ThisWeb-based
course is a vendor-neutral introduction to the tools and techniques
of organizing business information. Using texts, examples, supervised
activities, and an online Lab area, you'll create a controlled vocabulary,
thesaurus, A - Z index, and topic hierarchy for your application.
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
At the end of the course, you should be able to:
develop a plan for analyzing content
and user needs;
define a domain and formulate goals for taxonomy
development and deployment;
create a basic vocabulary of terms, hierarchy
of categories, and thesaurus;
create navigation tools based on your taxonomy
structure;
design a plan for evaluating the taxonomy.
WHO SHOULD TAKE THIS COURSE This course is designed for Web site publishers, content owners, knowledge
managers, technical writers, e-commerce managers, editors and others who
want to learn how to define the requirements for increasing information
productivity. We recommend that an interdisciplinary team
of two to four people take the course together.
TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS You'll need Internet access and a Web browser (e.g. Internet Explorer
4 or later, Netscape 5 or later).
COURSE FORMAT The course is conducted via teleconference,
e-mail, and the Web.
COURSE OUTLINE
Section 1: The nature of business taxonomies
Overview of taxonomy applications and functions,
characteristics of business taxonomies.
Section 2: Planning tools, techniques, & tips
Planning issues, development approaches, domain
boundaries, tools & techniques
Section 3: How to create a taxonomy structure
Defining objects & attributes, creating a repository,
vocabulary, and thesaurus, adding contact information and "local
links"
Section 4: Taxonomies and navigation
Flat lists, hierarchies, and network navigation
structures, user-friendly design
Section 5: Taxonomies, search, and metadata
Making search "smarter," integrating taxonomies
and search, managing metadata
Section 6: Portals and electronic commerce
Section 7: Taxonomy software
Types of software, selection tips, concept extraction
& summarization exercise
Lab
The course requires you to select a project and gather Lab data
for a real-world application. To save time, most data can be imported
via Excel worksheets. The instructor will help you select and define
your project, assemble required data, and assist you in using a
private, passworded work area in the Web-based
Lab. Communication with the instructor is via phone and e-mail.
At the conclusion of the course, the instructor
will help you identify lessons learned. Your Lab data can be exported
and saved as an Excel file. After exporting, it will be permanently
deleted from our server unless you arrange for long term hosting.
You have 60 days to complete the Lab portion of the course.
You can contract for a custom, hosted version
of the Lab as well as a custom version to install on your own server.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR Jean Graef is a "boundary spanner"
with an interdisciplinary background as a manager, entrepreneur, librarian,
programmer, and journalist. She has been developing and conducting seminars
on cutting edge information topics since the early 1980's.
DATE & TIME You can start the Web course at any time and proceed at your own pace.
You do not have to wait for a class to form. The amount of work involved
is roughly equivalent to a semester's course at the graduate level. Most
people can complete the course in three to six months. To minimize the
time commitment without compromising the educational experience, you can:
take the course as an interdisciplinary team;
narrow the scope of your Lab project;
extract data from existing corporate systems when
possible;
submit Lab data on Excel worksheets for importing
instead of manually entering Lab data;
INSTRUCTIONAL OPTIONS This course can be taught by one of our
instructors on site at your facility (minimum 6 participants) or you can
become licensed to teach the course as a Montague
Fellow in Knowledge Base Publishing.
PREREQUISITES We highly recommend that you take the Knowledge
Domain Analysis course prior to taking Creating Taxonomies. The Domain
Analysis course will help you create a Lab project with more business
impact, reduce the time needed to complete the Creating Taxonomies course
requirements, and double the amount of both instructor and Lab time available
to you.
COST Entire course: $2,750 per person (nonmembers),
$2,500 per person (members of the Society of Knowledge
Base Publishers). Course fee now includes an upgraded version of the
Lab and up to 2 hours assistance via phone and/or e-mail from the instructor.
HOW TO REGISTER
Call (413) 367-0245 to request a pro forma invoice or provide a credit
card number (we accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Diners Club,
and Discover). Payment must be received before your start date.
Created on November 29, 2002 | Updated on
May 6, 2006
Save to Slashdot
