by
Alan G. Chute, Ph.D., President, Advanced Learning Systems
Adjunct Faculty of The Union Institute and University

Background
Web vendors are beginning to realize what educators have known for years. Lots of
content and easy access do not make a complete learning environment. I can recall an
experience back in 1967 when I first entered the University of Wisconsin to pursue a
degree in Mathematics. While walking across campus a fellow student pointed out the
UW Memorial Library and noted that it was one of the largest collections of scholarly
works in the world with over six million books. The student suggested that the university
could just issue me a library card and I could spend my time browsing my way through
the library and in four years I would have acquired enough knowledge to be awarded my
degree. As I gazed at the immense library complex in front of me I reflected on the
suggestion: there was all the content I needed and I did have the access card, but I
intuitively knew that my whole education experience would be greater than just the
access and content parts.

Content Management Systems
Today in 2002 some web vendors are suggesting that Content Management Systems
(CMS) are all you need to support learning and enable performance on the job. With a
CMS they can amass a huge repository of documents; some organizations now have
more that ten million documents and they track utilization by measuring hits on individual
web pages. This is a library approach to knowledge management It is necessary but not
sufficient. To truly enable learning, the web resources need to be woven into the context
of the total learning and performance environment in ways similar to those an experienced
classroom teacher uses to weave the events of instruction into lessons. Classroom teachers
are taught that effective learning occurs when an appropriate combination of instructional
events are designed into the learning experience; events such as: activating attention,
informing the learner of objectives, directing attention, stimulating recall, guiding learning,
enhancing retention, promoting transfer, eliciting performance and providing feedback.
(Gagne, 1975, p.132)

Another problem inherent with many CMS is that they are built on proprietary
technologies that do not integrate well with other systems that are already part of
the learners' environment. These other subsystems such as: job tracking systems,
organizational calendars, employee communications channels, human resource
systems, compensation systems, etc. are equally important components in a total
knowledge management system. At a minimum, the web content management
solutions should use standard platforms like XML, SQL and Java, or better yet, Java
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) so that interoperability and back office systems integration
is possible.

A Case Study for Knowledge Management
So how do you begin to create an effective and efficient Knowledge Management System
(KMS) for your organization? Three years ago we created a KMS at Avaya Inc. that we
have evolved continuously to keep pace with changing user requirements. Annually the
KMS experiences over eight million hits, 188,000 unique visits and over 6.8 trillion bytes
of information downloaded. We discovered that one of the keys to success was to first
spend sufficient time understanding the employees' needs for information, learning
resources and on the job performance support. We also conducted a technology audit to
determine what other systems were in place or planned that needed to be taken into
account as we constructed a comprehensive KMS. Then we built a road map and formed
an implementation team to take us from where we were to where we wanted to be.

Here is a summary of salient user requirements. Employees wanted easy access to
information at a time and place convenient to them. We found that more and more the
Internet is becoming the vehicle that education providers rely on for providing reference
materials and up-to-date information from subject matter experts. The Internet has also
become the preferred method for email communication for learners, instructors and
experts. Learners like the ability to get their questions answered at a time and place
convenient to their needs. Invariably when learners who use email regularly are asked
if they found an Internet-based course to be interactive, they respond that the Internet
course provided them more access to their instructors and other learners than their
face-to-face courses. However, there are a variety of interaction issues instructors and
educational providers need to consider in order to ensure the amount and quality of the
interaction is appropriate to the learning context.

Learners wanted multimedia content hosted on the web that was interactive and relevant.
The instructor needed to determine what portions of the course should be posted on the
Internet. An entire course need not be hosted; some content is best delivered in other
forms. It is important to incorporate some multimedia technology into the learning
experience because it will provide the learner with a variety of methods to learn
information. Incorporating technology such as audio, video, graphics and email interaction
will provide a stimulating learning experience for the learner; however, multimedia should
be an enhancement to the course design, not a distraction.

Education providers will often want to validate the students' learning. Testing on the
Internet can be easily accomplished using traditional methods such as true/false, multiple
choice, matching and short response questions. Learners can take the test at a time and
place convenient to them and get immediate "knowledge of results" feedback. Teachers
know that the testing experience itself can be a valuable learning activity. Some teachers
have designed multiple testing activities in their courses that are intended mainly to
facilitate student collaboration and reinforce learning. When two or more learners get
together to take a quiz, they are actually collaborating in a manner that would not have
taken place in the traditional face-to-face instruction. Through collaboration, other
viewpoints regarding a particular subject are encouraged and can enhance the learning for
the study group. Online student collaboration sessions are easy to set up and because of
their interactive nature they can be a very positive and appealing learning activity.

Virtual Library Resources
Students want access to Virtual Library Resources in their KMS. Just as the campus
library today provides an expansive repository of indexed information for residential
students, the virtual library of the future can provide seamlessly integrated voice, video
and data resources for the distance learner. The virtual library will allow instructors and
learners to incorporate multimedia artifacts into teaching and networked learning
environments. In fact, education providers should encourage learners to create their own
personalized virtual libraries which they can access and refer to long after the formal
course experience is completed. As more instructors and learners use the virtual libraries,
the amount of valuable content hosted in the virtual library will begin to grow. A
knowledge resource nominated by one learner should be made visible to other learners
seeking to address related content. An affinity link feature such as "People who have
accessed this resource have also found these resources valuable" is an easy way to link
related content in a virtual library. Virtual libraries need to be open, dynamic, customizable
and linkable.

The learner may also want to engage live or online virtual mentors to obtain advice on the
performance of a specific job task. In an Electronic Performance Support System (EPSS),
the learner can interact with an electronic mentor whenever they need coaching. While
trying to complete a task, the learner may encounter unknown situations and need to ask
the system for help. The system has to interpret the question and generate a response that
prescribes references and training modules and then allows the learner broader access to
more expansive knowledge resources. For example, the learner may be a stock broker who
is trying to determine what long-term savings options make the most sense for a client
based on new tax laws. The stock broker can put specific client information into an expert
system, get advice, see examples and create a report to help the client understand the
recommendations.

As innovative tools such as collaboration, affinity links, communities of practice,
mentoring and group-testing are integrated into knowledge management systems, many
new types of knowledge resources and instructional strategies can be integrated into
robust virtual libraries. With these enhanced capabilities there are also new challenges
for instructors as they select the most appropriate learning resources for inclusion in the
KMS and as they design the overall learning experience. Instructors and educational
providers alike need to begin thinking about and planning for the tools they will employ
to make these virtual libraries powerful agents for creating virtual learning environments.
Effective design is truly the key to making the whole learning experience greater that the
sum of the web parts.

Demonstration Site
Most of the knowledge management capabilities described in this article were built into
a KMS that we created called the Avaya Solution Knowledge Center or ASK Center.
The intent of the ASK Center was to be the place for people to "JUST ASK" and
receive the information they needed to do their jobs. For over three years the ASK
Center has been an extremely valuable resource for distance learning, knowledge
management and e-Learning for the internal employees of Avaya. A viewable public
version of a KMS similar to the ASK Center can be browsed at http://www.aboutq.net

* Gagne', R.M. Essentials of Learning for Instruction. New York: Dryden Press, 1975