(This posting is also on Eclectic Bill)

One of my interests and part of my consulting practice is to bring knowledge management to higher education institutions. You would think that this would be a perfect environment given that universities are essentially knowledge factories. But, as in most things, the reality is much different.

Over the weekend, I read Information Alchemy: The Art and Science of Knowledge Management which is collection of essays on bringing knowledge management to higher education. It was very enlightening reading in that the various contributors demonstrated the barriers to KM in universities and strategies for implementing KM.

The first point was that colleges are administered while other organizations are managed. This seems a subtle point but it highlights the differences in culture. Scholars and departments at universities are fiercely independent, protective of their turf, and highly competitive when it comes to establishing reputations as leaders in their field. Thus, they see the university administration’s role as aiding the scholar and departments in gaining reputations. The administration is their to serve the community of scholars. Therefore, any attempts by the administration to impose a top-down program such as knowledge management is immediately resisted because it is seen as taking away independence and turf.

The second point is that university knowledge management is built around the scholary journal model. Everything about an academic’s career is based on their research ability and their research ability is based on their publishing record in the academic journals. An academic can be a great teacher, a major force in the community, and be an inspirational presenter at conferences but, if they don’t have the proper publishing record, they don’t get tenure and thus they are out of a job. This model may have made sense when it was first introduced at the turn of the 19th century but does it still have value in the 21st century?

Despite these barriers, some universities are seeing the advantages of knowledge management in terms of gaining students and profiting from the research activities from their community of scholars. I believe that knowledge management will eventually transform the university model. But, this institution, which survived medieval times, changes slowly.

Still in Beta but Kaneva looks to be a serious competitor for Second Life.  First, it combines the best features of MySpace and Second Life which is a very potent attraction.  Second, I like the fact that it seems easier to build things and import media to the virtual world.  Third, it is completely open-source through the Elite Developers platform which means that innovation will be much quicker than in Second Life which is very-controlled by Linden Labs.  To be safe, I’m keeping membership in both but I have some high hopes for Kaneva especially as a learning tool.

I often have disagreements with my colleagues over the proper use of Wikipedia.  I think it is a great seconday source of information (not to be cited but then students should never source Wikipedia) while some of my colleagues think that Wikipedia should never be used by students.  They took great glee in handing out a news article concerning a Wikipedia editor who was a college dropout even though he claimed advanced degrees.

Thankfully, the Chronicle of Higher Education had a great opinion piece which demonstrated the true value of wikipedia as a knowledge community and as a tool to teach critical thinking.

A colleague of mine made a great point today after reading this Harvard Crimson article:  “The true value of an Ivy League education was in the networking.  Now, with the explosion of social networking on the Internet, that advantage has eroded.  If the Ivy Leagues had to fall back on the quality of their teaching, students are going to realize the value of good state school with superior teachers over paying high tuitions to be taught by classmates who are only a year ahead of them because the elitist faculty can’t actually lower themself to been seen with students.”

I think this is an unfair generalization because I know several excellent teachers at the Ivy Leagues.  But articles like these do demonstrate that the old days of the academy are over and that students are demanding more.

So many conferences; So little time (and funds).   Lifehack has a great guide to virtually attending conferences while many folks in Second Life are holding simulconferences in conjunction with Real Life conferences (the Educause Immersive Learning Environments conference as one example).  David Warlick has created HitchHikr where conference participants can stream out photos, blogs, and videos from the conference.

Almost as important as the conference is the follow-up.

What are some of your ways of virtually attending conferences?

I just finished Rosenzweig’s book on how some business management research is flawed due to nine delusions:

1. The Halo Effect - Attributing organizational success to unrelated factors such as leadership, strategy, workplace motivation, etc.
2. Delusion of Absolute Performance - Seeing success as absolute rather than if the organization is doing better than its competitors.
3. Delusion of Rigorous Research - Confusing the quantity of research with the quality of research.
4. Delusion of the Single Explanation - One factor completely explains success or failure.
5. Delusion of Correlation and Causation - This should be a familiar one.
6. Delusion of Connecting the Winning Dots - Basing a sample only on outcomes such as only studying successful companies.
7. Delusion of Lasting Success - No company is successful in every business environment.
8. Delusion of the Wrong End of the Stick - Confusing cause and effect.
9. Delusion of Organizational Physics - Companies and the people who inhabit them are not easily predictable and the complexity inherit in their relationships makes them hard to study.

As I read this, I kept thinking of examples in educational and training research that these same delusions could apply to. For example, the field of learning styles seems to be littered with these delusions. And I wonder how the testing paradigms of “No Child Left Behind” would fare when examined with these delusions in mind.

Ning.com has just opened up to the public as a make-it-yourself social network. I am mulling over creating a social network for my classes to see how this would affect collaboration and online participation. I see them spending so much time on Facebook that I hope the same enthusiasm would carry over into a more academic environment. I have a three-week summer course I think I will try this on.

Students are off all next week and I’m vacationing until Tuesday.  I will be back on Wednesday with new thoughts on training, learning, and education.

At a teaching training session last night on teaching to different learning styles, the presenter stated that there 80 different learning styles according to Wikipedia.com.  You know a field is in trouble when there are a multitude of competing theories without some type of framework to determine validity.  Another sign is that there is a multitude of criticisms for the learning models but all of these point to the same problem - lack of empirical evidence.

Here is another interesting  dilemma - while there are a multitude of learning styles, there are only a few teaching styles.  It seems that that there would be just as many teaching styles as learning styles if we are dealing with how learning works.  This also indicates some problems for learning research.

Personally, a major flaw in learning theory is that none of them have a mental model basis.  I firmly believe that ignoring the way knowledge is captured and assimilated into a person’s overal knowledge storehouse is better area for learning theory research and can provide an empirical basis by which people learn.  I do feel that there is some valuable insights in how people learn by examining the various learning styles but no style potrays a complete process for human learning.

Today I gave the students their grade reports for the incentive-based grading system I am using.  Instead of the usual excuses and arguments over grades, I received insightful questions and requests to help the students plan the rest of the semester so that they could accumulate the points necessary for the grade they want.  I believe that giving the students freedom to choose their assignments and due dates is making the learning process itself more meaningful for them.  The real test will be at the end of the semester.

I recently read an article concerning the contradictory nature of college syllabi.  On one hand, the professor wants to create a warm and open environment for learning  but the professor must also set expectations and groundrules.  And, as the research found, most students don’t read the syllabus or remember much if they do read it.

In designing my spring courses, I used templates from Fink’s book on significant learning experiences and from the handbook on project-based learning.  As I was going through it today before class, I thought that this would be a better guide for students rather than the syllabus.  In fact, the most books I have were workbooks from the training sessions that I took.  I like the interactive nature of the workbook and the ability to track one’s progress.

The syllabus is a rather cold and remote document which is legalistic and often used as defense for unclear class objectives as in the standard response - “it’s in the syllabus.”  What a lame and unsatisfactory response!  If I heard that in a training session, I would have the trainer fired so, why put up with it in class?  And what a better way to retain the knowledge of a course than through a workbook full of notes rather than a legalistic syllabus.