The present Ph.D. thesis addresses the problem of knowledge-based engineering template update in product design. The reuse of design knowledge has become a key asset for the company's competitiveness. Knowledge-based engineering templates allow to store best practices and knowhow via formulas, rules, scripts, etc. This design knowledge can then be reused by instantiating the template. The instantiation results in the creation of an instance of the template in the specified context. In the scope of complex and large products, such as cars or aircrafts, the maintenance of knowledge-based engineering templates is a challenging task. Several engineers from various disciplines work together and make evolve the templates in order to extend their capabilities or to fix bugs. Furthermore, in some cases, the modifications applied to templates should be forwarded to their instances in order that they benefit from the changes. These issues slow down the adoption of template technologies at a large scale within companies. The objective of this work is to propose an approach in order to support engineers in the template update related tasks. In order to address these issues, a process supporting the template update related tasks is defined. Then a framework is proposed that helps design engineers during the template update process by providing a decision support system and a strategy for the update of template instances. The former is a system designed to ease the collaboration between various experts in order to solve template related problems. The latter aims at providing a sequence of updates to follow, in order to forward the templates' modifications to their instances. This sequence is computed with data extracted from models and templates, which are stored in an ontology designed for this purpose. The ontology is used to represent and to infer knowledge about templates, products and their relations. This facilitates the construction of update sequences as it provides an efficient overview of relationships, even implicit ones.

La Web Social y la Web Semántica han impactado en la forma en que la creación de conocimiento se ha llevado a cabo en la Web. La Web Social promociona la participación de los usuarios para crear y editar contenido y conocimiento en la Web. La proliferación de contenido y la necesidad de tener una administración automatizada de esta información disparó la aparición de la Web Semántica. Actualmente, la Web Social y la Web Semántica conviven y comparten un mismo tema: un mejor manejo del conocimiento. Sin embargo, la mayoría de la información en la Web Social no es parte de la Web Semántica, y la información de la Web Semántica no es utilizada para mejorar a la Web Social. Esta tesis presenta un enfoque innovador para estimular una co-evolución entre la Web Semántica y la Web Social: las fuerzas que impulsan la Web Social y las herramientas que llevan a cabo la Web Semántica trabajando en conjunto con el fin de tener beneficios mutuos. En este trabajo afirmamos que la co-evolución entre la Web Social y la Web Semántica mejorará la generación de información semántica en la Web Semántica, y mejorará la producción de conocimiento en la Web Social. Esto invita a responder las siguientes preguntas: ¿Cómo puede incluirse la generación de datos semánticos en las actividades de los usuarios de la Web Social? ¿Como puede definirse la semántica de un recurso web en un entorno social? ¿Cómo puede inyectarse en la Web Social las nuevas piezas de información extraídas de la Web Semántica? ¿Poseen las comunidades de la Web Social convenciones generales que deban ser respetadas? Con el fin de mejorar la Web Semántica con las fuerzas de la Web Social, en este trabajo se proponen dos enfoques de Social Semantic Tagging: P-Swooki que permite a usuarios de una wiki semántica gestionar anotaciones semánticas permitiendo completar el proceso de construcción de conocimiento, y Semdrops que permite a los usuarios describir en forma semántica cualquier recurso de la Web tanto en un espacio de conocimiento personal como en un espacio compartido. Además, con el fin de mejorar el contenido de la Web Social, proponemos BlueFinder: un sistema de recomendación que detecta y recomienda la mejor manera de representar en un sitio de la Web Social, información que es extraída de la Web Semántica. En particular, BlueFinder recomienda la manera de representar una propiedad semántica de DBpedia en Wikipedia, respetando las convenciones de la comunidad de usuarios de Wikipedia. / Tesis realizada en co-tutela con la Universidad de Nantes (Francia). Director de tesis por la Universidad de Nantes: Pascal Molli; co-director de tesis por la Universidad de Nantes: Hala Skaf-Molli. Grado alcanzado por la Universidad de Nantes: Docteur de l'Université de Nantes.

Recreational scuba diving is a highly social activity where divers are encouraged to work in groups of two or more people. Though collaborative, divers are unable to freely and naturally communicate. Additionally, the distortion of sensory information (e.g. distances and sounds cannot be judged as accurately underwater) affects the ability to keep track of critical information which impairs their ability to engage in this underwater world. We have studied and designed a fault tolerant system, including the software, the device, and the network, to foster underwater communication. We studied the technology required, the software design for both single user and multiple users, as well as, the network design in order to support such a system. In the thesis, we have set up and analyzed the result of three user studies and a simulation to investigate the viability of the proposed design.

This paper reports on an on-line collaborative design project of which the final outcome was a comprehensive, international World-Wide Web database of experts in the field of Instructional Technology as part of a learning task for post-graduate students in the same field. The main objective of the study was to determine the extent to which computer-supported collaborative design without face-to-face contact could be used to create a useful resource in this field. Sub-questions that arose were: How does a computer-supported collaborative design process evolve in an open-ended learning environment? What support could student designers working on a real-life project expect from their peers and experts in the field? How does one judge the success of such a project? What direct benefits can students derive from computer-supported collaborative design? The iterative design process was explored by means of an action research case study methodology. Three sets of issues fundamental to constructivist learning in an open-ended virtual environment came under scrutiny, viz. collaborative and participatory design, computer-mediated collaboration and collaborative learning. lt was found that computer-supported collaborative design could be a highly effective method both of learning and of producing a valuable artefact. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2001. / gm2014 / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Les travaux de recherche présentés adressent des problèmes de mises à jour de knowledge-based engineering templates dans le cadre de la conception de produits. La réutilisation de connaissances de conception est devenue un avantage clé pour la compétitivité des entreprises. Le savoir faire ainsi que les bonnes pratiques peuvent être stockés au sein de templates par le biais de formules, règles, scripts, etc. Ces connaissances de conception peuvent alors être réutilisées en instanciant le template. L’instanciation résulte en la création d’une instance du template dans le contexte spécifié.Dans le cadre de produit complexes et imposants tels que des voitures ou des avions, la maintenance des templates est une tache ambitieuse. Plusieurs ingénieurs de diverses disciplines travaillent ensemble et font évoluer les templates pour augmenter leurs aptitudes ou pour corriger des problèmes. De plus, dans certains cas, les modifications faites aux templates devraient être appliquées à leurs instances afin qu’elles puissent bénéficier de ces modifications. Ces problèmes ralentissent l’adoption à grande envergure des templates au sein des entreprises. L’objectif de ce travail est de proposer une approche afin d’épauler les ingénieurs dans les tâches relatives à la mise à jour des templates.Pour traiter ces problèmes, un processus adressant les tâches relatives à la mise à jour des templates est défini. Ensuite, un framework est proposé dans le but d’aider les ingénieurs de conception au cours du processus de mise à jour, en fournissant un système d’aide à la décision ainsi qu’une stratégie de mise à jour des instances. Le premier est un système conçu pour faciliter la collaboration entre les différent experts dans le but de résoudre les problèmes liés aux templates. Le second a pour but d’élaborer une séquence de mise à jour à fin d’appliquer les modifications du template à ses instances. La séquence est calculée avec les données extraites à partir des modèles CAD et des templates. Ces données sont stockées dans une ontologie conçue spécialement à cet effet. L’ontologie est utilisée pour représenter et inférer des connaissances sur les templates, les produits et leur relations. Cela facilite la construction des séquences de mises à jour en fournissant une vue d’ensemble sur les relations entre documents, même implicites. / The present Ph.D. thesis addresses the problem of knowledge-based engineering template update in product design. The reuse of design knowledge has become a key asset for the company’s competitiveness. Knowledge-based engineering templates allow to store best practices and knowhow via formulas, rules, scripts, etc. This design knowledge can then be reused by instantiating the template. The instantiation results in the creation of an instance of the template in the specified context. In the scope of complex and large products, such as cars or aircrafts, the maintenance of knowledge-based engineering templates is a challenging task. Several engineers from various disciplines work together and make evolve the templates in order to extend their capabilities or to fix bugs. Furthermore, in some cases, the modifications applied to templates should be forwarded to their instances in order that they benefit from the changes. These issues slow down the adoption of template technologies at a large scale within companies. The objective of this work is to propose an approach in order to support engineers in the template update related tasks. In order to address these issues, a process supporting the template update related tasks is defined. Then a framework is proposed that helps design engineers during the template update process by providing a decision support system and a strategy for the update of template instances. The former is a system designed to ease the collaboration between various experts in order to solve template related problems. The latter aims at providing a sequence of updates to follow, in order to forward the templates’ modifications to their instances. This sequence is computed with data extracted from models and templates, which are stored in an ontology designed for this purpose. The ontology is used to represent and to infer knowledge about templates, products and their relations. This facilitates the construction of update sequences as it provides an efficient overview of relationships, even implicit ones.

The main topic of this diploma thesis is the collaboration software. This thesis is mainly focused on their description followed by their implementation into the international company. All important terms for this topic are explained and defined in the theoretical part of this thesis. It is the base for the next parts where author explains the criteria for choosing the most suited collaboration tool for the particular company. After describing and comparing products the most suitable tool is implemented into the companys environment. At the end the key functionality of this collaboration tool is explained and shown on few practical examples. The goal of this thesis is to provide the theoretical fundamentals about the software collaboration tools, compare the products available and finally implement the most suited one into the environment of the international company.

Design strategies to support and enhance scientific collaboration are still ambiguous. The ability of universities and research institutes to support a collaborative scientific research environment among researchers through appropriate methods needs to be further investigated. The lack of understanding about the human factors behind collaboration, the nature of scientific tasks, and the institute’s cultural environment are motivations for this study. As a part of our work on a European integrated project, Edu-Tech, this study investigated which factors of collaborative research are important to give us a clear picture for enhancing the social perspective of the project’s webpage. This research purposes a model, Time Environment, Individual and Group (TEIG), in order to provide descriptive variable necessary to understand the transformation of online social knowledge. Accordingly, we provided a new prototype for designing our online community, Edu-Tech, which is now ready to facilitate collaboration among researchers.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-04T18:36:22Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Amauri Ramos1.pdf: 5520924 bytes, checksum: e26630274b4a50c9e7f79aa8dc49de04 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-10-05 / The computers and the Internet in the universities and organisms of research have been shown as an element with potential for the dynamization of the construction, use and dissemination of the information for the collaborative work of the research groups. However, it is not evident the use of specialized information systems for support this modality of work. In this context , the present research has as objective analyze which is the effective use of information systems, appropriated to support to the collaborative work, by research groups for the accomplishment of its works in a collaborative way. As foundation to above-mentioned analysis, firstly attempts to present the concepts of collaborative work, research groups and Computer Supported Collaborative Work, that show basic for the best understanding of the virtues, deficiencies and implications that result of the use of such systems. As second stage of this work, attempting to collect enough information for the construction of the inferences that constructed its conclusions, questionnaires to the leaders of the registered research groups in the Directory of Groups of Research in Brazil of the Lattes Platform of CNPq were applied. / Os computadores e a Internet nas universidades e organismos de pesquisa t?m se mostrado um elemento com potencial para a dinamiza??o da constru??o, uso e dissemina??o da informa??o para o trabalho colaborativo dos grupos de pesquisa. Por?m, n?o ? evidente o uso de sistemas de informa??o especializados para apoiar essa modalidade de trabalho. Nesse cen?rio, a presente pesquisa tem como objetivo analisar qual ? a efetiva utiliza??o de sistemas de informa??o, pr?prios para o apoio ao trabalho colaborativo, por grupos de pesquisa para a realiza??o de seus trabalhos de forma colaborativa. Como alicerce ? analise supracitada, busca-se primeiramente apresentar os conceitos de trabalho colaborativo, grupos de pesquisa e Computer Supported Collaborative Work, que se mostram fundamentais para a melhor compreens?o das virtudes, defici?ncias e implica??es que resultam do uso de tais sistemas. Como segunda etapa deste trabalho, buscando coletar informa??es suficientes para a constru??o das infer?ncias que fomentaram suas conclus?es, foram aplicados question?rios aos l?deres dos grupos de pesquisa cadastrados no Diret?rio de Grupos de Pesquisa no Brasil da Plataforma Lattes do CNPq.