Two fields of research are heavily interested in developing visualizations for helping users coping with complex tasks and ill-structured subject matter resources: knowledge visualization and information visualization. The goal of knowledge visualization is to assist students in learning and problem solving by providing tools for fostering externalized cognition. The goal of information visualization is to provide knowledge-based access to information resources and help users in making sense of the resources they are looking for in information retrieval. The contribution draws attention to digital concept maps as cognitive tools which may provide a basis for the development of synergistic approaches that may help visualizing, accessing, and managing both knowledge and information and foster resourcebased learning.
Contents of a website can be constructed by two means. Conventional websites usually have a sitemap initially. Using this map as a blueprint, the website designers develop the pages of the content and add links to the content of a website, such as the I-Know’05 homepage. For the website known as a knowledge portal, a sitemap cannot be prepared to outline the contents in advance. A knowledge portal site allows its members to create their own knowledge objects. The website therefore grows itself unlimitedly and unexpectedly just like a coral. Interestingly, these knowledge objects are not only represented in webpages but also associated with conceptual elements defined within the ontology of the knowledge portal. In this regard, we develop a visualization tool to display the sitemap of a knowledge portal and observe the concept map of group knowledge. As a practice platform of our visualization tool, we chose a locally developed knowledge portal, called Open Computational Problem Solving (OpenCPS) Knowledge Portal.