Abstract:

There is a large body of existing solutions that help learners accomplish knowledge organization tasks in learning contexts. Many of them are of a visual nature, providing custom-made representation schemes for concepts and related data. Concept mapping amongst them is well evaluated, and recent research results support the efficacy of Cmap-based knowledge acquisition and organization in various fields. Reconsidering these results we argue that for web 2.0 learning environments a more general approach is required. We propose a collaboration concept and a reference model of a novel tool that can be applied in the educational field: ”Conceptipedia”.
Representing the growth process of personal knowledge and sharing the emerging conceptual structures in problem solving contexts is a major task for individual learners, and a critical problem of coaching and tutoring. Knowledge obtained from the web or other resources needs to be contextualized, personalized, and reorganized, filtering misconceptions. We illustrate that visualization of information and its conceptual organization provide keys to problem definition, and consequently to its solution. These are the use cases of the personal knowledge organization tool: WikiNizer. [wikinizer.com]. It is a suitable personal knowledge management environment for the representation and organization of vygotskian “associative complexes” in the form of computer augmented personal Knowledge Architecture..
The reference model of Conceptipedia is conceived as a graph of ‘Things’ that enables us to define relations between concepts within a meta-knowledge graph. It can be used as a collaboration platform for WikiNizer users to compare, share, and merge the emerging Knowledge Architectures in a graphical wikipedia-style knowledge base. It can be adapted as a cloud-based application to various personal learning environments. Conceptual or navigational disorientation can be corrected by visualizing the knowledge architectures emerging from individual knowledge management.
Our conception of graphical knowledge-based interaction can be coupled with different collaboration techniques. Instead of focusing on the single-user in the learning process we argue that sense-making can be turned into a social process of consensus building by researching, exploring, capturing, articulating, mapping, and visualizing concepts and their various relationships. Conceptipedia as a collaboration platform will enable the user to build Knowledge Graphs which can be used interactively to define aspects and new relationships between concepts and things via navigable hyper-links, visualizing the development of problem specific conceptual relations of the creative mind. It can also document the process of the growth of personal knowledge, making peer comparison possible within the framework of collective knowledge, providing clues for conceptualization or detecting knowledge gaps.

Keywords:

Knowledge management, collaborative learning, knowledge architecture, knowledge graph, visualization, Wiki, WikiNizer, Conceptipedia, collaborative epistemology.