Conceptual Frameworks and Computational Support for
Organizational Memories and Organizational Learning

Project Summary

This project will investigate computer support for learning, working, and collaborating in information-intensive organizations. It will focus on communities of practice (such as local area network managers, research teams) as subgroups within and across organizations. We will work with specific communities to design, test, and reflect upon organizational memories to support organizational learning.

Organizational learning is a process by which knowledge that is created or made explicit during work on tasks is captured, structured, maintained, and evolved so it can be accessed and delivered when needed to inform future tasks. Organizational memories can facilitate organizational learning by supporting communication within communities of practice, delivering information relevant to their tasks, letting them "grow" their own information spaces, and allowing them to collaborate using the World Wide Web (WWW).

The project will work with specific communities of practice to study their actual and potential learning processes. Based on the interpretation and assessment of these observations, and theories from the research literature or from our own previous work, we will develop and articulate a new conceptual framework for computational support of organizational learning. To assess and develop this framework, organizational memories will be prototyped in collaboration with the communities and assessed in naturalistic settings.

The organizational memory software (building on emerging WWW technologies and prior research on domain-oriented design environments) will extend our currently existing prototypes with innovative mechanisms for capturing, structuring, as well as delivering information. It will incorporate computational support to reduce the burden on users as well as end-user controls to empower users to adapt the memory to rapidly evolving needs. It will integrate the various software mechanisms into a coherent architecture and a system of meaningful user interactions for supporting effective organizational learning.

Research Issues. We will focus our research on: (1) how to capture knowledge and integrate the contexts of work; (2) how to sustain the timeliness and utility of evolving information; and (3) how to deliver relevant information actively and adaptively.

Approach. We will develop a conceptual framework for integrating working and learning in communities of practice. We will create organizational memories that include mechanisms to capture and represent task specifications, work artifacts, and group communications; facilities for practitioners to reorganize and sustain the usefulness of the memory; and techniques for access and delivery of knowledge relevant to current tasks. We will extend emerging WWW technology with structured web site interactivity, version control of evolving information, software critiquing agents, and end-user programmability.

Assessment. We will ground our designs and technical innovations in an assessment of the informational needs and organizational barriers to learning within communities of practice. We will focus our research by working specifically with communities of practice such as local-area network (LAN) designers and managers, the group of researchers working in our center, students in classes, neighborhood communities, and industrial work groups.

Expected Results. The proposed research will create (1) at the conceptual level: a unifying framework for organizational memory and organizational learning; (2) at the computational level: a generic architecture for organizational memories based on our prior domain-oriented design environments and prototypes for specific domains; (3) at the assessment level: a body of empirical results based on evaluations of the systems and the underlying theory in concrete organizational contexts.

The complete NSF proposal for the OMOL Project

Further readings related to OMOL

Bibliography of readings on OMOL theory and systems by Mark Ackerman

"Knowledge Construction in Software Development: the Evolving Artifact Approach" -- Ph.D. dissertation by Jonathan Ostwald

"Personalizing the Web" -- paper by Gerry Stahl reviewing several collaborative information environments

"Research CyberStudio" -- proposal by Gerry Stahl for an organizational memory for interdisciplinary researchers

"Allowing Learners to be Articulate" -- proposal for McDonnell Foundation project on supporting learning

"Share Globally, Adapt Locally: Software to Create and Distribute Student-centered Curriculum" -- paper on an organizational memory for teachers, the Teacher's Curriculum Assistant

"Internet Repositories for Collaborative Learning: Supporting Both Students and Teachers" -- paper on using a Teacher's Curriculum Assistant and Agentsheets to support K-12 learning

"Supporting Personalization and Reseeding-on-demand" -- discussion of three organizational memory systems (WebNet, TCA, CIE)

"WebNet: Issues for Next-Generation DODE Design" -- discussion of several issues in the design of organizational memory support systems

"Does the Internet Support Student Inquiry? Don't Ask" -- paper by Elliott Soloway (with dynamic discussion) on problems of using the web as an organizational memory for student research

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Last changed: May 16, 2003