KMS & Informal Learning

Knowledge Management Systems

After our conversation in class last week my husband and I started discussing Knowledge Management Systems – Why in the world would he want to talk to me about my class work?? Well, he is part of a “business intelligence” team that essentially creates systems that are very similar to KMS. They build databases and the dashboard (user interface) to operate them. I have tried to summarize the general conclusions we came to!

In education, just as industry, exists the need to ‘share’ knowledge across the organization. This knowledge could be as simple as ‘what time does the bell ring’ or as advanced as ‘how to handle a student’s discipline issues’ and is often best relayed through a peer in the same organization. To meet this need, Knowledge Management Systems, or KMS, have become a popular type of technology intended to allow members of a community to share and contribute their knowledge to other members of the same community. On the surface, we can probably think of several uses for knowledge based systems, which include teacher-to-teacher methods discussion, or administrator-to-teacher procedure guides. Personally, I would love to have a resource with all of our user manuals in one place for the tech tools we have on campus. In the ideal environment, these types of systems would be readily accessible to answer questions and serve as a resource for peers, by peers. This would be especially helpful if “tech support” is limited or not around.

However, since we operate in conditions that are often less than ideal, KMS, becomes a much more difficult concept to implement successfully. Creating and maintaining KMS can be a time consuming process. The “human-ware” associated with this can be very expensive. This additional cost can be a burden for many school systems. Teachers often complain of time being taxed already and adding KMS maintenance to the list of responsibilities could be met with resistance from teachers.

An additional concern to KMS, which has been expressed in private industry, is the perception that sharing and documenting knowledge or a resource that you possess may result in a loss of a competency which has become a competitive advantage for some teachers, when compared to their peers. For example, a science teacher with a highly developed, personal and successful method of teaching DNA would argue that they should not ‘have’ to share this knowledge with other teachers unless it is by choice of the teacher where variations of the lesson are allowed. As we’ve seen with emerging technologies before, the technical part of KMS is less challenging than managing the change needed in user behavior becomes the true roadblock to successful implementation.

Informal Learning

I love the Winston Churchill quote about the difference in learning and being taught! I think for many people this is so true.

Technology in education opens up so many opportunities for informal learning. In my own experience I have used Twitter to help stimulate some informal learning experiences by posting links to current articles online that I have found. This will often spark the interest of students who either discuss the topic online or in class the next day. I have even had students who found something on their own share via twitter with the class.

Even without technology, my classroom itself provides opportunities for informal learning. I have posters and artifacts everywhere that will often spark discussions. I also have numerous books for students to peruse if they need to keep themselves busy!