SCOReD-UniTEN 2010 Managing Personal Knowledge

Managing Personal KnowledgeUnderstanding the Knowledge Expert

Authors:Shahrinaz Ismail, UCSI University

Mohd Sharifuddin Ahmad, Universiti Tenaga NasionalSCOReD-UNITEN 2010, 13-14 Oct 2010

Introduction

Difficulties in searching/locating knowledge experts within the firm

SemanticWeb

SemanticWeb

Concept: OKM based on PKM

Trust Social Influence

Individual Behaviour

Organisational Culture

Personal Knowledge Management

Using TOOLS that individuals find usable

Collaboration of TOOLS can be a set of KM Technologies

for specific organisation

Align with Organisational KM Objectives

The People Factor…

• PKM processes defined by most literature includes ‘people factor’– networking, find people who share the same

interest, social, sharing knowledge, collaborating, extension and extrapolation, and community of practice

– there is a need to “know the knowledge expert” along the processes of PKM

– Verma (2009): The core focus of PKM is ‘personal inquiry’, a quest to find, connect, learn and explore.

Define PKM…

• PKM is defined based on the processes deemed necessary to ensure its worth:– “best viewed as based on a set of problem solving

skills that have both a logical or conceptual as well as physical or hands-on component” (Avery et al., 2001);

– “consists in a collection of processes that an individual needs to carry out in order to gather, classify, store, search, and retrieve knowledge in his/her daily activities” (Grundspenkis, 2007);

– “activity we perform in order to improve our problem recognition, formulating attempted solutions, and error elimination activities” (Firestone, 2009);

– “an individual, disciplined process by which we make sense of information, observations and ideas” (Jarche, 2010).

PKM Processes Flows…

Avery, et al. (2001)

Retrieve

Evaluate Organise

Collaborate

Analyse

Present

Secure

Pettenati, et al. (2007)Create

Share

Creation

Codification

Sharing

Collaboration

Organisation

Razmerita, Kirchner & Sudzina (2009)

Grundspenkis (2007)Gather

Classify

Store

Search

Retrieve

Main Processes or Domain of PKM…

Jarche (2009)

Seek Find Aggregators / Filterers

Sense

Share

Find an Expression Medium

Find People with same Passion

Martin (2000)

Manage Personal Knowledge (Tool: networks)

Organise Personal Knowledge(Tool: library, database, etc.)

Share Knowledge(Tool: community of practice)

Jarche (2010)

Aggregate

Understand

Connect

CreationCodification

SharingCollaboration

Organisation


PKM over Web 2.0…

• Both sets of PKM processes flows (shown earlier) are aligned with the concept of PKM over Web 2.0 defined by Razmerita, Kirchner and Sudzina (2009)– showing the significance of current

technology trend in PKM– sets of activities in managing personal

knowledge over the emerging technology can be categorised into creation, organisation, sharing, collaboration, and codification (not in any particular order)

– the order of activities depends on the individual knowledge workers, since each individual is unique in managing self personal knowledge.

Creation

Codification

Sharing

Collaboration

Organisation


CreationCodification

SharingCollaboration

Organisation


“Looking Inward” & “Looking Outward”…

• Jarche (2009): The in-depth view of PKM processes, in terms of– ‘looking inward’ (i.e. categorizing, making

explicit, going public and retrieval); and– ‘looking outward’ (i.e. connecting,

exchanging and contributing)

4 Domains in People-Oriented Model…

• Wright (2005): Since managing personal knowledge is significantly people-oriented, a model to stress the importance of both bonding and bridging networks, with four interrelated domains:1. Analytical: involves competencies such as interpretation,

envisioning, application, creation, and contextualization;2. Information: comprises the sourcing, assessment,

organization, aggregation, and communication of information;3. Social: involves finding and collaborating with people,

development of both close networks and extended networks, and dialogue; and

4. Learning: entails expanding pattern recognition and sensemaking capabilities, reflection, development of new knowledge, improvement of skills, and extension to others.

The Aim…

Findings expectation: The finding is expected to be able

to propose a model for software agent to be used to identify and understand knowledge experts

through their behaviour, diligence and intention (BDI).

Main objective:To understand the processes involved in managing personal knowledge by knowledge experts.

Research Methodology

1. Literature survey and review on managing personal knowledge and PKM.

2. A study and analysis on the activities of knowledge experts when they manage their personal knowledge• some hypotheses are drawn up to be quantitatively and/or

qualitatively proven.

3. A conceptual model for a non-agent mediated PKM is drawn to prepare the base for applying a human-agent collaborative framework in further research.

4. Formalisation of the conceptual model by analysing a researcher’s way of managing personal knowledge in daily work• model is based on only the work processes through computer and

internet technologies• where tacit knowledge is expected to be within the embedded

processes but may or may not be captured to be explicitly presented

Preliminary Findings: Unmediated PKMResearcher

2. Understand / Analyse

1. summarise2. write reviews3. comment4. collect more data through research5. write journal/conference paper6. decide who the knowledge is for

1. search2. e-mail3. RSS feed4. aggregation tool5. online library database search6. auto-feed to email search7. ‘follow’ shared updates

1. Get / Retrieve Internet

1. RSS to blog2. e-mail3. share RSS/link, with reviews4. tag people when sharing link5. wiki6. social bookmark7. chat8. journal/conference

3. Share / Publish Internet

4. Connect

1. from comments by others2. from vote by others3. from ‘following’ others’

work/profile4. e-mail and online message5. chat6. connecting profiles7. networking at conference

Internet

Preliminary Findings

• From the overall view of a knowledge expert’s PKM (formalised in the next slide), it is found that a knowledge worker is connected to three different ‘locations’ when managing personal knowledge:1. Internet (via proactive search or semantic Web);

2. Knowledge sources (repositories, databases and knowledge bases), and;

3. Other knowledge workers (other individuals or knowledge experts).

Discussions

• This study uses an exploratory method to understand and formalise the preliminary findings into a conceptual model.

• Each individual knowledge expert has his/her own way of managing personal knowledge, and the range of knowledge experts are very diverse– researchers, engineers, consultants, lawyers, etc.

• In an organisation, even the knowledge workers at the operational level could be experts of their own field– they also use computers and internet technologies

in their daily management of personal knowledge

Recommendations of Methodology

Thorough research methods (data collection)to understand the aspect of ‘people’ andhow they manage personal knowledge

Questionnaire survey on PKMbased on preliminary findings

in this study

Theme-based Interviewon unique expertsin different fields

1. to understand the generalprocesses of managing

personal knowledgefor a big sample size

2. to verify the preliminaryfindings of this paper

1. to understand a more focusedand detailed aspect of

PKM processes,2. could lead to how tacit

knowledge is captured, codified,stored and transferred over

technologies

a multi-agent collaborative framework can be usedto further automate software agents

to extend the role of humans in a collaborative work process,such as PKM processes

Discussions

• In this framework, a human and his or her agent constitute a node, in which the agent communicates with other agents in other human-agent nodes, to collaboratively complete a scheduled workflow process.

• The concept of an individual knowledge expert in this paper can be extended to a concept of incorporating multiple agents for each node (human knowledge expert).

Conclusion

• OKM starts from the roots where individuals and their PKM styles/characteristics are situated.

• In order to develop a successful OKM strategy there is a need to understand how individuals (i.e. knowledge experts) manage their knowledge at personal level in achieving their personal objectives.

• These individual knowledge experts can be assisted by using agent intelligence to automatically locate experts and knowledge resources through understanding of BDI of the knowledge seeker– especially in matching its profile with that of the knowledge

resources and/or the knowledge experts

Conclusion

• This study brings forward the aspect of ‘locations’ in managing personal knowledge, which could be further defined in terms of ‘roles’ when the processes of PKM are mediated by software agents.

• Location-based mediation and role-based mediation are possible to be developed– with the latter being more complex to be analysed

than the other– with possibilities of adopting the BDI architecture

that includes stronger notions of agency

Final say…

• Agent technology could help knowledge experts achieve their personal objectives and goals, through the application of a multi-agent collaborative framework.

• Knowledge experts are not limited to researchers, but any individuals who work and manage their knowledge using computer and over the internet technologies.

• This could be further extended to related areas, e.g.:– agent-mediated PKM for strategic managers– agent-mediated personal learning environment (PLE) for

students– agent-mediated organisational knowledge management

(OKM) for decision making– etc…

A glimpse..

SA-2

SA-1

delegate

Legend:SA = Software Agent SA-1* = Method 2 for SAKW = Knowledge Worker

Internet

Knowledge Source

Repositories Database Knowledgebase

SA-1*

Node 1

Human Knowledge

Worker

SA

Node 2

Human Knowledge

Worker

Non-Expert(without profile)

Human KW with or without SA

Human KW is assisted by SA

Node 3Human KW without SA

-Proactive Search-Semantic Web

Agent EnvironmentSchedule to pertain

Human Knowledge

Worker

SA-N

Expert(with profile)

THANK YOU…