Abstract
A large topic map was created to facilitate understanding of the impacts of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident. It has a text topic map and a graphical topic map, which complement each other. A formative evaluation and two summative evaluations were conducted, as qualitative studies, to assess the usefulness and usability of the large topic maps as self-regulated learning tools. The topic maps were found useful for knowledge fusion and discovery, and can be useful when undertaking interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research. Users reported some usability issues about the graphical topic map, including information overload and cluttered display of topics when displaying large number of topics and their associated topics. The text topic map was found easier to use due to displaying topics, relationships and references in a linear view.
Highlights
The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident (White House, 2012) has impacted many aspects of the coastal environment of the Gulf of Mexico and the people living in the coastal states
This study aims to investigate two research questions: 1. Are the oil spill topic maps useful as a self-regulated learning tool for facilitating the understanding of the impact of the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident? 2
Qualitative data analysis was applied to the evaluation data to identify the categories of usefulness and usability issues
Summary
The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Incident (White House, 2012) has impacted many aspects of the coastal environment of the Gulf of Mexico and the people living in the coastal states. During the effort to stop and clean up the spill, the entities involved with the process, including state and federal agencies and contracted agents, have either conducted or contracted for numerous studies of the Gulf of Mexico as a part of their operations. These studies have published a considerable quantity of literature through news, conferences, journals, and the Web. Government officials, journalists and the general public wanted to get a general understanding of the impact, and Gulf-based researchers wanted to investigate the fate and effects of oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal states. The concepts and relationships were loaded to open source topic map creation tools Ontopia and Wandora (introduced below) to build a graphical topic map and a text topic map
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