Course Description
The management of the knowledge assets within an enterprise has become increasingly important in a knowledge-based economy. Knowledge Management (KM) is an emerging computing discipline that provides an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, operationalizing, sharing and evaluating an enterprise's explicit and tacit knowledge assets.
This course provides an technology-oriented introduction to the field of knowledge management, and examines technical issues related to the management of knowledge from an enterprise perspective. The course is designed along the lines of the standard knowledge management lifecycle, including topics that address knowledge acquisition, organization, processing, sharing and operationalization within an enterprise.
Course Objectives
The objective of this course is to provide a conceptual understanding of the theory and practice of KM. The course will introduce a KM framework comprising three components: (1) KM Strategy will cover guiding KM theories to determine the knowledge gaps within an enterprise and KM methodologies to implement a practical KM solution; (2) KM Solution will discuss enabling techniques to facilitate the creation, operationalization and sharing of knowledge within an enterprise; and (3) KM Evaluation will discuss metrics to measure the impact of the KM solution.
The course aims to provide practical know-how about how to design a KM solution in response to an enterprise’s knowledge gaps and needs; how to develop a KM info-structure leveraging various intelligent techniques; how to organize the various knowledge modalities in an enterprise memory; how to ensure knowledge sharing via the enterprise memory and how to measure the impact of the KM solution in terms of improved knowledge creation, utilization and sharing.
Course Delivery
The course content will be delivered by the instructor twice weekly in 90 minute lectures. The lectures will be in a seminar style, the instructor introducing a topic and leading the discussion with participation from the students. The lectures are designed to introduce students to knowledge management concepts, and to demonstrate their application.. The role of the instructor is that of a facilitator, introducing to the student various knowledge management concepts and methods, thus facilitating the student to apply the 'right' knowledge management methods to solve enterprise-related problems/issues. The student is expect to take charge and responsibility of his/her learning process by collecting the relevant resource material and understand in-depth the concepts/methods/strategies to the point where they can be applied to solve his/her knowledge management problem.
Students will be required to conduct a research project (see sidebar for tab titled Projects) and periodically present their research progress, findings and solution (see sidebar for tab titled Presentations). This is to enable a collaborative learning environment in which students learn by application of theoretical concepts and share their understanding experiences with others in the class.
Course Reference Material
This course does not have a designated textbook. The instructor will source relevant material from different books and research papers. Some useful knowledge management texts are as follows:
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E. Waltz. Knowledge Management in the Intelligence Enterprise. Artech House Publishers, 2003. |
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I. Watson. Applying Knowledge Management, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 2002 |
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D. Morey, M. Maybury & B. Thuraisingham. Knowledge Management. MIT Press, 2002. |
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RJ. Sternberg & JA. Horvath JA (Eds.) Tacit Knowledge in Professional Practice—Researcher and Practitioner Perspectives. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999. |
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I. Nonaka & H. Takeuchi. The Knowledge Creating Company. Oxford University Press, 1995. |
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S. Albert & K. Bradley. Managing Knowledge: Experts, Agencies and Organisations. Cambridge University Press, 1997. |
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V. Allen. The Knowledge Evolution: Expanding Organizational Intelligence. Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997. |
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Davenport T, Prusak L. Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, 1998. |
In addition students are advised to search for journal and conference articles. Quite a large number of knowledge management articles are available on the WWW.
Course Regulations
The course regulations and evaluation scheme is given in the course regulations section (see sidebar for tab titled Regulations). Students are advised to routinely check the course website for updates and announcements. It is the student's responsibility to pro-actively to get up-to-date information from the course website.
The deadlines for all deliverables have been set well in advance and students are required to find and follow the stated deadlines. The evaluation criteria for the various components of the course have been provided well in advance and students should prepare themselves accordingly.
Good Luck and Happy Knowledge Management