Niels Pinkwart

Andreas Harrer

Steffen Lohmann

Stefan Vetter

INTEGRATING PORTAL BASED SUPPORT TOOLS TO FOSTER LEARNING COMMUNITIES IN UNIVERSITY COURSES

Keywords: Educational portals, blended education, distance support for presence lectures

This paper identifies four criteria for systems that aim at supporting learning communities in university courses, and describes the web-based environment iPAL (internet Portal to Augment Learning) that addresses these criteria in an integrated manner. The iPAL environment extends a freely available content management system through some self-developed components. Practical experiences with the system are outlined, and a first evaluation is given.

Introduction

University lectures that surpass a certain number of attendants are usually accompanied by a loss of personal contact between students and university staff. This means that the individual support for learners is diminished and especially younger students in their first years of studies may feel discouraged. The growing availability of networking facilities, both at home and especially also with campus-wide wireless local area networks which have been established by several universities 1 , enables an enhanced kind of course support that might make up for the disadvantages caused by growing course sizes. The "blended learning" scenarios that arise from these situations are indeed promising as they allow for combining advantages of traditional teaching methods with those that new technologies offer [START_REF] Sauter | Blended learning[END_REF]. A basic media-based support of the learning process provided by web-based portal technologies can, e.g., enable the students to find all kind of information related to a course (like lecture notes, exercises, feedback to submissions). Further chances to augment learning scenarios by means of content management systems are discussed in [START_REF] Bergstedt | Content management systems and e-learning-systems -a symbiosis?[END_REF].

Additionally, web portals have a great potential for community support [START_REF] Kim | Community building on the web: secret strategies for successful online communities[END_REF] and can e.g. offer virtual meeting places for students and staff with asynchronous or synchronous communication functionality. The content of a portal, including the history of recent discussions, can also be seen as an artifact or "community memory" and may thus become a learning resource itself, e.g. for following courses or even for the current course [START_REF] Helic | Discussion forums as learning resources in web-based education[END_REF].

Criteria for Learning Support Systems

These learning process and community supporting features are not the only type of support portals can provide in educational contexts. For the staff of the course it is often time-consuming to publish all the learning material on time, keep everything continually updated and permanently track deadlines, e.g. for submitting exercises. A portal system can automate some of these tasks and thus relieve staff from organizational effort and unnecessary overhead tasks. Through an integration of exercise publishing, electronic submissions, distribution of tasks to the tutors and feedback to the submissions, organizational support for the staff and task support for the students can go hand in hand. So far only few systems offer a complete integration of all these features for courses. An integrated platform, however, increases interoperability between the tools it contains, and, in addition, provides a good means for the evaluation of resource usage and community interactions. Within the following sections, we describe our approach for implementing such an integrated platform, and present some experiences we gained with the system.

CMS Technology as System Foundation

Generally, choosing a system architecture (both in terms of general design and in terms of concretely used technologies) is an essential decision as it determines considerable parts of the properties and characteristics of the platform. Given the particular aims as outlined in the introduction, the main requirement in our case is the construction of a learning support environment that meets the different needs of both learners and teachers in a heterogeneous setting, consisting of presence and distance learning elements. The environment has to meet the different criteria mentioned: organizational, community, learning and task support. Aiming at "real-world" applications of the system, usability issues and additional requirements like security and portability of the environment also play an important role. Further reasonable demands requirements lie in the areas of deployment, platform-independency, and standardization. For the latter reasons, a web-based architecture seems appropriate for the intended learning community support system. As it is unrealistic to develop a functionally very ambitious and highly usable web application from scratch (especially with limited resources in terms of funding and time), and established technology in this field already exists, a search for a standardized web platform which meets most of the basic needs and supports the specific necessary developments was motivated. Our choice for this system base was to go for a content management system (CMS). In contrast to most of the generic web application platforms, a CMS already provides some basic and widely tested functionality that is useful for our purposes like • a good and (usually) secure user management, • embedded communication support facilities that are useful for community building [START_REF] Kim | Community building on the web: secret strategies for successful online communities[END_REF],

• a high degree of acceptance, due to the increasing number of web pages are deployed with a CMS, and • tested and expressive programming interfaces that allow the development of custom-made modules and their integration into the environment.

Implementation of Support Criteria

This section describes our implementations of the different support types that we motivated within the introduction. As outlined in the previous section, we decided not to "start from scratch" but build upon an existing CMS.

Figure 1. The iPAL modules

From the variety of available CMS, we chose Postnuke [START_REF]Postnuke CMS[END_REF] as the base for our iPAL (internet Portal to Augment Learning) developments. Reasons for the choice of Postnuke included previously made positive experiences with this modular PHP based CMS in research projects like SEED [START_REF] Schneider | Community, content and collaboration management Systems in education : a new chance for socio-constructivist scenarios?[END_REF], and its release under the GNU Public License, which allows a legal and free use of the software, including distribution and modification. In particular, the last point was highly important for us as we planned to change parts of the core system. Figure 1 shows the modules of our iPAL system, consisting of the Postnuke core system, some off-the-shelf extensions, and several self-developed modules. All components are classified according to their contribution areas (learning, task, community or organization), some components obviously belonging to multiple areas. In the following of this section, we go into detail about the contributions to the different fields.

Community Support

As noted in the introduction, there are quite a number of general-purpose communication modules for Postnuke (like for most CMS) that can serve well the purpose of community support, provided they are used in the right context. Examples include Wikis2 or chat components. Here, we only outline the standard or publicly available extension components that we make use of. The main communication feature within iPAL is a discussion forum. We use PNphpBB [START_REF]PNphpBB DiscussionBoard[END_REF], a special version of the phpBB bulletin board, one of the most popular and sophisticated forums on the internet, that can be smoothly integrated into Postnuke. Together with the option of sending private messages between users, this tool seems to contribute a lot to collaborative learning processes (cf. section 4). Another generic Postnuke functionality we employ is the poll module. In our application of the system (cf. 4.), the learners had the option to answer to questions (one per week) related to the lecture, the exercises, or the portal itself. We received continuous and valuable feedback and were thus able to improve both the system and the course organization. As these polls were completely anonymous, the students had a place to "safely complain" about everything related to the course, knowing that their lecturers would notice it. From our point of view, this is also an important function within a learning community which consists of people with different roles (each of these associated with certain rights and duties), and can intensify the community. These examples show that existing content management systems already provide quite a lot of useful features to support learning communities. However, in order to augment this towards a really useful and innovative support system for learning communities, especially when combined with presence lectures and exercise groups in blended scenarios, the CMS needs to be extended with custom modules. In terms of our support categories, these custom extension modules will mostly have to aim at organization, task and learning support: the community level is already well supported by the basic portal.

Organizational Support

While most CMS are clearly not especially designed for learning support, some "standard" modules are well suitable for our purposes. In particular, the aspects of group organization and the basic support for community building are well covered. The existing options to publish news articles on the index page and to send e-mails to all registered users are valuable for the organization, e.g. when new assessment results are available. In a number of university courses, one course format that can benefit from organizational support is the exercise groups. The management and maintenance of these groups can be problematic, especially with larger student numbers. The iPAL system supports the teacher in this task: the teacher just has to provide the dates and the maximum number of participants for each group before the courses start. If there are still places left, a registered participant can then sign up for a group -the users are permanently aware of the state of all groups. If a chosen date does not fit any longer, it is always possible for a user to change to any other non-occupied group. Tracking the current state of the groups, the teacher can think of offering additional groups when really needed, or merging groups and thus better use the expensive human resources. Other areas of organizational support, in particular the exercise handling and assessment, are described in section 3.4.

Learning Process Support

During traditional lectures in higher level education, the teacher usually writes his notes on a chalkboard. In our case, we have replaced the board with an electronic whiteboard and the chalk with the handwriting software NoteIt! [START_REF] Bollen | Interaktives Präsentieren und kooperatives Modellieren. Szenarien akademischen Lehrens und Lernens in Informatik und Naturwissenschaften[END_REF]. This combines the advantages of traditional handwriting with the possibility to prepare parts of the notes, store results for re-use and publishing and therefore helps in creating lecture notes on the fly automatically. Uploading the original notes in digital format as learning resources to the web application enables a tight integration of the real lecture with the supporting web portal -the notes of the lecture are accessible for the students from anywhere at anytime, so they do not have to take their own notes in the lecture (unless they want to) and can even comment on them in order to initiate discussions on topics of the course. In addition, this kind of reuse avoids media breaks and ensures authentic learning materials in the sense that the online available resources really have their origin in the lecture. The right part of figure 2 shows a typical lecture scene with the electronic whiteboard. In order to make use of these functions in a convenient way, iPAL contains a module that enables an automatic upload of all the notes of a lecture directly from the lecture hall. The notes are grouped by lecture date and shown in an overview window, with the possibility to enlarge and comment on each one. In addition, also a PDF version is auto-generated upon upload to conveniently allow for printouts. The left part of figure 2 illustrates the appearance of the lecture notes in the portal.

Task Support

Task support in interactive learning environments, especially in blended learning scenarios, can take various forms, from explicit workflow mechanisms to "softer" techniques, e.g. through the provision of guiding material. The iPAL system includes two different types of task support components. First, we use the generic Postnuke modules for downloads and links. In a learning scenario, these are (due to their numerous extra-functions like rating of the quality of resources, hit counts or comments) well suited to provide material for specific tasks, e.g. course-related exercises, or to offer general learning resources. With an extension, which is also released under GNU Public License, the download module can be extended with upload functionality. The iPAL portal uses this extension and thus allows the participants of the course to submit their own contributions to the learning resources pool. To achieve a sophisticated learning task support on the one hand and fine-grain control and course overview functions on the other hand, the built-in Postnuke functions are insufficient. A custom iPAL module manages the whole exercise system. Similar to the lecture notes, the teacher can publish the time-controlled exercise materials directly on the web page. Also example solutions, can be put in here together with a publication date that will make the solutions available automatically. If an assessment of the participants is desired, this can also be configured. In this case, the students have the possibility to upload their work via an electronic form (which facilitates paperless exercise handling, if this is desired). This option can also be constrained with a deadline after which no uploads are accepted any longer. The uploaded solutions can then be assigned to tutors. Here, the lecturer can choose between two assignment methods: Either the tutors receive preferably the submissions of the students of their "real-world" exercise group, or the submissions are distributed in a fair manner (each tutor gets the same amount of work). Of course the teacher can modify these assignments also manually. The tutors are automatically notified when there is work assigned to them. After reviewing the student's solutions (due to the open character of the exercises in our scenario, it is on purpose that this correction task is not automaticthough this could be embedded in the portal as well), the tutor can label his corrections with different color codes (red, yellow, green) that reflect his progress of correction.

Figure 3. The exercise review module

These status labels as well as the assessments themselves can be managed in a comfortable way via a special interface (see figure 3). If the exercise of the student has to be assessed with an explicit mark, the tutors can additionally enter the achieved score in the form. The teacher can access an overview of all submissions and their respective correction progress. When all the tutors have done their work, he can make the reviews visible to the students. These then receive a hint at a prominent position in the portal and can directly view their assessment. The score history of all users can be exported in CSV format at the end of the course for use in external spread sheet applications, which furthermore facilitates the work for the teacher who may need these tables as a source for further calculations of final marks.

Usage Context

The portal system as described in the previous section was used in winter term 2003/04 for the course "Programming" at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Most of the participants were studying "Applied Computer Science", smaller groups were from different other studies related to computer science. The following two subsections describe qualitative observations and empirical results about the system use within this context.

Descriptive Perspective

In the first lecture, a brief introduction to the core functions and the purpose of the portal was given, together with a policy what we would do with the collected personal data (like matriculation number or mail addresses). Due to the "Notebook University" initiative which is a part of the "eCampus" project at our university [START_REF] Kim | Community building on the web: secret strategies for successful online communities[END_REF], an above-average number of participants owns a notebook and is able to access the university network and the internet over wireless LAN directly from the auditorium (see figure 2). Consequently, we could already observe first registrations during the introduction lecture.

After the end of that lecture (so, after 90 minutes), over 30 participants had already registered themselves. The students accepted the web support for the course immediately. The feedback we got in both personal discussions and anonymous web polls was very positive. The question "Is this portal helpful for the programming exercises?" was answered as follows:

• 50% "Yes, in particular the forum and message system" • 36% "Yes, in particular the online materials" • 14% "No" Another question asked the students about their use of the digital lecture notes. Here, we received the result that 96% of the students used these resources in varying ways: online use, printing, offline use. The usage statistics of the portal support this impression (cf. section 4.2). In particular, the students intensively used the lecture notes, the discussion forum, the links and downloads sections, and the exercise module. The integration of the lecture notes into the portal directly after the lecture was very well received. We initially hoped that the function for annotating lecture notes within the portal would lead to discussions about the lecture contents, especially about difficult aspects. But this function was not used frequently enough to get a discussion culture started in that place. Yet, the generic discussion forum module was very lively: we could observe that the students took the role of peer helpers quite frequently, although dedicated tutors (that could be recognized through a special avatar) were also active in the forum. The quality of the peer helper's suggestions was so good that frequently, the "official" tutors did not even have to answer. Compared to previous years we had the phenomenon that the established forum of the students' organization, which is usually used a lot for discussion, was almost completely replaced by the internal forum of the lecture (below 100 postings related to the course in the established forum). This clearly shows that the internal forum integrated within iPAL was well accepted. We observed open discussions, including critique despite the fact that the course staff was also participating in the forum. Also some other features of iPAL turned out to be helpful tools for the teachers and tutors of the course: the portal greatly reduced the amount of administrative work with exercise group management and exercise distribution, correction, and assessment. The continuous feedback about the state of the exercise group occupancy was very convenient for the lecturer and allowed for a tailored solution. In the concrete case, this meant the creation of one additional group -it was possible to do this with virtually no delay, which would not have been possible in "traditional" settings.

Evaluation

At the end of the semester, the total number of registered users increased to over 340, who produced more than 470000 page views. Totally 178 students continued the course till the final examination. Thus we could observe that also people registered who were not participants of the course. With this policy of open registration also for external users we had not made any negative experiences so far: there has not been any abusive form of uploads or forum contributions. The forum was used extensively by the students, especially when the deadline for the final programming exercise approached. All in all more than 1500 articles have been written in about 250 threads. The majority of postings (approx. 75%) were content-related, i.e. with respect to the topics of the lecture and the exercises. The upload functionality was used mainly by the staff, only to a small part by the students (out of 56 uploads, only 9 have been from students and 18 from student tutors). The download functionality was used a lot, starting with a peak of more than 320 downloads for the first lecture notes and averaging between 150 and 250 downloads per resource for the whole term. One download of an additional tutorial session that is organized by the students' organization even had more that 1000 downloads. Unfortunately, the facility of rating the quality of contributions was not used at all, so uploaders had no acknowledgement, which may be a reason for the students' little participation in that area. As shown, the iPAL system was quite successful both in terms of usage statistics, and also considering teacher and student feedback as received from a realistic scenario. Trying to give a consolidated answer to the question if the system really helped the students in their learning activities is tough. Traditional empirical studies would have to compare "students using iPAL" with a control group and investigate whether there is a difference in learning outcome. However, these kinds of controlled laboratory studies were impossible in the real scenario. Despite this, we decided to analyze the usage data of iPAL empirically and indeed were able to find a statistically relevant (p<0.01) relation between the active portal iPAL usage (unfortunately, we were not able to completely track passive usage, i.e. page views without giving contributions) and the student's scores, both in a written test and in a programming exercise. Figure 4 illustrates the correlation between the number of postings in the forum and the final score in the exam. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient in this case is ρ=0.485, which indicates moderate positive correlation. An interesting detail observation is that there is just one participant with a high (>30) number of postings that has a low (<40) score in the exam. The other direction (low number of postings but high score in exam) appears more frequently. For a realistic scenario including a possibly very large number of interfering uncontrolled variables (like use of literature, external communication or lecture attendance), we consider this to be a fairly good and encouraging result that motivates further in-depth investigations.

Outlook

Since the information within the portal is a rich repository for a detailed analysis of communication structures and their changes over time, we plan to conduct an in-depth evaluation using Social Network Analysis (SNA) [START_REF] Wassermann | Social network analysis: methods and application[END_REF] techniques to correlate interaction data with success in the course. We have tested new versions of the iPAL system which are able to track also passive usage data (i.e. specific page views) in other courses. The analysis of this additional data with respect to patterns of usage, like in [START_REF] Wexelblat | History-rich tools for social navigation[END_REF], is also on our research agenda.

Conclusions

In this paper, we presented four criteria for web based learning support systems: • learning process support, • community support, • task support, and • organizational support We have presented an implementation of these four criteria that builds on the established technology of content management systems and re-uses reasonable parts of these systems, augmented by self-made components for specific functionalities. This iPAL system has been used in several University courses, with positive and promising evaluation results both on qualitative and quantitative scales. This paper has reported on some of these evaluation results.

Figure 2 .

 2 Figure 2. Transition of lecture notes from lecture hall to portal

Figure 4 .

 4 Figure 4. Relation between postings and score

An example from Germany is the "notebook university" programme funded by the ministry of education and research, at our university implemented in the eCampus project[START_REF] Kerres | Die Didaktik der Notebook-Universität[END_REF]

www.wiki.org


Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay
email: dgtrembl@teluq.uquebec.ca

INDUSTRIAL DISTRICTS AND INNOVATION NETWORKS: NEW THEORIES AND CONCEPTS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Over recent years, the study of industrial districts, inter-organizational relations and networks has become a major theme of interest in entrepreneurship research. Theories point to a new form of entrepreneurship and firm development which is based on the idea of creating links between firms to increase their chances of success and development. In this paper, we will present some data from a research we have conducted in Canada, in the province of Quebec to be exact, but first, we will present the theoretical perspectives which appear relevant to such investigation, which aims at developing a better a socio-economic model of the firm, as well as inter-firm relations, particularly as regards innovation and technological learning and transfers.

Introduction

In the present context which follows from recession and slow growth in the 80s and 90s, many industries and services are having difficulty in maintaining their competitiveness. In the light of present difficulties to restore competitiveness in many industries and services, cost competitiveness and product/industry cycle theories have been questioned by many theorists, as well as practitioners (managers) in firms. New theories based on the concept of "diversified quality production" , amongst others, were being developed to try to explain and propose new avenues for renewed competitiveness in "mature" industries. (cf Sorge and Streek, 1987;[START_REF] Tremblay | La dynamique 'conomique du processus d'innovation[END_REF]. These last theories point to new factors of competitiveness, such as quality of human resources management, entrepreneurial behaviour and organisational and technological learning , which appear to be as essential as technological innovation per se in order to move to "diversified quality production" and to restore competitiveness in industries or services considered as "mature" or declining. Other factors such as linkages to the local economy and invisible labour market factors were also put forward by authors such as Doeringer, Terkla and Topakian in a book called "Invisible factors in Local Economic Development", which highlights the importance of these invisible linkages in the renaissance of the Montachussets economy in the US. Finally, it is important to refer to the litterature on "industrial districts" as this material also points to a certain number of invisible factors which are favourable to economic development, amongst which the constitution of networks and the development of confidence and close relationships between firms.

Although this is apparently contradictory with the traditional perspective of the firm, which is based on competition between firms and does not admit the possibility of cooperation between firms, there appears to be more and more evidence to support this theory of the cooperative firm, particularly as regards technological and organizational innovation.Recently, the study of industrial districts, inter-organizational relations and networks has become a major theme of interest in entrepreneurship research. Questions related to the boundaries of the firm, to the kind of inter-organizational relations, to transactions and to sources of success in firms' networks have become central to many studies related to small business development and entrepreneurship, although not very much empirical work has been done, at least not outside of Europe and particularly of Italy, where the "industrial districts" concept has reemerged a few years ago and spurred much research.

Before we present the data from our research, we will start by defining the concept of industrial districts, to see how characteristics of this idea may be present in our observations, although they might take different forms. Secondly, we will refer to the writings of Doeringer, Terkla and Topakian on the question of "Invisible Factors in Local Economic Development", which refers to the title of their recent book. Having presented the relevant theoretical dimensions, we will present the data from our research in the second part of the paper.

PART I. THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES

1. The concept of industrial districts and the flexible small firm For quite some time, the general trend of industrialization was in favor of large firms, large entreprises, large production units. With the exception of a short spell in the 30's, there has been an almost continuous development towards larger units, larger entreprises, larger firms, and more and more centralization in the industrial structure. However, over recent years, there appears to be a reversal of this long term industrial trend in almost all industrialized countries. Starting in the 70's, there has been a certain shift back to small firms and small establishments. The latter appear to be responsible for most of the job creations, whereas large firms used to be credited for this previously.

The question is: why did this happen ? Is it true, as some say, that the smaller units offer more flexibility? And is this possible without developing precarious conditions of work in these small units? There are various explanations for this phenomenon. Some would argue that small firms have lower wage costs and lower labour costs, and therefore there is a shift in favor of small firms. In this perspective, it appears that labour is paying the price for the increase in flexibility of the firms. Others might argue that small firms could be more efficient, more productive, more innovative, that they can more easily adapt to new market trends and new needs in production. There are various others explanations, but it's hard to argue in general that small firms are always more efficient, more productive. If they were, it would be hard to understand why firms should have grown in size for one hundred years, for the entire period of industrialization, and suddenly the average firm size would decline again. There must be other reasons behind this trend, and there are two which appear to be fundamental.

First, as we mentioned previously, the economic environment in many parts of the world, and specially in the industrialized countries, has changed. Today, there is a much stronger demand for a different type of product: higher quality product, more differentiated services and products. The economic stability that characterized the world economy until the early 70's, more or less until the end of the Bretton-Woods agreement, has been lost: there is much more turbulence today, there is a need for much faster adaptation. The average life of a product --the product cycle --has shortened considerably; while the cost of producing a product has increased considerably. Secondly, the cost of technology has changed. With the advent of the micro-computer, and micro-electronics, the small firm can also easily purchase a computer. There has been a shift in consumer demand and in the basic business structure, and in some ways, this favored the small firms. Both these elements appear to have favoured small firms. However, small firms in Qu'bec or Canada do not all seem to be benefitting from this new environment, whereas the Italian firms in what is known as "industrial districts" have profitted greatly from the situation. Let us look at the characteristics of the industrial districts to try to determine the main reasons for their success.

As we know, the industrial district can be defined as a conglomeration or a network of many hundreds, sometimes thousands, of small firms in one particular industrial sector, in one industry, where these small firms specialize in particular activities. For example, in the so called Third Italy --in the centre and north of Italy--, there are eighty or ninety industrial districts, according to authors like Brusco and Beccatini, amongst others 1 . These districts specialize in all kinds of industries: in machinery, in various consumer goods industries, such as textiles, clothing, footwear, ceramics. And more important in terms of specific characteristics of the Italian model of industrial districts, these thousands of firms in one locality specialize in a particular stage of production. In addition, some firms specialize in particular services, producer related services or business services: for example, there are firms specializing in the design of a product, there are firms specializing in research and development, others specialize in marketing, in exporting, and even in banking and financial services for the industrial districts. This makes it possible for these firms to benefit from advantages similar to those of large firms in terms of cost reduction through specialization, amongst others, as we will indicate in the coming paragraphs.

By specializing, the small firms are enabled to benefit from similar advantages as those of large firms: they benefit from the improvement or the higher quality of production or service, as a result of specialization. They also benefit from increased economies of scale: if they bring together many firms, they reach levels of production which usually only the large firm can afford (and they do this without giving up their individual flexibility, as we will see furthr on). Beyond the specialization of firms in particular activities, there obviously needs to be cooperation between them. And for this cooperation to develop, there must be particular institutions in the district that coordinate all these activities. The industrial district is therefore a conglomeration or network of many different types of firms specializing in a particular stage of production, or in producer services or in business related services, which is characterized by a high degree of cooperation.

A second important aspect is the simultaneous coexistence of this cooperation and competition. The cooperation is organised: specialization requires some form of coordination and there also needs to be some relation between market and production. For example, in some of the Italian districts, which are very competitive because they furnish highly fashionable products (knitwear products of Benneton, or other textile fashions), there are persons or firms responsible for 1 ensuring a quick response of the production to new fashions. This person or firm is a kind of super-entrepreneur who knows the market very well and who knows all the producers. In this way, there is an effective link between production and the market --the product market. This is one aspect of the question, the cooperation and coordination element. The other is competition.

All this refers to some type of industrial atmosphere, specific links between businesses and the community which are to a certain extent quite original. We can ask ourselves if it is a typically italian model, or whether it can exist elsewhere, in different forms or in similar forms. The "industrial district" was discovered first in Italy, in what is called the Third Italy: provinces like Toscany, Emilia Romagna, Venezia, and other provinces (Goodman and Bamford, 1989). It does not exist in other parts of Italy. There have been attempts to implant this model of industrial districts from the centre and the north of Italy to the south, to the Mezzogiorno, but there has apparently not been much progress.

The reason appears to be that these industrial districts flourish only in a particular political, institutional and social environment. And there seem to be in this so called Third Italy specific conditions, which are conducive to small firm development, such as a tradition of cooperative, amongst which in agricultural cooperatives, a very effective local government, a good infrastructure, ÿas well as internal training and apprenticeship traditions in the firms. Indeed, an important characteristic of the model is that the many entrepreneurs used to be formal workers in other firms: they often left some large firms in the 60's to set up their own business, and they were usually highly skilled craftsmen. This is another important condition: a good technical and professional training in an area. These Third Italy provinces provided this training, mainly with the help of public institutions. These conditions obviously do not exist everywhere. This last element can be associated to organizational or technological learning, and in this sense, the industrial district represent an alternative to traditional industrial or innovation policies; as the Japanese model also shows, they can be seen as a form of decentralized participation of workers and firms in the innovation process (Tremblay and Rolland, 1996a).

While there are surely historical and institutional specificities to the Italian "ÿmodelÿ", as in the Japanese case, some authors have discovered that industrial districts or similar forms --small firm industrial communities or localized systems of production --exist in some other parts of Europe: for example, in the South East of France (around Montpellier), in the region Rhone-Alpes, in the state of Baden-Wurtenbergÿin southern Germany, in Denmark, in Sweden.

The characteristics of these situations are not identical to that of Italian industrial districts. However, if we look at how they are organized, we do find similar organizational principles: 1-there is tight cooperation of small firms in particular communities; 2-the coexistence of cooperation and competition; 3-the strong support from local government. These local and community institutions are apparently important for the small firms to flourish. It is on the basis of this thesis concerning industrial districts and similar models, that we investigated in the case of Quebec, to determine whether we could find some similar situations and characteristics.

Invisible labour market factors and linkages to the local economy and community

In their book entitled "Invisible Factors in Local Economic Development", Doeringer, Terkla and Topakian try to identify the factors which might explain the economic revitalization fo the Montachussetts region in the North East of the USA. The essence of the explanation boils down to the provision of specialized products and services generated through niche-seeking strategies of specific firms, as well as communitywide business or inter-firm network effects that reinforce these strategies by reducing production costs. Most noteworthy, according to the authors, are agglomeration economies among local firms, through input-output relationships and other forms of linkages. Here again, as in the Italian model, the agglomeration economies based on input-output relationships are very rarely based on visible cost competitiveness. According to the authors, they are based on the ability, derived from physical proximity, to participate in and respond rapidly to changing design and manufacturing practices. For many clusters of firms, as the authors call them, proximity is an important factor in both flexibility of production and cost competitiveness. They also indicate that it can reduce inventory costs throught "just-in-time" deliveries. Also, where quality is an important aspect, proximity makes it possible for firms to consult with each other quickly in order to resolve problems over product specifications and the like. ( cf [START_REF] Doeringer | Invisible Factors in Local Economic Development[END_REF]. Linkages to the local business community therefore appear important in order to adopt a strategy of diversified quality production, particularly if "just-in-time" (JIT) is included.

Again, in their book entitled "Invisible Factors in Local Economic Development", Doeringer, Terkla and Topakian identify some factors related to the labour market which influence business competitiveness in the Montachusetts region. The authors actually feel that the most important communitywide contribution to business competitiveness comes from labour market factors of which some can be associated to organizational learning. They admit that these factors have traditionnally contributed to the success of the local economy, as is the case almost anywhere, but indicate that these factors become of "paramount importance" as the economy evolves towards specialized custom production. Amongst these "invisible" labour market factors, the authors mention specifically skills, labour availability, the absence of wage pressures, and particularly important the workers' attitude which favours good productivity, as well as the quality of labour-management relations. All these of course favour the development of internal labour markets, as well as technological and organizational learning.

To summarize the authors, the invisible factors responsible for the good performance of Montachusett economy are essentially the niche-seeking strategies, agglomeration economies, and flexibility in labour markets; other elements often put forward in the litterature on the dynamics of competitiveness, such as changing technology, R & D and patterns of business ownership do not appear as important in the Montachusett context. It is on the basis of these various theoretical perspectives that we undertook our research, to try to see whether these aspects could also be found in a region of Qu'bec where there seemed there could be innovation networks and where the economy was not doing too badly over recent years. Our objective was to test for the presence of various aspects identified in the literature and to try to determine whether these invisible local factors had some influence on business development in a particular region.

PART II. EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

Some evidence from a research in Quebec, Canada

Considering the fact that there has been very little empirical research on the question in Quebec (only 2 researches underway, in 2 other regions, to our knowledge, and no final reports from these), our data present some interest, alghough they cannot be considered totally conclusive, being based on some 100 firms. It is interesting to note that our data lead to a conclusion similar to that of Bernard [START_REF] Ganne | Industrialisation diffuse et systŠmes industriels localis's. Essai de bibliographie critique du cas fran ‡ais[END_REF], in his report for ILO on "industrial districts or localized industrial systems", where he concluded that although the industrial district theory does point to some important elements of firms' competitiveness, the situations observed do not conform perfectly to the model. Our research results also do not confor perfectly to the model, but there may nevertheless be elements of firm networks and innovation exchanges of interest for the analysis of small businesses.

Our research was based on the analysis of some 104 firms in Quebec. We proceeded with two methods, that is an in-depth interview procedure and survey questionnaires. A short version of the questionnaire (with closed questions: yes or no, or choices of answers) was mailed to firms from 4 industrial sectors covering all regions of Quebec: textile and clothing; paper; electrical products; and furniture. We wanted to compare not only different industrial sectors, but also different regions (at least 2) in order to try to see whether there were regional characteristics to the organisation of the industrial systems. In this perspective, we conducted more detailed interviews in some 40 firms from two specific regions 2 ;.

In this last part of the paper, we will refer to some of the elements presented previously inasmuch as they give information pertaining to these subjects. In this sense, the first question which appears to be important is the question of the move from mass production to customized production, as well as the evolution of product cycles and emergence of the "new flexible firm". In our questionnaire, we asked a few questions pertaining to this subject, which I will now go over. All full tables are not included here for lack of space, but are referred to and are available upon request.

The emergence of the new flexible firm

One of the firs things we wanted to determine in our research was whether Quebec firms were actually moving towards a qualitative, techno-organizational strategy, whether they still had a pure cost-minimization strategy, or whether they were somewhat in between the two, with a combination of both strategies. The data do not indicate a definite shift towards a pure qualitative, techno-organizational strategy, but do indicate some evolution along these lines. We asked firms whether they had done some type of innovation over recent years (5 to 10 years ). The great majority indicated they had developed or introduced new technologies (63 % of all firms), new products (76 %), and new forms of organisation of work (68 %). There is a clear trend towards innovation, and it is interesting to note that while new technologies attract most of the public attention, product and organisational innovation appear to be more important and frequent, something which we also observed in previous research [START_REF] Tremblay | La dynamique 'conomique du processus d'innovation[END_REF].

Other research results 4 reveal the firm's perception of its main competitive advantage, as it indicates what the firms think are the reasons for which clients buy from their company. Firms were asked to classify the various possible answers on a scale from 1 to 5 (it was possible to give more than one answer), and the "superior quality of products/services" comes first in terms of highest percentages; it is also the answer which is less often considered negligible. Compared to prices, 48 % of firms identify quality and 43 % identify customized service as the main reason why people buy their products, while only 25 % consider price the main reason for sales. Under 5 % and 9 % of firms consider quality and customized service respectively as totally unimportant. Other possible answers such as proximity of firm, fidelity of clientele, dynamism of personnel, characteristics of the firm (coop. etc.) rate somewhere in the middle.

Another question (see Table 3 of original results; tables not included for lack of space) asked firms how the evolution of international and national markets had affected their product lines: 50 % indicated it brought them to develop new customized product lines for specific market niches, 42 % that it brought them to renew product lines more frequently (i.e. reduced product cycle), 65 % to produce more high quality products, and 66 % to manufacture a greater number of products. Only 18 % indicated that they had reduced the number of products. There are small variations according to industry, but we do not detail this here. We asked firms whether they had adopted means to reduce their production costs over recent years, and 92 % answered positively, 71 % saying this was because of Canadian firms' competition, and 45 % because of international competition (it was possible to give both answers -see table 4). For those who answered positively (92 %), we asked what means they took in order to achieve the most competitive production costs. Here, although the increase in quality of products comes first (86 %), followed by the development of better qualification of personnel (84 %), and then modernisation of equipment (81 %), and production process evaluation (80 %), "keeping labour costs as low as possibel" comes fifth with 75 %. Only direct participation of workers (64 % ) and search for less costly raw materials or intermediate goods. (cf. Table 4). It thus seems that although quality is a priority, it has not totally superseded the control of labour costs.

We asked firms what they had specifically done to modify quality of production (cf.Table 5) : 84 % indicated better quality control at each stage of production by the workers themselves; 75 % indicated they had tighter inspections of products before delivery; 71 % indicated they frequently modified products to adjust to specific clienteles; 59 % said they had a Total Quality Program; and 40 % indicated they had a better service for repairs of defects in products.

In our view, firms that have a better repair or defect service cannot be considered as having adopted a quality strategy; to a certain extent, this is more of a defensive than an offensive strategy towards quality. The possibilities and means for developing quality obviously differ according to type of product; for some firms, in printing or in industrial textiles for the paper industry for example, it is impossible to correct defects in materials.

Firms were asked whether they had taken measures to increase productivity, and 78 % said they had. As concerns the specific measures taken, they are as follows (cf.Table 6): -79 % (of the previous 78 %) indicated they changed machines or equipment; -75 % had adopted new methods of leadership in the firm; -74 % changed work organisation; -57 % increased the percentage of hours of capital (equipment) use.

In order to adjust to rapid variations in demand, we asked firms to identify the main strategies they used (cf.Table 7): -89 % said they do daily production planification; -82 % try to plan and control incoming orders ; -78 % will have workers stay in longer hours; -72 % try to have a better coordination between various sectors of the firm; -60 % hire temporary workers at times. All in all, the objective of a better quality product seems to be emerging, but firms have not rejected the traditional cost minimization strategy which rests on the reduction of labour costs, through variations in hours of work and/or temporary personnel.

Linkages to the local economy and firm networks

In the section on industrial districts, we identified various factors related to the local economy and community which might explain the performance of certain local economies. Characteristics of the institutional and social environment, the tradition of cooperation, existing simultaneously with competition, the availability of skilled labour and the proximity of public educational institutions. From Doeringer et al.'s research, we observed that just-in-time inventory management systems and the increasing importance of product quality and reliability in deliveries tend to reinforce the importance of close-knit and permanent relations between suppliers and producers, as well as between users and producers. Our research did not investigate the latter, but did ask questions on the relations between suppliers and producers.

First, let us indicate that some 47 % of all firms surveyed do some subcontracting for others, while 44 % give out work in the form of subcontracts. The percentages vary from firm to firm (Table 1), plastic, printing and electrical products being much more active in doing subcontracted work (61 % and 79 % of firms in the plastic and printing sectors) and in giving out subcontracts (68 % in electrical products firms). Analysis of the interviews indicates that subcontracting does in some cases permit the development of close-knit relations between supplier and producer. However, many firms seemed to have as close-knit relations, if not closer-knit relations, with affiliated firms (head office or other affiliates of a multinational).

Most of the firms' markets are in the province of Quebec, over half of them selling in Quebec, while only 12 % or so are present on international markets, 18 % in the province of Ontario, 6 % in Western provinces (Table 15). Some 18 % of firms indicate that they have local markets, which we defined as the MRC (municipalite regionale de comte -county regional municipality). However, international links are often more important in terms of R & D and other relations between affiliates and head office. The printing sector is the most involved at the local level, with 43 % of firms selling at this local level (MRC), while all other firms are around the 20 % mark, and plastics just over 3 %. On the opposite, the paper industry is the one which is the most present on the international markets (41 % of firms).

We asked firms why they chose to establish themselves in their municipality; on this question, no clear trend can be found, although labour market factors appear to be important for many. Answers are distributed between quality of labour (26 %), flexibility and polyvalence of labour (21 %), proximity of suppliers (20 %), proximity of markets (20 %), presence of firms of the same production sector (14 %), place of residence of owner (23 %) and financial aid (13 %), with many firms (35 %) indicating also various other factors. For example, the presence of a university (Un. of Sherbrooke) is important in some cases; the local Economic Council or Chamber of Commerce sometimes played a role (St-Hyacinthe); dynamism and personal contacts of the mayor was a major factor in bringing firms to establish in two particular cities (Granby, Bromont). In any case, labour and proximity factors seem important and information from interviews might give more weight to these factors.

To determine with whom firms had relations in the community, we asked questions concerning their relations with local suppliers, banks or credit unions. Some 52 % of firms have relations with local suppliers, 66 % with local banks and 15 % with local credit unions. More qualitative information are present in the interviews, for example concerning questions of trust, and other qualitative dimensions of personal relations, very often with the mayor, as is the case with the cities of Granby and Bromont. In this last case, other elements such as governmental subsidies, social and cultural activities, also played a role.

Networks and cooperation in R & D

One of the points we were interested in analysing was the relation between formal or informal networks and cooperation in R & D. Preliminary analysis of simple regressions does not indicate a very strong support for this hypothesis, for the data in general, nor for the region which we studied in more detail, the Monteregie. We are presently working on more detailed analysis, but will present general data; comparative industry data also present in the tables will not be presented in full detail here. As concerns specifically R & D, only half (48 %) of the firms did declare R & D activities for fiscal purposes in the last fiscal year (1990). Some 23 % of firms indicated they did R & D on an ad hoc basis, when it was needed. Some 66 % of firms that did R & D (on an occasional or systematic basis, that is 74 % of total firms) indicated there was a trend towards an increase, 8 % said it was declining and 25 % it was stable. (Table 8)

We asked firms if they had worked with partners in order to create new products, adopt new technologies or develop organisational innovations. Some 46 % of all firms did work with some partners, the percentage being higher (73 %, 14 out of 19 firms) in electric and electronical products (Table 10). In most of these cases, technological change and organisational change were closely associated and often brought about the creation of an informal working group. We also asked the firms to identify the reasons for which they chose these partners. Of the 48 firms that did have partners, some 42 % chose the partner because of prior personal acquaintance, 21 % because of its proximity, while 54 % gave technological capacity as the main reason. Subcontracting (15 %) and partnership of affiliates with head office (33 %) as well as prestige (21 %) were also given as answers (Table 10). Firms were specifically asked whether they had R & D cooperation agreements with other firms. Over 37 % had chosen other firms as partners, while some 12 % had some form of partnership with educational institutions (Table 13). When they did have some links with other firms, it was more often with foreign firms (49 % of firms that had some form of cooperation), with Quebec firms (30 %), with Canadian firms (21 %) and finally, less frequently with local firms (19 % ). As we can imagine, given the importance of foreign firms, the majority of these links were actually links between head office and affiliates: in 52 % of the cases the foreign firm was the head office and in 17 % of cases, it was an affiliate. In 21 % of cases, the firms werre independant of each other and in 15 % of cases the Quebec firms produced for the other firm. (Table 13). Out of the total of firms, under 10 % are part of a formal network of R & D, while almost 52 % are part of an informal network, in the sense that they exchanged informations with other firms. These informal networks are particularly important in the sectors of printing, electric and electronic products, food and beverages. (Table 13).

To develop more on the community and business networks, we asked firms if they had received technical informations from various sources. The majority of firms responded positively, but local firms do nota appear dominant (Table 14): 72 % of firms had receivde such information from suppliers; 39 % from clients who bought from them; 23 % from the head office; 21 % from provincial government agencies; 18 % from colleges; 17 % from universities; 14 % from federal government agencies; and only 11 % from local firms.

Firms also were asked to give information on the type of help they received from partners. The most frequent answer was help in materials and supplies (52 %), followed by the solution to production problems (38 %), help with computer hardware (20 %), computer software (20 %) and know-how (17 %).

General results from the empirical research

There are basically two ways of developing small and medium size firms in the perspective of technological and innovation development, as well as regional economic development. One is through linking small firm development to the development of large firms, that have a higher capacity for R & D and innovation. The other way would be for small firms to form groups or networks, to get together with other small firms, in order to create large -formal or informal -units. Why would they have to do this ? This is probably related to some of our observations concerning the problems of small firms, that is not the fact of being small, but rather being isolated and with little information and power. How can this be explained ? Compared to the large firm, the small firm lacks resources to fulfill all the functions that a firm has to meet in the present competitive context, that is R & D, technological development, designing a product, manufacturing a product, marketing it, financing the distribution, and assuming the cost of new development, as a result of the accelerated product cycle. In some way, the firm has to generate all these resources, and that means the small firm has to either rely on the large firm for resources transfer or on other small firms. Relying on the large firm is the method that has been perhaps best developed in Japan, where large firms contract out most of their production to medium size and small firms, and the large firms tend to transfer resources --their know-how, their capital, their human resources, their skills, their technology to the small firm. This is one way of developing small firms and this is actually one of the most frequently observed in our research. To a certain extent, results seem to indicate that this is the model which is more frequent in the region of Monteregie, particularly in the Bromont region, although it does not benefit all small firms. 5

cooperation and training

In order to get a good skill standard, there is often a need for cooperation amongst firms. Many firm owners ask themselves whether they should invest in the skills of their employees if they risk losing them, and therefore losing their investment. This dilemna has been solved in countries where all firms tend to do a lot of training, such as Japan, Sweden or Germany, where labour markets have traditionally been tight, and it seems to have found an original solution in the Italian model of industrial districts. In order to avoid this risk and resolve this problem, firms have to join and work together, and effectively share the costs and the risks. In order to do this, they have to have a good understanding of their joint interest, in the face of bigger firms or other competitors. In Sweden, for example, small firms apparently work together, and can therefore benefit from advantages in terms of R & D as well as of training. Although we insist more on small or medium size firms here, this is not just true for small firms, but is becoming true for larger firms as well. In the automobile sector for example, we have observed associations or networks between American and Japanese auto constructors, for example Ford and Mazda in the Detroit region, and the CAMI plant in Canada [START_REF] Drache | Lean production in Japanese Auto Transplants in Canada[END_REF], Huxley, 1995), amongst others. The same is observed in the computer field, with the traditional enemies IBM and Macintosh even developing associations for specific objectives. Firms tend to form cooperative networks in order to do joint development and sometimes even to do joint production. This apparently confirms the increasing importance of cooperation, for small as well as for large firms. In North America and in Quebec particularly, firms have not been known to develop training much, and certainly not to cooperate much in this field. We wanted to know whether this was evolving.

We asked firms whether they had had cooperation in training their workers, and the results seem to indicate some progression of cooperation in this field (Table 16). Consultants clearly dominate the scene : they are present in over 50 % of firms for training purposes. Here again, it is in the electric and electronics industry that they are most present. Other institutions that contribute to training in firms are the following (

Conclusion

To conclude, while theory indicates that the improvement of economic performance comes more and more through collaboration, cooperation, and the division of labor between firms as well as within the firm, it appears that this culture of "cooperation-competitition" has not bloomed fully in Quebec. There certainly does appear to be an emergence of cooperation in various forms; business and community cooperation do appear to play a role in certain production activities; but this does not seeem to be the main avenue used by Quebec firms in order to innovate. This probably depends on national conditions which are often very different, and surely differ quite a lot between Quebec and Italy, but much less between Quebec and Montachusett.

However, what many identify as vital ingredients for innovation and competitiveness, that is workers' skills development, organizational and technological learning, managerial and entrepreneurial competence, public infrastructures, close cooperation and trust between the municipalities and the firms, as well as between the firms themselves, these vital ingredients do not appear to be dominant in the present industrial structure of Quebec. Maybe it is forthcoming, maybe it just does not fit the firms' culture or business environment; it is not possible to conclude on this on the basis of only this research. In the ILO report mentioned earlier, [START_REF] Ganne | Industrialisation diffuse et systŠmes industriels localis's. Essai de bibliographie critique du cas fran ‡ais[END_REF] indicated that although there was a lot of interest for the theoretical model of the Italian industrial districts in France, few empirical studies had actually been done. On the basis of the existing material in 1990, it was difficult to find clear indications which might confirm the existence in France of "industrial districts" with identical or similar characteristics to those of what is now known as the "Italian model".

For the moment, our results on Quebec seem to lead to similar conclusions, that is that there are no clear indications which might confirm the existence in Quebec of something similar to the Italian "industrial districts". However there is clear indication that there exist networks between firms. The specific characteristics of these networks and the factors which might explain the specific form they take in some sectors or regions are however unclear yet. The size of firm and type of firm might be part of the explanation: firms which are actually affiliated to a multinational appear to present different networks from those of Canadian firms and Quebec firms, and SMBs (small and medium size businesses) seem also to have different networks from multinationals. The characteristics of these networks appear to be differentiated as concerns R & D cooperation and exchanges of technical or other types of information. As Ganne has indicated for France, we tend to conclude from our research that this does not diminish the interest for further empirical study of the question. On the contrary, we rather call for a renewal and opening of the analysis of what could be called "localized industrial systems" and a recognition of the fact that the social construction of factors of production in different countries is actually differentiated and cannot conform to only one model, whether it is the Italian industrial district or the Montachussets invisible factors of local development perspective. In any case however, all these theoretical developments, as well as our own empirical research do confirm the existence of a variety of factors which influenc local economic development, and particularly the development of small firms and networks in a local environment.

Table 16

 16

	):


Nikola Perkovic

A Step Away From the Matter Generation Mechanism

Keywords: Yukawa coupling, Standard Model, Higgs mechanism, Fermions, Leptons, Beyond the Standard Model

Yukawa coupling constants are arbitrary parameters in the Standard Model Higgs mechanism meaning that the SM Higgs mechanism does not predict the masses of elementary fermions nor does it explain why there are three generations of matter, namely leptons and quarks, respectively. We will present a formula that accurately measures Yukawa couplings for all three generations of charged leptons that is electrons, muons and tauons, respectively, without relying on the Higgs vacuum expectation value (VEV) but instead only using the fine structure constant, accounting for the running when the scale Q equals the mass of muons and then tauons, respectively. The formula also accounts for charged lepton generations therefore providing the first crucial step towards forming the theoretical framework necessary to explain the generation mechanism of matter.

Introduction

In the Standard Model of Particle Physics [1][2][START_REF] Salam | Elementary Particle Theory[END_REF][START_REF] Glashow | [END_REF], electroweak symmetry breaking [5][6][7][8] is responsible for the mass generation of W and Z gauge bosons thus rendering the weak interactions short ranged. The Standard Model scalar potential is 2 where the Higgs field Φ is a self-interacting SU(2) L complex doublet that has four real degrees of freedom, with weak hypercharge Y =1 and V(Φ) is the most general renormalizable scalar potential and if the quadratic term is negative the neutral component of the scalar doublet acquires a non-zero vacuum expectation value 𝑣 = (√2G F ) -1 2 ⁄

V(Φ) = m 2 Φ † Φ + λ(Φ † Φ)
which is approximately 246,22 GeV. We should also point out that

Φ = 1 √2 ( √2ф + ф 0 + 𝑖𝑎 0 )
where ф 0 and 𝑎 0 are the CP-even and CP-odd neutral components, and ф + is the complex charged component of the Higgs doublet, respectively.

The global minimum of the theory defines the ground state, and spontaneous symmetry breaking implies that there is a symmetry of the system that is not respected by the ground state. From the four generators of the SU(2) 𝐿 × U(1) 𝑌 gauge group, three are spontaneously broken, implying that they lead to non-trivial transformations of the ground state and indicate the existence of three massless Goldstone bosons identified with three of the four Higgs field degrees of freedom. The Higgs field couples to the W μ and B μ gauge fields associated with the SU(2) 𝐿 × U(1) 𝑌 local symmetry through the covariant derivative appearing in the kinetic term of the Higgs Lagrangian

ℒ Higgs = (D μ Φ) † (D μ Φ) -V(Φ)
Where the covariant derivative equals

D μ = ∂ μ + 𝑖gσ 𝑎 W μ 𝑎 2 + 𝑖g′YB μ 2
g and g′ are the SU(2) and U(1) gauge couplings, respectively, and σ 𝑎 where 𝑎 = 1, 2, 3are the typical Pauli matrices. As a result, the neutral and the two charged massless Goldstone degrees of freedom mix with the gauge fields corresponding to the broken generators of SU(2) 𝐿 × U(1) 𝑌 and become the longitudinal components of the Z and W gauge bosons, respectively.

(

(

The Z and W gauge bosons acquire masses

M W = g𝑣 2 (5) and M Z = (g ′ +g)𝑣 2 (6)
The fourth generator remains unbroken since it is the one associated to the conserved U(1) QED gauge symmetry therefore its corresponding gauge field remains massless or in other words, the photon is massless.

Similarly the eight color gauge bosons, the gluons, corresponding to the conserved SU(3) 𝐶 gauge symmetry with eight unbroken generators, also remain massless. Therefore, from the initial four degrees of freedom of the Higgs field, two are absorbed by the W ± gauge bosons, one by the Z 0 gauge boson, and there is one remaining degree of freedom H, that is the physical Higgs boson. The Higgs boson is neutral under the electromagnetic interactions and transforms as a singlet under SU(3) 𝐶 and hence does not couple at tree level to the massless photons and gluons.

The mass of the Higgs boson is given as m h = √2λ𝑣 2 , where λ is a free coupling parameter and therefore the mass of the Higgs boson is not predicted in the Standard Model.

With the Higgs field in the unitary gauge, the SU(2) 𝐿 × U(1) 𝑌 invariant Yukawa Lagrangian For leptons takes the form

ℒ 𝑓 = -λ 𝑓 (L ̅ Φe R + Φ † e ̅ R L) = - λ 𝑓 𝑣 √2 e ̅e - λ 𝑓 ℎ √2 e ̅e
The respective masses of fermions are not predicted since the Yukawa coupling λ 𝑓 is a free parameter provided in the formula

m 𝑓 = λ 𝑓 𝑣 √2
in that sense the Higgs mechanism does not predict any of the fermion masses. It is possible to estimate the strength of the fermion-fermion-Higgs interactions

ℒ 𝑓𝑓ℎ = m e 𝑣 e ̅eℎ - m u 𝑣 u ̅uℎ + ⋯
where m e is the mass of an electron and m u is the mass of an up quark. A very important consequence of the fermion-fermion-Higgs interaction is its direct dependence on fermion masses. The larger the mass the stronger this interaction becomes.

Yukawa coupling generation formula

In order to make sure that Yukawa couplings are no longer arbitrary parameters in the SM Higgs mechanism, we have to avoid using the Higgs VEV. Therefore the generation formula for leptonic Yukawa couplings is:

λ 𝑙 = ∑ (λ C,𝑙 • R ∞ • 3 g 𝑓 ) 1 3 (n G -1) ⁄ n G 2 3 n G =1
Where λ 𝑙 is the lepton Yukawa coupling, 𝑙 = 𝑒, 𝜇, 𝜏 are the flavors for electrons as the first generation, muons as second and tau leptons as third respectively, where n G = 1, 2, 3 represents their respective generations in the formula, λ C,𝑙 is the Compton wavelength of the lepton, g 𝑓 is the g-factor of the charged lepton and R ∞ is the Rydberg constant. Compton wavelengths of electrons, muons and tau leptons are known to high accuracy however the Rydberg constant and the g-factors of electrons and muons are some of the best measured quantities in all of physics, along with the fine structure constant α which will be used in the more complex version of the formula above, replacing the Rydberg constant and Compton wavelengths.

When n G = 1 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝑒 we obtain the formula for the electron Yukawa coupling

λ 𝑒 = λ C,𝑒 • R ∞ • 3 g 𝑓 = m 𝑒 √2 𝑣
where λ 𝑒 is the Yukawa coupling of the electron, λ C,𝑒 is the Compton wavelength of the electron and m 𝑒 is the mass of the electron. Using the known values for the Compton wavelength, Rydberg constant and the g-factor of the electron g 𝑓 = -2.00231930436182(52) as provided by NIST, we obtain 99.46% agreement for the two sides of the equation above.

When n G = 2 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝜇 we obtain the formula for the muon Yukawa coupling

λ 𝜇 = (λ C,𝜇 • R ∞ • 3 g 𝑓 ) 1 3 ⁄ 4 = m 𝜇 √2 𝑣
where the two sides of the formula are in 99.92% agreement accounting for the g-factor of the muon g 𝑓 = -2.0023318418(13). The accuracy of the formula's left side is slightly higher than for its electronic counterpart. This occurrence could be due to the fact that the Higgs VEV is measured using the Fermi coupling constant as depicted in the above section. The Fermi coupling constant is measured by using muonic mean lifetime as shown by T. van Ritbergen and

(10) (11) (12)
R. G. Stuart in their paper "On the Precise Determination of the Fermi Coupling Constant from the Muon Lifetime" [9].

When n G = 3 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝜏 we obtain the formula for the tau lepton Yukawa coupling:

λ 𝜏 = (λ C,𝜏 • R ∞ • 3 -2 ) 1 9 ⁄ 9 = m 𝜏 √2 𝑣
Where we used g 𝑓 = -2 since the tau lepton g-factor is still unknown and measuring it might provide evidence for new physics beyond the Standard Model. The two sides of the equation are in 93.51% agreement. One shouldn't make the mistake of trying to predict the tau g-factor using the formula from equation 13 since, as elegant and accurate as it may be, it is far too simplistic for such a complex task. We will, however, present a possibility to do so in the following chapter.

Eliminating the Rydberg constant and Compton wavelengths

The revised formula from equation 10 takes the form in which we only rely on the fine structure constant and the g-factor.. The formula is

λ 𝑙 = ∑ ( α 2+(n G -1) (Q) • 3 g 𝑓 2 + (n G -1) ) 1 3 (n G -1) ⁄ n G 2 3 n G =1
where α(Q) is the running value of the fine structure constant on the scale Q. When n G = 1 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝑒 we obtain the formula for the electron Yukawa coupling

λ 𝑒 = α 2 • 3 g 𝑓 2
which is essentially the same as the left hand side of equation 11 following the relationship the Rydberg constant has with the Compton wavelength R ∞ = α 2 /2λ C,𝜏 , however this only applies for the Compton wavelength of electrons, not muons and tau leptons. The accuracy is therefore the same as in equation 11.

When n G = 2 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝜇 we obtain the formula for the muon Yukawa coupling

λ 𝜇 = ( α 3 (M 𝜇 ) • 3 g 𝑓 3 ) 1 3 ⁄ 4
where α(M 𝜇 ) is the value of the fine structure constant on the muonic scale, that is when Q = M 𝜇 . This value has to be calculated using the formula

α -1 (M 𝜇 ) = α -1 + 2 3π ln ( m 𝑒 m 𝜇 ) + 1 6π ≅ 136
however there are some features that become out of place at higher orders. Alternatively we can use the MS ̅̅̅̅ renormalization scheme as explained in ref. [9] thus obtaining the value α -1 (M 𝜇 ) = 135.9. This provides us with 99.05% of agreement between the formula in equation 16 and the right hand side of the formula in equation 12 that uses the Higgs VEV.

When n G = 3 and therefore 𝑙 = 𝜏 we obtain the formula for the tau lepton Yukawa coupling:

λ 𝜏 = ( α 4 (M 𝜏 ) • 3 g 𝑓 4 )
1 9 ⁄ 9 using the MS ̅̅̅̅ renormalization scheme provides us the value α -1 (M τ ) = 133.557 and when g 𝑓 ≅ -2 we obtain an accuracy of 83% between the formula in the equation above and the right hand side of equation 13. However, other sources, such as the paper "QCD analysis of the tau hadronic width" [10] by E. Braaten, S. Narison and A. Pich, provide a value α -1 (M 𝜏 ) = 133.29. It is evident that the drastic fall in accuracy, compared to the left hand side of equation 13, means that the formula is incomplete for tau leptons.

Having in mind that the formula from equation 14 works for electrons and muons rather well with an above 99% level of accuracy, the question is: what is missing for tau leptons and does it require new physics beyond the Standard Model?

(18)

Conclusions and Debate

Both the formula from eq. 10 and the formula from eq. 14 provide a solid generation mechanism for the Yukawa couplings of charged leptons. The formula from equation 10 also manages to prove that Yukawa couplings of leptons are not arbitrary parameters in the Standard Model, nor any model that goes beyond thus requiring new physics, with extremely high accuracy for electrons and even more so for muons. The accuracy isn't as high for tau leptons but it is still satisfying. The formula from equation 14 relying on the fine structure constant, also provides very accurate values for the first two generations of leptons, namely electrons and muons respectively, but it also provides for an incomplete tau formula thus raising the question can the latter be completed within the framework of the Standard Model? If one manages to complete the tau formula, forming the theoretical basis of the matter generation mechanism should be a much simpler task than it ever was before and one can then easily predict the tau g-factor value.

There is also a possibility that the formula from eq. 14 is even incomplete for muons as well since almost an entire percentage of accuracy is lost between formulas in eq. 12 and 16 respectively. If this cannot be attributed to a slightly inaccurate measurement of α -1 (M 𝜇 ) that leaves us with a possibility for new physics BSM even on the second generation of charged leptons.


Faical Azouaou
email: faical.azouaou@imag.fr

Weiqin Chen

Cyrille Desmoulins
email: cyrille.desmoulins@imag.fr

Semantic Annotation Tools for Learning Material

This paper aims at providing the specification for semantic annotation tools for e-learning. From the specific requirements of annotating learning material, we categorize and evaluate the existing annotation tools, mainly general purpose ones. We illustrate two research prototypes of annotation tools we developed, and evaluate to what extend the specific requirements of annotating learning material are reached by these research prototypes.

Introduction

Many uses of annotations and metadata on learning material have been described, in ecological use reports or in research project, in various contexts and various roles [START_REF] Marshall | Toward an ecology of hypertext annotation[END_REF][START_REF] Marshall | Designing e-Books for Legal Research[END_REF]. However before people or software agents can use them, such annotations of learning material have to be created, automatically or manually. Currently few tools exist dedicated to this particular task of annotating learning material.

This paper 1 aims at explaining the specificity of annotating learning material and providing specifications for automated and manual annotation tools for e-learning. To come to such specification, we start from two different viewpoints. The first is the specific requirements that the e-learning context brings for annotation tools. The second is a review of existing annotation tools, mainly general purpose ones. As most of these tools are quite similar, we analyse their characteristic properties and categorise them to three most important factors as regard to semantic web and e-learning. We then evaluate the strength and weakness of each category regarding the requirements we have specified for annotating learning material.

We further illustrate on two examples of annotation tools we have developed in France and in Norway. We demonstrate how it is possible to define the functionalities of annotation tools for a specific use taking into account our requirements and adapting functionalities of general purpose tools of the same category.

Requirements for e-learning annotation tools

General annotation tools usually provide domain-independent annotation supports. They are designed to fulfill the general requirements such as ease of use, efficiency, etc. [START_REF] Handschuh | Annotating of the Shallow and the Deep Web[END_REF]. However, these tools do not take into considerations of special requirements for special domains. For example, in the context of e-learning, the annotation of learning material has different requirements. Below we list the requirements for elearning annotations tools:

Usefulness: takes into account teaching/learning context 1.1. Teaching/learning domain (topics to be taught).

Characterizing and evaluating existing annotation tools

In this section we discuss the different definitions of annotation in various contexts. We further review existing tools, mainly general purpose ones, based on the requirements of annotating learning material.

As there are many annotation tools and most of them are quite similar, our method is to extract properties characterising them. Focusing on the three most important ones as regard to semantic web and e-learning, we obtain a reduced number of categories on which we can situate each annotation tool.

Annotation definition and properties of annotation tools

According to the Merriam-Webster on-line dictionary [START_REF] Webster | On-line dictionnary[END_REF], an annotation is a note added by way of comment or explanation or the act of annotating. This definition, as many definitions from research literature, specifies that an annotation is both an object added to a document and the activity that produces this object. This twofold view on annotation is also reflected in the formal definition we present hereafter.

Euzenat [START_REF] Euzenat | Eight Questions about Semantic Web Annotations[END_REF] formalized semantic annotation in the context of the Semantic Web. From two sets of objects, documents and formal representations, two functions can be created: a function from document to formal representations, called annotation and a function from formal representations to documents called index. The corresponding activities are annotation and indexing. So, we can also formalize non-semantic annotation as a function from documents to non-formal representation, and the activity to create this function.

To extract properties characterising annotation tools, we studied the annotation activity and what characterises it. We established that the annotation activity on a computer depends on three main factors:

-The author of the annotation (the annotator).

-The addressee of the annotation (the user of the annotation).

-The fact that the annotation is semantic or not (see previous section). These three factors provided us four properties of annotation tools: Automatic versus manual annotation: Annotating is the process that creates a function from a document to a representation, formal or not formal, creating such a function involves three sub-processes. To choose a document or a part of document to be annotated (source); to choose the element of representation that is the result of the function (target) and finally to define the properties of the function itself. Consequently, automatic annotation means that the three annotation sub-processes are performed automatically by a software agent; manual annotation means that they are performed by a human agent, even if he/she uses software tools for that and semiautomatic annotation means that the human agent is helped by the software tools to perform at least one of the three annotation sub-processes.

Cognitive versus non cognitive annotation: Two properties describe the annotation addressee. The first is the cognitive aspect of the annotation, representing whether annotation can be handled by human, in this case, annotation has a visible shape, we call it "cognitive annotation" [START_REF] Caussanel | Cognitive Interactions in the Semantic Web[END_REF].

Computational versus non computational: The second aspect describing the annotation addressee is whether the annotation is aimed to be used by a software agent (computational) or no (non computational).

Semantic versus non semantic annotation: The third factor characterising annotation activity on a computer is the fact that it has an explicit semantics for the computer, and not only for the human that created it or handle it.

Evaluating annotation tools

The three main factors provided us with four dimensions to group and evaluate annotation tools:

-The author: automatic, manual or semi-automatic annotation.

-The addressee: cognitive versus non cognitive annotation and computational versus non computational annotation -Computational semantics: explicit semantics for the computer. The combination of these four dimensions makes a table of 24 cells. Each annotation tool can be categorized by one of the cells.

A second table shows in each cell of the table to what extends each of the three requirements in Section 2 are reached. "R" indicates realized requirements and "P" possibly realized requirements, which means that users could use the tool to somehow reach the requirements although the tool does not realize the requirement. This evaluation table points out the following interesting results: -All the non semantic cognitive tools realize the 3.1 requirement (does not disturb the activity) but it is not the case for semantic tools. -Some non cognitive computational semantic tools already use the e-learning standards (mainly LOM). -Very few other e-learning requirements are currently respected but some could be reached with an adaptation of semantic tools: usefulness, shareability and usability concerning teaching context (2.1, 2.4, 3.2). -The 2.1 and 3.1 requirements are yet respected by some tools that provide annotation with ontologies of teaching topics.

As we explained in section 3, annotation tools depend on the use of the annotation, both the creating use (the means provided to the annotator) and the annotation enduser (its addressee). Therefore to specify an annotation tool dedicated to e-learning means to clarify to which one of the 18 tools categories it belongs to, describe the specificities of the learning context and specify the functionalities provided by the tool to its users. We illustrate this method with two research tools dedicated to annotating learning material.

MemoNote

MemoNote is an annotation tool developed at the CLIPS laboratory (Grenoble). Although many learning and training activities are now supported by e-learning systems, users have usually no means (or very poor means) to manage the note of events and knowledge they want to memorize during these activities and to retrieve in the future. The MemoNote project aims at formalizing and implementing computerized external memories made of notes added directly and voluntary on the training material by its user. MemoNote is cognitive, semantic and manual or semi-automatic annotation tool. It enables the user to annotate pedagogical documents. For a specific teaching activity, MemoNote can adapt the user's context by selecting a set of ontologies which describes the users, the teaching domain, the pedagogical activities (content, location, time) and the pedagogical objectives.

This ability to change its context with a set of ontologies makes MemoNote both a generic tool, which can be used in every context, and a specific one, once the context is fixed by ontologies.

The user has two annotation means: -Manual annotation. The user himself/herself must define the three facets.

-Semi-automatic annotation. The annotator defines the source of the annotation by selecting an annotation tool and the annotation anchor. An annotation pattern is attached to each tool enabling MemoNote to deduce partly or entirely the semantic and episodic facets The user interface in both cases is the same. It has three main parts. The first part is a reader (reading software) embedding MemoNote annotation tools. It provides reading facilities quite similar to paper ones. In this reading interface, the user can choose an annotation tool (for example red underlining) and put it on the document surface (on the touch screen). The second part is the annotation interface where the user can define (or not) each semantic fields (addressee, objective, content, importance and confidence). The third part is the ontology browsing interface. For each attribute, the user want to define, this interface pops up until the ontological value of the field is fixed. For some entirely automatic patterns, the interface for annotation and ontology browsing does not open and fields are filled in automatically.

AnnForum

AnnForum is an annotation tool developed at the University of Bergen (Norway) to support the annotation and reuse of collaborative knowledge building forum as new learning resources. According to [START_REF] Euzenat | Eight Questions about Semantic Web Annotations[END_REF], annotation is not always productive if it hasn't been designed in close relation to its use, it will produce limited benefits. AnnForum is a computational, cognitive, semantic, manual and semi-automatic annotation tool.

FLE3 [START_REF] Hakkarainen | Collaborative technologies for facilitating progressive inquiry: Future Learning Environment Tools[END_REF] is a web-based groupware for computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL), which is used in a university course INFO281 (Introductory Artificial Intelligence). It is based on progressive inquiry learning, a type of activity where students engage in a research-like process by posting messages to categories (problem, hypothesis, scientific material, etc). There is a large amount of messages posted in each semester on FLE3. With AnnForum, by reusing FLE3 as new learning resources, future students can benefit from former students' knowledge and experiences.

A conceptual domain model is used in AnnForum to describe the domain concepts (Artificial Intelligence) and the relationships among them, which collectively describe the domain space. Once the conceptual domain model is available, annotations can be created by the teachers linking previous knowledge building to elements of this model. To support teachers in creating such annotations, we designed a keyword recognizer and an algorithm to determine the relevance of a message to a concept in the domain model. The keyword recognizer identifies the occurrence of the topics, including their names and variants of the names in the domain model. Relevance is determined using an algorithm that applies a weight to the keywords in the messages. The annotation of the messages from the system is then shown to the teacher who can add or remove the related topics on the interface and then elaborates the annotation manually. The semantic information added into the forum enables the reusing facility to detect messages and teaching material from the previous knowledge building which are relevant to current discussion topics and present them to the students.

Evaluation of Memo Note and AnnForum against the requirements

MemoNote tool as a cognitive, non computational and semantic annotation tools, respects the 2.2 requirement using OWL to represent ontologies and RDF to represent annotations. The 1.1, 2.1 and 3.2 requirements that were potential for general purpose tools are respected by MemoNote. This is made using the set of ontologies defining the annotation context and from which values are taken to specify the content of an annotation. Currently the 2.4 requirement is not yet implemented. We have started to formalize how a group could share manual annotations and create a collective manual annotation.

AnnForum allows teachers to create a domain model (1.1). This model has an explicit semantic network to support the annotation (2.1). Teachers can make annotation with teaching objectives in mind (1.2). The annotation can be created manually or semi-automatically. The annotation process does not disturb the teaching activities (3.1). By adding a learning model that complies with LOM or IMS-LD, it is possible to use AnnForum to annotate teaching/learning activities (1.3). Since the annotation is based on explicit semantics, it is also possible for teachers to share the annotations.

Conclusion

In this paper we first presented the specific requirements of annotating learning material. Based on these requirements, we categorized and evaluated the existing annotation tools. We have also presented two annotation tools which are under development particularly for learning material.

Although each of these annotation tools fulfills some of the requirements for learning material annotation, there are still some problems that need further investigation.

First, the requirements we presented might not cover all the requirements. Teachers, learners, and other actors may have their own needs when they annotate learning material. We should look more into the special requirements from different parties.

Second, in order to take into consideration teaching/learning context, annotation tools should be able to combine domain and teaching/learning ontologies.

Finally the categorization we provided is a first mean, for a particular use, to illustrate what new directions research should be followed. The tools respecting the most of the requirements are computational, cognitive and semantic, meaning that the promising direction could be that the user can let the software compute inferences for him. It means to make MemoNote also a computational tool with which the annotator would be able to create annotations that will automatically remind him/her annotations at a certain time in the future, depending on its current learning/teaching task. For AnnForum, the emphasis will be on the semantic use of e-learning standards (LOM, IMS-LD) in order to be able to annotate teaching/learning activities and support the share and reuse of the annotations.

Table 1 .

 1 Existing annotation tools by categories

		Author		Semi-
	Semantics	Adressee	Manual	automatic	Automatic
		Cognitive	Imarkup, Acrobat ,		Google's ToolBar
		and non	Web-Notes ,
		computational annotation	CoNote, WebAnn,
			Epost
		Non cognitive and	Manual index in	MyAlbum	Google search
	Non	computational annotation	libraries	Annotate	engine
	semantic	Cognitive and computa-	Knowledge Pump,		Cached Google Links
	annotation	tional annotation	Xlibris
		Cognitive	Annotea + Amaya,
		and non	Yawas [7], ThirdVoice
		computational annotation	Mark-Up
		Non cognitive and	Edutella, OntOmat,		AeroDAML
		computational annotation	SHOE, HTML-A,
	Semantic		WebKB, Karina
	annotation	Cognitive and computa-	Mangrove, SMORE	MnM,Melita,	KIM, MnM,
		tional annotation		Teknowledge,	Magpie, COHSE
				IMAT

Table 2 .

 2 Evaluation of existing tools based on requirements for annotating learning material

	Semantics	Author	Manual	Semi-	Automatic
		Adressee		automatic
		Cognitive and non compu-	P: 2.3		R: 3.1
	Non seman-	tational annotation	R: 3.1
	tic	Non cognitive and compu-	Nothing	P: 2.2	Nothing
	annotation	tational annotation		R: 3.1
		Cognitive and computa-	R: 2.4, 3.1		Nothing
		tional annotation
		Cognitive and non compu-	P: 1.1 1.2 1.3
		tational annotation	2.1 2.2 2.4 3.2
		Non cognitive and compu-	P: 1.1 1.2 1.3		P: 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1
	Semantic	tational annotation	2.1 3.2		2.4 3.2
	annotation		R or P: 2.2, 2.4		R or P: 2.2
		Cognitive and computa-	P: 1.1 1.2 1.3	P: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3,	P: 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 2.2
		tional annotation	2.1 2.2 2.4 3.2	2.2 2.4	2.4
				R or P: 2.1, 3.1	R or P: 2.1, 3.1

 [START_REF] Marshall | Toward an ecology of hypertext annotation[END_REF]This work has been partially funded by the Kaleidoscope network of Excellence. EU IST Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) project 507838.