Extended Concept Mapping Tools for building sharable content objects for Digital Repository Applications
K. Jayakumar
Director IT
Dept. of Administrative Reforms and PG Govt. of India
Ruchika Barua
System Specialist
World Bank Project for Capacity Building for Good Governance
Abstract
Concept mapping tools empower experts to play an active role in the knowledge capture process and enable build knowledge models with interconnected sets of linked concept maps and resources of the domain.
Knowledge models and digital repositories are intended to be used as a means for sharing knowledge among domain experts and users. They may also provide functionalities that facilitate and interface ingeneous capabilities that enable machines perform autonomic functions such as metatagging, building of concept maps, intelligent search and retrieval, knowledge inference and so on.
This paper describes an approach employing extended concept maps in the context of urban municipality reforms and details its capabilities to provide support to users for building the knowledge repository application. The approach facilitates encapsulating of knowledge elements of the domain, mata-tagging concepts to enable repurposing content, linking concept maps, adding propositions, annotations and handle multidimensional data including images, spatio-temporal data, generation and presentation of on the fly graphics and such other visualizations to enhance human cognition. The targeted purpose is to present explicit and tacit knowledge captured earlier in the repository, adapted to user profiles and facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing. The features also enable content authors to contribute effectively to fill knowledge gaps that may be evident during interactive sessions using the knowledge repository.
The proposed approach provides a scaffolding for experts, as they build concept maps collaboratively on the network, link their maps to others, and decide how to extend their knowledge models with a view to encapsulate knowledge as sharable content objects and their presentation adapted to various user profiles.
The approache also enables mining of related information and propose information to aid the user capture knowledge and enhance the quality of contents of the digital repository.
The paper begins with a brief summary of the concept mapping process and elaborates on the mechanisms that can be associated with the digital repository. It describes the approach, interactive features and performance of the extended concept mapping tool for providing intelligent, adaptive features for dynamic views of the contents of the knowledge repository. It closes with a discussion of next steps for refining the proposed approach.
1. Concept Maps
Successfully capturing and sharing expert knowledge depends on the ability to elucidate expert knowledge and to represent it in a form supporting examination by others. In light of the difficulties in capturing knowledge through traditional knowledge engineering processes, there is considerable interest in facilitating the knowledge capture process, in particular through methods that allow more direct and natural interactions between system and expert .
Concept maps represent concepts and relationships in a two-dimensional graphical form, with nodes representing concepts, connected by links representing propositions. Concepts are represented with the most inclusive, most general concepts at the top or as the central focus and the more specific, less general concepts and details arranged hierarchically below or in a collapsable network form spreading around the central focus.
An important characteristic of concept maps are the "cross-links." which represent relationships (propositions) between concepts in different domains of the concept map. Cross-links help to see how some domains of knowledge represented on the map are related to each other.
As a knowledge capture method, concept mapping is appealing for its elegant cognitive pattern enabling better comprehension. Experts can construct knowledge models of their domains directly and interatively in a collaborative manner or actively participate in assisted knowledge elicitation processes for facilitating knowledge capture and sharing, by producing representations that are easily understood by others. Construction of concept maps are often useful in the context of specific questions for which answers are sought or some situation or event that is attempted to be understood through the organization of knowledge in the form of a concept map.
In the context of enhancing value of the services that are associated with a knowledge repository, it would be useful to facilitate users in progressively re-creating cognitive mental models on the fly, in an order and manner that they perceive as useful using the concept maps which had been constructed earlier through collaborative efforts of knowledge workers and domain experts on the internet.
2.Extended Concept Maps (X-CMap)
As a value proposition for users of the knowledge repository, it is important that the concept maps must be associated with metadata, graphics, GIS, text descriptions and web references. Each node in the concept map also represents a concept object which encodes such information and appropriate user tools for viewing them.
The concept object itself is a self contained knowledge element with information about data, processes and systematic functions contained within. The concept objects are used within the overall meta-model solution framework which enables use of such concept objects for knowledge building, exploration and problem solving adapted to user requirements.
Concept nodes have the knowledge element contained in XML format and can be associated with URL's, geo-spatial data, images and text windows which activates when a selected node is clicked or with a ‘mouse over’.
APIs (Application Program Interfaces) built around the concept objects allow applications to access the data of other systems, while at the same time accommodating inhouse models. These APIs define the information available in one knowledge domain/ system and how another domain/ system should access and interpret this data.