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*** Application deadline: May 31 2001 ***
Dear Colleagues,
Applications are invited from candidates interested in pursuing a PhD
combining HCI/CSCW/AI with collaborative internet technologies.
* Visual Hypertext for Collective Sensemaking and Organizational Memory
* Modelling and Visualizing Research Literatures over the Internet
* Internet Tools for Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review
Please follow the application procedure specified on the Studentship
page: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/studentships
Applicants are encouraged to contact me informally to discuss ideas
before submitting a proposal.
Regards,
Simon Buckingham Shum
...........................................................................
Knowledge Media Institute (KMi)
KMi is a highly successful, rapidly expanding interdisciplinary
laboratory founded at The Open University in 1995, and located in
attractive new offices at The Open University's main campus in Milton
Keynes, UK. KMi undertakes high-profile advanced research and
development in Knowledge Media: the convergence of knowledge,
communication and computing technologies. We offer a stimulating and
well-endowed research environment, widely acknowledged to be at the
leading edge of European research and development, particularly in
new technologies for knowledge modelling and management, open
supported learning, and synchronous and asynchronous group working.
Our PhD development programme combines the best of European and US
models, and you will be joining an active PhD community. The style,
impact and content of our work are described in detail in our Web
pages at http://kmi.open.ac.uk/.
...........................................................................
PhD Studentships
Visual Hypertext for Collective Sensemaking and Organizational Memory
Dr Simon Buckingham Shum and Dr John Domingue
The Challenge: capturing and structuring group knowledge in real time
to generate a hypertextual organizational memory resource
The successful candidate for this PhD will work on an innovative
approach to organizational knowledge capture, as part of the
Compendium Project [http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/compendium].
In contrast to many knowledge management approaches to codification,
Compendium recognises the importance of
negotiation and debate when working across diverse communities of
practice, the need to capture unexpected, non-textual ideas fluidly
and in the same environment as expected, structured information, and
role that visual representations can play in collective sensemaking.
There are several possible kinds of research that could be conducted,
depending on your background and interests. Suitable backgrounds would
include Meeting Facilitation/CSCW (especially experience with software
tools to assist communication), Hypertext (argumentation; open
hypermedia), HCI (information visualization; usability studies), and
Computer Science (Java; Visual Basic; PHP; web discussion and
databases).
Some example PhDs might focus on:
* Working in organizations to introduce Compendium, facilitate
meetings, and evaluate the outcomes (HCI/Facilitation/CSCW
background)
* Extending an existing Java hypertext system in the light of user
feedback, and/or making it interoperable with other applications
enabling concept maps to be morphed into and out of other
representations.
Relevant publications:
Applicants will be expected to have formed ideas based on papers on
the Compendium Project website [http://kmi.open.ac.uk/sbs/compendium]
...........................................................................
Modelling and Visualizing Research Literatures over the Internet
Dr Simon Buckingham Shum and Dr John Domingue
The Challenge: Providing researchers with next generation tools for
tracking and analysing research concepts
The successful candidate for this PhD will join a dynamic team working
on the Scholarly Ontologies digital library project
[http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/scholonto].
There are several
possible kinds of research that could be conducted, depending on your
background and interests. Suitable backgrounds would include Hypertext
(semantic systems; open hypermedia), HCI (information visualization;
usability studies), CSCW (collaborative construction of shared
information spaces; classification theory/boundary objects), AI
(ontologies; knowledge modelling), Digital Libraries (document
semantics; DL user interfaces; RDF/metadata) and Computer Science
(information extraction; Java/web user interfaces; web databases).
Some example PhDs might focus on:
* Understanding how researchers conceptualise their fields, and
research literatures
* Designing and evaluating visualizations and other advanced
services
* Implementing information extraction technologies to identify
scholarly claims in documents, in order to seed a knowledge base
Relevant publications:
Applicants will be expected to have formed ideas based on papers on
the Scholarly Ontologies Project website
....................................
Supervision:
The above 2 projects will be jointly supervised by Dr Simon Buckingham
Shum and Dr John Domingue. Dr Buckingham Shum has expertise in fields of
human-computer interaction, design rationale, graphical argumentation
and electronic journals. Dr Domingue has expertise in human-computer
interaction, information visualization, and knowledge engineering,
specifically collaborative, web-based ontology construction.
We encourage informal enquiries from prospective students who want to
discuss ideas.
Additional Information:
* KMI Website: http://kmi.open.ac.uk
* KMI's Studentship Website: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/studentships/
provides links to * KMI studentship policy * KMI studentship FAQs
* OU Research Degrees Prospectus * OU Application Form
* Writing KMi PhD Proposals
* Simon Buckingham Shum: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/
(email: [log in to unmask], tel: 01908 655723)
* John Domingue: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/domingue/
(email: [log in to unmask], tel: 01908 655014)
...........................................................................
Internet Tools for Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review
Dr Simon Buckingham Shum and Dr Stuart Watt
The Challenge: Designing and evaluating next generation scholarly peer
review tools in the age of internet publishing
The successful candidate for this PhD will join an innovative project
investigating new forms of scientific/scholarly publishing and peer
review for the internet.
Technologies for scholarly interpretational spaces
A key problem we are working on in KMi is how to extend the Net beyond
being a vast document library by adding interpretational spaces -
technology mediated forums for interpreting, making sense, critiquing,
debating, making new connections Meaning arises from perspectives,
which make new connections. How can technologies like open hypertext,
annotation, discussion/argumentation systems, ontologies, text
analysis and visualizations of documents and associated concepts help
the interpretation of resources in the library.
In sum, without interpretation, there is no meaning or significance,
and we are left drowning in the information flood. We want to provide
computational support for interpretation. KMi is interested in
implementing interpretational spaces for researchers to analyse
documents.
Background to KMi systems
JIME: E-journal peer review. The Journal of Interactive Media in
Education (JIME) is a peer reviewed, electronic journal (ejournal),
published since 1996, to promote interdisciplinary dialogue through
the use of a Web-based peer review process. JIME articles are
published in a purpose-designed Web document-discussion user
interface, which tightly links the article to an area for review
comments and discussion. Reviewers can post comments under threads
based on the journal's review criteria (e.g. Originality of Ideas), or
they can make section-specific comments. The review process is
designed to enable authors, reviewers and the wider community engage
in constructive discussion as opposed to the conventional anonymous
'issuing of a verdict'. Authors have the right of reply, and reviewers
(non-anonymous) are accountable for what they say. This intellectual
history is preserved with the final publication in the form of an
edited version with the most significant comments and replies, which
remains an open forum for authors (e.g. to post updates) and readers
to comment. <http://www-jime.open.ac.uk>
D3E web document discussion infrastructure. There are hundreds of
links in a given article, which are generated by a Web publishing
toolkit called D3E (Digital Document Discourse Environment). D3E has
found many applications beyond JIME, is under development on an open
source basis, and is in use by a variety of groups.
<http://d3e.open.ac.uk>
Open Archives Eprint Servers. A promising platform for delivering
these services to the widest possible community is the Open Archives
Initiative (OAI), specifically, their Eprint server software. The Open
Archives Initiative <http://www.openarchives.org> has developed a
protocol to enable researchers to search for scholarly documents over
multiple ePrint servers. The Eprints server 'shell' that enables a
knowledge community to self-archive their documents is now freely
available <http://www.eprints.org>. The basis for providing
third-party services on top of the eprint server data is outlined in
the report of the first prototype implementation
PhD focus
The goal of the PhD will be to survey the range of proposed models for
scholarly publishing and peer review on the internet, and in the light
of this analysis, to implement and evaluate an environment that could
support research comunities. OAI and D3E are prime candidates, given
KMi's experience with them, but the strategy taken will clearly have
to take into account the rapid technical developments that
characterise internet and knowledge-based publishing.
Applicants should be able to demonstrate that they can work with
relevant web server technologies and standards. OAI servers ar
implemented in Perl and MySQL on Linux/Unix servers. The D3E toolkit
generates files for D3E-Phorum a customization of the PHP-based Phorum
system.
However, the ideal candidate will also have experience, or a strong
interest, in the social dimensions that ultimately will make or break
tools to support publishing and discourse in scholarly research.
Relevant publications:
Applicants will be expected to have formed ideas based on examining
JIME and associated papers, and OAI and Eprint documents.
Supervision:
This studentship will be jointly supervised by Dr Simon Buckingham
Shum and Dr Stuart Watt. Dr Buckingham Shum has expertise in fields of
HCI, design rationale, graphical argumentation and electronic
journals. Dr Watt has expertise in software agents for online communities,
knowledge modelling and management, and the teaching of cognitive
modelling.
We encourage informal enquiries from prospective students who want to
discuss ideas.
Additional Information:
* KMI Website: http://kmi.open.ac.uk
* KMI's Studentship Website: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/studentships/
provides links to * KMI studentship policy * KMI studentship FAQs
* OU Research Degrees Prospectus * OU Application Form
* Writing KMi PhD Proposals
* Simon Buckingham Shum: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/sbs/
(email: [log in to unmask], tel: 01908 655723)
* Stuart Watt: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people/snw2/
(email: [log in to unmask], tel: 01908 654513)
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