About
The Knowledge Management Research Group engages in research in several different fields. The underlying motivation for our work is a desire to create new and powerful ways to structure and communicate information, both in educational, industrial and administrative settings.
The KMR group has designed a structured information architecture called a knowledge manifold and invented a new type of knowledge management tool, called a concept browser, in order to effectively organize, explore and present the information content of such knowledge manifolds. We have also developed a conceptual modeling technique called ULM (Unified Language Modeling) that supports this process by enabling the visual presentation (in the form of a so called context-map) of any kind of verbally formulated information.
During the last 3 years, the KMR group has developed a first prototype of a concept browser, called Conzilla, which has attracted widespread attention, both on the national and international level, and has been presented at several national and international conferences.
While conforming to emerging international standards for information exchange and e-learning, such as XML, RDF and IMS, Conzilla combines conceptual modeling with annotated access to multi-media based archives in a novel way. This makes Conzilla a powerful platform for any kind of knowledge management system, especially within such fields as e-learning, e-commerce and e-administration.
Several Conzilla-based multi-lingual knowledge manifolds are presently under construction by the KMR group, e.g. within the fields of mathematics, organizational modeling, IT standardization, IT-accessibility and interoperability between different systems for e-commerce.
Using techniques from the Semantic Web community, the KMR group is aiming to develop Conzilla into a combined knowledge-, economy- and management-tool by participating in international collaborations that will expand the capabilities of the program within the areas of e-learning, e-commerce and e-administration[1]. Several of these projects are further described on this website.
Conzilla is managed as an open source project at SourceForge and the program can be downloaded from that site. Since Conzilla is open source, it has the potential to evolve into a widely used tool that provides support for a multitude of different users - including students, teachers and administrators - in structuring their information landscapes in more efficient ways.
In collaboration with other partners, the KMR group is also involved in developing a set of open source based e-learning tools that will support the use of a knowledge manifold as a customizable interactive learning environment. These tools include the Virtual Workspace Environment (VWE), the Standardized Content Archive Management (SCAM) electronic portfolio system and the Edutella peer-to-peer networked system for the exchange of educational media on the Semantic Web.