Knowledge Services

Central topic of our research activities is the contextualization and personalization of knowledge services and the support for collaborative knowledge construction in organizational settings. A major challenge hereby is the automatic identifcation of user activities, goals, and competences. Based on usage and sensor data the current work task of the user can be detected and innovative inference mechanisms allow for the prediction of user competences. Utilizing such context data enables us to supply knowledge workers with relevant information and to support the evolution of knowledge structures. We improve information and collaboration environments with context-sensitive, adaptive knowledge services. These knowledge services are hybrid in that they augment Web 2.0 and machine learning approaches with semantic technologies (e.g. ontologies). We have chosen this approach in order to counteract the limitations brought by limited content and user bases within enterprises, to reduce modelling efforts, while at the same time accounting for uncertainty.
Our vision of future knowledge management balances the needs of individual knowledge workers for flexibility with the needs of communities for interconnectivity and the needs of organizations for standardization.

Research & Development Focus

• User Context and User Profiling
• Adaptivity and Recommenders
• Emergent Knowledge Structures
• Informal and Work-integrated Learning

Additional Competencies

• Web 2.0, Collective Intelligence and Social Network Analysis
• Semantic Technologies, Semantic Web, and Semantic Retrieval
• Communication and Collaboration Technologies
• Service-orientierte Architekturen and Web Services
• Mobile Technologies