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| This system is a Knowledge System, which is different from an expert system. In a knowledge system you can search for and extract knowledge. A knowledge system will not give you precise answers; in this case it will give you stories from which you can learn. We do not pretend to be able to solve all your problems and we do not have answers to all questions. Instead we have selected a wide range of good practice examples from which you can learn. You are the judge as to how well the cases you find in the Beep Knowledge System match your needs. Very seldom what other people have done can be applied directly. But it is possible to learn from their good practice and from the lessons and mistakes they themselves have made. The Beep Knowledge System, is however, based on a database system that will allow you to make quite specific searches between and within cases. Specific searches will allow you to pull out cases that match specified criteria closely as possible thereby helping you find cases that match your needs and can inspire you.
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| Let's start with a practical example. You want to do something like introduce teleworking. |
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| Go to the Beep Knowledge System home page
First you see some text about us (the Beep Knowledge System). You will also find that there are different ways to search for a case. Each search method has it’s own icon. At the bottom of the home page you will also see a search method called objective search.
An objective search is actually a search in “what do you want to achieve”. We can’t know all the things you would like to use information and communication technology for, so we have designed a knowledge map – a hierarchical structure – that structures the cases inserted into the Knowledge System. As you want to find cases about teleworking you need to pose the question “why do I want to introduce teleworking?” and the answer is found among the objectives. Like: “To improve work structures and processes” or “To improve the quality of working life and working environment”
Therefore check the objectives “To improve work structures and processes” and “To improve the quality of working life and working environment” |
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| You can now perform two different kinds of searches. AND search or OR search:
AND search will find cases that match all the criterion selected, while OR search will find cases that cover at least one of the selected criterion. Thus in an OR search, the more options you select the more cases you get, while an AND search will give you fewer cases. Default is an OR search.
Now press the Submit Objective Search button. |
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| If one or more cases match your search criteria/criterion you will get a list of matching cases. Let’s say you performed the objective search mentioned above. One of the cases that match these criterion is the “Alcatel - large-scale teleworking (Belgium)” case. The case in the objective search results will be presented to you as:
Case 296 Alcatel - large-scale teleworking (Belgium)
Large company finds that offering teleworking opportunities encourages better job applicants as well as improving working conditions. Broadband access and full employee involvement essential.
To improve work structures and processes
.... Key Factor Collaborative working Case relevance 
To improve the quality of working life and working environment
.... Key Factor Increased flexibility of work patterns Case relevance 
.... Key Factor Worker involvement and autonomy Case relevance
See Summary Report . . . . . . . See full case file
Below the case title you will see a very short abstract which tells you in a few lines what the case is about.
You will also see what objectives you searched for are covered by the case and what key factors in each objective the case is matched by. As described below, each objective is futher divided into key factors which cover different ways of achieving the objective. You can click on the key factor names to get a specific case report that contains the case and information specifically relevant to the key factor. |
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| For each key factor you will also have an indication of case relevance that is – how relevant is the case to a given key factor:
 Case is not relevant
 Case has some relevance
 Case has medium relevance
Case is highly relevant
Case is most relevant
The higher relevance a case has for a key factor the more interesting the case should be for you to read, given that what you are searching for is within the knowledge map.
If you click on the title of the case you will se the Case report.
If you click on See Summary Report you will see an executive summary of the case and if you click on See Full Case File you will see everything coded about the case. |
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| A case report consists of the following sections:
- Title & subtitle
- Background
- Objectives
- Resources (Including ICT)
- Activities
- Outputs/results
- Lessons and conclusions
- List of case Domains, Objectives and Key Factors
- Case characteristics
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| Read the case carefully. Do not skip the background section. It is very important that you take a look at background, because you will have to adapt the lessons offered by the case to the background of your environment.
In the case of Alacatel specific circumstances force them to find new ways of attracting new employees. |
| What the case’s objectives were. What they wanted to do. |
| What kind of resources did the case use, including ICT, people, money, etc. |
| Here you can read how they tried to achieve their objective. |
| What the results were and what impact was achieved. |
| What did the case learn? This section, together with the background, is often the most important. What conclusions can be drawn from the case? What did the case itself learn? What would they have liked to do differently given what is known now?
In the Alacatel case the conclusion is that they now have a win-win situation for all, but they also learnt some lessons about requirements for the project to succeed.
Read the Alacatel case |
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| Executive summary report is a small summary of the case. Use it orient yourself about the case before you read the entire case report or full case report.
Read Executive summary report for the the Alacatel case |
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| The Full Case Report contains everything coded about a case.
A Full Case Report contains the executive summary, the full case description found in the case report, all case characteristics and everything specifically coded for a Case key factor.
Click here to read the Full case report for the Alacatel case |
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| You can always print the case. When reading a case you can see a button called “print”. If your internet browser supports java-script a small message box will appear saying “PRINT?” if you press “OK” the case will be sent to your printer. |
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| There are more refined ways of searching the Beep Knowledge System than the Objective search method mentioned previously. Five different ways of searching the System are always available to you from the top menu:
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| All cases in the Beep Knowledge System are selected so they fit into the Beep Knowledge Map.
The Beep Knowledge Map is based on the Domain hierarchy. There are, at present, 5 Domains in Beep:
- Work and skills
- The digital SME
- Social inclusion
- Regional development
- eGovernment
Each Domain is divided into Objectives (What do you want to achieve), and each Objective is further sub-divided into Key Factors (How to achieve it). In the Knowledge Map you search for cases at Key Factor level. You can view individual definitions, background materials and generic good practice syntheses of Domains, Objectives and Key Factors by clicking on them.
All cases in the Beep Knowledge System are selected so they fit at least one Key Factor. You can also view the Knowledge Map as a hierarchy/diagram (click here)
A Key Factor is actually what makes the objectives work. So for the first objective “To improve skills and competencies” in the Work & Skills domain there are four Key Factors. These four Key Factors are ways to achieve the objective. In our Objective Search mentioned previously the search results showed quite a lot of cases. Select specific Key Factors to narrow down your search.
In our example we used teleworking. Well if you want to use teleworking in order to improve skills and competencies one of the ways to do that would be to improve “employer support for continuous learning” – the first Key Factor of the “To improve skills and competencies” objective. You could also combine it with “Provision of learning” by checking the boxes to the left of the Key Factors.
Now press the Search button in order to see your search results.
If the search results in too many cases you can narrow down your search. Go back to the Knowledge Map Search. As with the Objective Search you have the option of selecting an AND search or an OR Search. At the bottom of the page, just beneath the Knowledge Map, the options for selecting search method are present. Again AND search will give you fewer cases and OR search more cases – if you have selected more than one key factor. If you are interested in the Definitions of the various Domains, Objectives or Key Factors you can click on a domain, objective or Key Factor name from the Knowledge Map. This will lead you to a page showing the definition and show you synthesis reports etc. if such are available. |
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| Objective and Knowledge Map Searches concerns what you want to do, but the Beep Knowledge System also offers you sophisticated search facilities that let’s you search the characteristics of the case.
Every case in the Beep Knowledge System has been defined and coded in the same way. We call such codings case characteristics. A characteristic could be geography or language of original material. (At present all case reports in beep are in English) |
| Let’s say we want to have a look at all cases in the Knowledge System that takes place in France and where the language is French. We therefore select the check the characteristic “Language” and “Geographic Classification”
Click on the button “NEXT (Step 2)” |
| You can select whether you want to search for cases where the language of original documents are French or French translations of original documents. Choose French for “Language of original documents”
You can search for cases within group(s) of countries or for cases within one or more countries. Go down the listbox with individual countries until you find France. Click on “France” to select cases from that country. |
| It is possible to select more than one search option in the list boxes. Just hold down your Ctrl key and click on the options you want to include in your search.
To select a range of options click on the first option you want to include, hold down the Ctrl key and use the arrow down key to include more options.
To select all options in a list box click on the first option to include and then hold down the shift key and press the End key. Please notice that you do not include the – Not selected – option, as that option will invalidate all your other selected options.
Click on the button “NEXT (Step 3)” |
| You are searching on language and geography, you must now choose what kind of search you want to perform.
- AND means that the search must meet this criteria.
- OR means that the search can meet this criteria
- NOR means that the search will exclude cases that meet this criteria.
The default is an AND search, which means that the search must meet both the language and geography criteria you selected at Step 2.
You could also choose to look for cases from France where language of original documents are not French. You do that by clicking on the radio button in the NOR column to the left of language.
Within a selected criterion selected options are always searched for by the OR method. This means that had you selected France and United Kingdom for country, the search would look for cases from France OR from United Kingdom.
Now you can search the Knowledge system with the selected criteria and search methods by clicking on the “Submit search” button. |
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| Sometimes you need to find cases dealing with a particular key word/topic. The word “teleworking” is not part of the Knowledge Map previously mentioned, but the Knowledge Map does cover teleworking cases.
In keyword search we have defined some keywords we think you would want to use to search. You therefore need to find a keyword in the lists that match what you want.
As we can’t cover all keywords in the world we have selected a group of keywords we feel cover the cases in the Knowledge System. You might not be able to find the exact word, but try to think of synonyms.
Example: You are looking for something about public transport. Well this is not a key word, but try to select transport. Transport is a broader term, so it might bring up a case that concerns public transport.
Think of this as a learning process. We can’t know exactly what you want. You in the end might be inspired by cases that match transport, but do not exactly match public transport – the Knowledge System is designed to facilitate learning and generic lessons from the cases are there for you to use in your own way.
The search results from a Keyword Search results in cases matching keywords so that cases with the highest number of matches comes first in the search results list. A combination of keywords might therefore be an excellent way for you to find cases that match your interest. |
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| The free text search is just a very simple search within case text. Free text search does not cover case characteristics, so, unless a characteristic is mentioned within the text, free text search will not find it.
Free text search does not distinguish between capital and lower-case letters, and the word(s) you search for must contain at least 4 characters.
Free text search does not search for phrases only for words.
Finally, as with keywords, you should think of synonyms:
Example: If you input the word “women” in the free text search box it will miss all the cases that use the word “ladies” instead of the word “women”.
The search result of a free text search will show you in which part of the case the word was found. |
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| Advanced search is for the really brave as it combines all the various search facilities in the Knowledge System.
The advanced search is a very detailed and it is possible to use it as a database tool. However we really want to encourage you to use the Knowledge System as a Knowledge Tool – don’t let a too specific search result close your eyes to other cases from which you can learn, but which do not match your search criterion as perfectly.
If you find the Advanced Search page a bit overwhelming, you can use the Advanced Search in a Step-by-Step fashion (Click on the link to Step-By-Step Advanced Search)
The Advanced Search covers the following sections
- Free text
- Case characteristics
- Main actors
- ICT
- Knowledge Map
If you know a case’s ID number or part of the cases title you can even search for this. |
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| When you are logged into the Knowledge System a button “Your settings” is available to you.
Your settings not only cover information about you, but also offer you two useful tools.
- Your history
- Your comments
Nothing is worse than having read a case and being unable to find it again. In Your history you will see a list of all the cases you have accessed. The list is ordered so the most recently accessed cases are on the top of the list.
Your comments list the comments you have made to cases and links directly to the case. If you have made a comment a reply may have been made. Click on your comment to go to the case and see other people’s comments and possible replies. |
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| Do you know of a case that should be in the Beep Knowledge System? Well - we are very interested in hearing about it!
When you are logged into the Knowledge System a button on the top menu saying, “Contribute a Case” appears.
Click on the “Contribute a Case” button.
Fill in the Contribute case form and submit it. A member of the Beep team will then contact you, as we would like to hear more abut the case. |
