Designing Knowledge Management System for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology
Murali Raman; Terry Ryan; Lorne Olfman; Journal of Information Systems Education; 2005; 16, 3; ABI/INFORM Global p. 311-320
Reviewer: Dedy Gunawan
A wiki, which is a Hawaiian word for quick and simply a group collaboration software tool based on Web server technology, is able to facilitate the establishment of knowledge collaboration in an educational setting. The success of this assistance, however, depends on instructors and students’ knowledge about the technology, careful planning for implementation and use, class size, and students motivation to involve in the learning. This is what Raman et al. (2005) concluded in his research Designing Knowledge Management System for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology. The research was a case study about the integration of ICT, particularly wiki technology, in facilitating knowledge management in a course that one of its objectives is to let the students use knowledge management technology. The research aimed to depict an experience in using wiki technology to design a knowledge management system.
The problem viewed by the authors as the background of their research was the lack of literature in the implementation of knowledge management system in educational field, while in the business area the literatures were easy to find. Some questions the authors stated regarding to this matter are how the relevance, the design, and the content of knowledge management systems to education are, and what types of technologies can be used to support the creation of knowledge management systems. The authors, then, suggested teachers and researchers to create softwares artefacts as a mean of knowledge management incorporation for teaching and learning. In addition to that, wiki was proposed by the authors.
In this study, however, the authors did not claim wiki technology as the only tool that can be used in teaching and learning. They recognized that wiki is only an alternative amongst many other technologies. In agreement with that, Malaga (2002) and Steele (2004) proposes email to be used in the class, while Borja (2005), Clyde (2005) and Esatment (2005) introduce web logs as tools of instruction, and Wagner (2004), cited in Raman et al. (2005), suggests nine technologies to be integrated in teaching: ‘e-mail, static and database backed Web pages, discussion forums, internet chat, video-audio streaming, video-audio conference, GDSS, Web log and wikis’.
To analyse the value of the wiki technology, the authors utilized five of six perspectives of knowledge within Alavi and Leidner’s framework: knowledge as a state of mind, knowledge as an object, knowledge as a process, knowledge and accessibility to information, and knowledge as a capability (Alavi and Leidner, 2001 cited in Raman et al., 2005). The authors, then, linked those perspectives and the design requirements for knowledge management system for teaching and learning with the supports wiki technology might provide to these requirements. Despite these good linkages the authors had made, however, there should have been an explanation why the last perspective of knowledge; ‘knowledge vis-à-vis data and information’ (Alavi & Leidner, 2001) was not used.
The participants of this case study were three females and seventeen males who study either information science or management. The author did not explain the sampling they employed regarding the proportion of males and females and what they studied. In spite of that, this is an acceptable pace because the purpose of a qualitative sampling is ‘not to generalise to a population, but to develop an in-depth exploration of a central phenomenon…and select people or sites that can best help you understand the central phenomenon’ (Creswell, 2005). ‘The goal of this purposive sampling is to select individuals for case study who are likely to be “information-rich” with respect to the researchers’ purposes (Gall, 2005).
There was not clear information about the instrument employed in the research. The only method of data collecting mentioned by the researchers is an interview. In part 4.6 of the paper, however, they discussed the survey result. This part talked about some trends such as the most popular tool for knowledge share among the participants, the regular users of the technology within the wikis, the alternative methods of communication other than wiki technology, and the aspects of the wiki technology the participants use the most. The authors, still in the same part, also created a figure about weekly activity summary on the wiki over one semester. The graph generally describes three main activities of the participants: creating new pages, updating and rolling back pages. It seemed that they used survey and observation to explain the trends and to portray the weekly activities.
The authors organised both face-to-face and email exchange while conducting interviews with the participants. There were fifteen sessions of interviews. The interviews were done in one-month period immediately after the knowledge management class had ended. The questions developed in the interviews were aimed to get the students’ understanding about the reason of the instructor in using wiki technology, the objective and process of using the technology, and whether wiki technology can support the goals of knowledge creation through collaborative effort and discovery learning. Each interview session took about 45 minutes. The interviews generated various answers. Some conflicted understanding of goals in integrating wiki technology between the participants and the instructor was also discussed. Some participants understood the goals of the use of wiki, while some others did not. Some participants admitted that wiki is a powerful tool in teaching and learning. However, the readiness of the instructor in preparing the wiki technology had a very significant effect to the research. Even though it sounded realistic, the instructor’s decision to let the students discover knowledge in their own way because of his/her unfamiliarity with all wiki features was risky. While motivation is an urgent part of discovery learning, the case study pointed out that the participants had not enough initiative and enthusiasm to discover for themselves. Accordingly, the study seemed fail to portray a successful experience of the wiki technology integration in the knowledge management design.
There are seventeen readings listed as the references. They consist of eleven journal papers, one electronic paper, four books and one conference proceeding. The oldest reference was published in 1994, while the newest was printed in 2004. The authors followed a consistent referencing system. The abstract provided information about the aim of the research, the research method, and the result of the research. However, it did not inform the readers about the participants, the instrumentation, and the procedures of the research. Some keywords are provided to help the readers understand the overall paper.
In conclusion, the research presents an experience of using wiki technology in designing knowledge management system for teaching and learning. Although the wiki technology did not contain perfect features due to the lack of instructor’s experience, the interviews show that it was a powerful tool of collaborative learning technology. The success, however, depends on the knowledge about the technology, careful planning, class size, and students’ motivation.
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RAMAN, M., RYAN, T & OLFMAN, L (2005) Designing Knowledge Management Systems for Teaching and Learning with Wiki Technology. Journal of Information System Technology, 16, 311-320.
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