Knowledge Management Essentials

Managing the Knowledge (hereinafter, the Session) is a hands-on session designed to get its participants started managing the knowledge relevant to WorldOpp. The Session is the ninth of ten sessions of WorldOpp Placement Seminar (hereinafter, the Seminar).

Outline

Composing the Documents is the predecessor session.

How to implement concepts

Concept formulation is a strategy employed in inductive teaching to explain an idea or phenomenon and assist the learners form a clear understanding of the concept by giving examples. The examples employed ought to be drawn from the learner's environment and should be relevant. The trainer therefore needs to have a clear understanding of the concept to enable him break it to down to respective components and borrow local examples to explain the idea. Concept understanding therefore helps learners classify objects and ideas based on their individual features . It requires the learner to compare and contrast relevant features within groups that either contain or do not contain the concept - relevant features.

Teaching a Concept

1. Select a Concept -
2. Identify a good set of features or characteristics
3. Select a good set of examples
4. Select a good Set of non examples

Learning a Concept

1. Discovery - in this method of learning, the learner discovers concepts on their own. For example, a baby will discover that it has five fingers on each hand and also that it can hold objects. This discovery though perception driven illustrates the idea of holding objects and allows the baby to discover new applications of the concept learned.
2. Use of Examples - This may be supervised or Unsupervised. It allows learners to analyze ideas or objects based on their features to discover a trend or similarity in features and characteristics. For example, when introducing the concept of 'Furniture' the learner may draw examples from chairs, tables, couches and so on. From the examples, He or she will discover they all have large surfaces, majorly made of wood and allow people to sit or place other objects. A complex concept such as 'Fairness' may be explained by giving case studies and letting the learner determine what would be considered fair and what would not.
3. Words and Phrases - Hearing or reading of new concepts helps in understanding them. While this method in itself may not fully describe the concept, It helps the learners learn terms associated with the concept and explain it in their own words. For example, Most enterprises are investing in Big data to cultivate competitive advantages.
4. Compare and Contrast Examples - Learners can also draw examples and compare them to discover similarities and salient features. For example, In explaining the volcanic eruption and formation of volcanic mountains, The trainer would cite examples of mountains such as Kilimanjaro and Mount Fuji. These can then be contrasted to Block Mountains such as Usambara and Ruwenzori.
5. Invention – This method of concept learning is similar to discovery. In this case however, There must be a need fr the invention. For instance in the discovery of the wheel, there was need to make work easier and the early man discovered that a round object would move more easily than a rectangular one.

In the CNM Wiki learners are encouraged to go through the Learning Methods available to understand the various concepts. The Wiki employs the use of some of the above methods to explain concepts. Additionally, as part of the learning process, learners are required to develop their own learning aids and post them on the Wiki. These can range from recordings to Infographics and recorded videos.

How to manage the knowledge

Getting started with WorldOpp is the successor session.