A new visualization approach for supporting knowledge management and collaboration in e-learning

This work introduces an information visualization component that appears as an additional window in an online collaborative e-learning environment, and can be used for viewing, browsing, editing and manipulating knowledge-based learning information through the LiveNet (http://138.25.13.210:8000/ln4-1) -a knowledge management and enterprise collaboration tool. This visual component employs a new visualization technique, called ENCCON (Nguyen and Huang, 2004), which uses a connection + enclosure layout method and a semi-transparency navigation mechanism to handle large scale of hierarchical learning information and it aims to provide a better assistance to the users of LiveNet for visual manipulation and navigation of knowledge-based data objects. The use of visualization techniques in LiveNet provides users with not only a 2D graphical visual interface for direct data manipulation, but also a set of clear views, the focus+context views, of the interrelations among the data objects which enhances the understanding of relational information that the users want to see. Although the proposed visualization technique ENCCON can be applied in many domains, we only concern its application in the domain of collaborative e-learning through the LiveNet.