Going beyond your Personal Learning Network, Using Recommendations and Trust through a Multimedia Question-Answering Service for Decision-support: a Case Study in the Healthcare

Patricia Santos (University of the West of England Bristol, United Kingdom)

Sebastian Dennerlein (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

Dieter Theiler (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

John Cook (University of the West of England Bristol, United Kingdom)

Tamsin Treasure-Jones (Leeds University, United Kingdom)

Debbie Holley (Bournemouth University, United Kingdom)

Micky Kerr (Leeds University, United Kingdom)

Graham Attwell (Pontydysgu, United Kingdom)

Dominik Kowald (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

Elisabeth Lex (Graz University of Technology, Austria)

Abstract: Social learning networks enable the sharing, transfer and enhancement of knowledge in the workplace that builds the ground to exchange informal learning practices. In this work, three healthcare networks are studied in order to understand how to enable the building, maintaining and activation of new contacts at work and the exchange of knowledge between them. By paying close attention to the needs of the practitioners, we aimed to understand how personal and social learning could be supported by technological services exploiting social networks and the respective traces reflected in the semantics. This paper presents a case study reporting on the results of two co-design sessions and elicits requirements showing the importance of scaffolding strategies in personal and shared learning networks. Besides, the significance of these strategies to aggregate trust among peers when sharing resources and decision-support when exchanging questions and answers. The outcome is a set of design criteria to be used for further technical development for a social semantic question and answer tool. We conclude with the lessons learned and future work.

Keywords: decision support, question-answering systems, semantic networks

Categories: H.3.4, H.4.2, I.2.4