Knowledge Compass

This project is centered around the I School itself and addresses the disconnect between the people that form the ISchool community. The core problem we analyzed is the lack of effective communication mechanisms to address student-alumni interactions. We aimed to build a living, dynamic repository of information that would support a range of services to build a stronger community at I School. Some of these would be targeted towards alumni, others to students, and some would jointly target both groups. Given the diverse backgrounds of the I School student body and the interdisciplinary curriculum, we also wanted to help current students successfully navigate towards their academic and professional goals, and hence the title, Knowledge Compass.

We conducted the project in two phases. The first phase was more technical in focus, seeking to design and implement new technology-based services that would increase the extent and effectiveness of alumni communication and alumni-student interactions. Work on this phase revealed some organizational and structural obstacles to a successful deployment of these services. We thus pursued a second phase to understand these obstacles. Taken together, these two phases yielded a more complete and robust understanding of the problem and suggested recommendations that enhances the chance of success than the initial proposal.

Refer to the report for more details and data on our findings and recommendations.