GoldMind: A Teacher-Centered Knowledge Management System for Higher Education -- Lessons from Iterative Design

TL;DR

GoldMind is a human-centered knowledge management system designed for higher education, developed through iterative co-design with teachers to improve usability and integration into digital teaching workflows.

Contribution

This study introduces GoldMind, a novel KMS tailored for educators, created via iterative design informed by user feedback and advanced analysis of human factors.

Findings

Enhanced understanding of teacher interactions with KMS

Design principles for integrating KMS into teaching workflows

Insights into cognitive load and knowledge behaviors

Abstract

Designing Knowledge Management Systems (KMSs) for higher education requires addressing complex human-technology interactions, especially where staff turnover and changing roles create ongoing challenges for reusing knowledge. While advances in process mining and Generative AI enable new ways of designing features to support knowledge management, existing KMSs often overlook the realities of educators' workflows, leading to low adoption and limited impact. This paper presents findings from a two-year human-centred design study with 108 higher education teachers, focused on the iterative co-design and evaluation of GoldMind, a KMS supporting in-the-flow knowledge management during digital teaching tasks. Through three design-evaluation cycles, we examined how teachers interacted with the system and how their feedback informed successive refinements. Insights are synthesised across three themes: (1) Technology Lessons from user interaction data, (2) Design Considerations shaped by co-design and usability testing, and (3) Human Factors, including cognitive load and knowledge behaviours, analysed using Epistemic Network Analysis.