EDUCAUSE | Knowledge Management

Tune In April 11 for a Free Web Seminar on Knowledge Sharing

pkurkowski — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:41:34 -0500

Today in many circles the mention of knowledge management conjures up fears of complex IT systems (often equated with failure) or a new initiative (often associated with vague requirements). How do you develop a knowledge management program that incorporates the essence of organizational learning and knowledge sharing without new tools or systems? The Johnson Space Center has embarked on such a quest to define a program that leverages the wealth of knowledge of 50 years of human space flight not only for today's workforce but also for generations to come.

In this free April 11 EDUCAUSE Live! web seminar, Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT, presenter Jean E. Engle, Chief Knowledge Officer, NASA/Johnson Space Center, will share her thoughts on the effective development of knowledge management programs.

Those unable to attend may wish to visit the archives after the event or browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Knowledge Management, Information Technology Management and Leadership, Institutional Management, and Planning.

EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional General Session: Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT

llarsen — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 16:45:02 -0600

This is a summary of the EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Opening General Session, February 20, 2008

Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT

Jean E. Engle

Chief Knowledge Officer,

NASA/Johnson Space Center

MS. Engle was the NASA Johnson Space Center CIO until she recently accepted the challenge of becoming one of the few Chief Knowledge Officers in the government. She noted that there are many differences between the two roles.

She provided background information about NASA and JSC. Many do not realize that NASA has multiple centers around the country. These all began as competitors rather than partners but this has changed over the years. Engle described the passion in the community for their work.

JSC is the integrator of all things about manned space flight. It is the home of the Astronaut Corps and, as it is primarily known, “Houston, we have a problem” Mission Control. The actual workforce is about 3000 civilians and 14000 contractors. Ten thousand of these people are “inside the fence.” There is a lot of diversity between all the pieces which includes different HRs, different cultures, and more, that keep them from working as well together as they would like.

JSC owns the 3 largest programs: Shuttle, International Space Station, and Constellation – crew exploration. They plan a moon to Mars ship by 2015, and an Earth to Mars ship by 2030. The Shuttle program, with 130 successful missions and 2 catastrophic failures, will be retired in 2010 after 11 more launches. This means there will be 5 years with no US presence in space. The International Space Station will rely on the Russian space program with the exception of some things that can go up only with the larger Shuttle before it is retired. The ISS will soon be 6 person supportable and be able to do true science.

Moving back into her talk on knowledge management and its challenges, she described Knowledge Management (KM) as the ability to capture the right information and pass it on to a person who needs it. KM is critical in this era as we face a major workforce transition and changing skill set needs, i.e., Shuttle skills are different than will be needed in the new programs. The average age at JSC is 45. As with other organizations, many are approaching retirement and knowledge they have has gone uncollected.

From planning conversations with the CKO from Goddard Space Flight Center, Engle shared the Top Ten Myths about Knowledge Management which is adapted from several sources

10. Culture change can be mandated from the top down (what should managers do)

9. Collaboration effort can be “purchased” or “sharing be rewarded” (these are not sustainable and quality is not good. Reward from personal satisfaction is best)

8. KM can be outsourced

7. Anybody (who isn’t busy) can do KM

6. KM can be solved by buying the right software

5. KM can be independent of the business process

4. Communities of practice can be established from the top

3. KM is about centralizing knowledge content to use it more efficiently

2. KM is really about databases

1. KM is an IT function and should be given to the CIO

Actions that Engle took to implement KM were

1. Benchmarking

Studied approach looking at various entities (Rolls Royce and others – these were companies that had pressing need) inside/outside government and the aerospace industry.
Consortium studies with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC)
Working with her Goddard SFC counterpart

2. Assessment

Center-wide knowledge management maturity assessment which provided insight into how much knowledge sharing was occurring and where
Identified strengths and gaps/barriers – the identified fractured organization was a big barrier

Engle noted that many people who hoard information are still among us and indicated the need to convince this generation to actively work on KM. Some of the methods used are:

Leadership – modeled behavior
Local learning – which needs to be encouraged/fostered. She indicated that there are only 5-7 types of info and we need to know how/when to share each of these) Lessons learned at the local level are applicable across multiple organizations. However, you must ask the question: Is this something that others need?
Codify when appropriate –Goddard SFC tried to film 40 retirees to retrieve the critical knowledge they had. It was expensive, no one watches it, so “why do that to your friends.” Tacit knowledge is not something you suck out of someone and put on the web.
Change management takes time. She indicated that most companies successful at KM have been doing it for 7-8 or more years.

Notable:

Generational differences are a part of the equation. NASA has 4 generations working side-by-side (GenX, GenY, Boomers, Traditionals) as does higher education. The average age is 45.

What is on incoming undergraduates’ minds?

Learning curve for new employees/younger generations, it is hard to come up to speed in the organization. New hires say it takes 5 years to know the culture and how to get things done
Technology gap; the technology is not what they are used to and not user friendly
More engagement of younger employees is needed – “don’t just give me a phone, computer, and leave”

Engle believes if NASA doesn’t change they won’t be able to recruit in 5 years.

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For thoughts from GenYers who now work for NASA watch the GenY created slide set available at http://www.educause.edu/SWRC08/Program/13571?PRODUCT_CODE=SWRC08/GS01 (watch a second time for how this might relate to IT in higher education)

They don’t understand why NASA doesn’t have wireless or why the NASA Web doesn’t say what NASA does
They (the next generation) will pay $124 billon to get to the Moon/Mars by 1030
They say NASA should forget the top-down way they are doing things – it’s already dead
They say NASA needs to better understand the audience – because the audience does not see the point, understand the facts, and aren’t currently in a position to participate.
Instead of NASA telling the audience what they want to share, GenY wants NASA to spark conversations with compelling stories that touch the GenYs– but please be timely and utilize social media.
They want NASA to reclaim its image as a leader of innovation

The slide set also considers what this would look like via headlines such as “Astronaut Twitters from Space during EVA,” Two Million Digg Votes for the Latest NASA Press Release,” and “NASA Switches Back to MACs”

The slide set went on to discuss the good things that NASA is doing but said

“There isn’t one ultimate communications strategy to solve NASA’s problems once and for all.” GenY wants to be a part of the solution.

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More KM ideas

Google – installed but the story is much more complex.

Led to identifying repositories, beginning with websites

Which is leading towards identifying usage of websites
Which will lead towards document and content management strategies
Supported by stronger taxonomies and metadata structures

Engle offered lots of healthy ideas for improvement

Process:

Social networking
Pause and learn – informal learning sessions (30 minutes)
Integrate risk management with knowledge management – crucial to decision-making – good (not perfect) makes managers better decision-makers
Information lifecycle management – scan and make it available for future generations – but with connection to get context of the info
Tacit knowledge capture – interviewing retirees

Add in People and Technology

Web-enabled high performance teams
Knowledge sharing forums
Case studies – teaching by providing context to a story
Web 2.0 technologies- enabler for infusion, collaboration, and sharing (everybody has a wiki but no one uses them

She suggested that they may bring people back to talk/teach/record (7 original astronauts are still living)

And she reiterated that they want to be tool independent.

Engle left us with Astronaut Eugene Cernan’s quote from the final Apollo mission: “We leave as we came, and god willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.”

Engle requested that we visit the NASA website(s) and give them feed back.

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Q&A

Q – Were there only the 4 students who did the slide set involved?

A - There were 4 who did the slide set but many more who participated in focus groups. (At least 44) Engle also discussed a mentoring program for engineers. The have 61 mentors for 900 engineers.

Q – What does NASA do to partner with universities? And question about interns.

A - Talk to NASA HR – and they have a good program for interns which has doubled to 300. These are made to have 24X7 availability rather than work hours.

Q - Mentoring program?

A – The mentoring program is via the HR program. It has been opened up to retirees and many have come back to mentor.

Q – Collecting knowledge from retirees?

A - Retirees are asked to “drop things off” and many are providing resources (one individual gave them 150 boxes that the archivist is going thru)

Q - Does having retirees mentor mean that current employees will be encouraged to do so as well?

A – While current employees are always encouraged to mentor, there is now more work to do but no more budget. Resources are an issue. Time is an issue.

Further comments:

Not having so many layers between engineers and upper levels is better. It used to be that you had to follow the chain of command – but after the Columbia incident people could come forward at any level. Engle noted that GenYs are not concerned about organizational charts and hierarchies don’t mean anything to them. (Boomers like hierarchy)

Change must occur / we must move on / preferably as part of the solution rather than part of the problem. She noted that Discovery (shuttle) is their baby and whether sending off to college, or to Smithsonian, it is a change that must happen.

Engle talked about issues around engaging kids, Second Life, etc, considered, but not all kids think alike. They do their best to hear the younger generations but they don’t always reciprocate. NASA interns do reciprocate but sometimes that reciprocation needs to be facilitated.

Other tidbits:

NASA offers competitions thru educational programs.

NASA has a watchdog site which get information faster than employees do.

The intern program has been expanded to include sophomores (Engle began as a coop student with NASA when she was 19.)

Engles’s presentation materials are available at http://www.educause.edu/SWRC08/Program/13571?PRODUCT_CODE=SWRC08/GS01

An interview with Engle is available via podcast at

http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/educausepodcastanintervie/46264

EDUCAUSE Podcast: An Interview with Jean Engle, Chief Knowledge Officer, NASA/Johnson Space Center

gbayne — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:27:19 -0600

This 12 minute podcast features an interview with Jean Engle, Chief Knowledge Officer for NASA at the Johnson Space Center. She delivered the opening keynote speech at the EDUCAUSE 2008 Southwest Regional Conference entitled, "Knowledge Sharing: Some Myths and Ideas, and a Little IT".

Ms. Engle joined the Johnson Space Center as a cooperative education student in 1984. She earned a B.A. in Mathematics in 1987, and an M.B.A in 1993 from the University of Houston, Clear Lake. She has served in a variety of increasingly responsible division and directorate staff positions and has been a member of the CIO Office since its inception in 1994. Over the last several years, she has led JSC’s involvement in a number of Agencywide and Centerwide Information Technology standards and security efforts.

In September, 2006, Ms. Engle was named the Chief Knowledge Officer for the Johnson Space Center. In this capacity, Ms. Engle is responsible for the development of an integrated knowledge management plan across the entire center, conduct studies of current and past knowledge management activities, evaluate current policies and processes, as well as collaborate with other NASA Centers and industry to identify and utilize best practices.

Communication Tools: the Whole Enchilada

smiltenb — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:30:09 -0600

Thanks to everyone who gave me feedback on project communication tools! As
we have been researching tools and recommendations, the institutional needs
for these systems has started growing. In addition to project management we
are wondering about how collaboration tools can also meet communication
needs within our department:

as a repository for documentation (how to install...)
to provide an overview of what is going on in the department (this
week...this month)
as a place where all the bits of information can be brought together into
a big snapshot

I have no expectations that technology will provide us with the sole
solution to improving communication and workflow, but I¹d really like to
hear more ideas and stories about how other institutions are effectively
using collaboration applications. We narrowed down our list of possible
solutions to four: mediaWiki, drupal, typepad and Teams.

And since drupal consolidates many kinds of content (wiki, blog, RSS, etc.)
we felt that it was the product most worth looking at. Yeah...simple,
right?

One of our graduate students did most of the initial research into
the applications and he presented his findings to some members of the
department who lead academic technology and some who lead administrative
technology. We started zinging ideas and brainstorms until we happened upon
the real solution: we want the whole enchilada.

We want tools that help us improve intra-departmental communication, manage
open-ended projects and communicate with those outside our institution. And
while we¹re at it, can¹t this same system be used for distance learning and
course management? Can¹t we have galleries of student work, class lectures
from instructors and course reminders?

Oh yeah, and we want to be mostly free and standards based and EASY to use.

Spang Bovey
(http://connect.educause.edu/blog/nspang/lms_vs_social_software/2540) and
William Allen (http://connect.educause.edu/blog/wallen/end_of_lms/16635)
have interesting posts about the future (or not) of LMS systems. We have
decided to take a divide and conquer approach < I will spend a bit more time
with drupal and see if it meets our needs (with a focus on communication,
collaboration and project sharing) and my academic counterpart will spend
time with moodle and other systems to see what they might offer.

Thoughts, experiences, warnings and insights much appreciated!

ISO Project communication tools

smiltenb — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:01:29 -0600

For the past two weeks I've been trying to identify and assess web based applications that would meet several needs within the broad umbrella of project communication/management:

provide a quick overview of what's happening on a given project
have a component that could be used for documentation
be multi-layered (a public component available without login; a private component for authenticated users only)
provide distribution components (RSS...)
standards based
has a simple and easy-to-use interface
hosted externally or internally
provide multiple views of content (via tagging, grouping...)

I've been surprised at how hard it has been to find an application that meets many of these needs.

I've been playing with SharePoint for a few months but feel that the learning curve to make it an effective and organic tool is significant. Basecamp is a bit too simple. I entertained the idea (suggested by our brilliant Director of Administrative Systems, Ted Simpson) of using Educause Connect (but it lacks the overview and cohesive functions we're looking for).
A straight-up wiki application might be the closest thing I've found; yet something is missing (perhaps the calendar/overview features). I have the feeling that the solution is much simpler and more obvious than is apparent to me.

This is a request for your ideas and suggestions about good solutions for web based project tools.

Knowledge creation in learning organisations and communities

catherine — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 07:33:48 -0600

How does decision making occur within Communities of Practice? Or, to make the question more specific, how do professional communities engage in collaborative decision-making, and how does that process contribute to the functioning and the effectiveness of the community in question? How do groups of people, working together, decide that a particular innovation is worth pursuing?

These are some of the research questions that are emerging from my current work, and from the various projects that our evaluation group is pursuing at CARET. Increasingly, I'm finding that I want to learn more about theories and concepts of knowledge creation. And I want to start to think about how to reconfigure my own diverse academic support and research projects within this broader theoretical framework.

How do I define "innovation" here? In terms of communities of practice, by "innovation" I mean a change in professional practice: for example, adoption, adaptation, or abandonment. How does someone within a particular CoP decide to adopt a new practice? Can we identify conditions under which individual innovations in practice reliably transfer to the community at large?

Carl Bereiter's concept of "promisingness" has really caught my eye. Bereiter's research suggests that successful learning organisations / learning communities are better able to identify new or innovative things (practices, ideas, tools etc.) as being relevant or interesting (ie. "promising"). The collective ability to recognise "promisingness" means that their communities are more flexible, more adaptive, more innovative. So... what is promisingness, and how do we foster it?

Some reflection on the role of an organisation like Educause seems appropriate here. How does Educause, how do we as a community, help to build a culture of innovation within learning communities? We could list many ways in which "innovation" is tightly pegged (at least in theory) to the professional domain of academic technology... technical innovations, socio-cultural innovations... However, whether "e-learning", as currently practiced within institutions of higher education, is necessarily the best way to foster this culture -- or cultures -- is, I think, very much open to debate. Is this a debate that needs to be more visible within Educause?

Getting started at Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture

mpasiewicz — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 07:19:00 -0600

Corante's Symposium on Social Architecture is about to begin and I can't wait.

Last evening we toured a Degas exhibit. Hearing the docent speak of draft drawings as leaving trails of information about a master's work raised all sorts of imagery in my head ... wikis, knowledge management, etc.

Further, in thinking about the range of works that Degas provided for us made me think of issues of digital preservation. I wonder if parallels could be made of physical preservation of art ... drawings vs. pastel work vs. paintings vs. sculpture ... media/medium ... at risk works, etc. Perhaps someone has already done that. If you had to come up with an example of a digital work that could serve as a contemporary of a piece in an at risk media (like a charcole sketch on newsprint perhaps; or maybe one example of one with a little more durability ... a photo on resin coated paper), what would it be?

What can we learn from the art world's efforts to preserve the physical works of authorship?

They also have a blog setup for coverage of the event.
http://www.corante.com/events/ssa/blog.php

An Interview with Alfred Essa about Open Source, Web 2.0, and .LRN

mpasiewicz — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 11:42:00 -0600

This 30 minute recording with Alfred Essa, Executive Director of the .LRN Consortium, gathers his thoughts on open source, blogs, podcasts, java, .LRN and a range of other topics.

Pennies from Kevin or Educause 2005: Track K day 1

osubalogh — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 20:31:14 -0500

-- Typed up and spell checked in StarOffice 7 after being inspired by Scott McNealy's speech.

Tuesday October 18, 2005 I attended two of the pre-conference seminars.

Seminar 8A: Knowledge Management and Leadership: Do we know what we know?

Jerry and George we very informative and I feel I know a little more background and history of the struggle to organize, share and create knowledge. We also talked about the difference between information and knowledge.

One thought provoking key concept for me was from Voeller's Circle of Knowledge. “Knowledge Management is focused on augmenting or enhancing the completeness of a participant's ability to interpret information within a context.”

What's implied here is that without context, information is not knowledge. Makes my mind ache just thinking about it, I'm having a Zen poetry moment.

We also touched on the idea that until Human Resources(HR) and performance management buy's into the idea that there is value in sharing knowledge we will continue to see the hoarding of knowledge instead.

The second half of the presentation was when we really got into, what I would call the tools of Knowledge Management. We moved quickly through this half but I really think that's where the gold was located.

I learned about Grokker and it's concept of “on the fly taxonomy”(ironically I looked up the definition of taxonomy on Google)of search results.

We also touched on wiki, which reminded me I should have looked up taxonomy on wikipedia.

I also now see a value in searching not only for search terms as typed, but also their synonyms.

My Two Cents:

I think the big benefits and key concepts were found in the second half of the session, I wish we had not had to move so quickly through them in order to stay under time.

When we talked about valuing the sharing of knowledge I couldn't help but think of a cyberpunk novel that I had once read. I think either “Snow Crash” or “Neuromancer” had some system of contributing information into a giant database and you were paid for contributing that knowledge only when it was searched for and used by someone. Can anyone help me out with this(the wikipedia articles on these two books, while incredibly thorough, did not include a narrative on this topic?

Seminar 11P: Universal Web Design: Designing More Accessible Web Resources.

Jon as usual mixed thought provoking questions with his straight faced humor for a nice presentation about writing usable web sites. I highly recommend checking out his group's tools and I'm hoping to bring some of the concepts back to Ohio.

My Two Cents:

I meant to tell Jon about a site called www.archive.org , it contains some “snapshots in time” of web sites throughout the years. Jon was often looking for examples of less than accessible web sties, but a result of his own success is that some of those bad examples aren't as bad anymore. I got a kick out of using the “wayback machine” to see www.osu.edu from June 7th 1997.

I must admit I felt a little shot down when I brought up a question about the benefits of including your own narration for sections of a web page. I'll have to mull the idea over a little more. What I pictured was a concept that one of my staff has written about in a book he wrote for his degree. Travis Dick wrote about the idea of embedding a sound file strategically on a website, perhaps at the beginning of a section, which contains a human spoken version of that section or paragraph or key concept. It made me think about my son's LeapPad books were he can point to a little icon of a speaker and have certain sentence read out-loud to him to help him learn to read.

Newcomer's Orientation: Maybe I'll be in a podcast...

I enjoyed the Newcomer's Orientation. This is my first time at the large yearly Educause conference and Brian Hawkins really made us feel at ease. In my mind I could compare that lie ahead with previous events like SIGUCCS and Mid-Ohio HDI.

After the session I was invited by Allan Carrington to participate in a recording that might eventually turn into a Podcast. Becky Gray from Arizona and I navigated our ways through Allan's questions and I hope the results are a helpful perspective from three Educause newbies.

My Two Cents:

I really liked the top 10 “pieces of advice list” from former attendees that Brian presented. Maybe they should appear in the conference program next year.

Brian also made me thoroughly frightened of a gruesome and mysterious monster named CALEA who apparently I get to meet Thursday around lunch.

That's all the pennies I have to give out for now, have a nice day.

Kevin

Expectations: Seminar Knowledge Management and leadership

osubalogh — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 07:20:36 -0500

I'm interesting in two main topics:
1) Sharing knowledge, how do I convince people it's worth trying.

2) "Off the shelf" knowledge base products vs. a mature home grown php/my sql system we use at the 8help support center at The Ohio University.