Team Challenge - Groupware and Learning

Many schools are finding that the knowledge of their employees is the most valuable asset of the organization. Deriving maximum benefit from assets comprised of knowledge requires technology for capturing, using, storing, and retrieving knowledge-based work. Many schools will endure fundamental cultural changes when implementing knowledge-based technologies thus it would be ill-advised to attempt building knowledge-based technologies without mastering the fundamentals of sections I, II, and III of this guide.

There is an inherent life-cycle of acceptance and effectiveness when introducing technologies in a school system and this cycle entails introducing (immature) to the desired outcome of the technology (mature). Technology gains maturity when it meets its organizational potential, but there still exist a requirement for "the technology push" by those implementing it for quite some time after maturity. For instance, e-mail may become a standard practice within a school system, but may still require the continual use and modeling by implementers before becoming institutionalized (mature) because of resistant users. The key strategy for schools implementing new technologies are developing organizational standards for use, developing training components, and developing instant and perpetual support mechanisms.

Sharing best practices can be beneficial to schools, but there is much more to organizational learning than sharing benchmarks. The learning organization is about collective energies and initiative to create new knowledge and new capacities and not so much about spreading information. Information does not equate knowledge, and knowledge requires learning. Electronic mail is being utilized in many organizations and schools and provides a surface level type of groupware function. E-mail, however, needs expansion to a database type delivery system where the process moves beyond activities of "read-me" and "file me" type operations. E-mail type groupware for teams needs to move to conversation and information retrieval type systems that not only communicate but also capture and store team processes (knowledge).

The needed level of e-mail type systems for learning organizations is one that supports browsing information and knowledge. "Just in time" learning requires that team members be able to seek items when they are needed, and this requires a stored history of communications that has wide scale accessibility. Additionally, an effective e-mail system in a learning organization needs an elaborate search, classification, and indexing system so that things can be found with little effort. The described type of e-mail system could be classified as a conferencing system, and with successful implementation would be more effective than meeting face to face when considering a single feature such as automatic capture and store.

Acquiring information does not translate to acquiring knowledge (Karash, 1995). The process of learning is a series of transformations beginning with information transforming to learning that is then transformed to knowledge (

Implicit vs. Explicit Knowledge). The use of electronic collaborative tools provides the means for capturing and storing the knowledge created by teams. Knowledge can be thought of as "intellectual capital" within the school system and "intellectual capital" is a core issue in regard to collaborative technologies because transferring knowledge and storing knowledge is a key feature of emerging technologies. Knowledge is a personal competence such as a skill, and these skills are required to do things. Knowledge (skills) are acquired as a result of reading, seeing, or listening to something. Activities such as reading, seeing, and listening are mediums through which information is transformed into knowledge (Gundry & Metes, 1996).

Technologies not only govern and provide the means toward knowledge such as with the internet but also provide the mechanisms to help capture, organize, store and transmit information for individuals to use in the transformation of information to knowledge. The transformation of information to knowledge involves an interaction between many factors such as context and structure. The transformation to knowledge in any given circumstance requires a shared context and/or understanding for the transformation to be applicable to another circumstance.

A common assertion is that knowledge is best learned through doing something as opposed to reading about it or being told about it. Learning occurs in real situations (or practices) without having to abstract and reorganize information into a medium for transference such as in a book or with a lecture. Communication practices between people contain knowledge, and these practices such as dialogue may be formal or informal in nature and may include a number of accompanying items (for expanding shared space). Technologies designed for collaboration provide storage of communication that can be shared with others for further transformation into learning and knowledge (Gundry & Metes, 1996).

With shifts toward learning organizations, administrators need new tools for capturing, storing, and retrieving knowledge, and they must accept that the "all knowing person" such as the administrator of the past is gone forever. A more suitable role for new educational leaders is as "learning leaders," (Bailey, Ross & Bailey, 1994) who share the responsibility of fostering and creating "learning friendly" environments.

Developing technology teams is a promising method for success of the learning organization and without such, a true learning organization base on principles of shared vision, systems thinking, and continual learning is not possible. Teams generate a great deal of learning thus creating much new knowledge that is of high value to the school system. Collaborative technologies facilitate and capture the knowledge of how and why the team learning occurred.

Schools are accustomed to capturing and documenting information for documentation purposes of routine work for repeating procedures and duplicating quality standards. However, capturing non-routine processes and documenting the derived knowledge is extremely difficult. Generally, the processes used are not capable of recording intricate dialogue and the context of which the knowledge was created.

If the methodology is too strongly related to a particular context, then it may fail to be generalizable to other situations. If knowledge is too far out of context, relating the information to other situations becomes difficult. Shared context is essential to effective communication and coordinated teamwork. A central electronic repository, recognized and used as such by the team, becomes a means to capture the team's emerging knowledge, as well as its mission, norms, and work processes.

It is important to support all the operating environments in which people work as well as the methods they use in their work. The computer industry is diverse, and there are many quality products available for networks, personal (and interpersonal) computers, and a wealth of powerful software programs for accomplishing a multitude of tasks and operations. The problem is how to connect team members so that the working spaces become shared spaces, and the collective strengths of the team are less fragmented. When one team member begins a document in one software program, how is that document shared with the rest of the team if different software programs are used?

There are programs that allow users to view, create, modify and enhance various documents. These types of programs (Adobe Acrobat® for instance) are flexible, contain cross-platform file formats, retain all fonts, page layouts, and graphical elements. Contained within these programs are also the ability to create full-text indexes of collections of documents that enable users to search document collections for captured team knowledge. Adobe Acrobat created a new file format called the Portable Document Format (PDF) that unlike the PostScript technology is highly compact and includes hypertext features. One of the most useful aspects of PDF is that it makes it possible to go online from nearly any kind of software program through a process similar to printing using a special print driver furnished with the Acrobat Exchange® program. Through another Adobe program Acrobat Distiller ® files are converted from raw PostScript files to PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Exchange ® and Acrobat Distiller ® also allow implementation of hyperlinks to the World Wide Web.

Publishing documents on the Web has only recently become popular, and until recently, only organizations who needed to make large volumes of information available to the public used the Web for publishing (

Web Technologies). As school districts see the need for making knowledge more explicit so that it can be stored, indexed, shared and transferred, and so that this knowledge is more tangible, publishing on the Web appears to be a logical choice.

Most processes for recording knowledge typically only document the explicit elements. Often what is not documented are the informal processes that took place in the practice of dialogue, the dynamics, the insights, and the interactions that made the learning possible. What typically gets recorded is the 'what' of a process while the 'why' of the learning is lost forever. The resulting knowledge of the process remains in the minds of people who were personally involved instead of captured and shared (Gundry & Metes, 1996)

With technology teaming, the knowledge from learning is seized by the team process tools as the learning transforms to knowledge. Knowledge management and computer conferencing make the most of electronic collaboration tools such as email, voice mail, and audio/video conferencing.

Computer conferencing was invented roughly twenty years ago and has a history of supporting various social and educational activities. Computer conferencing is rapidly maturing as the key tool of virtual teams. Computer conferencing can be found in many different forms such as bulletin boards, data conferencing, web conferencing, and groupware. When a team uses computer conferencing to collaborate, a permanent, shareable, record of what they write and send to each other is created. That record captures the knowledge that the team created, thus becoming sharable with others for further learning (

Organizational Memory). The team generates the knowledge used in their work, and this knowledge becomes available to others without having to relive and repeat the learning processes. Additionally, this type of knowledge is being produced and consumed simultaneously, and the team is referred to as "prosumers" (producer and consumer) by some (Gundry & Metes, 1996).

The context of technology team dialogue includes situations, relationships, assumptions, expectations, and prior events. Adding context to information is one of the transformations from information to knowledge. Capturing teamwork electronically retains context, but attention needs to be given to organization and structuring of subjects, chronological sequences, etc., so that others not involved can tell what is going on or what went on.

$Requirements of "technology push" exist as a new technology reaches maturity by those implementing it for awhile because of the tendency to revert back to the old ways of doing things.

$Requirements of teaming and learning fundamentals are necessary when attempting to build knowledge-based technologies.