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Knowledge Management
What is it?
Why do you need to know?
How do you support it?
Kari Branjord, University of Minnesota
Toru Iiyoshi, Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching
Paul Treuer, University of Minnesota Duluth
Knowledge Management:
Presentation Outline
1. How should Higher Education integrate
knowledge management tools and process?
(Kari Branjord)
2. National Agenda to Advance the Scholarship
of Teaching (Toru Iiyoshi)
3. Campus Implementation of Knowledge
Management Tools (Paul Treuer)
4. Summary and Questions
How should Higher Education integrate
knowledge management tools and process?
 What is knowledge management?
 Why is knowledge management important in
higher education?
 What are knowledge management tools in
higher education?
 What is the framework for understanding
knowledge management?
Framework for Knowledge Management
Selectivity
Repurposability
Interoperability
Individual Control and Ownership
Openness
Selectivity
 Example: A researcher is completing a
grant proposal.
With whom should she collaborate?
What should she include?
How should she highlight her
accomplishments?
How does she hone her research question?
Selectivity defined
Not all knowledge is created equal. Determine that
which is important prior to moving forward. This
includes the idea of compressing complex
knowledge into a simpler presentation. Brown talks
about not crushing knowledge under its own weight.
This is not to say that it should be diluted; rather it
should be distilled to its essence and presented in
clear and obvious ways. Without forethought, the
workgroup and/or institution will drown in
information and knowledge and not be able to do
anything about it.
Selectivity example 2
 Enterprise Integration: How do you choose what
to integrate?
 Criteria can include value to the individual,
contribution to accelerating a process, credibility with
the intended audience, etc.
 High value targets for integration are demographic
data, academic records, job information, etc.
 Ideas I didn’t think about: Portfolio should integrate
with RefWorks and del.icio.us
Repurposability
 A tenure track faculty member has created entries
for every presentation he has given in his areas of
interest. How can this information be reused?
 Tenure review
 Annual performance review
 Grant proposal
 Sharing with students
 Collaboration with peers
 What if it were granular enough to be (re)combined
with other artifacts to tell a more compelling story?
Repurposability defined
There are several concepts included in this term.
Terms such as granularity, re-usability, and enteronce-use-many fall under this heading. In order for
knowledge to be useful, it must be small enough to
(re)combine with other pieces of knowledge, yet
large enough to be meaningful. If individuals have to
constantly re-enter knowledge or information that is
already known to another system, sharing will
diminish. No one has time to rehash the same stuff;
individuals must be able to reuse the knowledge they
have already documented.
Repurposability example 2
 A medical resident creates a bibliography for a
research project. She wants to continue to add to it
as she develops research or personal interest in the
area. She shares it:
 With peers to obtain further knowledge
 With her program director who can help focus her
research even more effectively
 As part of her professional development records at annual
review time
 In an application to be head resident
Interoperability
 Imagine the different roles a person plays in life. At each
transition, he wants to preserve his history and continue
to build upon his base of knowledge.
 A student starts a Portfolio as an undergraduate at the U of M.
 This student goes to Grad School at IU.
 Upon earning his PhD, he is awarded a tenure-track position at
a UMD.
 As a tenured professor, he is involved in research, public
engagement, and teaching.
 His knowledge never stops growing. This requires
constant management and re-evaluation, as well as the
ability to move his Portfolio information as he changes
institutions.
Interoperability Defined
Is a corollary to repurposability. It is not enough
to be able to reuse collections of knowledge
within a system; systems must be aware of the
knowledge that other systems house and must be
able to access it. This requires standards and
integration technologies. Trusted sourcing and
cross-system authentication is vital. Knowledge
does not exist in just one domain; it must be
permitted to “live” outside of a particular
context, such as a class.
Individual Control and
Ownership Defined
Knowledge creation is an invisible activity that occurs in the
human brain (Davenport, 1998). Only when this becomes
explicit with supporting artifacts can it be shared. The
knowledge that a person possesses or created is her own. It
becomes more valuable, and the rate of acquisition accelerates
when a person is participating in communities or groups. Thus,
KM technologies, by definition, facilitate this sharing of
knowledge in social networking. It is imperative, however, that
the focus and highest level of consideration be given to the
individuals rights to control and responsibilities to share.
Individual C & O example
 A professor has been pursuing a research interest for years.
She wants to propose a new course in her department to
share this knowledge.
 First, she selects artifacts to demonstrate that her area is significant




and appropriate for undergraduate education.
She pulls work products from her sponsored projects, her blog, her
community of practice site, and her bibliography
She shares the proposal and supporting documentation and ideas
electronically with colleagues inside and outside her university.
As she receives feedback, she modifies her proposal, continuing the
cycle until she is satisfied that it is good enough to propose
officially.
Her new course is approved, and the learning objects she gathered
populate her course web site, and the approved proposal is uploaded
to the administrative systems.
Openness
 The information management group of a public institution
has a very open, non-hierarchical environment. They work
to ensure that everyone from the public to the president to
the individual has access to the information needed in a
context that makes it useful. Given this mission, their
department culture contributes to knowledge management.
 Staff share their findings with one another. Holding knowledge is
not power; sharing knowledge is powerful.
 No secrets are kept between the workers and the management.
 Ideas are documented and shared in all directions
 Prioritization of projects occurs as a group, using best practice
methods to estimate size, duration, and value.
Openness defined
KM technologies and processes must escape
proprietary boundaries. This is not an advertisement
for open source. This is to suggest that only when
knowledge is shared and made explicit to all is it truly
valuable. When it is exposed, others can comment and
build upon it, make connections in new ways, and
return the ideas and knowledge to the originator in
enriched forms. While open source software is an
example of this in practice, the connectedness the
internet permits can enable all knowledge processes to
behave this way.
National Agenda to Advance
the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
 Mission, vision, and work of the Knowledge Media
Laboratory (KML) of the Carnegie Foundation
 Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
 KEEP Toolkit, Workspace, and Knowledge Repositories
 Examples of Best Practices;
 Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching
 Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate
 Howard Hughes Medical Institute
 Open Education: MERLOT, and OSPI
Knowledge Media Laboratory (KML):
Mission, Vision, & Work
The Carnegie Foundation’s Knowledge Media Laboratory
helps educational institutions take advantage of the growing
power of emerging technologies and new media to turn the
knowledge implicit in effective teaching and learning into
ideas, theories, and resources that can be used widely in a
variety of contexts and situations.
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
 Make teaching and leaning visible and public
 Review and reflect on each other’s work
 Learn and build on each other’s work
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
 Make teaching and leaning visible and public
 Review and reflect on each other’s work
 Learn and build on each other’s work
How can technology support educational knowledge
representation, sharing, and building?
KEEP Toolkit
Community Workspace
Knowledge Repositories
(Galleries & Exhibitions)
Make Teaching and Leaning Visible and Public
 Help select and organize resources,
artifacts, data, and evidence related
to teaching and learning
 Prompt analysis and reflection
 Help transform collections of
“stuff” into compelling and
engaging knowledge
representations
KEEP Toolkit
(http://www.cfkeep.org)
 Help present individual and
collective knowledge
Make Teaching and Leaning Visible and Public
To examine, select and organize
teaching and learning objects and
transform them into visually
appealing and intellectually engaging
knowledge representation (with
reflections) is a daunting task.
KM Framework #1: Selectivity
The KEEP Toolkit provides the user with the necessary
guidance and scaffolding for better selection, organization,
reflection and representation through “flexibly-designed”
templates (including frameworks, prompts and directions).
Scholarship of T&L Project Course Transformation
Class Anatomy
An Example Template (Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate)
KM Framework #2: Repurposability/Reusability
An Example: Teacher Education
KM Framework #2: Repurposability/Reusability
“Triple Play” in Teacher Education (Carnegie Quest Project)
Teacher Educators
Student Teachers
Experienced Teachers
KM Framework #3: Interoperability/Portability
KEEP Toolkit + Community Workspace
(Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching)
KM Framework #4: Individual Control/Ownership
Multi-layered knowledge representations
for deep collective understanding
(CASTL Campus Program,
CASTL, CID, HHMI,
and many others)
Institutions
Departments
Link, stitch, exhibit, and
remix knowledge
representations and objects
(Creative Commons?)
Faculty
Students
KM Framework #5: Openness
Toward Building a National/International Distributed-Knowledge
Network of Teaching and Learning
CID Gallery
MERLOT Gallery
OSP Case Studies Gallery
Smart Indexing &
FederatedSearch Tools
KML Gallery
CASTL Gallery
Public Snapshot Archive
KEEP Toolkit Users: 8,300+
Snapshots: 33,000+
Projects/Initiatives: 100+
Implementing KM: Challenges and Issues
 Departments’, Faculty’s, and students’ lack of
incentive
 Technical and intellectual challenges
 Time efficiency
 Return on investment
 Lack of support and guidance for the
developmental reflective processes
 Knowledge representation “literacy” issues
(reflective writing, multimedia composition, etc.)
 Sustainability
Implementing KM: Keys to Success
 Link KM initiatives with present and future needs
(e.g., on-going transformation/reform efforts at
your institution)
 Have stakeholders involved in planning and action
 Find/develop useful tools and resources to make
your KM processes most efficient and painless
(ideally engaging and rewarding)
 Invite key faculty/programs/departments to pilot
 Document and share successes and challenges
 Recognize excellence and make it public
 Build a support capacity to sustain your efforts
Campus Implementation
of Knowledge Management Tools
Vision: The University of
Minnesota Duluth’s
Knowledge Management
Center (KMC) is
committed to evaluation,
assessment, development,
and deployment of tools
for managing personal,
educational, and
professional records.
Chancellor Kathryn A. Martin speaking at
KMC Grand Opening in August 2005
Campus Implementation of
Knowledge Management Tools
Students
Faculty
Staff
UMD’s Knowledge Management Center
Best Practice: ePortfolio use by UMD’s
Chemical Engineering Program
 Entry Wizard prompts students
to put artifacts in ePortfolio
 Artifacts are repurposed for:
Admission to program
Graduation from program
ABET accreditation
Employment following
graduation
Best Practice: ePortfolio use by UMD’s
Chemical Engineering Program
Selectivity
Repurposability
Interoperability
Individual Control
and ownership
Openness
Best Practice: ePortfolio use by UMD’s
Chemical Engineering Program
Implementation Tips
1. Chemical Engineering faculty identify portfolio learning
artifacts for entry wizards and presentation templates
2. Portfolio sharing is a requirement, used for summative
purposes at key programmatic milestones
3. All students are taught how to use portfolio in a freshman
course. Faculty are taught how to use portfolio in short
workshops.
4. Course projects and assignments throughout program
meet identified portfolio requirements
Best Practice: Health Services Use of
Managed Information System
Health Services enters and
shares information and
knowledge through MIS
system, a web-based,
password protected,
database for entering and
sharing:
•Strategic Objectives
•Measures
•Evaluation
Best Practice: Health Services Use of
Managed Information System
Health Services is part of
Academic Support and
Student Life (ASSL):
 Management by




objectives
Unit and Process
Teams
Quarterly Reviews
Baldrige Assessments
MIS System
Best Practice: Health Services Use of
Managed Information System
Selectivity
Repurposability
Interoperability
Individual
Control and
Ownership
Openness
Best Practice: Health Services Use of
Managed Information System
Implementation Tips
• The Health Services director, assisted by an
administrative aide, developed strategies and measures
• The objectives and measures were peer reviewed
• The process of developing objectives and measures
was done by all HS Staff.
• Results and evaluative comments are shared with HS
staff, Group Leaders, Process Teams, and
administrators
• Results are tied to unit planning process action steps
Emerging Best Practice:
UM Enterprise System Advising Tools
On-line UM System Advising
Tools are integrated in
ePortfolio platform:




Advisee List
APAS Report (degree Audit)
Academic Profile in
UM Advisor Reports
College of Natural Resources Advising
Emerging Best Practice:
UM Enterprise System Advising Tools
On-line UM System Advising
Tools are integrated in
ePortfolio platform:





Advisee List
APAS Report (degree Audit)
Academic Profile in
UM Advisor Reports
Grad Planner
College of Natural Resources Advising
Knowledge Management:
Summary and Questions
 Knowledge is created in an information-rich
world through processes
 Technology facilitates creation and sharing of
knowledge
 Higher Education is an environment where
knowledge is created and shared
 KM is about contextualizing information and
knowledge through the use of rapidly evolving
on-line/electronic communication tools