Web-based Learning Solutions for Communities of Practice

through continuous learning (Rosenberg, 2001). In
fact, most organizations already support learning
activities through seminars and other traditional
learning activities. Nevertheless, all of the above
are not sufficient (“codified and transferred”
learning (Robey, D., Khoo, H.M. and Powers,
2000); new methodologies, based on networked
technology, have emerged to satisfy the gap between
tacit and explicit knowledge. Collaborative
environments - aiming at supporting collaboration
among groups of people forming Communities
of Practice (CoPs) - are believed to be one of
the most promising solutions to promote what is
commonly known as “collective intelligence” or
“organizational memory” (Ackerman, 1998). The
term CoP is used to define a group of people with
“common disciplinary background, similar work
activities and tools and shared stories, contexts and
values” (Millen, Fontaine & Muller, 2002).
A comparison between online and traditional
CoPs naturally results to several differences (Palloff
& Pratt, 1999). Even though the goal of this
work is not to study them thoroughly, some of
them are intentionally mentioned. A traditional
CoP often confronts time and space limitations and
its members are assigned a specific role. Furthermore,
entrance to a traditional CoP may require a
more intentional motivation, while CoP members
tend to self-organize through certain physical activities.
On the other hand, online CoPs are more
likely to define more “fluid” limitations. This can
result to more “peripheral” members with less
“visibility” (Zhang, Wei & Storck, 2001). Taking
the above into consideration, several implications
arise concerning online CoP contribution. In fact,
usage analysis of online CoPs has shown that one
of the greatest problems is the “fading back” and
absence of members’ identities (Haythornthwaite,
Kazmer, Robins & Shoemaker, 2000).
Related with the above remarks, contemporary
tools receive criticism regarding lack of
active participation and limited engagement in
their use, which is partially due to the inability
of identifying and exploiting a set of important
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Mining Unnoticed Knowledge in Collaboration Support Systems
relationships among community members and the
associated collaboration-related assets. In order to
further investigate the aforementioned problem,
we proceed to a thorough examination of environments
provided to online CoPs. Aiming at keeping
our subject of study as general as possible, we
prescribe some commonly met characteristics.
In order to sufficiently elaborate collaboration
among CoP members, we prescribe a framework
that elaborates and integrates issues from the Data
Mining and the Social Networking disciplines.
By applying such an interdisciplinary approach,
our aim is to reveal meaningful relationships, as
well as valuable information about the members’
roles and competences, thus strengthening the
community’s integrity.
RELATED WORK
Contemporary approaches to online environments
hosting a large group of users build on diverse
user profiling mechanisms (Fink & Kobsa, 2001).
These approaches usually distinguish between
static (or user defined) and dynamic (a set of
attributes updated by the system) user profiles.
Dynamic attributes derive by tracking down user
actions and aim at providing a more personalized
environment. Personalization of the environment
may include user interface adaptation by making
most usable actions or information more easily
accessible. Moreover, by taking into account a
user’s profile, these approaches aim at filtering
information which generally resides in a big
collection of documents. Information filtering is
achieved by reading the content of these documents
and combining its content with the user’s
profile. The main goal of these approaches is to
provide individualized recommendations to users
concerning the system items (Burke, 2002).
Social network analysis (SNA) is a tool that
allows the examination of social relationships
in a group of users and reveals hidden relationships
(Wasserman & Faust, 1994). In fact, social