Abstract:
Collaborative virtual environments are becoming an intrinsic part of
professional practices. In addition to providing communication and collaboration means,
they have the potential to collect tremendous amounts of data about collaborative
activities. The aim of this research is to utilise this data effectively, extract meaningful
insights out of it and employ the new, semantically structured knowledge back in the
environment. This paper presents a framework for integrating data mining and knowledge
discovery technologies starting from the early design stage of the virtual environment.
This KDD framework includes four major groups of components, which begin with the
selection of the data that should be recorded and end with a knowledge representation
for incorporating dicovered information back into the system and improving the structure
of the virtual space and the set of feasible actions that can be performed there. The
paper contrasts the earlier ad hoc techniques to the proposed systematic approach. The
applicability of the framework has been tested and demonstrated on a real environment.
