{"id":1163,"date":"2008-05-24T08:16:23","date_gmt":"2008-05-24T08:16:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/knowledge-management\/"},"modified":"2026-11-11T22:04:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-12T03:04:36","slug":"knowledge-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.designedtoinspire.com\/blog\/knowledge-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Knowledge Management"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m already starting week 3 of my summer semester (time flies) and one of my courses is Knowledge Management. We are past the "what is the difference between information and knowledge" stage and moving into "what does instructional design have to do with knowledge management". As usual, all of my thoughts are buried in Blackboard, but I thought I would try to pull out a few ideas as I get the chance. Part of my own personal knowledge management is capturing my reflections here, right?<\/p>\n

My thoughts this week are heavily influenced by what I experienced this week as an instructional designer, teacher, and consultant. About 18 months ago, I helped lay out a series of new courses in Instructional Design for Baruch College in NYC. Joanne Tzanis<\/a>, a prior instructor of mine and an adjunct at NYU, was hired to create a new Continuing Ed. program in Instructional Design at Baruch and asked me to help prepare fairly "generic" ID courses for novice or self-taught trainers who need \/ want to build upon their ID skills \/ knowledge. Baruch called a few weeks ago and asked if I could "retrofit" the 10 week class called "Planning and Creating Online and Blended Learning" into a 3 day seminar – an instructional design feat in an of itself … and to facilitate the course this Monday – Wednesday.<\/p>\n

This story has an ending that (IMHO) has everything to do with knowledge creation, management, markets … and a great tie in to instructional design. In "retrofitting" the class for this abbreviated scope and particular audience, I spent an incredible amount of time \/ effort thinking about the existing knowledge and experience of the learners in the group. Overall, I tried to build upon the ANTICIPATED knowledge the trainers had gained in years of experience in face to face training and link it to designing courses in an online world. I would have liked to have worked with the client to get beyond what I anticipated, but the constraints of time and access prevented it. <\/p>\n

I spent quite a bit of time during the session reinforcing that information is not instruction … and that as trainers they know from experience that information without learner practice, feedback, guidance, etc. should not be dumped on learners as instruction. I tried to reinforce that they had a huge knowledge bank (knowledge marketplace?) to draw from and that just because they are contemplating a new medium for delivery, their knowledge (new from class, prior experiences, from others) should be their guide for the future … see … TA! DA! … a nice bow on this package.<\/p>\n

I think this story is a story of knowledge creation, management, and markets … knowing what you know, knowing who knows what, building on prior knowledge, and knowing when and how to use the knowledge you possess!<\/p>\n

<\/span>In the practicum that I used during the "activity" portion of the seminar, I asked the learners to design instruction without regard to the medium. This forced them to use the new materials I presented, their prior knowledge about instruction and training, and what others in their cross-functional teams knew (others in the knowledge market who normally stuck to their silos). I then worked with them in their simulated instructional design teams to contemplate how and when their approach would be altered using different media. This "build upon what you (and others) know" approach led to the light bulb (a-ha) moments that every teacher waits for during a class.<\/p>\n

This idea of facilitating learners as they "co-create" knowledge by building upon what they (separately and collectively) know is a big area of focus for a prior prof. of mine, Peter Honebein<\/a>. In a recent ISPI session, he put up a slide that I feel is applicable to both my example and this class. Here are the bullet points applicable to ID:<\/p>\n