The Why and How of Knowledge Management: Some Applications in Teaching and Learning

The Why and How of Knowledge Management: Some Applications in Teaching and Learning

By Olivier Serrat Principal Knowledge Management Specialist Social Development, Governance, and Gender Division Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department

Global Online Association for Learning: Learning Summit 2016 18 February 2016 SMX Convention Center, Metro Manila, Philippines

When was the last time you talked about knowledge management with a colleague? In your organizations, is it the case that isolated staff fuss about how important—and difficult—knowledge management is? Or, 1 is it embedded in your corporate strategies and business plans? In The Bourgeois Gentleman, a comedy that in 1670—for the enjoyment of French aristocrats—mocked the pretensions of social climbers, M. Jourdain exerts himself in the arts of dancing, fencing, music, and philosophy. His "philosophy" lesson is—in fact—little more than a primer on language: "Everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose," lectures the philosophy master. At which point the author, Molière, has the central character exclaim: M. JOURDAIN: Oh, really? So when I say: "Nicole bring me my slippers and fetch my nightcap," is that prose?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Most clearly.

M. JOURDAIN: Well, what do you know about that! These forty years now, I've been speaking in prose without knowing it!

Notwithstanding M. Jourdain's affectations, many will agree this turns the tables on the fruitless sophistry of his philosophy master.

I. THE BLIND MEN AND THE ELEPHANT Fast-forward to the 21st century, and even more sophistry. In a strange parallel, knowledge management may be suffering from "The Blind Men and the Elephant" syndrome: it has come to mean many different 2 things to people, each claiming allegiance over the others, even though the wellspring is the same.

Knowledge management is not a discipline in its own right, as some claim, but a prism that generates 3 views of organizations as purposeful entities that strive for higher performance. It is a tool for sensemaking—that being the process by which people give meaning to experience—the immediate purpose of which is to provide support for improved decision making. Central to any definition, however, should be the belief that knowledge is a valuable asset and that organizations can manage it to solve business problems using a diverse set of tools, methods, and approaches. Failing to recognize what they do not know, do not know they know, or know but do not use, organizations lose money and undermine success.

Picture: The Blind Men and the Elephant

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In the latter case, where, would you say, do your organization's knowledge management initiatives stand in the five important competency areas of strategy development, management techniques, collaboration mechanisms, knowledge sharing and learning, and knowledge capture and storage? (Serrat 2008–) From the mid-1990s—which uncoincidentally also witnessed the birth of the World Wide Web, knowledge management has been driven in turn by information technology, organizational learning and intellectual capital, and taxonomy and content management. (Put differently, one could say that knowledge management focused first on containers, next on communities, and lately on content.) But, there is much convergence: ever faster and cheaper, when it is not completely new, information and communications technology now allows people to seek, acquire, and share expertise, ideas, services, and technologies locally, nationally, regionally, and around the world. It boosts efficiency and productivity; reduces risks, transaction costs, and barriers to entry; provides the means for sweeping reorganization of business; and generally makes governments, markets, and networks work better.

Disarmingly, according to Bill Gates, "Knowledge management is a fancy term for a simple idea. You're managing data, documents, and people's efforts. Your aim should be to enhance the way people work together, share ideas, sometimes wrangle and build on one another's ideas—and then act in concert for a common purpose." (Gates and Hemingway 1999)

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Note: The Indian parable of the blind men and the elephant cautions against drawing conclusions from limited perspective. One blind man, who has bumped against the side of an elephant, is certain it is a wall; another, who has felt a tusk, imagines it to be a spear; a third, who has touched the trunk, reckons it is a snake; a fourth, who has felt about the knee, judges it to be a tree; a fifth, who has chanced to touch an ear, supposes it must be a fan; and a sixth, who has seized on the swinging tail, considers it is a rope. When they compare notes they discover they are in complete disagreement. There are many interpretations of this story—and people likewise fight over these: one of them might be that the truth is much greater than anyone of us can grasp; another might be that open-mindedness can afford a better perspective on situations and events.

Source: Wikipedia. 2016. Wall Relief in Northeast Thailand.

For better understanding of knowledge management, there is value in distinguishing: 4  Notions of data, information, and knowledge; 5  Core knowledge activities;  Ecological, organizational, and technocentric perspectives on knowledge management.  Schools of thought that have shed light on knowledge management, e.g., computer science, cognitive psychology, management science, and organizational development;  Cognitive and community models of knowledge management;  Knowledge management technologies that variously serve to codify, communicate, internalize, or organize knowledge;  Learning before, during, and after;  Consequences that an organization's configuration—to which some would now add age 6 composition —might have for the definition of a knowledge management effort; and  Knowledge management motivations.

This in no particular order except that—to state the obvious—the last point should come first. What motivation leads organizations to undertake a knowledge management effort is of the highest importance.

But, many organizations never clarify why, exactly, they want to manage knowledge. And yet, how, what, when, where, and who follow why.

II. THE WHY AND HOW OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: SOME APPLICATIONS IN TEACHING AND LEARNING The "why" of knowledge management might be to:  Achieve shorter product (or service) development cycles;  Boost internal and external network connectivity;  Harness intellectual capital;  Increase knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services;  Leverage the expertise of people across the organization; 4

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Data are discrete and objective facts, measurements, or observations that can be analyzed to generate information. Information is data that have been categorized, analyzed, summarized, and placed in context in a form that has structure and meaning. Knowledge is a combination of data and information, to which is added expert opinion, skills, and experience, resulting in a valuable asset that aids decision making. In organizational terms, knowledge is generally thought of as being know-how, applied information, information with judgment, or the capacity for effective action. Knowledge can be tacit (meaning, personalized knowledge that people carry in their heads) or explicit (meaning, knowledge that has been codified in formal, shared language and packaged for communication and transfer). It can be individual or collective. In an organization, examples of explicit knowledge are "best practices", curriculums, machines, methodologies, patents, policies and procedures, processes, products, publications, services, strategies, and websites; examples of tacit knowledge are competencies, experiences, ideas, individual or collective beliefs and values, intra- and inter-organizational relationships, insights, know-how, perceptions, and skills. Intrinsically, knowledge is linked to people.

Core knowledge activities are to identify, create, store, share, and use knowledge, often in a two-way exchange.

Two important requirements must be fulfilled to achieve improvements from these activities: (i) the activities should be aligned or integrated into business processes; and (ii) the activities should be balanced according to the specificities of each process.

Simplifying, Millenials (born 1980–1995) are technically savvy, demand communication and feedback, value diversity, are entrepreneurial, and have a global perspective. This group is made up of "digital natives" who were born in the Computer Age: it learns by exploring. Generation X (born 1965–1979) is the "business casual" generation: GenXers put their trust in themselves, not their organization: they learn by doing in the workplace.

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Manage business environments so staff can access insights that are appropriate to their work; Promote creativity, innovation, and organizational learning; and/or Solve intractable problems.

The distinct motivations behind knowledge management efforts are not mutually exclusive and organizations are likely to launch several simultaneously. But, each initiative rests on or relates to specific capacities and skills, resources, and systems.

Figure 1: The Why of Knowledge Management: Eight Recurring Motivations

Development Cycles

Network Connectivity

Intellectual Capital

Knowledge Content

Expertise

Business Environment

Creativity, Innovation, and Learning

Wicked Problems

Source: Author.

From requisite ecological, organizational, and/or technocentric perspectives, once the motives impelling knowledge management initiatives have been made clear, the "how"—thence the what, when, where, and who—of knowledge management can be brought to bear on sundry areas of activity.

Figure 2: The How of Knowledge Management: Ten Main Areas of Activity

Business Activities Communities Content Management Intellectual Capital Knowledge Benchmarking Knowledge Capture Knowledge Culture Knowledge Partnerships Knowledge Retention Knowledge Transfer

Source: Author.

Is knowledge management applicable to schools, colleges, and universities? The answer is yes: indeed, just about any party will readily agree that the identification, creation, storage, sharing, and use of 7 knowledge is the raison d'être of these institutions. So, if education is in the knowledge business, why are there so few examples of knowledge management initiatives in the education sector compared to, say, health? There is no shortage of explanations and a few should set the scene. Pell-mell, schooling is about learning before doing (hence, the emphasis on explicit knowledge) while work is mainly about learning by doing (hence, the emphasis on tacit knowledge). Phrased differently, "declarative" knowledge, or

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Obviously, schools, colleges, and universities are most commonly associated with knowledge sharing. (This said, a knowledge management solution cannot focus on one or two core knowledge activities in isolation.)

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"knowing that", profits little from management. Conversely, it may come as a surprise that many teachers act on intuition rather than according to pedagogical principles; indeed, personal predisposition may even stand at the core of becoming a teacher. All the while, the knowledge base of those engaged in teaching is a perennial subject of debate, perhaps because teachers work in very individualized settings and so little of their know-how is codified: their knowledge is personal rather than collective and more tacit than 9 explicit. In colleges and more so in universities, faculty members working in a myriad of disciplines tend to identify with—and are therefore evaluated by, if citations are the main instrument—their external peers rather than their own organization. Also, these institutions are organized in distinct functional and notably 10 hierarchical domains, which do not inspire helicopter vision. What is more, many schools, colleges, and universities are funded from the public purse operate under an exigent set of concerns, demands, interests, pressures, and restrictions: this makes them far more "open" and therefore more complex systems than what is found in the private sector.

Figure 3: Functional Domains of Education

Administration

Admissions

Alumni Affairs

Curriculum Development

Enrollment Planning

Faculty

Governance

Library and Information Services

Performance Evaluation of Faculty

Placement

Planning and Development

Research and Development

Reporting

Student Affairs

Student Counseling

Student Body

Student Learning

Teaching and Learning Processes

Source. Author.

Even so, it would be a great irony if in the age of globalization, accelerating technological change, and increased competition knowledge management cannot help schools, colleges, and universities—be they public, private, or the object of public–private partnerships—improve teaching for better learning outcomes. The elemental questions about teaching and learning that knowledge management can help address are: What knowledge is likely to be needed, and by whom, in the future? By what actions and infrastructure might the capacity of education systems to produce, mediate, and apply such knowledge be

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Simplifying, declarative knowledge is typically fragmented information, hooked to texts, that must be acquired sequentially as an end in itself. (Rote learning is an extreme form of it.) As one might expect, it reinforces the teacher's role as dispenser and arbiter of knowledge and lends itself to elaborate grading systems and ability groupings. However, the transfer of knowledge from one party to another requires more than simply providing information: it takes place only when (i) the knowledge of the first becomes information for the second, (ii) the recipient works on that information so it is integrated into pre-existing knowledge and becomes part of his or her context of meaning and purpose, and (iii) the recipient applies the new knowledge in action. This explains why so much dissemination fails: it does not provide the support receivers need to convert information into personal knowledge that can be successfully applied. Declarative knowledge is the converse of procedural knowledge but may be a necessary step toward that, at least in the case of novices.

9 It is generally held, perhaps simplistically, that the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers and that the only way to improve outcomes is to improve instruction. So, there ought to be great interest in helping teachers improve instruction, creating awareness of weaknesses in their practice, providing them with a precise knowledge of "good practice", and motivating them to make necessary improvements. (Prior to selection, they would have been checked for, say, minimum qualifications; intrinsics such as literacy and academic ability; and suitability for teaching including attitude, aptitude, e.g., communications and interpersonal skills, as well as personality.) Toward this, for instance in high-performing education school systems, programs are deployed that build practical skills during the initial in-house training of teachers; place coaches in schools to support teachers; select and develop effective "instructional leaders", that is, excellent teachers selected to become principals who are then trained to coach and mentor others; and enable teachers to learn from each other.

10 Not for nothing do people refer to the ivory tower of academia.

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developed efficiently and effectively to both support and influence schooling for tomorrow? Toward this, citing the Organisation for Economic Co‑operation and Development, schools, colleges, and universities should:  Develop a commitment to knowledge management;  Expand the role of practitioners in knowledge management;  Establish and use networks for knowledge management;  Use information and communications technology to support knowledge management;  Forge new roles and relationships between researchers and practitioners to support better research and development in education;  Devise new forms of professional development for practitioners that reflect and support knowledge management priorities; 12  Integrate knowledge capital and social capital; and  Design infrastructure to support knowledge management. (OECD 2000) In education as elsewhere, knowledge management can bring people, processes, and technology together in functional domains—such as alumni and student affairs, curriculum development, and research and development—for motives like those listed earlier. For sure, the tools, methods, and approaches to deliver any intent that would have to be particularized and cut across applications to fructify, for example, curriculum, managerial-cum-organizational, and pedagogical knowledge. But there is no reason why, to cite but one, the burgeoning plethora of information and communications technology such as social media should not also urge in education as elsewhere a convergence of knowledge management and e-business (and of course e-commerce), an escalation of (hitherto modest) knowledge management initiatives into organization-wide projects, and ever-greater reliance on knowledge management to infuse innovation with tacit knowledge. The Powerpoint below illustrates with videos four ecological, organizational, and technocentric applications that hold potential for knowledge management in teaching and learning.

Box 1: Information and Communications Technology and the Education Sector In education, information and communications technology is a potential game changer: it is reaching a new level of maturity with emphasis on content curation and usage. In higher education, for one, it is beginning to globalize open, online, and flexible systems that deliver cost-effective and equitable pathways to just-in-time, mobile learning. Among others, new software enables blended learning in the classroom and self-paced learning for students. Computer-based simulation technologies show great potential for competency-based training and assessment in both higher education and technical vocational education and training and provide fertile ground for interdisciplinary collaborative research.

New opportunities arise to more closely monitor the performance of students, teachers, and schools for improvement. New and integrated information systems for institutional management and performance help optimize the allocation of resources. To make sure information and communications technology translates into improved learning and labor market outcomes—besides better-performing education systems, close integration with pedagogical strategies and adequate capacity development are required and dedicated efforts must be put into measuring and monitoring results.

Source:Author.

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This concerns the two sides of the equation: the teachers and their students. The primary function of schools, colleges, and universities is transmission and cultivation of knowledge but these institutions have largely omitted to manage the professional knowledge of staff so it might enrich and improve teaching and learning.

12 Social capital refers to the collective value of a network—be it a person's or an organization's—and the inclinations that arise from the network to do things for a common good. Social capital is built by shared norms, values, and understandings that, together, engender trust, reciprocity, and cooperation.

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Box 2: Leading Knowledge Management: An Exchange with Stuart Basefsky OS: On 18 February 2016, I will speaking in Metro Manila, Philippines on The Why and How of Knowledge Management: Some Applications in Teaching and Learning at the Learning Summit 2016 of the Global Online Association for Learning. Do you have a message for the audience?

SB: The onus on the audience will be to have the skills to identify the challenges, opportunities, political relationships, etc. that will define the terrain in which they must apply your concepts. The devil will be in these details. You must convey to them that this will be the hard part.

OS: Knowledge management has often been described as comprising three elements: people, processes, and technology. This is a given but I have a preference for the leadership–organization– technology–learning construct. Can you say a few words about leadership, which is meant to drive values for knowledge management?

SB: Leadership on these matters can come from anywhere in the hierarchy; it is not necessarily top– down. However, the measure of leadership will lie in the execution of plans. Coming up with concepts is one thing; bringing them to fruition is another. You provide the outline of a plan to move forward with proper vision and desired outcomes. Yet, the outcomes rest on the ability of members of the audience to apply solid leadership skills. They may not even know what talents and skills exist in their own organizations. In fact, many may be latent. Knowledge champions must engage the people in their organizations to "want" these outcomes and to understand why they are beneficial not only for the institutions they serve but for their communities and educational goals as well. The audience must come up with the passion to make this happen. Without some passion, advances will be long in coming.

Source: Email correspondence of 11 February 2016.

Powerpoint: The Why and How of Knowledge Management: Some Applications in Teaching and Learning

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Source: Author.

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Video 1: Flash Animations for Learning

Source: ADB. 2015.

Video 2: Social Media

Source: ADB. 2014.

Video 3: The Empowerment of ADB-Hosted Communities of Practice

Source: ADB. 2013.

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Video 4: The ADB Sustainable Development Timeline: The Birth of a Living Archive

Source: ADB. 2014.

The views expressed in this address are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Asian Development Bank, or its Board of Governors or the governments they represent.

OLIVIER SERRAT is Principal Knowledge Management Specialist in the Asian Development Bank. In 2010, he published two books, Learning in Development and a compendium of Knowledge Solutions, available at www.adb.org/publications/learning-development and www.adb.org/publications/compendiumknowledge-solutions, respectively. All articles in the Knowledge Solutions series he launched in 2008 are at www.adb.org/knowledgesolutions. Olivier is currently working on the ADB Sustainable Development Timeline, available at reflections.adb.org: this is an anthology of videos that catalogs major sector and thematic landmarks in ADB's operations since 1966. Olivier can be reached at oserrat@adb.org.

Acknowledgements Stuart Basefsky, Information Specialist and Lecturer at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, reviewed this paper and shared valuable insights.

References   

Gates, Bill and Collins Hemingway. 1999. Business @ the Speed of Thought: Succeeding in the Digital Economy. Grand Central Publishing.

Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. 2000. Knowledge Management in the Learning Society: Education and Skills. www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/knowledge-management-inthe-learning-society_9789264181045-en Serrat, Olivier. 2008–. Knowledge Solutions. Manila. www.adb.org/knowledgesolutions

Related ADB Documents     

Serrat, Olivier. 2008. Building Communities of Practice. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/buildingcommunities-practice ——. 2008. Managing Knowledge Workers. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/managing-knowledgeworkers ——. 2008. Storytelling. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/storytelling ——. 2008. Notions of Knowledge Management. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/notionsknowledge-management ——. 2009. Glossary of Knowledge Management. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/glossaryknowledge-management 11

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——. 2009. Building a Learning Organization. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/building-learningorganization ——. 2009. The Roots of an Emerging Discipline. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/roots-emergingdiscipline ——. 2009. A Primer on Organizational Learning. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/primerorganizational-learning ——. 2010. Seeding Knowledge Solutions Before, During, and After. Manila. www.adb.org/publications/seeding-knowledge-solutions-during-and-after

Related ADB Videos       

ADB. 2013. The Empowerment of ADB-Hosted Communities of Practice. Manila. vimeo.com/92214511 ——. 2014. Social Media. Manila. vimeo.com/93379097 ——. 2014. The ADB Sustainable Development Timeline: The Birth of a Living Archive. Manila. vimeo.com/124022887 ——. 2015. Flash Animations for Learning. Manila. vimeo.com/122391099 ——. 2015. Sense, Coherence, and Meaning: The ADB Sustainable Development Timeline. Manila. youtu.be/n8iho9H8MLY ——. 2016. The ADB Sustainable Development Timeline. Manila. reflections.adb.org/ ——. 2016. ADB: Reflections and Beyond. Manila. vimeo.com/user26371068

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