Knowledge Compass

The inspiration for this capstone project at I School was the internship and career surveys filled out by I Schoolers. However, their results are published in an Adobe Acrobat PDF format that offers limited meaning for users. Both data collection and analysis are static. Further, this archival approach doesn't encourage alumni to participate, which erodes its value.

Knowledge Compass’s goals include:

• collecting user data to inform the service design
• modeling the data harvested
• providing a platform for service architecture.

This project provides an information and service design perspective that treats alumni and current student information as a rich data resource to support many new kinds of services. One can see how the different courses taken by students point to different career paths; hence, Knowledge Compass. The project also looks at organizational issues in terms of analyzing the barriers to collaboration within the I School amongst students and alumni.  Specifically, we are looking at collaboration in the following areas:

• career guidance
• course recommendations
• subject matter expertise
• class projects

We anticipate this to be the first phase of a multi-phase project.