Representation is fundamental to working with knowledge in my view. I'm collecting my thoughts here.
What is representation?
Ad hoc sketches, informal qualitative models, scenario construction, concept
maps, rule sets, structured text all serve as representation, reflecting the
expectations and experience of their creators, they connect collaboration to
future use. They serve a dual role: (a) to facilitate design and critique and
(b) to serve as the holder for the product to be, they are affordances in
design, which they can enhance or inhibit. Representations, clarify,
extend, complete and move unique experiences and abstract ideas toward the
essential and typical. Representations are material, they allow ideas
and experience to have an independent existence in an externalized form, they
help to capture emergent thought. Like a lump of clay, a representation is
tangible, it can be pointed to, passed around, played with. It takes thought
experimentation one step further, eliciting new ideas.
Mediating in collaboration
Prototyping, 'strawman' and mock-up activities allow particpants to draw on
their experiences and practices more directly than abstract descriptions.
Representations mediate the relation between collaborators and their products,
between individuals in a group, between the group and their sponsors and
between the group and their users / market. Once captured in a representation,
there is a resistance that sets in as descriptions are manifest &
objectified that tends to balance the affordance offered. It is the
multitude of interpretations that carries the strength of a representation
rather than the consensus around shared meaning.
Representation as container
Boundary objects (concept maps, ontologies, source documents) serve as a
vehicle, container and carrier, for ideas. When a representation crosses
boundaries, there is a loss of meaning (reification) and context, which is
counter-balanced by an opportunity for new negotiations, different views and
altered meaning. This points to the importance of establishing rationale & context
in use or practice, an essential non-represented aspect associated with
any formalism. All representations are situated in use. An important aspect of
a memory object is its trajectory, i.e. the consequences of later use
(see Ackerman & Halverson 1999, in BoundaryObject
Representation as mapping
Most often we look upon our representations as one for one mappings.
Rule repository
Henry Seiler, in "Managed business rules: A repository-based
approach" PC AI July / August 1999 16-19, http://www.rulemachines.com/brs/whitepaper.htm
talks of business and code developers interaction around business rules (a BO)
and gives the roles & architecture of a rule object repository. Allows
business types to participate directly in design, preserves critical
documentation, enables off-line testing, helps with rapid response to business
change, an IC reporting tool, separates representation and inference.
see http://www.rulemachines.com
The FAQ:
This is covered in greater depth in KmFaq. It can be used to
capture solutions to common problems, used for self-help and perhaps a little
bit of training. There are some quite sophisticated FAQ engines for reasoning
and presentation.
possible to send any text about kr?
Posted by: master fentaw | May 30, 2007 at 03:54 AM
did you know that you were featured as one of the daily links on March 16th for elearningpost http://www.elearningpost.com?
their summary:
KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATIONS
Denham Grey talks about the usefulness of representations:
“Representations are material, they allow ideas and experience to have an independent existence in an externalized form, they help to capture emergent thought. Like a lump of clay, a representation is tangible, it can be pointed to, passed around, played with. It takes thought experimentation one step further, eliciting new ideas.”
Posted by: Carol H Tucker | March 27, 2005 at 08:21 AM
Greetings Ben,
We are using a Cmap tool to explore community concept mapping at KnowledgeBoard - join us.
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=138367
Posted by: Denham | March 20, 2005 at 11:12 AM
I'm a graduate student major in the technology of education and very interesting in knowledge representation. Is there any online platform use concept map to share knowledge?
Posted by: bamboo | March 20, 2005 at 10:36 AM