CPE/CSC 581
Computer Support for Knowledge Management
Spring 2009
CPE/CSC 581-S09 Computer Support for Knowledge Management Schedule
The following table provides an outline for the course schedule.
It lists the topic for a particular week, together with references
to the respective entries in the reading list, and to the assignments
with their due dates. Material will be made available as the course proceeds,
so some links will be broken initially.
Note: The table is generated via XML, and may not display properly on some browsers.
You can also use the PDF version,
but it may not follow hyperlinks, and is more likely to be out of date.
Week Date Topic KeywordsDescription Readings Guest Speaker Topic Assignment Lab Activity Project Due Student Presentation Student Commentators 1 March 31 No classes - Cesar Chavez holiday April 2 Overview,
IntroductionAn overview of the course.
Knowledge and humans: benefits, problems.
Knowledge and computers: knowledge representation, reasoning.
Dealing with large accumulations of knowledge: libraries, other repositories.
Computer support for dealing with knowledge: storage, retrieval, evaluation, visualization.
Assignment 1: KM ToolsIdentify potential topics; team formation; brainstorming of ideas;
previous team projectsName/Topic: Name/Topic: 2 April 7 Knowledge Acquisition, Representation and ManipulationBasic principles and methods to enable computers to deal with knowledge:
Transfer of knowledge from humans to computers,
extraction of knowledge from data collections ("data mining"),
representation of knowledge in computers (rules, frames, scripts, meta-data, RDF),
generating new knowledge from existing knowledge (inference, reasoning).
Presentation and Paper Select topic April 9 Milestone Week 2: Requirements, Testing and Evaluation Plan; teams established; project definition Paper topic proposal 3 April 14 Educause Western Regional ConferenceI'm presenting the work done by a former student in her Master's thesis on tablet PCs and learning styles.Assignment 2: KM Body of Knowledge Requirements definition, tentative schedule April 16 Knowledge Organization Computer support to make the utilization of knowledge easier and more effective for humans:
Balance of conflicting requirements (e.g. levels of abstraction vs. access to specific details);
selection of suitable knowledge organization and presentation methods.
Reviewer feedback to paper topic proposal Apr 17/18 Open House Activities Cal Poly's Open House is on Friday and Saturday. This is an excellent opportunity to show off your storyboard or prototype, and to collect initial feedback from external users. Storyboards, prototypes (if possible)4 April 21 Knowledge Organization Establishing relations among knowledge items:
explicit vs. implicit relations; special relations such as similarity,
part-of, contains, ...
Methods for organizing knowledge: hierarchies, categorization schemes, descriptors,
ontologies, metadata, Semantic Web.
Michael Miller, Dean of the Cal Poly Library Libraries as Knowledge Repositories Milestone Week 4: Prototype 1 (alpha) April 23 5 April 28 Knowledge Retrieval Finding and retrieving relevant knowledge items from large collections:
Information retrieval, search engines, relevance ranking.Assignment 3: Knowledge Presentation and Visualization April 30 6 May 5 Knowledge Presentation Presentation of identified relevant knowledge items to the human user:
Text, graphics, animation; visualization techniques,
alternative presentation methods (e.g. audio);
Human-Computer Interface (HCI) and usability aspects.
Milestone Week 6: Prototype 2 (beta) May 7 7 May 12 Knowledge Exchange Sharing knowledge between computers and humans:
Knowledge exchange languages,
internal representation of knowledge vs. sharing,
levels of abstraction, details.
Computer-computer vs. computer-human knowledge exchange.
Assignment 4: Knowledge Usability Evaluation Paper draft version May 14 8 May 19 Knowledge Interaction Processes and methods that help humans utilize computer-based knowledge more effectively, especially in interactive sessions: Delphi method, process modeling, Semantic Web, RSS, Wiki.
Milestone Week 8: Final Version Reviewer feedback to draft version May 21 9 May 26 Constrained Access Dealing with knowledge under constrained access conditions, such as
mobile devices, voice-only, limited attention, or disabilities.
Peer evaluation of project final version May 28 Final version paper10 June 2 Ethical and Social Dimensions of Knowledge Consequences on societies and individuals of access (or lack thereof) to knowledge;
intellectual property and copyright issues;
case studies and trends of computer-based knowledge management
in different contexts: commercial, educational,
informally organized (e.g. Web communities)
Project Presentations, Final Documentation Reviewer feedback to paper final version Project Presentations Project Presentations June 4 Feedback and Evaluation forms Project Presentations Project Presentations June 5 CSC Poster Session CSC Poster Session CSC Poster Session