A MODEL MULTI-AGENTS FOR SHARING AND EXCHANGING
KNOWLEDGE IN COMMUNITY OF PRACTICES
Kenfack Clauvice
Modeme,Jean Moulin University, 6 cours Albert thomas, Lyon, France
Keywords: Community of practices (CoPs), Sharing and exc
hanging Knowledge, Multi-Agents System (MAS), Agent
Oriented Abstraction (AOA).
Abstract: This paper attempts to show, how CoPs evolve knowledge transfer. We are focusing on the elaboration of a
frame to analyse and underlie the logics of the modalities of functioning of CoPs. We qualify this concept as
an abstract regrouping knowledge creation. By adopting a processual perspective, we will try to present the
mechanisms of sharing knowledge within a CoPs. CoPs is a collection of agents (human beings) who have
rather strong common points such as, their level of social capacity, their competences, and the cognitive
capacities. The development of the exchanges is based on abstract boundaries; the couple
knowledge/community implies that an exchange of information takes place through mechanisms of co-
operation, negotiation and through a specific communication language of community members. However,
the legitimacy of exchanged knowledge is recognized only with interpersonal confidence association that
creates for itself progressively interactions. Besides, these exchanges take place only through rules and
standards established by all the members. After having pointed out the theoretical bases of CoPs and the
sharing knowledge mechanisms, we will present an approach of simulation using the paradigm of the multi-
agents systems, sharing knowledge’s within the CoPs.
1 INTRODUCTION
The concept of community is today at the core of
many organizations which are involved in the
development of the open source software, CoPs and
Epistemic. KM (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995)
appears to be a highly interesting, although its
human dimension, more precisely the social aspect
of its transfer process of knowledge is often
neglected. The ability to manage and to share
knowledge could indeed fuel the competitiveness of
organizations. Recent researches suggests the
change of behaviour within a structure (Grant, 1996)
favourable in knowledge transfer. However, in our
research, by community, we mean a group of people
who interact frequently in a direct way, and in a
multi-face process, they weave between them more
or less asymmetric connections. People who always
work together evolve in the way of a community
environment. This suggests that the notion of
cooperation and not competition is one of the
fundamental characteristics of the community.
Bowles and Gintis (Bowles and Gintis, 2000)
underline the importance of the notion of
community, and not the emergence of special
community forms which, according to him, explains
the increasing interest of this concept. Our purpose
concerns the concept of CoPs, which corresponds to
an emergent space where the transfer of knowledge
can be made away from organizational constraints
(Wenger, 1998). Inside such knowledge-producing
community, the members’ behaviour is
characterized by the respect of social standards,
voluntary engagement in construction, exchange,
and sharing of common repertory cognitive
resources, experiments and storytelling. Through
their specific practices, this community can be
considered as a “core” of skills that helps the
hierarchical structures in the construction of
knowledge. This concept of distributed actors’
organization is well studied in the field of the
Artificial Intelligence (AI). More specially the
Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI) being
particularly interested in the modelling of intelligent
behaviours entities distributed in an environment.
Multi-agents organizations spread information on
physically distributed sites, the can serve as a
support for the design of distributed information
systems (Yu, 1999).Our research concern
implementation tool intermediation for the CoPs in
247
Clauvice K. (2006).
A MODEL MULTI-AGENTS FOR SHARING AND EXCHANGING KNOWLEDGE IN COMMUNITY OF PRACTICES.
In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Software and Data Technologies, pages 247-252
DOI: 10.5220/0001320402470252
Copyright
c
SciTePress
the aspect of interaction, negotiation, cooperation,
knowledge share. But this short work is strictly
focussing on share, exchange and capitalization of
knowledge. We aim to modelize CoP’s members’
behaviours while exchanging, and sharing
knowledge process. We then define the
characteristics of the agents occurring in the process
of computer adding knowledge sharing. In this step
we will describe how we mean as communication as
action between agent-agent.
2 CoPs, KNOWLEDGE SHARING
& MANAGEMENT
CoPs is a group of agents engaged in the same
practice, regularly communicating through various
mechanisms: Groupware, emails, forums, face-to-
face discussion, and meetings. The use of
information technologies and communication gives
us the possibility to work in an asynchronous or
synchronous mode. The literature on this concept is
large, (Wenger, McDermott&Snyder, 2002;
Josserand&Leger, Vaast, 2004, Soenen, 2004). We
define this concept as: a group of people that
communicate together, to exchange information and
to enrich their knowledge and know-how through
their actions to find a consensus on a subject they
are confronted with. The agents engaged in such a
process coordinate their activities to improve their
individual competences, through the exchange and
share of a common base or individual knowledge,
which is built while the practice of the community is
developing. The collective training and the
construction of new knowledge then appears as a
non-deliberated form of the common practice
(Wenger&Snyder, 2000). CoPs becomes
increasingly through the actions and the repeated
interactions that they maintain between agents which
regularly communicate their experiments and
validate new forms of common practice. It plays the
elementary role of core of skills that Wenger
describes as "Locally negotiated mode of skills"
(Wenger, 1998). The adhesion of the members is
based on cooperative process; all depends on the
type of community. There are communities in
which, the adhesion of a new member requires a
preliminary consultation with other members,
through consensual agreement. The constitution of
the common cognitive capital of the CoPs is made
through permanent sharing of experiments between
the members. The permanent comparison of
individual expertise constitutes the base of the
community and social standards base that guide the
behaviours agents (Brousseau, 2000).As the co-
operative process develops, the increase of the
common cognitive capital contributes to make
stimuli increasingly easy; the frequency of the
interactions while intensifying reinforces the
creation of the social standards and shared routines.
The implicit or explicit mechanisms of search of
legitimacy exploit the behaviour of the agents
belonging to the community. (Dupouët, Yildizoglu,
Cohendet, 2004). Thus, the context of the CoPs
refers to a range of rich behaviours of the agents
which belong to the community. Satisfaction that
they withdraw to exchange together makes it
possible for them to develop a single comprehension
(common language, and practices) in their field. The
process of negotiation is made by a diffusion of the
subjects discussed with the whole community. Roles
can be allocated to members according both their
experiments and degree of confidence. In that case,
attribution of roles can be done by vote or through
consensual way. Furthermore, members of the
community are using technological tools which can
be synchronous or asynchronous. CoPs can be
invisible or institutionalised (Wenger, Mc
Dermott&Snyder, 2002). The members share a
substrate of common knowledge. In this fact, the
concepts of the CoPs are based on three criteria’s
characterizing its operation (Lave&Wenger, 1991)
(Brown&Duguid, Lesser&Everest 2001).To meet
specific needs for a community of Knowledge
practices, we propose to equip it with a knowledge
base. In that regard, the panacea of Knowledge
Management (KM) tools can be exploited to this end
by giving the possibility to organise Knowledge
credits in predetermined conceptual classes in
ontology, by allowing them a more natural and
intuitive access to required knowledge. The KM
constitutes that an important contribution to
schedule knowledge emergent of the interactions of
the members of the CoPs, to show the interest to
mobilize the knowledge management for the CoPs
2.1 The KM Such as the Scheduling
of Knowledge Credit
The generation of knowledge within CoPs can
appear by sharing means, of exchange and
acquisition of knowledge. The more a person shares
her knowledge with somebody, the more certain
confidence grew. In addition, the knowledge
acquisition implies that agent engages in a process
of knowing and expertise research. The knowledge
sharing corresponds to a replication of knowledge
capitalized on the scale of the organization. It
consists in reproducing, exchanging to compare and
making evolving knowledge available to the
members of an organization more specifically of a
community to make a lever of value. Researchers
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like (Roberts; Rolland and Chauvel, 2000;
Davenport&Prusak, 1998; Kramer, 1997) see in
confidence a fundamental characteristic in a process
of information’s exchange. The legitimacy of
knowledge in an exchange process is recognized if
the receiver accorded a high degree of confidence to
the sender. It consists in sending messages, request
or information in a store space. These spaces contain
a group of knowledge or cases to be solved.
Epistemological approach: The step that we
wish to adopt consists in identifying the
characteristics of the context in which the
knowledge share and exchange takes place, for that
we shall base on an initiative of modelling /
conception based on the systemic analysis (Durand
1979, Donnadieu, 2002, LeMoigne, 2002), the
socio-constructivism approach, and the collective
cognition and the constructivist knowledge design
(Avenier, 1997), The socio-cognitive conflict
(George, 2001). Finally, the approach of collective
cognition allows the individuals engaged in a
common practice to develop negotiation
competences, confrontation and argumentation. The
goal is to achieve to a group decision marker design.
In such a process, agents accumulate knowledge and
competence progressively with practice. These
mobilized theories thus aim at highlighting us in the
step of modelling of the adopted approach. What
will interest modelling consist in
including/understanding not only operation but also
obviously the motivations of the members in the
process of sharing?
3 THE EMERGENCE OF
ANALYSIS MODEL
Adhesion within a community, presupposes certain
recognition by its pairs and by the organization.
Wenger argues that one of the fundamental
characteristics to belong to a community of practice
relates to a certain mutual confidence between the
members of the community. From that point, we see
the importance of analysing here the role of
confidence in knowledge sharing to a community.
We will talk about the interpersonal confidence that
exists naturally between two individuals and whose
determinants are competence and reputation.
Organizational Model: There is a type of
community in which the control is strongly
distributed and whose members have the same skills,
and pursue multiple goals. Nowadays, after the
presentation of the theoretical and practical bases of
the communities of practices, we aboard now this
part to approach the knowledge management. Our
work consists in to trying to show how communities
of practice are managing their substrate of
knowledge by a multi-agents approach.
A multi-agents approach for Knowledge
sharing in a community of practices: The MAS uses
the social metaphor of the insects, reactive agents
(reactive SMA) or of the human organizations
cognitive agents (AI-like). According to this
paradigm, agents interact in order to accurately,
carry out actions ordered by an external agent. In
most cases, the agents were expected to coordinate
their actions and sometimes to cooperate in order to
achieve their goal although having different
motivations. The negotiation by the agents consists
to coordinate, to share limited resources or to solve a
conflict while agreeing on a solution in which their
respective interests are as well as possible satisfied.
The models of negotiation implemented generally a
language of communication and a protocol of
negotiation to conceive a diagram of the interactions
between agents, like the agents reasoning capacities,
to modelling their work procedure to carry out their
strategies. The languages of communication define
some rules to carry out the information exchange
between agents. These rules relate to aspects located
at the low level of the communication between
agents and can, for example, specify the structure of
the messages or the actions of communication (Com,
2002a). The Agent Oriented Abstraction (AOA)
paradigm was introduced into Multi-agents systems
(MAS) with an aim, to propose an agent abstraction,
i.e. not founded on extensions of the principles of
the paradigm Oriented Object. In this approach, an
agent is an autonomous entity with annotated
knowledge and a mechanism of decision based on
this knowledge. It makes it possible to approach the
KM by considering the entities of the organization,
their knowledge and their capacities of exchanges.
The exploitation of this paradigm can be considered
in a uniform way for any organization’s entity. From
a generic point of view, knowledge is a variable,
simple or complex, which can as well represent, a
collection of data, a document, an authorization, a
competence. Coordination remains as much a
significant concept because we can use them to
exploit individual interactions. Indeed, the interest to
aboard knowledge management within a CoPs based
on multi-agents approach lies in compatibility and
convergences between these two fields. If it is
considered that an agent represents an entity in the
community carrying information or knowledge, then
we can approach basic concepts characterizing
knowledge within the community: knowledge and
data distribution, autonomy of the entities and
simultaneously complex interactions between them
(negotiation, share information, coordination),
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PRACTICES
249
dynamic behaviours, heterogeneity from points of
view.
Interest of an agent for capitalization of tacit
knowledge: Usually capitalization of knowledge
implies the constitution of a capital that may
produce benefits in time. Knowledge capitalization
techniques have been already developed in
distributed artificial intelligence (DAI) directly
applicable to handling knowledge. Indeed, some
agents have competencies, which may vary from
simple operations to various reasoning. Those agents
may be have in various way procedural behaviours
and contain much knowledge. Cognitive agent
seems to be an interesting support to realize the
social system that we mobilize. Those cognitive
agents can be specialised by insufflating new
knowledge for a restricted field. He can also be
associated with other specific agents which purposes
are ranging from keeping knowledge to memorising
the tasks. The developed agent is able to manage
knowledge, according to its expertise field. This
gives the possibility to agents to control the
development of its knowledge base. Instead, to have
only one KM, we allocated to each agent her own
knowledge base. This can be cooperating if faced
with a complex problem solving. For a specific
domain, it will be necessary to create concept
models to represent this field. Such systems of
concepts are called ontology. We showed, the
knowledge or exchanges within a community are
done through roles, which are allocated to each
member. This section describes initially how roles
are formed, and in the second place, how roles can
be configured and be allocated in terms of actions.
Roles, agent, and attribution of the roles:
Several roles can be defined within the community,
in a general way these roles are allocated by a
regulator jointly indicated agreement with the whole
of the members see Agent-group-role model and role
attribution (Parunak, Odell, Fleischer, 2003). A role
is a class, which defines a normative behavioural
repertory of an agent (human or artificial). It
provides modules for the social systems of agent and
the conditions by which the agents act together.
Each agent communicated to other agents according
to functional conditions of the system. Several
methodologies of design agents were proposed, we
studied two of them: the proposal of (Ferber, 1999),
and (Jennings and Wooldridge, 2000). A role in
Aalaadin (Ferber, 1999) is an abstract representation
of the function, service or quite simply the identifier
of an agent within a group. Each agent can hold
several roles, but each role is local with a group. The
communication between the agents is not possible
through the roles, which they assume, and
consequently, the group carries out control on the
communications. Roles can be defined
independently of the groups and played within these
same groups. Moreover, the roles can have
associations of knowledge with other roles,
indicating this interaction. Our proposal is mainly
limited to two major aspects. The first one is what
we called Role formation and the second one is
called Role configuration
Role formation: in this case roles can be
assigned to the agents in a multi-agents system in
two manners: endogenous (by self-organization
emergent like system), and exogenic (by the
originator of the system when the system is built or
modified). The endogenous self-organization is a
phenomenon spread in the normal systems. While
agents act together, structures and models on the
emergent level system can adapt and be robust to the
changes of the environment system. At the
beginning, the behaviour could have been the
actions of a simple individual. With time, however,
the actions of the individual could be identified as
together useful behaviour which can be used by
other individuals to produce similar results.
Role configuration: can be considered
according to two dimensions: Horizontal
specialization that addresses the number and
horizontal complexity of the actions supported by a
role. Contrary to the vertical specialization, which
separates the execution from the actions of the
administration, in another word, it takes place
according to the degree of command, which an agent
can have above its actions and the actions of other
agents. Specifically, horizontal roles specialization
requires an end, a role for agent can require handling
any kind of request, and for vertical specialization it
relates to managing the action of the agent, more
precisely deals with the degree of control of the
actions of the system.
3.1 The CoPs like Support of
Knowledge Creative
We define a community of practices as a creative
community of knowledge formed of a grouping of
agents carrying a common interest for a specific
subject and exchanging knowledge in bond with this
subject. This definition is well situated in the
knowledge management of an organization through
the AOA approach. Gathering agents implies
existing dynamic capacities of adhesion and
participation in the communities (Calmet & Maret,
2000). At least, an agent must have dynamic
capacities to create communities. The idea of a
common interest for a specific subject implies the
evaluation of this subject by each agent, taking into
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consideration its objective. In the same way, the
concept of knowledge bonds with the subject of the
community requires the evaluation of a distance
between knowledge and a subject. The knowledge
exchange (consists in sending messages in a store
space, a request or information, these spaces contain
a group of knowledge or cases to be solved), imply
that agents can acquire and transmit knowledge.
They must only have the capacity to interiorise
received knowledge and to exteriorise/diffuse own
knowledge: from where the idea to equip each agent
with a knowledge base. The primitives that we can
associate to the members of our community can be:
created/finished a community (creates, delete) if the
need for creating a under-community is made feel
(in the case of the reorientation of the objectives of
the community), to join/leave a community (Join,
Leave), to send a knowledge or to require a
knowledge (inform, request).We consider several
models and process of operation of the CoPs. The
principal constraints that we wish to impose are to
ensure that the knowledge obtained by the agents
during their interactions is not centralized, the
autonomy of the agents, and the safeguarding of the
opening of the system of agents, i.e. the possibility
of entry and exit of agents without damaging the
system. We wish to use an approach of "one to
several" to implement the knowledge sharing. Each
agent would have, in addition its own knowledge
base, a list of agents if it wants to transmit
knowledge or requests. Agents can everytime join
communities (which he knows). We wish to develop
prototypes (Java, Jade platform or others) of the
simulation programs as well as applications with
user interface: agent responsible for the knowledge
management, agent responsible for the diffusion of
information or the allocation of the functions,
system of information’s exchange. In term of
knowledge we propose: Creation and enrichment
knowledge, research centres and pro-active
dissemination of knowledge service, presentation or
visualization knowledge service, evaluation
knowledge service, maintenance knowledge service,
Administration -knowledge service.
The agents that we can elaborate in our
Proposition are:
Safety agent: dynamically, he manages to
control access to the database of the system. This
knowledge is imported from consensual decisions
made by the agents.
Moderator agent: ensure the coordination and
the diffusion of the tasks, the follow-up the
realization of these tasks, as well as the integration
of knowledge in the database of the community. Lay
down the objectives of the group, the topics of
discussion and definite a scenario of collaboration of
the agents. It has moreover a list of the agents of the
system.
Community initiator agent: dedicated to the
agent chosen as leader, initiation consists in creating
a subject of debate, sending messages and making
known the community. This action is done within a
space dedicated for this purpose. All the agents of
the system are members of the community. These
messages consist of inform (transmission of
knowledge) and request (request for knowledge).
The evaluation of the contents of the messages is
specific to each agent. No agent centralizes the
exchanges.
Evaluator agent: ensures the evaluation of
knowledge likely to be stored in the knowledge base
dedicated to the community, and then transmits it to
the regulator. Supports the self- evaluation and the
motivation to be shared, evaluates if the objectives
were achieved. The agent, which wishes to insert
new knowledge, can require the authorization to the
regulator of the community.
Interface agent: are agents who belonging to
several communities can transfer knowledge from a
practice to another, we can consider them as experts
playing an advisory role.
Profiles agent: in charge to manage user
profiles (name, firstname, competences,
experiments....), works in close cooperation with the
moderator agent. In order, without neglecting the
problems of the interoperability of information
systems, the model presented positions in the
context defined by the CoPs (Wenger, 1998). Those
diffuse knowledge while integrating environments
supporting training intention. And, they can be a
group of individual authors and users of knowledge,
an industry of conceptual tools, a consortium of
diffuser of formalisms or a community of free
software developing the components of a system of
remote formation. While referring to the
fundamental characteristics of the communities of
practices we could say that a community is defined
by a triplet < C, D, P >, where C is the community
of the actors, D is the field of competences, and P
contains the questions raised or prone to discussions
of the community from which new practices
emerges from. For the agents, a CoPs bases itself on
the structure of communication which exists
between the agents, we can advance that the
behaviours of the agents can consist of two large
shutters: an engagement in a practice and an
engagement in social exchanges. However, these
two shutters are dependent insofar as the
communication informs the practice and the practice
feeds the exchanges.
The communication as action: Following
upon the works of Austin and Searle (Austin 1962,
Searle 1969), we lean on a pragmatic frame, where a
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PRACTICES
251
statement is considered as an action - due to the
change which it entails in the world -and where its
meaning bases on the knowledge shared by the
interlocutors and on the intention which each has
and gives. At the conclusion of a phase of
negotiation, a consensus is found; the negotiated
concepts belong to the knowledge shared by the
interlocutors. It is thus clear that the communication,
which bases on the shared knowledge, also
contributes to spread this knowledge, via the
mechanisms of negotiation.
4 CONCLUSION
We have presented the methodological and
technological choices to conceive and implement the
concepts relating to our study. The multi-agents
systems through their models and technologies offer
a support that we can use to conceive and establish
in relevant manner the social system of which we
showed the characteristics previously. Readings
concerning CoPs are showing interests of such
practice, but also difficulties faced by then members.
A CoPs is a social system as well as agents in MAS
paradigm. MAS’s models and technologies fulfilled
in relevant manners, CoPs characteristics.
The idea is, then, to propose a platform
intermediation tool, based on MAS, which
reproduce a social system in order to facilitate Cops
functioning. From this step, we ha to implement the
intermediation tool, on for example JADE or
MADKIT platform. This system will help member
of community to communicate together or with
members of another community. The
communication system which we will used is based
on the act of language developed by Searle and
Austin (Searle 1969, Austin, 1962).
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