Shared Knowledge Project
From Horizon Project
e-Learning Design 2.0: Supporting emergence, connected networks, and shared knowledge *
[edit] Introduction
This document began a snapshot summary of diverse ideas on emergent e-Learning in the workplace. Based on a dissertation research project,* it began with a Social network analysis (SNA) of the Blogosphere. A request to participate was sent to 22 of the most trusted Bloggers writing on topics related to anytime e-Learning and shared knowledge. Six open-ended questions were answered by 15 participants and the results summarized to this Wiki. Participants were then asked to confirm, edit or revise the diverse findings over a period of two weeks. All participants were aware that answers regarding design and support for emergent learning vary according to context, culture and experience. Many stated that there are neither universals nor easy answers, but in general, there was great awareness of the potential residing in the collective. Bloggers have seen first-hand the diverse research, experience and wisdom that resides there.
Presented here are ideas that represent consensus, difference and a number of basic tenets regarding a digitally connected network of knowledge and reflect the potential ahead for what the Horizon Report 2008 claims will be a collective intelligence available in the patterns, correlations and flow.
This research is targeted toward better understanding of emergent e-learners. How can an organization best approach the design and support of a network where individuals, teams, projects and groups are required to find, create and share knowledge daily? Can we collectively define current best (and worst) practice that supports the needs of the digital knowledge worker while at the same time supporting and ensuring each learner’s contribution to the knowledge network?
A number of gracious, busy, trusted Bloggers agreed to explore understanding by answering six open-ending questions. Responses were summarized and the tag clouds produced through Many Eyes. Participants were then asked to review, revise and confirm understanding and agreement with the ideas gathered.
Once the study phase closes, the Wiki will remain open at the NMC, and hopefully evolve as the community continues to explore the HR theme of collective intelligence and emergent knowledge.
[edit] Original Participants
The original, community-trusted Bloggers, spread across virtual space and 7 countries, included:
Nirmala "Nimmy" Bangalore - India (Aa...hah! Thinking Inside the Blog)
Shawn Callahan - Australia ( Anecdote)
Stephen Downes - Canada ( OL Daily )
Lilia Efimova - Netherlands/Russia ( Mathemagenic )
Peter-Anthony Glick - England ( Leveraging Knowledge )
Denham Grey - USA ( Knowledge-at-work)
Harold Jarche - Canada ( Harold Jarche: Stategies for online collaboration)
Alan Levine - USA( CogDogBlog )
Jim McGee - USA ( McGee's Musings)
Clive Shepherd - England( Clive on Learning )
George Siemens - Canada ( elearnspace)
Ray Sims - USA ( Sims Learning Connections)
Luis Suarez - Spain (ELSUA: A KM Blog by Luis Suarez)
David Snowden - Wales (Cognitive-Edge)
Jack Vinson - USA (Knowledge Jolt with Jack)
One invited participant, Tony Karrer - USA (eLearning Technology) contributed at the wiki review phase.
[edit] Key Terms
Emergent learning/emergence-based learning: Self-directed, individualized, learning on demand that contributes to distributed knowledge within a larger organization or network. Seeking knowledge “just in time”, without classes, workshops, grades, attendance, or sequenced instruction.
Knowledge management: a range of organizational practices and policies used to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning across the organization.
Learning environment: Although emergent learners can create a learning environment from any situation (book, a hallway conversation, call to the Help Desk, IM a friend, Google or Wikipedia), for the purpose of this study, this would be an online environment designed to enhance a student's learning experience by including computers, software and the Internet in the learning process. Emergent learning environments currently in the workplace include tools for electronic communication (e-mail, threaded discussions, chat, collaborative documents, and editing tools), Web publishing, searchable file services, search engines and subject directories, tagging and Internet links to outside resources.
Learning organization: A term coined by Senge in the early 1990’s, a learning organization contains a culture where individuals continually expand their capacity to learn and create, where expansive patterns of thinking and risk are nurtured, where teamwork is expected, and where people continually work to see the whole (systems thinking) together.
Organizational knowledge: Knowledge that is created, shared and made available throughout an organization. Key to the concept of knowledge management, organizational knowledge is information that is comprehensively gathered and is key to an organization's operations, processes and success.
Social knowledge: Distributed understanding, expertise and collaboration in the creation of information; knowledge reached by consensus across a social network or organization.
Social network analysis, social network theory: Social network theory views relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the individuals within the networks, and ties are the connections. Social network analysis (SNA) is a map of ties between the nodes that make up a network or community.
Social software: see Web 2.0
Web 2.0: Originally coined by Dale Dougherty of O’Reilly Media and brought into popular use by Tim O’Reilly soon after, the term refers to a new generation of software and hardware of the Internet that allows for participation and collaboration, and has the emergent characteristic of being better and more valuable the more people use it and contribute to the whole. Web 2.0 social software examples include blogs, Wikis and social networking environments that contain personal profiles of skills and interests. Tools of the Web 2.0 framework include 1) Google logic, which displays results of search in order of ranking by number of other sites that link to the retrieved site and 2) the ability to tag a contribution by dynamically defined category for grouping results across diverse media.
Weblog or Blog: A site that runs via the user’s Web browser, enabling journal-like entries without needing special skills or coding. These are posted on a regular basis and displayed in latest chronological order. The social aspect of the technology is that each post allows for comments or “trackbacks” from the readers of the blog. An additional social aspect is the “blog roll” of trusted or influential bloggers that a blog displays and links to from its site. Special search engines like Technorati and the Google Blog Search tool display results of “the Blogosphere” by recentness or by popularity (links of trust) to that blog.
Wiki: a Website that allows visitors to easily add, remove, and edit collaborative content. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia of approximately 7.3 million articles in 252 languages written by volunteers, is the most well-known Wiki. This page is a Wiki page.
[edit] INHERENT CHARACTERISTICS of effective emergence-based learning environments
Tag cloud for participant responses
Inherent characteristics were defined as tools, processes, practices, systems or support structures that need to exist within the environment.
Dealing with information is more challenging in times of abundance versus times of stability. The exponential growth of information that defines much of our world today requires an approach that is capable of scaling. Despite the value of acquiring information and knowledge as-needed, no single individual can make sense of the complexity and abundance on their own. Social networks and collective intelligence are an important way of making sense. As such, the dominant characteristics of emergent learning environments might include an open, networked, not hierarchical structure that allows for an open flow of unstructured, findable information.To accomplish this, regardless of tools or systems, the organization needs to give up control to the network and to the learners.
Support for diversity, and diversity of opinion, is core to effective emergent environments. Concepts are understood in relation to other concepts. As such, the more diverse our information sources, the more accurate our understanding. Transparency and openness would include the ability to see into the communications of the organization.
Tools might include any effective collaborative technology: forums, Blogs, Wikis, and an online "who knows what" or "ask the expert" facility. Other possibilities include references, communal authoring, personal profiles, intuitive back-channels (e-mail, Skype, IM), concept mapping, image storage and display, text forums, private spaces.
New tools in the workplace must allow users to network with each other less publicly. There would be absolutely no censorship, low risk for making mistakes, and a minimum of rules. An atmosphere where mistakes are accepted and encouraged, with examples of others learning from mistakes.
Users would be encouraged to contribute content for the benefit of all users, participating in a culture that celebrates learning. This would include processes that inspire learning before doing and tools that facilitate learning, as well as a culture of learning where experimentation is encouraged and where people are recognised for what they know and also how they collaborate with others. Perhaps for emergent learning to occur you also need challenges, fewer resources so that there is a feeling that we need to be resourceful to succeed but most importantly a group of people who share values such as a love of learning, hard work, quality, who know failure is required for learning, know that reflective practice is required.
Tools would be networked, run over multiple platforms, changing or evolving, and would be ones in use among external colleagues as well. In general digital material needs to be fragmented, and search mechanisms non-hierarchical. Customization and personalization features would exist within the system to encourage autonomous learning, resource feeds and channels froma a diverse range of sources.
Connectivity to other systems and other learners would be in place. An expectant behavior is that users are not dependent on user manuals or training classes to learn systems and tools, but instead learn by doing, by using the emergent environment itself. Systems would also provide functions to access and tap into a broad, loosely connected network of colleagues. Learners need the ability to get at previously-accessed content and the ability to connect to other people in a similar learning track.
Communities of practice are often discussed as good places for emergent learning, but this doesn’t mean that learning through socializing in a community (re: legitimate peripheral participation) is always effective. New members need scaffolding and support to fully access the available community resources and understandings. Mentors – others who can help you through the learning process should be available within the environment. Access to all kinds of learning resources (mainly people and information, not courses) would be easy to find. Information and knowledge are now democratised from the perspective where everyone is empowered to have a voice and a say in whatever the matter that may drive their interest. The ease of use of those various social tools is helping knowledge workers understand they are now in control of the flow of information, their knowledge, and how they connect with others.
Time itself would be a characteristic of the environmental culture: time to reflect and to think, without the pressure of deadlines. Reflection would be a constant, even in the middle of the deadlines. Self-driven learning, knowledge and skills are a part of that reflection – knowing how you learn, being able to identify learning needs and opportunities, get yourself through the process, etc. If the only thing an organization rewards is busyness, then emergent learning (or learning of any kind) is not likely to happy. If the time is available, then a variety of practices prove useful in supporting learning. Practices such as trip reports, project journals, and after action reviews all make it easier to reflect on the raw materials of experience to get to better learning. These practices work quite effectively for individual knowledge workers as well as for groups and project teams.
Processes might include built-in knowledge capture and formalisation of lessons learned capture. They would include definition and diffusion of best practices. These practices would include formal rewards & recognitions of knowledge sharing. Cultural practices would encourage creativity, risk-taking and mistakes made along the way. These knowledge-driven tools and processes must be given the same level of support as "traditional" business processes. Support would include an IT/IS department with the right skills to support new knowledge tools and services. The environment should be smart, with an ability to provide visibility of people and content, including social network applications and effective enterprise search to discover and make connections with existing content. It could also provide external orientation (customer, partner, academic, analysts, and other thought-leader).
Some believe that open source and open standards can encourage system growth and development.
[edit] Fostering INDEPENDENT, AS-NEEDED KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION
Tag cloud for participant responses
Availability of tools is likely the most important aspect of as-needed knowledge. Learners will often find and serve their own needs when they have access to tools. However, it is important to note that organizations will require greater levels of involvement in setting up the ecology of learning, fostering use, etc. than is often assumed. Much like the internet consists of a developed infrastructure, so too will emergent learning activities rest on a well thought out infrastructure that gives the appearance of transparency and use without hindrance. The challenge for organizations is to determine what needs to be managed and what needs to be fostered.
Hiring independent and passionate people and then making sure that the independence and passion are not killed by the rules and routines will foster knowledge. Again, one of the most important things is making time for reflection and learning and creating an atmosphere of learning from mistakes and reward for those who share their expertise by rating this highly in performance reviews.
An organization fosters by using the practices in their action. This would be accepted norms of using IM, wikis, shared document editors for their processes, and not sending documents by email attachments, The organization might do things to recognize and reward network knowledge acquisition, or to make it obvious as its culture. All documents, information is available to all users in the network, so it is pervasive.
From the bottom up, through grassroots, through a critical mass of early adopters who can test the waters and see what they are like. They would be the ones helping the business evaluate whether it is worth while exploring or not. Trying to push it top down, corporate wide is not going to happen. It's got to be viral, personal, unrestricted, open to everyone, letting command and control go once and for all!
Other actions that can foster independent learning include ensuring that most knowledge capture takes place during normal business processes. By rewarding & recognizing the provision of knowledge by individuals, especially when not directly concerned by the requester’s purpose. By making the necessary tools available and encouraging people to find information and knowledge through all possible ways.
A primary reservation about top-down approaches, however, is that efforts to establish uniformity of practice and transferability of learning, while well-intentioned, general stifle the process rather than fertilize it. Organizations need to give up the notion that they can control learning in any meaningful sense. There is no curriculum in the real-world and attempts to impose one will interfere with whatever learning might actually be there to be had. Beyond providing time, organizations can offer examples of learning in practice, role models of multiple approaches to effective learning, and an information-rich environment that is easy to access (stop trying to limit or control the web sites I can visit, for example). Be patient and not expect to see a payoff in the next quarter’s results.
'Independent as-needed knowledge acquisition' isn't an organizational virtue. That is to say, projects initiated by the organization, for its own benefit, are rarely of the sort that benefit learners, and hence rarely are of the type of learning described. Perhaps it's much more an organizational culture thing than any initiative or project or management process. Organizations that encourage staff to be open, to collaborate on non-work projects with people in other organizations, to share freely, to experiment and fail (etc) are organizations that will foster learning. In such cases, it is likely that the initiatives will be created by - and owned by - the employees, not the organization.
The potential of informal learning on the Web is that it can let us be wolves in our learning. We have the means to connect with other members of the pack all over the world. We don’t have to revert to sheepdom so that we can be scheduled for the next course or workshop or whatever the all-knowing organisation has decided is best for us. “I don’t need your course, I’ll learn it on my own and I’ll find others who are willing to help me”.
Informal, emergent learning is linked to critical theory and that is to question authority, seek the truth and question our own perceptions of reality. Thinking for yourself may be subversive for the organisation but it is necessary for individual growth, as with any child growing into adulthood.
The organisation should create opportunities for people to have authentic experiences, and when they can't get those experiences give them the opportunity to hear the stories of other people who have had those experiences, combined with running through scenarios that spark real, reflective thinking. Leaders in the organisation (organisations by themselves don't do anything and can be viewed as an emergent property) need to be thinking of the experiences people need to have to improve their knowledge and the ability for the group to get things done.
Recognize achievements, celebrate failures as learning opportunities, allow staff to experiment and fall forward, encourage out of work relationship building and networking, allow 15% of time for personal projects. Establish some version of reflective activity, both individually and collectively.
Generous policies and budgets regarding Blogging, book purchases, professional society memberships, attending conferences, etc encourage shared knowledge. Develop ongoing relationships with academic communities. Help employees create their own personal learning environment (PLE). Provide incentives for teaching (both to internal and external audiences)
[edit] Fostering SHARING, COLLABORATION and NETWORKING of organizational knowledge
Tag cloud for participant responses
Sharing, collaboration, and networking are not ends to themselves. No one collaborates for the sake of collaborating. Instead, these activities occur in the context of achieving certain tasks. Collaboration and networking are natural responses to the current environment of information abundance. What often prevents people from collaborating, sharing and networking is a lack of skills in how to participate (media literacy skills) or the existence of corporate reward systems that suggest personal achievement is vital. What gets rewarded gets done.
Provide mechanisms for making individual interests and expertise easily visible for others (e.g. via blogging, smart personal profiles, opportunities for an exposure); create conditions for chance encounters with interesting others; Provide and support easy to use communication and collaboration tools, but not require their use. Recognize and reward teams in addition to individuals.
Formally allocating weekly time for each collaborator (e.g. the often quoted “20% time” at Google). Allow time to socialise, network, "to stop & think" & be creative within exploration. Instilling these values in employees, from the top, is a start. By being visible with actions on public web sites, but using group organizational tools such as tagging for managing organizational information, keyword search, online collaboration tools.
Trust that core group of early adopters who are on the bleeding edge of technology will drive the corporate adoption of social tools in order to help empower knowledge workers to share, collaborate and network with other peers without the hassle of having to figure it all out by themselves first.
In a networked environment, every node has the ability to influence and contribute to the entire network. One way to encourage contribution is through promoting the use of networking tools, especially collaborative tools that allow for independent inquiry. One example of such a tool is social bookmarking (furl, de.lic.ious, ma.gnolia). Another tool to encourage and promote the use of a personal feed reader, so that each learner can determine their interests and pull in new knowledge on the topic.
Demonstrate shared knowledge at the top levels. Encourage people to talk, to share and to explore independent knowledge. Highlight teaming and group success, rather than individual achievement. The organization should get out of the way and give up the notion of control. A culture of shared knowledge doesn't impose arbitrary or artificial barriers on who can or should collaborate, share, and network. Secrecy is never a useful part of strategic business behavior. The organization should reward & recognize individuals who are effectively sharing their knowledge.
Another way is to introduce the concept of communities of practice and implement the action-oriented approach.
Encourage informal communication and community, collect and pass along stories, allow open questions, foster building core documents, attach contact information to artifacts and documents. Don't try and formally manage it. Allow people to choose their own collaboration tools in a social computing environment. The organization should provide communications tools and encourage (but not require) their use. Make it easy to find others with similar interests – via tools and social network applications.
It is important that the organization remove constraints that prevent sharing. Most often, security is an organization's prime concern, and this makes communication very difficult. Ther organization needs to open these channels of communication (sometimes literally, as frequently internet ports are blocked and software, such as Blogger, disabled). We have seen this already, with organizational postal services, telephone services, and email. The same logic should extend to the provision of blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, community websites, etc.
Employ the usual technology suspects such as discussion boards, wiki, web-conferencing solutions, IM, VOIP, etc. Use hot links for documents. Facilitate physical meet-ups through architectural design and orchestrated face-to-face events. Support and encourage communities of practice and other community and network constructs. Identify and address roadblocks via organizational network analysis.
Finally, the organization needs to have policy support for open communication. Typically organizations tightly control all public emissions, requiring that staff obtain prior aproval from a public relations office before communication. These constraints need to be lifted, replaced by a foundation of trust within a framework of guidelines and expectations.
[edit] Fostering better expression and sharing of TACIT KNOWLEDGE
Tag cloud for participant responses
It is important to recognize that tacit knowledge cannot be stored or communicated. It is understood and thus the idea of capturing tacit knowledge is contradictory. Tacit knowledge is only produced through direct experience, and isn't shared per se. Perhaps it would be best to abandon the notion of tacit vs. explicit knowledge. This has been a terrible diversion and confusion created by Nonaka. Marking some kinds of knowledge as tacit makes it appear mysterious and different from other kinds of knowledge. Yes, “I know more than I can say,” but the objective is for me to work on making what I know more explicit and transparent to myself as well as to others. While there may be forms of knowledge that I can best acquire through experience rather than formal instruction or transmission, we should identify that and work out ways to help others acquire experience more quickly and more effectively.
Having said that, experience (tacit knowledge) may be the most powerful kind of knowledge available, and as such, the need for this knowledge must be articulated within the organization. Those who can share their story need to see that it is valued, who needs it and why it should be shared. To make experience accessible, the organization should create conversation spaces. Tacit knowledge cannot be made explicit in a manner different from how it is created in the first place. As such, conversations and tools that foster conversation are vital. As is the time to converse. Tools that can evoke tacit knowledge might include interview podcasts, videos, capture of story-telling and case studies.
Another support for tacit knowledge is through one of the organisms that has been mainly ignored to date, but which has been able to save plenty of different businesses from disappearing: communities. The perfect ground to help foster the sharing of tacit knowledge within the organization is through fostering community. Making use of the latest social software tools both inside and outside of the corporate world will accelerate the adoption of new models of collaboration and knowledge sharing, which in the end are only going to benefit everyone!
Encouraging direct synchronous communications between individuals (face-to-face, video conference, instant messaging) allows sharing of knowledge in situ. Unstructured communication and formally allocating weekly time for each collaborator to socialise, network, "to stop & think" & be creative fosters tacit knowledge exchange.
Cultures that promote tacit knowledge do so by incorporating knowledge sharing sessions, mentoring, training, retaining relationships with departing key staff, sanctioning pairing, rotation, shadowing on the job, and structured on the job training (OJT) - all in an aggressive manner to create a culture of sharing experience.
Organisations should aim to increase their storyability, that is, the likelihood of whether stories are told in the organisation. It helps to give clear definition around what you expect people to talk about -- and what you expect them to NOT talk about (legal issues). Stories are told when remarkable things happen or when people have remarkable experiences.
Means of producing direct experiences of successful performance are well known and should be incorporated across diverse cultures. For example, police departments pair inexperienced officers with experienced officers for just this purpose. Other types of modeling and simulation can also generate tacit knowledge. There is also the element of tacit knowledge as being a property of a community (eg. a 'community of practice' as defined by Kuhn or Wenger). The idea is to enable new staff to 'think like' more experienced staff, which requires exposure to conversations and interactions. Therein, tacit knowledge becomes experience told, shown and shared.
[edit] Potential TOOLS or PRACTICES for finding, creating and encouraging organizational knowledge
Tag cloud for participant responses
Tools that might work in one case will not necessarily work in another, but again, certain practices encourage collaboration and sharing of knowledge. Reflection time, spaces for dialogue, opportunity to help/share, information literacy, and a culture that encourages free exchange of ideas are cultural practices that encourage shared knowledge. Tools or practices may vary, but those that fit the way people (individuals!) work and address their needs first, before addressing any organizational needs are more likely to be embraced.
The practice of forming communities of practice and allowing their members to communicate freely and directly, and whenever possible, to meet up physically at least once/year. Knowledge sharing sessions, communities, expert locators, portals.
The use of after action reviews as the simplest tool to get people to thinking about and reflecting on the lessons to be taken away from experience.
Focus on helping individual knowledge workers enhance their personal, local, knowledge as the fastest way to increase organizational knowledge. If you want an organizational step to go beyond the support of individual learning, encourage those who are learning to teach what they know to others. It increases their rate of learning and the conversations help move the individual learning throughout the organization.
Practical tools, applications and processes for training and organisational development include critical thinking tools, workplace job aids, performance analysis tools, informal learning tools, personal knowledge management tools (Blogs and social bookmarks, etc), and tools to help people move from problem to solution. Whatever the content creation systems, they should to be public and transparent with work.
Lots of Web2.0 stuff could potentially fit into that category, but it’s not only the tools themselves, but the attitudes of implementing them (e.g. as a company you can introduce Blogging) that would grow into a lively knowledge ecosystem, if done right. Socially, tools like supported forums and wikis provide space for knowledge exchange.
Most likely, successful organizationally supported tools would be easy to personalize, easy to start using in a bottom-up way (e.g. no need to get acceptance of everyone and convince IT guys for a huge investment), social (let people talk to other people, not to databases), simple and easy to use job aids.
Tagging tools for collecting, sharing resources are useful. Mainly, Blogs, Wikis, podcasts, RSS / Atom feeds, podcasts and social bookmarks.Group meeting tools that provide shared creation/expression. (Connect/Elluminate). Yes, the usual suspects, but put together into an explosive combination of them all really does help knowledge workers create, find and encourage organizational knowledge. Tools empower the individual to be in control of the knowledge they share, with whom they share it and at the pace they would want to share.
Storytelling, business narrative (different to storytelling - more like anthropology), people directory, Blogs, Wikis, social bookmarking, mentoring schemes, collaboration support teams, search, teleconference, large group processes (world cafe, open space, future search).
Building joint concept maps, sharing stories, narrative databases, capturing best in class practices, attaching contact information to key artifacts, recognition of failure as a learning opportunity, rewarding knowledge reuse and collaborative activities are excellent practices for sharing knowledge.
The telephone and email have been exceptionally successful communication tools in the past. When combined with effective personal record-keeping, these tools result in the generation of a substantial body of personal knowledge for the staff member. More recent tools that have been effective where used include instant messaging, discussion lists (web and email-based), and content management systems. Again, though, their use must be combined with a personal record system - which is why the organization should encourage practices like Blogging.
In the end, there needs to be a central drive for all these tools and conversations. Theory of Constraints has been found to be an excellent mechanism to set strategy for an organization. With these things set and related tools in place, people can bring out their knowledge around how to implement strategy. The idea is that having clear direction and a means to get there helps remove a lot of uncertainty around whether a given idea is going to provide value.
[edit] GREATEST PRIORITY in creating a more effective digital workplace
Tag cloud for participant responses
For many respondents, the answer rests in the cultivation of a new, social mindset within the organization. Although the tools and possibilities are now easily available, our practices of using them are often guided by old sets of values and internalized routines. Social technologies will make little difference without the trust, open-ness, and culture that supports the individual in their discovery and contribution.
That people feel empowered to be expressive, to participate, that their voices count, and that they feel comfortable with a place/space of less order is of vital importance. Organizations need to create an internal culture conducive to knowledge sharing. Ways to ensure this culture include making curiosity acceptable within the organization. Help people recover their innate curiosity and root out the organizational practices that discourage and suppress curiosity. Give up control to create shared knowledge.
Along with cultural change is the issue of changing the skill set needed of knowledge workers. A new, participatory culture will demand what some call new media literacy which could include: leveraging social media in problem-solving, the sample and remix of content, scanning multiple resources for meaning, pooling knowledge and resources with others working toward a common goal, networking with people and through machines to build collective intelligence, and working with diverse communities and perspectives to achieve consensus-built solutions. A change in knowledge skills will demand an environment that fosters the ability to find, create, share and disseminate information. A new media literacy in knowledge workers will depend on an environment that allows for the capture of personal values, that builds and maintains networks and effectively collects feedback.
Support for knowledge work will include trust over distance, and issues of control resting in the realisation that working from home, remotely, from the Web, can be just as effective as working from the office. Managers need to understand their team members are not hovering around their own workplace. Workers can be productive when they are mobile, thriving, constantly on the road, working from home, and as such the best way to keep in touch with them is through the digital workplace: The Internet.
It will continue to be a challenge dealing with locating information, fuzzy boundaries, shared controls, knowing what we really need, how to find it and taking responsibility and risks to go for it. For young and old, digital and digital-averse, information overload will continue to be a challenge as new habits and strategies are developed to help us move from information scarcity to information abundance.
Getting older people who have made it to the top without technology to understand how technology can take the next generation to the next level. As technology becomes more intuitive, making the “how to” of connection, sharing, and collaboration will become radically easier and better understood throughout the organization – getting technology more into the background, while simultaneously becoming even more powerful and understood.
* Originally created as part of a [dissertation research project] by Colleen Carmean, Capella University. (Committee: Rod Sims (chair), Elena Kays, Patricia McGee)
