TC112: Technology for Knowledge Management

July 3-28th

SUMMARY
Our digitally connected lives have made information increasingly available to all. How do you
navigate this world of overabundant information, while making sure that the right knowledge is
being incorporated into and captured by your project? How do you ensure that experiential
knowledge from the field feeds back into program design, or that best practices from one project
are shared with a similar project in another part of the world? How do you leverage technology
to elicit tacit knowledge and connect geographically dispersed people to share and make sense
of the knowledge they have gained? The growing field of knowledge management provides a
framework and introduces tools to help practitioners improve knowledge flow and ultimately
development outcomes.

This course provides an overview of the knowledge cycle by focusing on skills and strategies to
better generate, capture, share, and apply knowledge to development programs. It will feature
live interactive guest expert presentations with leading KM specialists, community of practice
leaders, and online learning experts. It will also include a unique hands-on learning environment
with technology demos, practical activities, networking events, immersive simulations and more.
Ultimately, participants will leave the course with an understanding of the tools and techniques
to effectively design, deliver and evaluate knowledge management activities.

TEACHING METHOD
The entire course is delivered online. The total time commitment is a minimum of 2-5 hours a
week with suggested 7-9 hours per week. The course is designed to be highly interactive and
social, but we also work hard to ensure that the majority of the content can be experienced in a
self-paced manner. It will feature one or two real-time interactions each week, such as live
discussions, live expert interviews, and live simulations. In order to accommodate busy
schedules of mission staff from around the world, we’ve set up a learning environment where
participants have plenty of options to explore content that is most relevant to them through live
content and interactions, readings, and videos. Facilitators will produce weekly audio podcast
recaps for participants to catch up on key conversations and topics. Participants can also
access all course content four months after course completion so the material can be revisited
later.
OBJECTIVES
At the conclusion of the course, participants will be able to:

● critically analyze both the opportunities and the pitfalls that emerge when working with
technology to improve knowledge management outcomes
● connect relevant learning and management theories to the technological strategies and
tools discussed in the course
● manage specific knowledge management software platforms and tools and understand
how the differ/work together (ex: CMSs, LMSs, Wikis, Blogs, Social Network Analysis
tools, Webinar platforms, project management tools, etc)
● design dynamic and effective strategies for using tools and platforms improve knowledge
management processes and communities
● design an effective knowledge sharing activity with the skills and tools for both in-person
and virtual activities.
● measure and evaluate KM activities to ensure that knowledge sharing outcomes are met
● develop critical self-confidence for working with technology to address knowledge
management challenges

DURATION
July 3 - July 28 2017 (4 Weeks)

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:
● Aaron Buchsbaum, World Bank
● Courtney Roberts, Moonshot Global
● Karim Bin-Humam, DAI
● Arno Boersma, UNDP

SCHEDULE/SYLLABUS (TENTATIVE)

● Week 1: Introduction to Knowledge Management (People, Process, & Tech)

● Week 2: Tech for Collaboration and Capture (Conducting a Knowledge Audit)
● Week 3: Tech for Internalizing and Organizing (Developing a KM Strategy and
Implementation)
● Week 4: The Future of Knowledge Management (M&E for your Project, Social Network
Analysis, Technologies on the Horizon)

Across all four weeks, we will weave in several topics including:

● How do knowledge managers effectively evaluate tech tools based on factors like
bandwidth, literacy, language support, etc.?
● How do knowledge managers create engagement with their community virtually and
across distributed networks?
● How do knowledge managers effectively measure the impact of their programming?
 ● When is technology the answer and when should the focus be on people and process?
● When something is not working, how and when do you make the decision to switch?

Week 1: Introduction to Knowledge Management

What is “knowledge management” (KM), and how does it relate to my work? KM cuts across the
disciplines of communications, M&E, organizational learning and education. Depending on the
project KM can “live” in any one of them. This week offers an overview of KM principles and
provides case studies of good KM in practice.

Key Topics:
● Types of knowledge
● How to structure a KM strategy based on KM framework.
● What do we mean when we talk about “knowledge” management? How is that different
than content or information management?

Week 2: Tech for Collaboration and Capture (Conducting a Knowledge Audit)

This week will focus on identifying knowledge assets and gaps at your organization or project.
We’ll talk about how to identify the people, processes and tools that already in place that can be
used to improve knowledge flow, and how to find the known unknown. Using examples from
participants’ own experiences, the course will help students determine where there are
knowledge gaps and how to begin to address them.

Key Topics:
● Identifying existing knowledge assets (who knows what, and where?)
● Understanding knowledge gaps (what do my stakeholders need?)
● Knowledge mapping (how is information currently flowing/grouped?)

Key Technologies:
● Internal collaboration tools: Slack & Hipchat
● Webinar platforms: (Google Hangouts on Air, GoTo Meeting, Fuze, Join.me Adobe
Connect, etc)
● Fire-sharing applications: Box, Dropbox, GoogleDocs
● Project management tools: BaseCamp, Trello, Asana
● Wikis
● Discussion forums
● Tools for audio capture: Audacity
● Tools for video capture: Camtasia

Week 3: Tech for Internalizing and Organizing (Developing a KM Strategy and

Implementation)
Now that you understand your knowledge problem, this week focuses on designing activities,
processes and tools to help bridge the knowledge gap. We will discuss some of the strengths
and weaknesses of the most common in-person and online knowledge sharing activities, and
discuss how to determine which one best suits your needs.

Key Topics:
● Scoping knowledge sharing activities: establishing online/in-person meeting spaces and
selecting participants
● Implementation: facilitation tips, meeting design and knowledge capture
● Post-event follow-up: sharing out knowledge and continuing the momentum
● Picking the appropriate tool
● KM 1.0: newsletters, databases, workflow management, peer assists,
communities of practice and after action reviews
● KM 2.0: blogs, wikis, webinars, content management systems and knowledge
fairs

Key Technologies:
● Content Management Systems (CMS)
● eLearning and Learning Management Systems (LMS)
● RSS feeds
● Community blogs
● SharePoint
● Portals

Week 4: The Future of Knowledge Management (M&E for your Project, Social Network
Analysis, Technologies on the Horizon)
There is more to measuring the impact of a knowledge activity than counting the number of
people that show up. This week focuses on the progress, outcome and impact indicators that
can be used to report back on the effectiveness of a KM activity. We also talk about the future of
KM in exciting but as-yet untested tools.

Key Concepts
● M&E for KM
● Social Network Analysis (SNA)
● Prospective KM tools: Big Data, Data Mining and Predictive Analytics