SCILS Knowledge Café sponsored by the Knowledge Institute

November 6, 2008

    Twenty people joined the knowledge café including students and faculty from three SCILS departments as well as RU libraries faculty and staff. A brief “whip around” allowed those participating to say what knowledge they gained during the previous week, and the extraordinary events of election night 2008 were invoked along with other topics. A short introduction – Knowledge Management 101 – was given so that those not familiar with the current state of KM/Knowledge Sharing could be understood before commencing the Knowledge Café.

With carafes of coffee on each of three tables, the interdisciplinary groups explored three questions:

-         What are the burning research issues in your field?

-         Do these research areas align with each other, and if so, how?

-         How do these research areas relate to knowledge sharing or knowledge management?

The burning research issues that emerged:

-         How are information and communication content packaged? How can content be packaged to be more user friendly, more accessible and more affordable?

-         Information has no value if we can’t trust it. How do we derive credibility?

-         Knowledge destruction – old knowledge needs to be destroyed to make way for the new, but what are some effective ways to do this?

-         Knowledge may be lost in the “tower of Babel.” How can we get past the difficulties of not understanding each other because of information overload, different vocabularies, different cultural understandings?

-         Knowledge Integration – what are some models we can use to integrate knowledge management into various work processes.

-         There is a dissonance between play and work in learning. How can we capture the “curiosity factor” that propels children to read Harry Potter or others to engage in activities that are engrossing? Can gaming and simulation roles help in making learning work play and finding play in learning?

-         How can incentives be used to help people share knowledge especially for those in organizations that are geographically distributed?

-         How can barriers of culture and power be transcended in order to break down resistance to share knowledge?

-         How can technology be used to help share knowledge through tools such as social networking, etc.? How can appropriate media for sharing knowledge be chosen?

-         How can we measure the benefits of using technology for knowledge sharing?

               In an effort to unpack the discussion and develop common themes, the assembled group articulated the following:

 Possible common themes and research areas for  those associated with the Knowledge Institute:

1.       Trust and social networking can be explored in the context of collaborative design and knowledge integration. How do we choose the media and method of presentation for ease of use, accessibility, and clarity?

2.       Through interaction with the Web, learning may take on different characteristics than we’re accustomed to in traditional learning. These issues can be explored from the standpoint of play and learning or new learning styles and effective educational models.

3.       Play is related to work, and just as play is social and collaborative, learning takes place through group activity as well through solitary knowledge assimilation. What are some ways we can explore what we know about knowledge integration, information and communication technology, and credible content in order to formulate learning goals in a context of appropriate social interaction and challenging projects?

It was announced that the next Knowledge Institute meeting will take place on Thursday, December 11, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM in SCILS room #323.