Personal and Shared Perspectives on Knowledge Maps in Learning Environments

Knowledge maps are a powerful means to represent and share knowledge in both communication and learning. Collaborative knowledge mapping, in particular, enables comparing, discussing and bridging different perspectives on a topic. In this paper, we propose that it can be supported by providing users with multi-perspective maps, including one shared perspective and several individual ones. Building on our previous work about collaborative annotation of resources, we provide a formalization for multi-perspective concept maps, which we implemented in a proof-of-concept prototype. We then present the results of a formative qualitative evaluation performed on the prototype, where 12 participants, divided into 4 groups, performed a collaborative mapping task with two different versions of the tool: one in which only the shared perspective was available, and another in which the shared perspective was paired with a personal one. From the analysis of the observations gathered in the evaluation, as well as the subjective impressions of the participants collected by means of an electronic questionnaire, we draw requirements for an interaction model supporting multi-perspective concept maps. Such requirements can be summarized as follows: (1) the UI should overlay the personal and the shared perspective, to stress that they concern the same object (the map) and to enable comparison; (2) “shared” and “personal” should be supported by different work modalities, which should be explicitly enabled in the UI; (3) the UI should include a “revision of changes” mode to support users in evaluating changes by others, and relating their perspective to the work of others.