Innovation through virtual communities of practice: motivations and constraints in the knowledge-creation process

This paper appears in International Journal of Projectics. Vol 4(1), pp. 39-49

Enterprise information portals: potential for evaluating research for knowledge management and human capital assets using social network analysis

Paper presented at the ECKM 2010 – 11th European Conference on Knowledge Management, 2-3 September, 2010, Famalicão, Portugal. URL: http://www.academic-conferences.org/eckm/eckm2010/eckm10-home.htm

The European challenge of KM and innovation: a skills and competence portfolio for the knowledge worker in SME's

This chapter appears in Innovations of Knowledge Management edited by Montano, D. Copyright 2004, IGI Global, www.igi-global.com. Posted by permission of the publisher.

Estudo sobre as diferenças interativas e comunicativas das educadoras e das mães

Dissertação apresentada na Escola Superior de Educação de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciências da Educação - Especialidade Intervenção Precoce

Knowledge management in multinational companies: the repatriates’ role in the competitive advantage in subsidiaries

This paper addresses the topic of knowledge management in multinational companies (MNCs). Its purpose is to examine the role of expatriates in knowledge acquisition and transfer within MNCs. Specifically it focuses on knowledge acquisition and transfer from one MNC head office located in Germany to two Portuguese subsidiaries as a basis for competitive advantage in their Portuguese subsidiaries. A qualitative research methodology is used, specifically through an exploratory case study approach, which examines how international assignments are important for the role of expatriates In knowledge acquisition and transfer between foreign head offices and their Portuguese subsidiaries. The data were collected through semi structured interviews to 10 Portuguese repatriates from two Portuguese subsidiaries of one foreign MNC. The findings suggest that the reasons that lead to expatriating employees from Portuguese subsidiaries to foreign head offices are connected to (1) knowledge management strategies to development the subsidiary’s performance; (2) new skills and knowledge acquisition by future team leaders and business/product managers in Portuguese subsidiaries; (3) procuring knowledge, from agents in head office, to be disseminated amongst co-workers in Portuguese subsidiaries; (4) acquiring global management skills, impossible to acquire locally and; (5) developing global projects within MNC. Also our results show that knowledge acquisition and transfer from foreign head office, through subsidiaries’ expatriates, contributes directly to the Portuguese subsidiaries’ innovation, improved performance, competitive advantage and growth in the economic sectors in which they operate. Moreover, evidence reveals that expatriation is seen as a strategy to fulfil some of the main organisational objectives through their expatriates (e.g., create new products and business markets, develop and incorporate new organisational techniques and processes, integrate global teams within multinational corporation with a responsibility on the definition of global objectives). The results obtained suggest that expatriates have a central role in acquiring and transferring strategic knowledge from MNC head office to their subsidiaries located in Portugal. Based on the findings, the paper discusses in detail the main theoretical and managerial implications. Suggestions for further research are also presented. The study’s main limitation is the small size of the sample, but its findings and methodology are quite original and significant.

Iniciação ao violoncelo: estratégias e recursos pedagógicos

Resumo I (Prática Pedagógica) - No mundo actual, repleto de desafios, em que a sociedade exige cada vez mais do cidadão, é importante que os professores, como elementos fundamentais na formação para a cidadania, desenvolvam profissionalmente capacidades e competências que os façam pensar e reflectir sobre esta realidade. Uma orientação pedagógica construtiva, por parte do professor, não só em termos de aprendizagem dos alunos, mas também na construção do seu saber e prática pedagógica, torna-se fundamental. A Prática Pedagógica a que reporta este relatório foi desenvolvida no ano lectivo de 2012/2013 na Escola de Artes do Norte Alentejano (EANA). O mestrando desenvolveu a orientação pedagógica do ensino do violoncelo a três alunos que, conforme o regulamento em vigor do estágio do Mestrado em Ensino da Música, deve ser ministrada a discentes a frequentar níveis diferentes do ensino especializado da música, neste caso, Iniciação, 3º Grau e 5º Grau. Nesta primeira secção do relatório de estágio elabora-se a caracterização da escola e dos alunos, bem como a explanação das práticas educativas desenvolvidas, fornecendo uma descrição e levantamento das actividades adoptadas e das problemáticas que surgiram no decurso do estágio, identificando as opções tomadas para a resolução das mesmas. A partir dos resultados obtidos no estágio e de uma auto-avaliação da prática educativa, elaborou-se uma análise crítica da actividade docente que permitiu identificar aspectos positivos e menos positivos, que possam ser futuramente melhorados.

Tech-based Innovations in pedagogical practices: the case of ISCAP

TICEduca. III Congresso Internacional TIC e Educação. 14 a 16 Novembro, Lisboa

Terminology and knowledge engineering conference. New frontiers in the constructive symbiosis of terminology and knowledge engineering

To meet the increasing demands of the complex inter-organizational processes and the demand for continuous innovation and internationalization, it is evident that new forms of organisation are being adopted, fostering more intensive collaboration processes and sharing of resources, in what can be called collaborative networks (Camarinha-Matos, 2006:03). Information and knowledge are crucial resources in collaborative networks, being their management fundamental processes to optimize. Knowledge organisation and collaboration systems are thus important instruments for the success of collaborative networks of organisations having been researched in the last decade in the areas of computer science, information science, management sciences, terminology and linguistics. Nevertheless, research in this area didn’t give much attention to multilingual contexts of collaboration, which pose specific and challenging problems. It is then clear that access to and representation of knowledge will happen more and more on a multilingual setting which implies the overcoming of difficulties inherent to the presence of multiple languages, through the use of processes like localization of ontologies. Although localization, like other processes that involve multilingualism, is a rather well-developed practice and its methodologies and tools fruitfully employed by the language industry in the development and adaptation of multilingual content, it has not yet been sufficiently explored as an element of support to the development of knowledge representations - in particular ontologies - expressed in more than one language. Multilingual knowledge representation is then an open research area calling for cross-contributions from knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences. This workshop joined researchers interested in multilingual knowledge representation, in a multidisciplinary environment to debate the possibilities of cross-fertilization between knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences applied to contexts where multilingualism continuously creates new and demanding challenges to current knowledge representation methods and techniques. In this workshop six papers dealing with different approaches to multilingual knowledge representation are presented, most of them describing tools, approaches and results obtained in the development of ongoing projects. In the first case, Andrés Domínguez Burgos, Koen Kerremansa and Rita Temmerman present a software module that is part of a workbench for terminological and ontological mining, Termontospider, a wiki crawler that aims at optimally traverse Wikipedia in search of domainspecific texts for extracting terminological and ontological information. The crawler is part of a tool suite for automatically developing multilingual termontological databases, i.e. ontologicallyunderpinned multilingual terminological databases. In this paper the authors describe the basic principles behind the crawler and summarized the research setting in which the tool is currently tested. In the second paper, Fumiko Kano presents a work comparing four feature-based similarity measures derived from cognitive sciences. The purpose of the comparative analysis presented by the author is to verify the potentially most effective model that can be applied for mapping independent ontologies in a culturally influenced domain. For that, datasets based on standardized pre-defined feature dimensions and values, which are obtainable from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) have been used for the comparative analysis of the similarity measures. The purpose of the comparison is to verify the similarity measures based on the objectively developed datasets. According to the author the results demonstrate that the Bayesian Model of Generalization provides for the most effective cognitive model for identifying the most similar corresponding concepts existing for a targeted socio-cultural community. In another presentation, Thierry Declerck, Hans-Ulrich Krieger and Dagmar Gromann present an ongoing work and propose an approach to automatic extraction of information from multilingual financial Web resources, to provide candidate terms for building ontology elements or instances of ontology concepts. The authors present a complementary approach to the direct localization/translation of ontology labels, by acquiring terminologies through the access and harvesting of multilingual Web presences of structured information providers in the field of finance, leading to both the detection of candidate terms in various multilingual sources in the financial domain that can be used not only as labels of ontology classes and properties but also for the possible generation of (multilingual) domain ontologies themselves. In the next paper, Manuel Silva, António Lucas Soares and Rute Costa claim that despite the availability of tools, resources and techniques aimed at the construction of ontological artifacts, developing a shared conceptualization of a given reality still raises questions about the principles and methods that support the initial phases of conceptualization. These questions become, according to the authors, more complex when the conceptualization occurs in a multilingual setting. To tackle these issues the authors present a collaborative platform – conceptME - where terminological and knowledge representation processes support domain experts throughout a conceptualization framework, allowing the inclusion of multilingual data as a way to promote knowledge sharing and enhance conceptualization and support a multilingual ontology specification. In another presentation Frieda Steurs and Hendrik J. Kockaert present us TermWise, a large project dealing with legal terminology and phraseology for the Belgian public services, i.e. the translation office of the ministry of justice, a project which aims at developing an advanced tool including expert knowledge in the algorithms that extract specialized language from textual data (legal documents) and whose outcome is a knowledge database including Dutch/French equivalents for legal concepts, enriched with the phraseology related to the terms under discussion. Finally, Deborah Grbac, Luca Losito, Andrea Sada and Paolo Sirito report on the preliminary results of a pilot project currently ongoing at UCSC Central Library, where they propose to adapt to subject librarians, employed in large and multilingual Academic Institutions, the model used by translators working within European Union Institutions. The authors are using User Experience (UX) Analysis in order to provide subject librarians with a visual support, by means of “ontology tables” depicting conceptual linking and connections of words with concepts presented according to their semantic and linguistic meaning. The organizers hope that the selection of papers presented here will be of interest to a broad audience, and will be a starting point for further discussion and cooperation.

A improvisação ao órgão no desenvolvimento da leitura à primeira vista

Resumo I (Prática Pedagógica) - A Secção I - Prática Pedagógica - refere-se ao Estágio que a mestranda realizou no Conservatório de Música de Ourém e Fátima durante o ano lectivo 2013-2014. No âmbito das suas funções de docente, a mestranda realizou o estágio com um aluno do I Grau – 5º ano do Regime Articulado, e com um aluno do III Grau - 7º ano do Regime Articulado e assistiu, ainda, às aulas de um aluno do V Grau - 9º ano do Regime Articulado, sob a orientação da professora cooperante, docente de órgão dessa mesma escola. Nesta secção é feita uma breve caracterização da escola onde se realizou o estágio bem como dos alunos envolvidos no estágio. Por último, são mencionadas as práticas educativas desenvolvidas, os objectivos gerais para o ano lectivo, os métodos utilizados, os objectivos pedagógicos implícitos para cada período e, a finalizar, é apresentada uma análise crítica da actividade docente.

Intercultural awareness through. Digital storytelling

In today’s globalized world, communication students need to be capable of efficiently communicating across the globe. At ISCAP, part of the 3rd year syllabus in Translation and New Technologies course is focused on culture and the need to be culturally knowledgeable. We argue the approach to incorporate cultural aspects in HE needs to be studentcentered, in order to encompass not only intercultural awareness, but also the 21st century skills students need to be successful and competent citizens. Additionally, as studies have shown, the manipulation of digital tools fosters greater student involvement in learning activities. We have adopted Digital Storytelling - multimodal storytelling technique - to promote a personal, student-centered reflection on intercultural communication. We intend to present student and teacher perspectives on this learning experience and assess its relevance in HE contexts, based on the content analysis of student expressed perspectives on this activity as well as a multimodal analysis of the digital stories created. A preliminary analysis of our case study has demonstrated that Digital Storytelling potentiates two complimentary types of reflection: on the one hand, students felt the need to reflect on their own intercultural knowledge, create and adapt their finding in the form of a story; on the other hand, viewing others’ stories they have raised questions and demonstrated points of view otherwise ignored.

Deficiência, autonomia e teatro: trabalho de projecto

Trabalho de Projeto submetido à Escola Superior de Teatro e Cinema para cumprimento dos requisitos necessários à obtenção do grau de Mestre em Teatro - especialização em Teatro e Comunidade.

Caracterização das actividades pedagógicas promotoras do desenvolvimento das competências visuais que influenciam a iniciação à leitura e à escrita

RESUMO: A presente tese de dissertação de mestrado visa a contribuição para o enriquecimento da organização curricular da Educação Pré-Escolar. Baseia-se num estudo de natureza estatística descritiva, desenvolvido junto de uma amostra de vinte e três Educadores de Infância, dos Jardins de Infância do Concelho de Lourinhã, através da aplicação de um questionário, que procura caracterizar as actividades promotoras de competências visuais, quanto ao grau de importância e de frequência, no que constituem os pré requisitos para a leitura e a escrita. Os resultados sugerem a necessidade de uma maior sistematização dessas actividades e demonstram que um número significativo de actividades são desenvolvidas, neste âmbito, pelos educadores de infância, havendo, no entanto, aspectos considerados lógicos por autores como a Barraga e a Chapman, que não são geralmente considerados. A ênfase das conclusões é colocada, na necessidade de alargar o leque de actividades promotoras dos pré-requisitos para a iniciação à leitura e escrita e às actividades previstas nos Programas Educativos Individuais, para crianças com baixa visão, através da articulação com o docente de educação especial, de forma a que a sua intervenção especializada envolva todos os aspectos considerados fundamentais no treino de visão destas crianças. ABSTRACT: This master’s degree thesis is based on a descriptive statistical study, conducted with a sample of twenty three preschool Teachers working in public kindergartens in Lourinhã, Portugal. The study was based on the results of a questionnaire aimed at contributing to enrich preschool Curricula. The study was based on the scientific knowledge of the precise classroom activities which contribute to develop visual abilities needed for reading and writing. The activities were characterized according to their importance and frequency. The results suggest that these activities should be more planned and more organised. It showed a significant number of activities which are prepared on a regular basis and considered important but, on the other hand; it also showed a significant number of activities which are prepared occasionally. The emphasis of the conclusions is on the fact that the Curricula should include a larger range of activities that promote visual abilities needed for reading and writing and that Individual Educational Programs for low vision children, which include specific activities for vision training, should be built in team with the classroom teacher. In addition, Special Education Teacher’s program should contemplate all the aspects that the Preschool teachers do not, in order to involve all the important aspects for vision training.

Knowledge management in higher education institutions: a framework to improve collaboration

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework that increases knowledge sharing and collaboration in Higher Education Institutions. The paper discusses the concept of knowledge management in higher education institutions, presenting a systematization of knowledge practices and tools to linking people (students, teachers, researchers, secretariat staff, external entities)and promoting the knowledge sharing across several key processes and services in a higher education institution, such as: the research processes, learning processes, student and alumni services, administrative services and processes, and strategic planning and management. The framework purposed in this paper aims to improve knowledge practices and processes which facilitate an environment and a culture of knowledge collaboration,sharing and discovery that should characterize an institution of higher education.

Knowledge management systems and intellectual capital measurement in portuguese organizations: a case study

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study on knowledge management in Portuguese organizations. The study was based on a survey sent to one hundred of the main Portuguese organizations, in order to know their current practices relating knowledge management systems (KMS) usage and intellectual capital (IC) measurement. With this study, we attempted to understand what are the main tools used to support KM processes and activities in the organizations, and what metrics are pointed by organizations to measure their knowledge assets.

A teaching-learning sequence of colour informed by history and philosophy of science

In this work, we present a teaching-learning sequence on colour intended to a pre-service elementary teacher programme informed by History and Philosophy of Science. Working in a socio-constructivist framework, we made an excursion on the history of colour. Our excursion through history of colour, as well as the reported misconception on colour helps us to inform the constructions of the teaching-learning sequence. We apply a questionnaire both before and after each of the two cycles of action-research in order to assess students’ knowledge evolution on colour and to evaluate our teaching-learning sequence. Finally, we present a discussion on the persistence of deep-rooted alternative conceptions.