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Compendium from Open University


Compendium fact-file

Owner  :  Open University
Researchers
(listed alphabetically)		  :  Michelle Suzanne Bachler [Browse, RDF], Simon Buckingham Shum [Browse, RDF]
Description  :  http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/
Demonstration  :  http://www.compendiuminstitute.org/download/download.htm
Screencam  :  http://www.aktors.org/technologies/compendium/welcome_intro.html
Builds on  :  eXtensible Markup Language, Java, Hyper Text Markup Language
Addresses challenges  :  Knowledge Retrieval, Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge Publishing, Knowledge Modelling, Knowledge Reuse

What's the Problem?

  • Face-to-face meetings often drift and lack focus. This is even more of a problem in virtual meetings where face-to-face cues are lost.
  • Collaborative knowledge work in real organisations requires tools that can support multiple perspectives, assist in debate, and provide resources for reconstructing group memory.
  • Domain experts are not usually knowledge modellers. Tools providing intuitive representations are needed to help in knowledge elicitation.

Towards a Solution

Compendium is a semantic, visual hypertext tool for supporting collaborative domain modelling and real time meeting capture. It provides an intuitive visual map of issues, ideas and arguments. It can be thought of as real time concept mapping, but with additional native semantic hypertext functionality. It is interoperable via XML with other technologies, for example, in the AKT IRC eScience CoAKTinG project, which is integrating it with other meeting support and collaboration technologies.

Compendium is simple to learn for individual use, whilst real time mapping of discussions in meetings takes some practice. There is a small but growing community of practitioners who are using it in their work. It is derived from Dialog Mapping, for which there are commercial training courses available.

A couple of example Compendium maps are shown below. The maps are created in real time, and displayed for all to see, providing a group working memory (and in subsequent meetings, a long term memory to recover what was discussed/agreed).

The first shows the use of Compendium capturing a design discussion:

Discussion map

The example second from a closing session on action items

Decision map

An illustrated commentary in a recent report shows how Compendium was used to support the design of a semantic web application, specifically, ontology merging and design. The Y2K contingency planning report explains how semantic tags can be used to harvest concepts in large databases, and how the hypertext concept of 'transclusion' assists sensemaking by tracing where a given node is being discussed.

Take a Guided Tour

Introduction to Compendium (Macromedia Flash Movie)

Try a Demonstration

Version 1.2, including full online documentation [Demo]

Technical requirements: Java Runtime Environment 1.3, Windows 98/2000/XP, (Windows-only at present due to use of Access as DBMS; multiplatform version planned)

Example Applications

Y2K Contingency Planning (Verizon, USA)
Collaborative ontology design (Open Unversity/AKT, UK)
Strategic planning (University of Wisconsin, USA)
Summary of other case studies (Verizon and NASA, USA)
Visualizing Argumentation (2 chapters on Compendium and Dialog Mapping)

Further Reading

Key document: Compendium: Making Meetings into Knowledge Events Selvin, A., Buckingham Shum, S., Sierhuis, M., Conklin, J., Zimmermann, B., Palus , C., Drath, W., Horth, D., Domingue, J., Motta, E. and Li, G., Knowledge Technologies 2001, Austin TX, March 4-7, 2001 [PDF]

Other relevant documents: Rapid knowledge construction: a case study in corporate contingency planning using collaborative hypermedia Albert M. Selvin, Simon J. Buckingham Shum (2002), Knowledge and Process Management Volume 9, Issue 2, 2002. Pages: 119-128 [Online ISSN: 1099-1441, Print ISSN: 1092-4604] [PDF] See also the Compendium Institute Library.

Semantic representation

View in the AKT Triplestore Browser or as RDF.

Also available in DOAP RDF (Description Of A Project)