Introduction

The network of knowledge is being built at this community portal by two main building blocks:

• nodes
  
• links or relations
  

In the example shown in the figure, the nodes are the concepts displayed inside the oval: 'molecule', 'compound', 'complex' and 'part'.  The links are represented by an arrow (in this case).
In this knowledge network, the nodes are either concepts or activities.  And links in this knowledge network are named relations. Just as each node has a name, links may also have a name.  Initially you will see only concept maps with a single relation at this site. The example you see here is a a DepMap (dependency map), where the link is named 'depends on' or 'prerequisite of' when you read from the node touching the arrow head to the tail of the arrow.  If you read from the tail of the arrow to the head, the relation in this case is 'required for'. Thus, the map consists of a number of propositions.  In this map the propositions are:

• The concept 'part' is required for the concept 'molecule' or the concept 'molecule' depends on the concept 'par't.
  
• The concept 'compound' is required for the concept 'molecule' or the concept 'molecule' depends on the concept 'compound'.
  
• The concept 'complex' is required for the concept 'molecule' or the concept 'molecule' depends on the concept 'complex'.
  

The dependency that we are representing here is of meaning.  That is, if a person needs to understand the concept 'molecule', he or she must already know the meaning of the concepts 'part', 'compound', and 'complex.

Questions that you should always ask while making links and adding nodes

• Always ask yourself the following set of questions:
• To understand a concept what do you expect the learner must already know?
• To understand a concept what do you expect the learner must do?
• To impart a skill what what other activities the learner must do?
• To impart a skill what other concepts the learner must already know?

Answers to these questions can be specified by establishing links between concepts and activities.

Some characteristics of the dependency map?

• You will notice that the concepts on the top of the map are always the easier concepts.  More and more difficult concepts will be situated at the bottom of the map.  Thus the map's  vertical axis can be interpreted as the degree of difficulty.

• The concepts that are arranged in the same level are of similar level of difficulty. 

• However, the accuracy of the map will begin to emerge only after we have more data.  Larger the data, greater the accuracy of the map. 
  
• The algorithm that draws the map automatically aligns the nodes and draws the links.  Since the data may change from time to time, you may like to look at the snapshots periodically. 
• The sequence of learning (learning path/track) starts from the top to the bottom.  You need to focus on the node which is your learning objective (if you are a student) or teaching objective (if you are a teacher) and follow the arrows.
  

Contributing a Node

To add a concept or an activity as a node, use the "Add Nodes" (3) link on the left side tool box. 

Editing Nodes and Links

Use the link labeled 2 in the toolbox shown above to search, view,  add and edit nodes and links. This the place where a set of actions can be performed.  The interface looks as follows:

• You can use the default 'View' to navigate the network.  In a dependency map each node's neighborhood is divided into depends-on-neighborhood (8)  and required-for-neighborhood (9). 
• The 'Edit' (3) interface looks similar to Add form.
• The 'Delete' (4) interface also looks the same, except that you will see against each node a check box.  If you want to remove a link, un-check the box.
• The 'StickyMap' (5) gives a larger dependency map (currently as an image) of all the linked concepts in the gnowledge network. 
  
• The 'DepMap' (6) gives a context dependent map.
• 'History' (7) gives information about the node's creation and modification details, who did what and at what time.
• The depmaps can be saved in formats (10) like png, jpeg, gif, svg, ps.