specific applications are developed, clinic and studying systems, and their programming models are described. Finally we implement these two applications in the students education process: Online studying has been tested in the Technical University – Varna, Web based clinic system has been used for practical education of the students in the Medical College - Sofia, branch V. Tarnovo

Az információterjedés szerepe az innováció-elfogadásban. Az okostelefonok és az on-line kollektív intelligencia (Role of informationspread in the innovation acceptance: the smart phones and the online collective intelligence)

A tanulmány célja az innováció-terjedés marketingvonzatú irodalmának bemutatása, valamint betekintés az exploratív tartalomelemzés módszerével az informális, kollektív intelligenciát generáló on-line felületek, nevesül a blogok és fórumok kutathatóságába. Az okostelefonok innováció-elfogadásának példáján keresztül a szerzők megpróbálják felderíteni az információterjedés elméletének megvalósulását az elemzett felületeken. Bemutatnak három, a mintára jellemző információterjedési és felvett szerep mintát, melyek alapul szolgálhatnak a további célirányú kutatások számára. / === / Adaptive smart phones that give space for user-added functions create active online discussions. Committed users are ready to share information, advise others, while less expert users seek this information. In their paper the authors show that related user-generated content i.e. blogs and bulletin boards provide a rich data source for analysis, which gives them the opportunity to further elaborate on the diffusion of information in the case of smart phone usage among online Hungarian users. Online collective intelligence may well contribute to the diffusion of innovations through diffusing information. Following a thorough review on the literature on the diffusion of innovations, in their exploratory content analysis, they found two categories of users on the analyzed boards: a first group we dubbed "experts" (corresponding to innovators in Bass's typology) that made a special effort trying to solve particular problems thus contributing to collective intelligence, thus reducing (among others) the perceived complexity of these phones and adding to their trialability, both factors influencing users' innovation acceptance, and a second group, "simple users" (or imitators in Bass's typology), uninterested in product innovation, still asking questions and searching for solutions concerning extant technology. Manufacturers do not seem yet to regard these boards as a source of valuable data, even though these clearly serve as an important pool of information and a growing factor of decision for their potential customers.

Mandevillian Intelligence: From Individual Vice to Collective Virtue

Abstract Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive vices (i.e., shortcomings, limitations, constraints and biases) are seen to play a positive functional role in yielding collective forms of cognitive success. In this talk, I will introduce the concept of mandevillian intelligence and review a number of strands of empirical research that help to shed light on the phenomenon. I will also attempt to highlight the value of the concept of mandevillian intelligence from a philosophical, scientific and engineering perspective. Inasmuch as we accept the notion of mandevillian intelligence, then it seems that the cognitive and epistemic value of a specific social or technological intervention will vary according to whether our attention is focused at the individual or collective level of analysis. This has a number of important implications for how we think about the cognitive impacts of a number of Web-based technologies (e.g., personalized search mechanisms). It also forces us to take seriously the idea that the exploitation (or even the accentuation!) of individual cognitive shortcomings could, in some situations, provide a productive route to collective forms of cognitive and epistemic success. Speaker Biography Dr Paul Smart Paul Smart is a senior research fellow in the Web and Internet Science research group at the University of Southampton in the UK. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a professional member of the Association of Computing Machinery, and a member of the Cognitive Science Society. Paul’s research interests span a number of disciplines, including philosophy, cognitive science, social science, and computer science. His primary area of research interest relates to the social and cognitive implications of Web and Internet technologies. Paul received his bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Nottingham. He also holds a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Sussex.

Utilizing cross-domain SOAP Web services using client-side languages in an enterprise mashup platform

Service oriented architectures (SOA) based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Web services have attracted the attention of enterprises mainly for business-to-business integration and to create composite applications that execute business processes. An existing problem is the lack of preoccupation with non technical users due to the fact that to create a composite application to fulfill users needs, it is necessary to be in contact with IT staff. To overcome this issue, enterprises can take advantage of web 2.0, 'introducing in the development stage some technologies like mashups and some concepts like user empowerment, collaborative work and collective intelligence. Some results [3] [13] have shown how web 2.0 concepts can help non technical users to produce relative complex business processes. However, traditional enterprise requirements goes beyond typical web 2.0 solutions in several aspects: (1) traditional enterprise systems are based on heterogeneous stack of technologies that are not directly exploitable from a web-based client (where SOAP web services play an important role); (2) web browsers set some cross-domain security constraints making difficult to integrate services from diverse domains. In this paper, a contribution to two web 2.0 research projects [14] [15] partially solves the problems described: provide a way to invoke cross-domain backend services (based on SOAP technologies) directly only using clientside languages, without a need for any adaptation layer. © 2010 ACM.

The dicode workbench: A flexible framework for the integration of information and web services

Aiming to address requirements concerning integration of services in the context of ?big data?, this paper presents an innovative approach that (i) ensures a flexible, adaptable and scalable information and computation infrastructure, and (ii) exploits the competences of stakeholders and information workers to meaningfully confront information management issues such as information characterization, classification and interpretation, thus incorporating the underlying collective intelligence. Our approach pays much attention to the issues of usability and ease-of-use, not requiring any particular programming expertise from the end users. We report on a series of technical issues concerning the desired flexibility of the proposed integration framework and we provide related recommendations to developers of such solutions. Evaluation results are also discussed.

Reflective web interface agent

Web interface agent is used with web browsers to assist users in searching and interactions with the WWW. It is used for a variety of purposes, such as web-enabled remote control, web interactive visualization, and e-commerce activities. User may be aware or unaware of its existence. The intelligence of interface agent consists in its capability of learning and decision-making in performing interactive functions on behalf of a user. However, since web is an open system environment, the reasoning mechanism in an agent should be able to adapt changes and make decisions on exceptional situations, and therefore use meta knowledge. This paper proposes a framework of Reflective Web Interface Agent (RWIA) that is to provide causal connections between the application interfaces and the knowledge model of the interface agent. A prototype is also implemented for the purpose of demonstration.