Cal Poly SLO CSC 581-S18 Computer Support for Knowledge Management Prof. Franz J. Kurfess
Syllabus
Dr. Franz J. Kurfess, Cal Poly Computer Science & Software Engineering Department (http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/)
My office hours are tentatively scheduled as follows:
You can find up-to-date information on my online calendar.
The Cal Poly Catalog 2013-15 describes the course as follows:
Methods and techniques that computer-based systems can provide to make the management of knowledge and information in digital form easier for the user. Emphasis on support for knowledge-intensive activities performed by users. 3 lectures, 1 laboratory.
Prerequisite: CSC 480 or CSC 484 or consent of instructor.
From CPE/CSC 480, students should have knowledge about the following areas:
If necessary, these topics can be reviewed by reviewing the material from the CSC 480-F17 course. Further information on knowledge-based systems is the topic of CSC 480-W13; more recently, it has been taught by Dr. Assal.
From CPE/CSC 484, students should be familiar with the following topics:
If necessary, these topics can be reviewed by looking at the lecture notes of the CSC 484-W17 course.
The goal of the course is to understand important problems, challenges, concepts and techniques dealing with the organization and management of knowledge with the help of computers, with particular emphasis on usability aspects. Upon satisfactory completion of this course, students are expected to:
In order to achieve these goals, students learn how to analyze, design, implement and evaluate programs and systems of varying complexities. The core aspect of these systems is to offer support to "knowledge workers", in particular with respect to the ever-increasing amount of knowledge and information that becomes available and necessary for many tasks. This includes support for traditional tasks related to knowledge management, such as the grouping of related documents into categories or hierarchies, the generation of dictionaries and ontologies, or the construction of knowledge networks through references and citations.
In addition, methods and techniques that rely heavily on features offered by computer-based systems can be used to augment the human-centered tasks. Examples for such approaches are collaborative filtering, automatic content- and usage-based categorization of documents, the categorization of non-textual information such as images, drawings or sound, or the extraction of relevant keywords and other information from documents.
In contrast to knowledge-based systems, where computers are actively involved in the manipulation and generation of knowledge, the goal here is to use computers as tools for activities mainly performed or at least directed by humans.
Students will apply usability evaluation methods to knowledge management systems in order to decrease the effort and time humans have to invest to utilize these systems. The emphasis here lies in the examination of user interaction methods and paradigms that enhance the effective use of knowledge. This may require evaluations of knowledge organization and presentation methods, in addition to the usual user interaction paradigms.
To the best of my knowledge, there are no suitable textbooks available for this course. Most of the books and articles on "knowledge management" are written with a business perspective, usually concentrating on the role of knowledge in corporations. Textbooks on Knowledge-based Systems and Artificial Intelligence mostly concentrate on the direct representation and manipulation of knowledge through computers, rather than on the support that computers can offer for human-centered knowledge management.
There are a few books available now on the Semantic Web:
More recent articles on the status of the Semantic Web are:
The W3C Semantic Web site is the source for standards and technical information.
You can find further information on Machine Learning and related topics via the syllabus of last quarter’s CSC 570 Computational Intelligence class.
The course Web page at http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~fkurfess/Courses/581/S18/ contains the following:
On PolyLearn you’ll find grades and feedback about class work. We’ll use Piazza as a discussion board, in particular for weekly updates on class activities, and the exploration of project topics. We’ll use a Web repository with a Google Docs spreadsheet as entry point for team project documents and research activity materials.
The main work in this class consists of a team project, assignments, and a research activity.
Student teams will have several project topics to choose from, with an emphasis on mobile devices. Some of the projects will be done in collaboration with outside partners. The project work should focus on the user interaction with a device or system. The teams are expected to design and implement different versions, ranging from design sketches and storyboards to partial implementations. Much of this work can be coordinated with the assignments. Usually the project outcomes will be shown in a display around the mid-quarter point and one at the end of the quarter. Details will be discussed during the first or second week of the quarter.
This course is an advanced course, and students are expected to investigate a topic related to important principles and recent work in the field. Traditionally, the results of such research work are delivered in the form of a presentation and research paper. In this class, we will examine alternative approaches to present the outcomes of the research conducted as class work. This can be in the form of an entry to Wikipedia or a similar Web site, a series of blog entries, a video, a podcast, or of course a traditional paper. The activity can be conducted individually, in small groups, or by the same team that works on the project. It is subject to the following expectations:
This class will rely on interactive classroom activities, such as participation in group discussions, presentation of ideas and results (from textbook, class or assignments), providing written summary materials (as web files via Piazza or Moodle), etc.
Success in this class depends on regular attendance, preparation of assigned readings and homework exercises, as well as a level of professionalism in the class presentations and displays. Peer evaluations may be included as part of the grade.I will use the following allocation of scores for the calculation of the grades.
I reserve the right to change the formula used. Please note that the project consists of several parts, which will be evaluated separately. The project will be done in teams, and the performance of the team as a whole will be graded unless there is a clear disparity in the contribution of the individual team members. Should this be the case, I might ask for additional documentation like work sheets, email messages, or draft copies of documentation to evaluate individual contributions. For the team grades, feedback through peer evaluations will also be considered.
The official final exam dates and times are listed on the schedule. The following activities may be scheduled for this final exam time; details will be discussed in class:
Students are expected to attend all lecture and lab sessions for the class. Except for unforeseeable reasons like illness or accidents, I expect advance notice for anticipated absences and delays in submission of class work.
To maintain uniformity across the student population, I am following university guidelines and will consider the following “excusable” reasons for allowing students to make up missed work and absences:
Much of the graded work in this class depends strongly on presentations and documentation material. Once a team or individual has committed to a date for the presentation, extensions or changes in the dates will only be permitted for the reasons listed above. Such changes may also have to be coordinated with the project contacts at the outside partner.
It is University policy to provide, on a flexible and individualized basis, reasonable accommodations to students who have disabilities that may affect their ability to participate in course activities or to meet course requirements. Students with disabilities are encouraged to contact their instructor to discuss their individual needs for accommodations. If you have a disability for which you are or may be requesting an accommodation, you are encouraged to contact both your instructor and the Disability Resource Center, Building 124, Room 119, at (805) 756-1395, as early as possible in the term.
The expectations below are based on Cal Poly’s Code of Student Conduct.
Academic dishonesty, in particular plagiarism, can be a serious offense. Any instances of cheating or plagiarism may be reported to the department chair and the Office of Student Rights & Responsibilities (OSRR). The Cal Poly rules and policies are listed in the Cal Poly catalog as well as at the OSRR web site. If the rules are unclear or you are unsure of how they apply, ask the instructor beforehand.
For programming assignments, we may use programs or services like Moss to compare assignments within a section, across all current sections of this class, and with old assignments. While such programs are not perfect, they detect suspicious similarities even after replacement of variable names and other identifiers. In general, the use of program libraries is acceptable, but not if they provide functionality whose implementation is the purpose of the lab or assignment. If you use libraries you need to indicate this in the documentation.
Turning in work is presumed to be a claim of authorship unless explicitly stated otherwise. For work created by multiple persons (such as team projects or group presentations), I may ask for documentation on who is responsible for which parts or aspects of the work.