Instructor: Robert J. Sandusky

E-mail: sandusky at utk dot edu

Office Hours: Tuesday, 12:00 Noon - 2:00 PM ET, or by arrangement

Meeting Time: Tuesday, 6:30 - 9:10 PM EST

Meeting Place: COM 321B (and Centra)

Course Catalog Description: Covers classic theories of knowledge and theories of first and second-generation knowledge management paradigms. Introduces related disciplines and the knowledge lifecycle, types of knowledge, organizational learning, intellectual capital, communities of practice, knowledge ecologies, knowledge audits, knowledge sharing, repurposing of information, uses of information technology, and roles of information professionals in developing knowledge management initiatives.

Objectives: IS 556 provides students with theoretical and practical background to understand the complex issues around the creation, transfer, and use of information and knowledge within and between organizations. Given this backgrond, students will be able to participate in initiatives to help organizations manage information more effectively and/or pursue original research in this area. Much of the course will focus on reading the primary and secondary literatures in order to gain an appreciation of the organizational, psychological, cognitive, social and technical issues related to what we refer to as knowledge management.

At the end of the semester, based upon your personal experiences and the class readings, lectures and discussion, you will be able to:

1. demonstrate, as a result of completing the assigned readings and participating in discussion, the ability to identify and express different conceptions of information and knowledge
2. demonstrate, as a result of completing the assigned readings and participating in discussion, understanding of theories related to knowledge management
3. experience, though completion of the assignments, creation of information / knowledge as an individual and a group
4. demonstrate, though completion of the term paper, the ability to build upon the information presented in the readings and discussion and derive new insights into the problems of managing information and knowledge

Required Materials

Textbooks

Choo, C.W. (2005). The knowing organization: How organizations use information to construct meaning, create knowledge, and make decisions. 2d. ed. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-517678-2.

Davenport, T.H. & Prusak, L. (1998). Working knowledge: How organizations manage what they know. Boston: Harvard University Press. ISBN 1-57851-301-4.

Computing Requirements

Centra: The login page for Centra, used for online synchronous class sessions, is found at http://www.liveonline.utk.edu/main/sis/index.jhtml?default=true.

NB: Only Internet Explorer is supported by Centra at this time.

Blackboard: The syllabus and other course-related information is available on the Blackboard system Online@UT at http://online.utk.edu/. This system provides support for asynchronous communications for the course. You will need your NetID and password to access the materials at Online@UT.

System and browser recommendations can be found at http://www.itc.utk.edu/onlineutk/about_first_time_users.shtml. This page also provides links to other information about the system.

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Grades are based on class participation (10%), assignments (40%), leading discussions during class (20%), and a term paper (30%).

You are expected to participate in discussions during class meetings and on the discussion boards, and therefore, class attendance is expected. Your presence and participation is vital to the success of this class. To receive full credit for participation, your presence must be known both during in-class discussions and in the asynchronous discussion boards. The quality of your contributions is as important as the quantity of contributions.

If an absence is unavoidable, please e-mail me before the absence, if at all possible.

Read the assigned materials prior to the class for which they are assigned, and be prepared to refer to passages or issues of interest to you during our discussions.

If you have questions about the class, look at the "Questions About Class" discussion board. Please post your questions first to the class bulletin boards located on the Blackboard system at http://blackboard.utk.edu/webapps/login/. Sharing your questions is helpful because (1) other people may have the same or similar questions and (2) you may get a faster or better response from other people in the class. I will be reading the discussion boards (almost) daily.

The project presentation is made near the end of the term (please refer to the schedule) and is based upon your term paper.

Policy on late submission of assignments and projects: A minimum of 5% will be deducted from your grade for each 24 hour period your submission is late. Please contact me prior to any assignment or project due date (as far in advance as possible) in order to negotiate adjustments due to an emergency.

Final grades will be assigned as follows:

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Leading Discussion (20%)

When you are responsible for leading discussion on particular readings, please post to Blackboard no later than 5PM ET the day prior to our class meeting. Your posting should contain your reaction to the item (see "Citation" assignment instructions) and questions and/or d iscussion issues to use to motivate the discussion during our class meeting.

Posting Citations (15%)

Knowledge management encompasses a wide range of approaches, conceptualizations, and fields. The issues and boundaries are fluid and continue to change. An important part of expertise in KM is finding ways in which to locate and analyze related work (articles, research, books, etc.).

Learning Objectives

1. By seeking and locating citations to significant and substantive articles and books addressing one or more important aspects of KM, you will contribute to your understanding of KM and where and how to locate information about it.
2. By creating thoughtful analyses of the citations you locate and contextualizing them for other course participants, you will contribute to our local set of KM resources.
3. By posting thoughtful and substantive responses to other participants' citations and analyses, you will further augment our local set of KM resources.

Instructions

Each participant in the course will locate and post a minimum of three significant, substantive citation to the appropriate area in Blackboard a minimum of three times during the semester. Each posting should include:

• A link to the item cited
• A concise analysis of the item cited:
• • Brief, one paragraph summary of the cited item
  • Brief discussion of the item's relationship to this course
  • Summary of the item's contributions to this course and KM
  • Ways in which the item could be improved
  • Questions raised by the item
• Process you used to locate the item

For each round of citation posting, each participant should provide a thoughtful and substantive response to at least one of the citations posted by another participant.

KM Organization Analysis Assignment (5%)

You will engage with and analyze a professional organization that includes KM professionals, broadly construed. If the organization you are interested in has a financial barrier to entry, try obtaining a "trial membership" to support your evaluation of the organization.

1. By seeking and locating a KM organization, you will contribute to your understanding of KM as an area of professional practice.
2. By writing an analysis of the organization you locate, you will contribute to our local set of KM resources.

Instructions

You will post a brief analysis (about two pages) of the organization to the Blackboard site and present a brief summary of your analysis during class. Your analysis should justify why this is a KM organization; the organization's strengths and weaknesses; its values; its value to information professionals; etc.

Knowledge Mapping Assignment (10%)

One of the fundamental activities of a KM project is creating an inventory or map of existing information/knowledge assets (information objects; people; communities of practice; organizational memories; procedures; repositories; etc.). In this assignment, each participant will conduct an abbreviated knowledge audit and create a knowledge map based upon the information he or she has collected.

1. By seeking, analyzing and organizing information/knowledge assets, you will apply the conceptions of data, information and knowledge presented during the first portion of the course to a real-world setting.
2. By seeking, analyzing, and organizing information/knowledge assets, you will evaluate, adopt and modify one or more pre-existing processes for mapping organizational knowledge.
3. By creating a knowledge map "deliverable," you will grapple with the challenges of representation in KM.

As discussed in the lecture, knowledge mapping efforts are necessarily unique for any organization or setting. The KM literature doesn't yet provide standard procedures or approaches to conducting knowledge audits or creating knowledge maps, so this assignment requires creativity.

Select a domain you are familiar with personally. Use ideas from the readings, discussions, etc., to frame a process that will yield a representation of the results of your audit. Some ideas for domains include:

• information / knowledge you use to support your student career
• the expertise around you: at work; your personal professional network, etc.
• the information / knowledge used at your job to attract and retain customers / users / patrons
• other

Your deliverable should be a representation of what you discovered through the mapping process. There is no specific deliverable format to aim for here, so the nature and form of the deliverable is up to you. It should be understandable to you and others; include enough descriptive information with your deliverable to make it so. It might be a schematic diagram, or one or more lists of attributes of the information / knowledge you analyzed.

We will discuss each person's assignment during class the day this assignment is due.

Wikipedia Assignment (10%)

An unexpected outcome of the success of open source software development processes is the recent appearance of large-scale social information systems. One of the most successful and well-known of these is Wikipedia. In this assignment, participants will register and become Wikipedians - members of the Wikipedia community. During the semester, you will contribute to or create one or more Wikipedia articles related to KM and the information professions. This assignment also provides participants with experience in the application of information and communications technologies to information work and the production of knowledge.

1. By registering as a new member of the Wikipedia community and observing the processes of article creation and editing, participants will experience the socialization and acculturization processes as legitimate participants.
2. By contributing new material to the community, students will participate in distributed knowledge creation.
3. Through journaling and writing a reflective piece about their Wikipedia experience, participants will relate their understanding of KM to the Wikipedia technology and community.

Instructions

I recommend that you begin an electronic journal where you can note your expectations, questions, and experiences as you work through this assignment. You will likely encounter many situations that will mirror situations revealed in the literature we are reading - issues of acculturation, learning, fitting in, sensemaking, sharing expertise, etc.

• How do people get started contributing?
• Why do they contribute?
• How do newcomers learn about how to participate? What can go wrong as a newbie?
• How does the community ensure information quality?
• How do the tools provided support participation? How do the tools make participation difficult?
• Etc.

• The URL to the article(s) you created or contributed to, with an indication of what your contribution was
• A short reflective piece (about two pages), based upon your journal entries, about your experiences with Wikipedia. You should address the nature of Wikipedia (and Wikis in general) in terms of KM: is Wiki a KM technology, for example.
• Your journal entries.

Term Paper (30%)

Each individual will select a topic related to KM and write a substantial research paper on that topic. Course participants will identify and select their topics during February and submit the final version in early May. The last class meeting will consist of student presentation of their papers. The presentation itself will count for 5% of the term paper's 30% contribution to the final grade.

Some possible topics for papers that relate to the content of this course include:

articulation work -- boundary spanning -- collective / group mind -- communities of practice -- community knowlege -- computer supported cooperative learning (CSCL) -- computer supported cooperative work (CSCW) -- context -- cultural contexts -- decision making -- distributed cognition -- hidden / invisible work -- information sharing / hoarding -- innovation and creativity -- intellectual capital -- knowledge transfer -- language -- open source / open content -- organizational learning -- organizational memory -- peer production -- research methods in KM -- sensemaking -- social capital -- social construction of knowledge -- teams / groups -- technologies for KM -- theories of collaboration -- transactive memory -- others....

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Students with Disabilities

If you need course adaptations or accommodations because of the impact of a disability or you have emergency information to share, please contact the Office of Disability Services at 191 Hoskins Library at (865) 974-6087. The ODS coordinates reasonable accommodations for students with documented disabilities. For more information, see http://ods.utk.edu/.

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Please post your questions first to the class bulletin boards located on the Blackboard system. Sharing your questions is helpful because (1) other people may have the same or similar questions and (2) you may get a faster or better response from other people in the class. I will be reading the discussion boards (almost) daily.

I am almost constantly on e-mail and will respond to your questions within 48 hours. Here are the methods you can use to get in touch with me.

Instructor: Robert J. Sandusky
E-mail: sandusky at utk dot edu
Office Phone: (865) 974-2785
Fax: (865) 974-4967

Mailing Address:
School of Information Sciences
University of Tennessee
451 Communications Bldg.
1345 Circle Park Drive
Knoxville, TN 37996-0341

Academic Integrity

University of Tennessee Policy

"The responsibility for learning is an individual matter. Study, preparation and presentation should involve at all times the student's own work, unless it has been clearly specified that work is to be a team effort. Academic honesty requires that all work presented be the student's own work, not only on tests, but in themes, papers, homework, and class presentation. There is a clear distinction between learning new ideas and presenting them as facts or as answers, and presenting them as one's own ideas. It is part of the learning process to incorporate the thoughts or ideas of others into one's own mind and presentations with the purpose of learning and enlarging on personal boundaries of knowledge." (Hilltopics: students handbook, 2003-2004, p. 40).

"The University expects that all academic work will provide an honest reflection of the knowledge and abilities of both students and faculty. Cheating, plagiarism, fabrication of data, providing unauthorized help, and other acts of academic dishonesty are abhorrent to the purposes for which the University exists. In support of its commitment to academic integrity, the University has adopted an Honor Statement." (Hilltopics: students handbook, 2003-2004, p. 41).

(from "Understanding Plagiarism" at http://www.lib.utk.edu/instruction/plagiarism/. Retrieved January 10, 2006.)

Schedule

Week 1 – January 17
Conceptualizations of Information & Knowledge

Week 2 – January 24
Information, Knowledge, and Transfer in Organizations

Week 3 – January 31
Information and Knowledge Projects

Week 4 – February 7
Ecological & Holistic Perspectives

Week 5 – February 14
Manifestations of Knowledge

Week 6 – February 21
Sensemaking Perspectives

Week 7 – February 28
Learning & Memory Perspectives

Week 8 – March 7
Decision Making Perspectives

Week 9 – March 14
The Role of Information Professionals

Week 10 – March 21
Spring Break

Week 11 – March 28
Systems & Cases, Part 1

Week 12 – April 4
Systems & Cases, Part 2

Week 13 – April 11
Systems & Cases, Part 3

Week 14 – April 18
Models & Metrics

Week 15 – April 25
Student Presentations

Week 16 – May 2