Student-centred KM strategies

Department of Mechanical EngineeringFebruary 15 2011 Slide 1

Student centred knowledge management strategies

Dr. Steve CayzerUniversity of Bath


Preliminaries

• This talk is not about enterprise KM

• This talk is not about KM theory

• (though I mention both in passing)

• This talk is about a teaching experiment; how do students engage with KM, and formulate a strategy for themselves

• Does it work?


Dr Steve Cayzer

• Background in IT consultancy (Logica)

• - and enterprise R&D (Hewlett-Packard)

• Research interests include web information management [1]

• Engaged with KM team while at HP (Stan Garfield, Andrew Gent)

• Now at University of Bath: leading a KM unit on MSc programme

S. Cayzer (2004) Semantic blogging and decentralized knowledge management. Communications of the ACM, 47(12):47-52

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1035134.1035164


MSc in Innovation & Technology Management

• New Programme (2008-)

• International reputation and growing fast

• Modules drawn from both Engineering and Management

• Topics cover creativity, product development, technology strategy, sustainability

• Alumni gain positions in manufacturing, automotive, aerospace, tech transfer, consultancy…

• Knowledge management is a recurring theme


About the students

• 35 students currently (programme growing quickly)

• Wide variety - UK, Europe, Asia, Africa, S.America (no N. America yet)

• Split evenly between engineers and biz/management backgrounds

• All have first degree, tend to be young (early 20’s)


About the KM project

From submission to UK Higher Education Academy

This project aims to catalyze a student-led embedded, active and relevant Knowledge Management (KM) programme. It is initiated by a workshop with input from internationally recognized thought leaders in KM. The students will formulate an ongoing strategy that they will implement and monitor throughout the year. There will be an opportunity to report back to the international KM community. The benefits will continue to accrue after the students have graduated due to KM curatorship and an active mentor programme.


Motivations

KM has a proven impact on innovation and technology management (Drucker, JS Brown, Wenger etc).

• It is important that students gain an appreciation and an ability in this space

• and yet KM studies themselves have shown that learning is most effective when it is embedded in a relevant activity.

So, this project:

• Develops reflective practice in the students as they monitor the effectiveness of their ongoing strategy across many months.

• Provides for an alumni scheme, where selected individuals are invited to come back to present and to act as “KM mentors”.


Outline of KM topic

• Importance of Knowledge Management

• Theory of knowledge – eg tacit and explicit

• Applied knowledge – communities of practice

• Case study - Knowledge management in Hewlett-Packard.


Corporate: 10 tips for building a KM Strategy

1. Information and knowledge exist, but will not automatically flow • through pipes and buckets and posters• just because best-practice information is available

2. You need a plan, but grand KM theories will not get results3. You can make money from KM if you focus.4. It is critical to recognize the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge5. Ignore organization and human dynamics at your peril6. Create vehicles for self-service7. Knowledge Services and Networks: Access to information is important, but access

to people with knowledge is more important8. The highest investment yields the highest return – facilitated transfer of best

practices through a project9. Observe process, but measure results10. Plans are nothing...planning is everything.

Source: APQC


Teaching: The 3 components of KM Strategy

• People– Network, culture, training, roles, incentives …

• Process– Create, capture, reuse, measure, communication ..

• Technology– UI, social component, workflow ….

• Metrics– Content, participation, (re)use, value


Workshop

• Devise a KM strategy for sharing your knowledge on this course.

– This should encompass PEOPLE (team roles), – PROCESS (meetings, brainstorms, and – TECHNOLOGIES (blogs, wikis).

• You also need to think about METRICS

– How can you demonstrate success (or otherwise)? • An outcome should be posted on moodle.

An in depth analysis of this process relating it to KM theory and organisational practice, would make a good subject for an individual assignment or even a dissertation.


KM Strategy template

PeopleWho leads (different activities)

How about contacts outside your team?

ProcessMeetings? Social? Incentives?

Technologywiki, blog, twitter, other?

MetricsParticipation

ContentReuse


4 Steps to define a KM Strategy

1. Motivate

2. Inventory

3. Select

4. Prepare & Plan

Warning: Do not be over ambitious!

Output: please post a brief (1 page max) summary of your group’s discussion and reflections on moodle.

This can be a photograph of a flipchart page


Step 1: Motivate

• Objectives – what are your needs on this programme

• How will KM help?

• What are you aiming to achieve?

• What is wrong with what you are doing now?

• Innovate – Share – Capture – Reuse – Collaborate – Learn

• FOCUS – do not have to do everything


Step 2: Inventory

• People• What are the aptitudes/skillsets/attitudes in your group?

– Do you prefer talking/discussing/reading/listening/doing. • Who is the person that knows everything?

– Who is the person that knows everybody?

• Processes– How often do you meet?

• How formal? What documentation? – How do you share learnings– How do you reflect on performance?

• Tools– What do you use to share information (moodle, email, dropbox…)– What about communication (msn, skype, sms)


Step 3: Select

• WHAT will you do– choose 2 or 3 that you will implement

• WHY these

• THINK; is this the right tool for … – Doesn’t matter if your initial choice is wrong


Step 4: Prepare and Plan

• WHO will lead

• HOW will you implement

• How will you measure/report/assess


Other possibilities

1. discuss Belbin roles and discuss which you might be. What is the mix in your group?

2. What sort of a learner are you? Take the VARK testhttp://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire

Some focused on technology


Group 2 learnings

• Familiarity of technology/process– We selected the Yahoo Answer [because] we often used very similar software named

Baidu Zhidao (Chinese).– Yahoo is [an] innovation leader and Baidu Zhidao is [a] follower.

• Regular use. – For example, I posted four questions [Baidu Zhidao] related to the fields of education and

automotive industries in the past three months. I also answered at least five questions about the over sea education, especially about studying a master degree at the UK

– I do not post any questions into Yahoo, but I do use Yahoo a lot for searching similar questions. For assignments and suggestions about British Universities … at least fifteen times within a month.

• The reason for using both Yahoo Answer and Baidu Zhidao is because of the less commercial influence, since the majority who answer questions in these network communications really want to give their help or share their personal experience without considering any money

Some focused on process

Group 4 Learnings

• We did not really get to implement almost the whole process.– We have different available times – Each of us were more concerned to do our individual assignments

• However, I have used this method before … and it has proven to be very effective. – good knowledge sharing – helps to nurture other skills (in terms of presentation).

• It is very important to – implement it at a very early stage.– have a group which have the same set of goals and commitment.

• if this were to be implemented before the exams, I think it would provide better revision and results (perhaps)

Some groups fragmented

Group 1

Group 6 Learnings

• Very technology focused– Skype, email, facebook– File transfer as measure of success

• “Didn’t work as expected”

• But for individuals, used tools to share a lot (skype daily)– Even 3 months later

Some outcomes were unintentional


Group 1 Google Group


Group 1 Learnings

• Google group worked well during active (week long) project

• But as file share (could have used dropbox)

• Discussions redundant because physically co located– “We are always hanging around together”– During field trip to London, group stayed on for social

event

• Similar experience on a previous project– Augments and encourages physical world interaction


Overall conclusions

• Very small scale experiment, interpret findings with caution– And focus is on KM teaching rather than empirical

study• Some initial findings– Process is as interesting as the result– Some unexpected (and welcome) outcomes– Tendency to focus on technology, and to be over

optimistic


Hypotheses

• This exercise increases appreciation, awareness and ability in the area of KM strategy

• Students engage more with the course through this exercise

• Follow on ‘metric evaluation’ exercise will provide further insights

• KM mentor program could bring additional benefit


Comments, feedback, questions, discussion …


Additional Material

KM in HP - PEOPLE

• People– External: KM strategy, KM consultants– Internal: KM Stars, knowledge advisor– Networks: HP professions– Reward and Recognition

KM in HP - PROCESS

• Process– Project meetings, discussions, ‘check ins’,

• Some lessons learnt

– Organisational ‘coffee talks’– Use of technology eg Halo. – Customer engagement – capture knowledge– KM metrics - Capture, reuse, participation

• social network mapping • Helps management to see value of CoPs

KM in HP - TECHNOLOGY

• Desktop tools

• CAD, proposal builder..

• Web 1.0:

– Forums, Knowledge Briefs, team spaces, people finder, project profile repository

• Web 2.0:

– Facebook - > me@hp– Blogs -> hp blogs– Wikipedia -> HPedia– Twitter -> buzz– Digg -> ideavine– Plus water cooler, semantic blogging…

Enterprise Social Networks

Bernardo Huberman and Lada Adamic 2003 Information Dynamics in the Networked World in Eli Ben-Naim, Hans Frauenfelder, Zoltan Toroczkai, (Eds.), 'Complex Networks', Lecture Notes in Physics, Springer, 2003.

Anticipated Outcomes

• 1). Students achieve a deep appreciation of KM through embedded learning. The application of KM will enhance their learning performance, and due to the integrated and transferable nature of the proposal, these benefits will spill over into their other subjects.

• 2). A portfolio of KM artefacts that will be useful to existing and future students, and which will also act as an improved communication channel so we can better shape our offerings to student needs.

• 3). A critical evaluation that examines the impact of this programme on curriculum development and pedagogy

• 4). An improved link to industry through invited speakers and programme outcomes, and to alumni through the KM mentor proposed scheme.

Student-centred KM strategies

Education

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