Growing the eLIDA CAMEL Community of Practice Case Study

2011 ◽  
pp. 443-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Jameson
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Social Networking ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Collaborative Planning ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Building Trust ◽  
Self Help

This chapter outlines key design features that may be necessary to ‘grow’ a successful intentionally designed community of practice (CoP) in education. Prior research on communities of practice (CoPs) has emphasised their benefits for knowledge management and the relative difficulties involved in ‘managing’ CoPs, given that such communities are frequently conceptualised as self-organizing entities. The chapter reports on reflections from the JISC-funded (2006-08) eLIDA CAMEL project, which created a community of practice in education based on the CAMEL CoP model imported from a Uruguayan self-help farming group and adapted by JISC infoNet and ALT (2005-06). The chapter provides a case study of a successful inter-institutional CoP and recommends that certain indispensable design features may be necessary to ‘grow’ CoPs, including sufficiency of duration of the community, limitations in shared focus, collaborative planning, expert leadership/ facilitation, an emphasis on building trust, explicating tacit knowledge and social networking in a framework fostering practitioner expertise.

Where Knowledge Management Resides within Project Management

2005 ◽  
pp. 138-154 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Owen ◽  
Frada Burstein
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Project Management ◽  
Knowledge Transfer ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Formal Knowledge ◽  
Engineering Consulting ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter explores how an engineering consulting company creates, manages, and reuses knowledge within its projects. It argues that the informal transfer and reuse of knowledge plays a more crucial role than formal knowledge in providing the greatest benefit to the organization. The culture of the organization encourages a reliance on networks (both formal and informal) for the exchange of tacit knowledge, rather than utilizing explicit knowledge. This case study highlights the importance of understanding the drivers of knowledge transfer and reuse in projects. This will provide researchers with an insight into how knowledge management integrates with project management.

Facilitator Toolkit for Building and Sustaining Virtual Communities of Practice

2011 ◽  
pp. 202-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Kimball ◽  
Amy Ladd
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Collaborative Work ◽  
Work Training ◽  
Virtual Communities Of Practice ◽  
Over Time

The boundaries of a Community of Practice (CoP) have changed significantly because of changes in organizations and the nature of the work they do. Organizations have become more distributed across geography and across industries. Relationships between people inside an organization and those previously considered outside (customers, suppliers, managers of collaborating organizations, other stakeholders) are becoming more important. In addition, organizations have discovered the value of collaborative work due to the new emphasis on Knowledge Management—harvesting the learning and the experience of members of the organization so that it is available to the whole organization. This chapter offers a practical toolkit of best practices, tips and examples from the authors’ work training leaders to launch and sustain a virtual CoP, including tips for chartering the community, defining roles, and creating the culture that will sustain the community over time.

A Knowledge Management Process in Communities of Practice of Engineering Based on the SECI Model for Knowledge

2012 ◽  
pp. 134-149
Author(s):  
Akila Sarirete ◽  
Azeddine Chikh
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Explicit Knowledge ◽  
Management Process ◽  
High Importance ◽  
Web Technologies ◽  
Seci Model

With the vast movement toward promoting and developing models, practices, and technological environments in the engineering domain, a need exists to facilitate communication, collaboration, and coordination among its actors. Communities of Practice (CoPs) represent the natural and logical solution to answer these needs. In this paper, the authors propose a knowledge management process to exploit tacit and explicit knowledge in the engineering domain within the framework of a CoP of engineering. The approach used in this work introduces new elements in the Nonaka’s SECI model for knowledge creation. To validate the proposed process, a qualitative case study has been conducted on two CoPs, “CPsquare” and “The Cisco Learning Network”. It has been shown that CoPs and social learning impact learning as well as knowledge sharing. The use of web technologies and socio-technical approach in the management of knowledge is of high importance.

Knowledge Retention in the Service Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Valio Dominguez Gonzalez
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Service Sector ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Knowledge Retention ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
Multinational Company ◽  
A Company

Currently, the challenge for researchers and managers in the area of knowledge management is to study methods and models that promote and facilitate the acquisition, retention, distribution and utilization of knowledge by individuals and groups of organizations. The main objective of this paper is to analyze how a company that operates in multi-site service sector is organized internally in order to retain the acquired knowledge. The research strategy used is the simple case study, applied in a large multinational company. The findings points out that the service providing organizations should focus their knowledge retention process in a specific department toward this goal. This department has the task of identifying and registering the best practices and learned lessons among all the employees working on different clients in databases, in addition, to promote the integration of these employees in order to promote the distribution of tacit knowledge.

Leveraging environmental scanning methods to identify knowledge management activities in transportation

2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 579-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denise Bedford ◽  
Frances Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Action Plan ◽  
Support Network ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Environmental Scan ◽  
Transportation Sector

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to highlight the level of knowledge management (KM) activity underway in the transportation sector. The environmental scan highlighted common business drivers for KM across transportation agencies. Design/methodology/approach – The project team used outreach methods, environmental scanning techniques, targeted interviews constructed around amplifying questions to identify stakeholders. A two-day workshop was sponsored, where stakeholders could discuss common business interests and exchange KM practices. Findings – The environmental scan methodology was successful and will be carried over to two other economic sectors in the coming year. The identification and elaboration of business drivers through the amplification process was a valuable contribution. Sharing of KM practices was highly effective because the participants were working from a common set of business drivers. Research limitations/implications – This activity has implications for other sectors. Well-designed environmental scans of KM programs and initiatives can identify stakeholders for intra-sector communities of practice. These communities of practice provide a support network for knowledge professionals working within organizations, provide the input for intra-sector KM research agendas, and a collaborative action plan for moving that agenda forward. Practical implications – The workshop participants identified six action items to advance the practice of KM within their institutions. Social implications – The environmental scan and the workshop resulted in the creation of a community of practice of knowledge professionals for the transportation sector. The community of practice will work to advance KM within the transportation sector. Originality/value – The authors believe the scan approach provides a new and valuable approach to encouraging the practice of KM in the field of transportation. The authors also suggest that this approach may be used effectively in other sectors to promote the discipline.

scholarly journals Improving the Praxis of Conversation Club Leaders in a Community of Practice: A Case study in a Self-Access Centre

2019 ◽  
pp. 165-180
Author(s):  
Pamela Sigala Villa ◽  
Adelina Ruiz-Guerrero ◽  
Laura María Zurutuza Roaro
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Effective Practices ◽  
Foreign Language Proficiency ◽  
Club Leader

The role that a conversation club plays in the improvement of foreign language proficiency of its users in a self-access centre varies according to the strategies a conversation club leader applies. This paper reports the changes made by conversation club leaders (CCLs), who formed a community of practice (CoP) under the methodology of Knowledge Management (KM) to become aware of the effective and non-effective practices they employed through recording themselves, sharing their experiences, listening to each other, and analyzing their performance. A total of six conversation club leaders participated in the case study that took place in 2016. The outcome was a series of strategies generated by the CCLs and shared with all new CCLs in the self-access centre.

scholarly journals Teacher Interculturality in an English as a Second Language Elementary Pull-Out Program: Teacher as Broker in the School’s Community of Practice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Durham
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Community Of Practice ◽  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
School Students ◽  
Ethnographic Interviews ◽  
Pull Out ◽  
Cultural Boundaries ◽  
Cultural Experiences

This case study investigated how one teacher, Lidia (a pseudonym), used her own cross-cultural experiences to socially and academically assist elementary school students who were crossing cultural boundaries of their own. This study used ethnographic interviews and classroom observations to explore Lidia’s experiences and struggles as she crossed cultural boundaries and built intercultural competence and how those experiences related to her teaching methods. Lidia used stories, multicultural images, and the students’ home languages so that her students could become confident in their multicultural and multilingual identities instead of solely assimilating. Teaching interculturally for Lidia meant empowering students to balance their home cultures while creating meaningful opportunities for them to practice English and school cultural norms. This study adds to literature on intercultural competence and communities of practice by exploring how interculturality may be advantageous in helping teachers work with diverse and international students by allowing them to act as brokers within the school’s community.

Communities of Practice Based Business Performance Evaluation

2011 ◽  
pp. 201-221
Author(s):  
Mei-Tai Chu ◽  
Rajiv Khosla
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Resource Allocation ◽  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Organizational Demands ◽  
Decision Making Processes

Knowledge Management (KM) is known to enhance an organization’s performance and innovation via the knowledge sharing both explicitly and tacitly. Moreover, Communities of Practice (CoPs) has been accepted as an effective way to retrieve and facilitate tacit knowledge particularly. Performance Evaluation of CoPs will significantly impact an organization’s strategic focus, knowledge transfer, resource allocation, and management performance. Meanwhile, proper measurement and decision making processes are critical for KM and CoPs success. However, the ultimate performance of CoPs implementation is uneasy to measure correctly. This chapter attempts to analyze how to establish a feasible framework to assess CoPs performance to meet organizational demands. This framework contains four dimensions and sixteen criteria built from review of existing literature and experts’ interviews in a large R &D organization. Therefore, this chapter tends to discuss the CoPs and its performance evaluation from a theoretical and practical perspective.

Supporting Communities of Practice by Advancing Knowledge Management between Hybrid Collaborative Environments

2010 ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Anna De Liddo ◽  
Grazia Concilio
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Collective Knowledge ◽  
Collaborative Environments ◽  
General Applicability ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Collaborative Environment ◽  
Real Community

In this chapter the authors investigate a tool integration perspective to support knowledge management and exchange between Web-based and traditional collaborative environments. In particular they discuss the integration between a tool (CoPe_it!) supporting collaborative argumentation and learning in Webbased communities of practices and a hypermedia and sense making tool (Compendium) acting as a personal and collective knowledge management (KM) system in traditional collaborative environments. The authors describe the tools and drive a comparative analysis of the two groupware by focusing on the general applicability of the tools integration for supporting communities of practices and, more generally, collaborative works. Moreover the authors present the results of a case study in which the tools integration has been applied within a real community of practice. Finally they discuss main results of the tools integration in order to leverage communities of practice to a truly collaborative environment with no communication boundaries.

CoPs for Cops

2008 ◽  
pp. 1938-1947
Author(s):  
Maarten de Laat ◽  
Wim Broer
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Learning Organization ◽  
Different Types

Managing knowledge in large organizations is a challenge in itself. Modern views on Knowledge Management (KM) focus not only on finding ways to capture and distribute corporate knowledge but also provide ways through which knowledge can be shared, discussed and created. Different types of organizations have different approaches to KM. From general descriptions of these approaches, parallels to the Dutch police will be presented. This chapter discusses how KM within the Dutch police is an integral part of the organization and how explicit and tacit knowledge is shared to create new corporate knowledge. The authors present examples of how Communities of Practice (CoPs) within the Dutch police play a role in both sustaining and developing their own practice, and how these communities are crucial to the learning organization.

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