Organic Software Framework for an Adaptive Integrated Knowledge Repository

The goal of the research was to design and build an organic knowledge repository that had the inherent ability to grow and evolve over time. A design artifact - Constructivist Unifying Baccalaureate Epistemology (CUBE) - was designed and tested to validate the efficacy of this approach. Two models that facilitate this organic nature of the system were developed for this research; a Knowledge Weighting Model and the Aggregation-Integration-Master model. A Semantic Web ontology integrated with the W3C Resource Description Framework was used to create a concept space that offers a unified view of the discipline. The two goals of this approach were validated. First, students and faculty were able to enter information that dynamically altered the organization and structure of the knowledge repository. Second, students utilizing the Integrated Knowledge Repository developed a more complex understanding of the interconnected nature of the materials linking a discipline.