Future Directions in Supporting Virtual Communities of Practice: Designing Tacit Culture in Adaptive Collaborative Knowledge Sharing Environments

摘要

Jasper II and Contact Space constitute a WWW-based knowledge sharing environment comprised of a system of intelligent software agents that support explicit and tacit knowledge sharing. Jasper II agents adaptively learn their user's interests by observing the user's behavior, while Contact Space agents dynamically move avatars to designated locations in a virtual space in order to support real time communication. In this paper we describe how this system facilitates and encourages the sharing of informal information by encouraging people to interact asynchronously and in real time where there are mutual concerns or interests. We present design scenarios for incorporating cultural and organizational cues into the knowledge sharing environment in order to offer enhanced support for communication among remote, mobile workers.