In October/November 2003, Dr Andrew Treloar and Professor Sally Joy from Monash University in Australia visited the OU to discuss Information Management and related topics.
Andrew Treloar's final report of the study tour is now online.
It has been mailed to the following universities in the US who participated in the study:
UCLA
Indiana University
The University of Delaware
Loyola College, Maryland
Ohio State University
In Para 2.2.4, KMI is described thus:
The Knowledge Media Institute has a charter to look at what their senior researchers think will be of use to the university in 3-5 years time. In other words, they are trying both to anticipate and to drive trends. As an example, they introduced webcasting some 5 years back as an innovation and are still running their own home-grown software (STADIUM) as a production system. Currently they are working on semantic web initiatives, and knowledge creation/management/sharing.
They have 6-7 senior researchers who pursue their own interests within the university's remit. Approximately 60% of their funding is external, from a variety of sources (local companies, the Research Council, the EU and multi-nationals). The key question they ask about all their activities is “Who are we empowering and why?”.
Noteworthy current projects are:
BuddySpace – a instant-messaging based collaboration environment
the D3E toolkit – a lightweight hosted discussion environment
TouchGraph – a scholarly ontology tool
Compendium – a real-time meeting mapping tool, supporting collaborative sense making
FlashMeeting – a Flash-based video-conferencing application that does not require any plugins
The key findings about the Knowledge Media Institute were that:
It provides an excellent way to bring together researchers and practitioners.
It provides a space for experimentation with new technologies.
It brings together a critical mass of people with related interests and relevant skills.
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