CSC 581
Computer Support for Knowledge Management
Spring 2003
Points
25
Deadline
June 3
CSC 581 Computer Support for Knowledge Management
Assignment 4: Knowledge Integration
Note: Due to time pressure, you can choose to do either
Assignment 3, or Assignment 4. The grading will be adjusted so that
three assignments instead of four are sufficient to get the full
score in the assignment portion.
A major challenge in knowledge management is the integration of different
bodies of knowledge from disparate sources in varying formats, and possibly
with incompatible tools. In this assignment, you need to collaborate with
one or more of your classmates, and integrate your individual bodies of
knowledge.
Here is a list of methods and tools that have been used for similar purposes:
Manual Integration: The entities constituting the bodies
of knowledge are merged and modified by humans, possibly with
the support of tools such as editors.
Mapping Schemes: Through an analysis of the underlying frameworks
a scheme is developed that allows the conversion of one body into the other,
ideally in both directions. Such schemes usually are implemented in software,
and can be applied more or less automatically
Meta-Frameworks: The commonalities and differences of the
individual frameworks are captured at a higher level through formal descriptions.
This way, the individual bodies can be used in a coherent, but transparent way
(i.e., the user doesn't need to be aware of the boundaries or even the existence
of multiple bodies of knowledge).
This assignment should be performed in small teams. After selecting your
team mates, you need to integrate the different bodies of knowledge
that you developped individually. This integration needs to be done at
two different levels. At the conceptual level, the knowledge
entities contained in your body of knowledge (e.g. the concepts,
objects, and relationships) need to be consolidated into one single
body of knowledge. This may involve activities like identifying an
abstract concept that is common to both, eliminating duplicate entries,
and establishing relationships between related entries.
At the implementation level, you need to identify a
common format that is compatible with the tools that you used
for the individual efforts. You can convert one body of knowledge
into the tool that the other uses, or choose a representation
that is supported by both tools. In the worst case, you may have
to recreate one of the bodies, or manually insert the respective
entries into the other.
Grading Guidelines
This paper contributes up to 25 points to the overall assignments score.
The score will be determined by the following criteria:
level of integration
(manual, mapping scheme, meta-framework)
flexibility
(what is the impact of modifications in the individual bodies;
how difficult are adaptations of the mapping techniques)
complexity of the domains and knowledge frameworks involved,
(how complex are the individual frameworks, and how difficult
is their integration)
quality of the integration
(is the integrated body of knowledge coherent;
is there evidence of problems resulting from the merging)
evaulation of the integration techniques used
(identification of strenghts and weaknesses;
overall suitability for the task)
presentation
(is the appearence of the material of professional quality,
e.g. without spelling or grammatical errors)
In this assignment, you get a higher score for integrating a larger number
of different bodies of knowledge. An appropriate scoring function for this
aspect will be discussed in class.
Submission
The deadline for this assignment is two weeks after the distribution.
It should be submitted via the Blackboard "Discussion Forum"
feature; I will set up a discussion forum for it. You should format
your document as an HTML file so that it can be viewed easily from
within BlackBoard. If you use MS Word or a similar program, please
convert it to HTML.