Knowledge Sharing, Learning at the Point of Need, and
Learning Asset Integration
Breakout Session # 312
Larry Floyd
July 19, 2010
3:45 - 5:00pm
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Purpose & Agenda
Purpose
Overview of Knowledge Sharing and
Learning Asset Integration
Agenda
 What is Knowledge Sharing?
 What is a Community of Practice?
 Community Building Process
 Questions to Consider
 Overview of DAU’s Knowledge Management
System and Its Integration of Learning Assets
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DAU Mission
Provide a global learning environment to support a mission-ready
Defense Acquisition Workforce that develops, delivers, and sustains effective and affordable warfighting capabilities.
Impact acquisition excellence through:
 Acquisition certification and leadership training
 Mission assistance to acquisition organizations
 Online knowledgesharing resources
 Continuous learning assets
 Strategic workforce planning

Located with our Customers
Region Location
Capital/Northeast Fort Belvoir, VA
Mid-Atlantic
Midwest
South
West
California, MD
Kettering, OH
Huntsville, AL
San Diego, CA
Workforce
31,566
23,110
18,604
28,360
25,465
We are part of the community, not just a place to take classes.

Knowledge Management is about…
 Solving known problems with known solutions
 Sharing & transferring the right know-how
 Applying good practices and key learnings
 Building relationships and trust
 Making it easy to find the right people who know
 Leveraging your organizations collective intellect

Knowledge resides with people
 Knowledge loss via:
 Downsizing
 Retirement
 Mergers/Acquisitions
 People movement - job changes – teams disband

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.
- Cultivating Communities of Practice: A Guide to Managing Knowledge
Etienne Wenger, William Snyder, Richard A. McDermott
Communities of practice are groups of people who come together to share and to learn from one another face-to-face and virtually.
They are held together by a common interest in a body of knowledge and are driven by a desire and need to share problems, experiences, insights, templates, tools, and best practices.
APQC’s Best-Practice Report,
Successfully Implementing Knowledge Management (APQC, 2000).
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Subject Matter Expert Richard McDermott identified four primary strategic intents for communities:
 Helping – provide a forum for community members to help each other solve everyday work problems
 Best Practice – develop and disseminate best practices, guidelines, and procedures for their members to use


Knowledge Stewarding – organize, manage, and steward a body of knowledge from which members can draw
Innovation – create breakthrough ideas, knowledge, and practices
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 What is the community’s purpose?
 How does the community support the corporate mission, goals or business objectives?
 How does the community add value?
 How does it determine it is adding value?
 Who has a stake in the community success?
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 What benefit does the community provide to the organization?
 What issues/problems resonate with the business leaders?
 Is there a sense of urgency linked to the work of the community?
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 Reduction in hours needed to solve problems
 Decrease learning curve
 Decrease rework and prevent reinvention
 Increase innovative/breakthrough ideas
 Avoidance of costly mistakes
 Improved speed of response
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 Identify a formal organizational advocate for the community and champions to legitimize the activities of the community
 Establish Core Working Group (10-15) to drive establishment of the community
 Gather and document community requirements/needs – knowledge audit, conduct requirements focus groups, surveys
 Aggregate community requirements and target areas of opportunity – quick wins
 Marry effort to availability of resources and develop timeline
 Address most critical needs of the community first

Introduction to Acquisition Community
Connection (ACC)

Acquisition Community Connection https://acc.dau.mil
-ACC is a nest of collaborative spaces created through partnerships w/Services,
Agencies, and Industry to support growth beyond internal resources and leverages one tool in a cost effective way
-Shared infrastructure reduces cost for DoD
-Available 24/7
-Much of the content is available even w/o login
-Provides central location for workforce to access related knowledge
-Creates conditions that foster collaboration across organizational boundaries – end result is that individuals begin to recognize the value of knowledge sharing

Communities are aligned to AT&L functional areas and business processes
• Facilitate workplace effectiveness
• Promote career-long learning
• Available 24/7 – when and where you want

https://acc.dau.mil/cm
-One of the cornerstone CoPs in the
ACC (started in 2001)
--Significant partnering with Federal
Government
-Process & Mission areas provide structure for CoP and have contributed to improved focus in DAU
Courses
-Tightly integrated with DAU course material (and was first CoP to share actual course material as contributions on the ACC)

https://acc.dau.mil/contingency
-Grew out of need identified by small group of members from Air
Force (Workspace to SIA to CoP)
-Contingency Community now has more than 2,400 members
--Supports both open content and restricted After Action Reports for deploying Service Members to share lessons learned/prepare them deployment

https://acc.dau.mil
ACC Stats
•
99,565 members
•
~2000 new members/month
•
~7 million page views/month
•
~200,000 visits/month
•
46 Communities & SIAs
• 700+ Workspaces

Is this true: 80 % of learning takes place on the job (and not in a class)?
Informal = 80%
Informal: the degree which the learner has control of both the objective and the means.
Formal = 20%
Formal: the degree which the institution has control of both the objective and the means.
“Learning in the Workplace”, Marsick and Watkins, 1990.

Filling the formal learning gaps with comprehensive learning assets
…with
Formal
& Informal
Learning
Policies Webcasts
Lessons learned
Tools
Regulations
Videos
Classroom Materials
Browseable
DL/CL courseware
Scenarios
Simulations
Formal Courses
Providing a Constant Support Presence in DoD Acquisition Careers

Need an Architecture to Integrate
Learning
Knowledge Sharing
DAP - Online Portal to Big A and HCI knowledge
ACC - DoD's online collaborative communities
Virtual Library – Online connection to DAU research collection
Training Courses
Classroom & online
DAWIA Core, Core Plus, &
Executive
Continuous Learning
CL Modules - Online, selfpaced modules learning modules
Conferences PEO /
SYSCOM, Business
Managers, DAU Acquisition
Community Symposium
Mission Assistance
Consulting - Helping organizations solve complex acquisition problems
Targeted Training - Tailored organizational training
Rapid Deployment Training -
On-site and online training on the latest AT&L policies
Formal and informal learning at the point of need

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Learning at the Point of Need?
It’s not about classroom or web, it’s about selecting the right delivery medium.
Learning at the Point of
Need is about giving the learner more control!
Formal and Informal Learning must be integrated!

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 What are the most urgent clusters of problems?
 What outcomes do we want to improve within and across agencies?
 What is in it for me?
 What focus do we want to start with?
 Where are low-hanging fruits with visible impact?
 What knowledge to share:
 What knowledge do we have? What kind of knowledge? Who has it? Who needs it?
 What knowledge to develop:
 What knowledge are we missing?

 What knowledge to document:
 What documents, tools, and other artifacts do we need?
 Opportunities for mutual help and thinking
 Who are the key players?
 Is everyone here? Who else should be? What types of members? Where is expertise?
 What would make members want to engage actively?
 How to make the community energizing and activities useful?