Knowledge Acquisition and Application

1. Knowledge Acquisition and Application Chapter 6

2. Knowledge Management Cycle • Knowledge Acquisition: Reuse • Promote efficiency • Lead to Innovation • More effective ways of doing things • Knowledge Application • Application of knowledge is filtered through human brain and applied to job tasks

3. Knowledge Reuse • Most jobs require certain amount of knowledge creation but we don’t want everyone creating new knowledge • Want to apply existing knowledge in new or unfamiliar situations • Want “small ideas” from individuals, not reinvention of jobs • Example: • Lawyer reuses knowledge created in another case • Programmer employs a subroutine that someone else created • Effective knowledge workers reuse their own knowledge all the time

4. Individual Level • Personal (Individual) knowledge acquisition and application • Personalization and Profiling • Cognitive Styles and MBTI • Bloom Taxonomy of Learning Objectives i

5. Cognitive Styles and MBTI • Cognitive differences • We all have preferred habits of thought that influence how we make decisions, how we interact with others and how we prefer to learn • These are neither good nor bad • They emerge early in our lives and tend to remain fairly stable through the years • People tend to choose professions that reward or correspond to their preferred cognitive styles • Myers-Briggs Type Indicator • an example of a widely used tool to assess cognitive styles 5

6. Meyers Briggs Personality Type Indicator • Four Dimensions of Personality Type • How we interact with the world and where we direct our energy • The kind of information we naturally notice • How we make decisions • Whether we prefer to live in a more structured way or a more spontaneous way Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

7. Extraversion Introversion Interest Orientation E I Outer world of actions, objects, and people Inner world of ideas and concepts Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

8. Sensing iNtuition Perception S N Immediate reality and direct experience Inferred meanings and relationships Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

9. Thinking Feeling Judgment T F Reliability of logical order – cause and effect Priorities based on personal importance and values Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

10. Judgment Perception Environment Orientation J P Judging attitude – Control of events and systematic planning Spontaneity – Curious, awaiting events and adapting to them Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

12. Bloom’s Hierarchy of Learning Objectives Conceptual systems theory that describes progressively complex levels of learning achievement – as evidenced by learner behaviours Prerequisite structure Need to master lower level before moving up to the next level E.g. your course objectives Good model for knowledge acquisition 12 B. Bloom (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain

13. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 13

14. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) Evaluation Synthesis • Define • Memorize • Repeat • Record • List • Recall • Name • Relate Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 14

15. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) Evaluation • Restate • Discuss • Describe • Recognize • Explain • Express • Identify • Locate • Report • Review Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 15

16. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) • Translate • Interpret • Apply • Employ • Use • Demonstrate • Dramatize • Practice • Illustrate • Operate • Schedule • Sketch Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 16

17. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) • Compose • Analyze • Differentiate • Appraise • Calculate • Experiment • Compare • Contrast • Inventory • Question • Solve • Examine Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 17

18. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) • Distinguish • Plan • Propose • Design • Formulate • Arrange • Assemble • Construct • Create • Collect • Set up • Organize • Manage Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 18

19. Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued) • Judge • Evaluate • Rate • Value • Revise • Score • Select • Assess • Prioritize • Justify • Debate Evaluation Synthesis Analysis Application Comprehension Knowledge 19

20. Example: Course Objectives Use a framework and a clear language for intellectual capital and organizational memory concepts Model the flow, sharing and leveraging of intellectual assets Identify some of the principal cultural characteristics that are necessary to encourage organizational learning and innovation Describe the links between individual and organizational learning Monitor, value, categorize, report intellectual capital 20

21. Knowledge Reuse • Knowledge management projects have pursued many approaches to capturing and reusing knowledge. • These include creating document repositories; recording meetings, conversations, and email exchanges; organizing discussions in document databases; and providing annotation systems. • Key obstacles to success are: • Digital objects are difficult to find. • When found, objects are difficult to assess. • Systems are not strong at identifying people who can help find or assess objects.

22. Organization Size • Small organizations focus on knowledge acquisition • with few people and limited dispersal of knowledge, they seem to face relatively few obstacles sharing or reusing knowledge. • Large organizations, in contrast, have difficulty finding and reusing knowledge. • Even determining whether the knowledge exists within the organization can be difficult. • For example, a pharmaceutical company found that although clinical tests of a compound are expensive, searching for possible past test results of a compound would be more expensive than retesting some of them.

23. Knowledge Reuse • Document management systems, directories of personnel identifying areas of expertise, and other repositories are constructed and used in some circumstances • KM systems that focus on gathering, recording, and accessing reams of “knowledge” at expense of person-to-person interaction have been expensive and unsatisfactory

24. Successful Internalization of Knowledge • Individual must access and understand available knowledge • And consciously decide this is better way of doing things • Apply knowledge to real-world situation

25. What is a Learning Organization? A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights. New ideas are essential if learning is to occur Sometimes they are created from scratch (flash) At other times they come from outside the organization Triggers for organizational learning but by themselves, ideas do not bring about organizational learning: needs to be accompanied by changes in the way that work gets done – otherwise, no potential for improvement 25

26. Management: Building Blocks Learning organizations are skilled at 5 main activities: Systematic problem solving e.g. use scientific approach Experimentation with new approaches Learning from their own experience & past history (lessons learned, project reviews) Learning from the lessons learned and best practices of others (benchmarking, networking) Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout the organization (training, lunch and learns…) 26

27. Steps Leading to a Learning Organization Foster an environment that is conducive to learning Time for reflection, analysis, to think about strategic plans, dissect customer needs, assess current work systems and invent new products Open up boundaries and stimulate the exchange of ideas – destroy the silos & ivory towers with conferences, meetings, project teams Create learning forums: programs or events designed with explicit learning goals e.g. study missions, committees, symposiums, etc. 27

28. Lessons Learned and Knowledge Inventories Whenever an exceptional situation occurs – opportunities for best practices (creative innovations) and lessons learned to be drawn from them Need to be captured, described and preserved to be accessible again when needed Continued learning of employees, communities and of the organization 28