Title & Editors' Information
Knowledge Management and Challenges in Education
Editors, Erika Grodzki and Clarinda Calma
Editor-in-Chief
Sharaf Rehman
Jungo Press
Knowledge Management and Challenges in Education
Editors, Erika Grodzki and Clarinda Calma
Editor-in-Chief
Sharaf Rehman
A publication of the International Association of Language, Culture, and Politics,
Tischner European University, Krakow, Poland.
Published by Scholars Ink Publications and Jungo Press.
ISBN: 978-91-87889-09-7
©Sharaf Rehman
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Section I
In Defense of Eclecticism and Knowledge Management
Editors
Knowledge Management: Challenges in Curriculum Design amid Knowledge Explosion
Sharaf Rehman
Section II
Acceptance of New Bar Codes (QR codes) in Poland - Not Just yet
Marta Koszko
Metropolization in the Age of Knowledge Economy: Is it Building Bridges or Building Walls?
Monika Chomątowska
Section III
Piercing the Armor of Indifference: A battle Fought in a classroom.
Lyon Rathbun
Cultural Influences on Reflective Thinking
Silvia Emilia Plăcintar
Managing Knowledge Technology in an Educational Context
Lucyna Wilinkiewicz-Górniak
Section IV
Cultural Knowledge Gaps (Lacunas): Challenges in Cross-Cultural Advertising
Erika Grodzki & Kinga Kowalewska
Desirable Personality Traits in Long-Term Partners
Sharaf Rehman
In defense of eclecticism and knowledge management
In Defense of Eclecticism and Knowledge Management
Editors
A cursory glance at the titles in this collection may lead one to categorize it as an “eclectic assembly” about knowledge. Such a label, however, would be hitting it squarely on the head. Isn’t humanity’s collective knowledge an eclectic assemblage, and isn’t a truly learned person a person with knowledge in many disciplines? Traditionally, a “Renaissance person” was an individual with astuteness and familiarity in varied disciplines. A contemporary Renaissance person is an eclectic jack-of-all-trades.
Neither knowledge nor eclecticism is undesirable. The essays in this collection are strung together on the thread of “sharing of knowledge”. Sharing, as in imparting knowledge in a formal classroom setting; sharing as in disseminating information to large populations in society.
Teachers, policymakers, and businesspersons are wrestling with two important issues: one, presenting relevant, timely, and useful information to their users and two, placing the information where the users may reach and access it easily.
Assuming that “educated decisions” are in the best interest of people in a society, it is important that users of the knowledge, be it students in a classroom, or public at large, have the choice in deciding the value, worth, and usefulness of a particular piece of information before accepting or discarding it.
Broadly speaking, the essays in this collection are about creation, dissemination, and results of knowledge sharing efforts. Such a grouping lends itself to three sections: Theoretical framework around knowledge management, organization of knowledge for formal instruction, and presenting knowledge in a given society.
The opening essay by Rehman lays a broad foundation by describing the purpose, place, and importance of managing and sharing knowledge in non-traditional learning settings. He offers practical approaches to planning and imparting instructions. Simplistic as it may seem, Rehman’s recommendations are grounded in research. His arguments appeal equally to logic and common sense.
The two papers in Section II report on a society’s attempt at sharing knowledge with its various publics. Marta Koszko discusses and dissects the use of Quick Response bar codes, their display in public places, and users’ reactions to QR codes, smartphones, and technological sophistication necessary to make use of such communication.
Marta Koszko questions the relevance of recent technological devices that are supposed to help people communicate more effectively and access information more easily. She describes the early attempts of introducing the Quick Response (QR) codes in Poland. The postal stamp look-alike squares have endless functions from carrying a boarding card to scanning and depositing a check into one’s checking account. One can pay a bill by scanning the QR code on a bill or get directions to a museum by scanning the QR code on a poster at a train station. Koszko argues that while it is an extremely useful technology in providing, sharing, and accessing information, it is of little use for someone who is not about to board a plane or pay a bill or visit a museum. Or if a person does not own a device that can scan a QS code and then perform various functions. For such non-users, the display of QR codes in public places is an intrusion. Such persons may also feel excluded from the communication that is occurring through this new technology. Are the QR codes to improve communication among the providers and the users or is it to exclude certain people from the communication process. She agrees that if one has a proper device one has the information, without it, one is unable to access certain information. She concludes that for some, these devices may be useful, for others these may be unessential.
Monika Chomątowska revisits the question of turning cities into metropolises. Reminiscent of German expressionist cinema and Fritz Lang’s landmark silent film Metropolis (1927) that presented a futuristic urban dystopia producing dehumanization, totalitarian control, and environmental disaster leading to a cataclysmic decline in society, Chomatowska asserts that in the name of “knowledge economy”, some governments and international organizations are pushing for metropolization as the future of the world. As more and more opportunities are shifted from the rural areas to the cities, the quality of life in the rural areas deteriorates. People migrate to the cities in pursuit of employment, education, and healthcare. Such depopulation of the rural areas and the overpopulation in the cities has widened the gap between metropolises and the countryside creating a visible social exclusion that is afflicting both rural and metropolitan populations and has produced a social underclass in the rapidly growing cities in Asia, Africa, and South America.
Offering examples of the transformation of European cities such as Barcelona, Glasgow, and Stockholm, she questions the social and economic benefits of metropolization. Just as expressionistic cinema introduced a new form of conflict in narrative structure - man versus city -, Chomątowska warns us of the deepening of internal disparities in metropolises, of high unemployment among immigrants, hence creating a poor underclass. The lure of a better life in a big city is giving way to a dual city with rich gated communities near slums where the children of poor immigrants attend the worse schools and poverty becomes heritable. The newcomers from rural areas often lose their cultural values. The moral standards in metropolises are also different from those in traditional societies– e.g. higher divorce rates, consumeristic lifestyle, placing career above family life, and loose sexual contacts have resulted from the creation of metropolitan cities. Careful knowledge management and communication need to be put in place before cities turn into futuristic nightmares.
Three essays in Section III are case studies from classrooms where educators and facilitators are facing the challenges of reconciling with cultural values and social issues.
Lyon Rathbun is teaching in a violence-ridden town on the border between the US and Mexico where gunfire exchanges between the members of the drug cartel and the law enforcement agencies are everyday occurrences; where innocent bystanders risk getting caught in the crossfire and getting killed. It is not easy to teach grammar when the students are preoccupied with guns, or to the students to pay attention to calculus or chemistry when kidnapping and human trafficking are eminent. In such a challenging classroom, Rathbum teaches literature.
In a first-person style, he describes the challenges he faced and how he overcame these. As a personal account, he tells a moving story of how he has taken the "reality" of the students' lives and made it relevant to literature. His narrative is moving and heart-warming. He has added a new dimension to sharing knowledge by building trust between the learner and the teacher.
Silvia Emilia Plăcintar offers a fresh perspective on the real mission of teaching - to prepare the students so that they can manage (careers, work, life) on their own. She reports on the findings of a cross-cultural study of students from China and Romania. Through observation and self-reporting, she explains that reflective thinking is carried out differently by people from different cultures. Simply put, different people think and approach problem-solving differently. She analyzes her findings on dimensions such as individualistic versus collectivist cultures, high-context versus low-context cultures, and independence versus interdependence. Her observations offer new perspectives on two cultures – Chinese and Romanian.
She notes that attitudes towards task-completion thought process, and willingness to collaborate and interact differ significantly between the Chinese and Romanian adult learners. Despite their cultural differences, she concludes that interaction with their counterparts from another culture, both groups become aware of the shortcomings in their own perspectives and the need to readjust their thinking and interaction to work productively with others. Her findings are conclusion are yet another reminder that as the “global village” emerges, the need for interdependence becomes self-evident.
Lucyna Wilinkiewicz-Górniak focuses on specifics of identifying a need and designing instruction to satisfy that need in a Business program at a university in Poland. Although immersed in a theoretical framework, her approach and application are practical and useful to the extent that teachers around the globe may find her method and approach flexible enough to be adaptable in many cultures. She notes that many of today’s learners are digital natives while the teachers might still be exploring digital horizons as digital immigrants. Still, the two share a common path lighted by the promise of knowledge management – generating, storing, and sharing knowledge. She also reports on the differences in attitudes and perceptions of teachers and learners. Nevertheless, she finds more similarities than differences arriving at her optimistic conclusion: “… technology has become an indispensable element in the educational process”.
Two essays in Section IV address cultural differences and values. Applying the Lacuna theory to international advertising, Erika Grodzki and Kinga Kowalewska, point to the challenges of incorporating cultural values in creating appealing advertisement copy and images. Comparing ads for beer in the US and Poland, Grodzki and Kowalewska demonstrate that since different traits and values are seen as important in the two countries, incorporate images and text highlighting these important values in their ads. Consequently, American beer ads stress notions of self-reliance, independence, and the outdoors while the Polish ads for beer make references to tradition, strength, and family.
These authors also caution the reader of the limitations an outsider has when witnessing different cultures. Newcomers (visitors, strangers, foreigners) are unable to detect many of the linguistic, behavioral, and ideological idiosyncrasies in a new culture leaving the outsiders at a disadvantage and gaps in their understanding and knowledge of the new culture. Their essay is a signpost reminding us that people’s impressions of a foreign culture are far from complete if limited to their own observations and interpretations. For a fuller understanding, one needs assistance from the indigenous.
The final essay by Rehman takes us full circle. He describes how knowledge is managed (gathered, evaluated, and used) in mate selection. For most people, mate selection is a serious matter and people try to obtain as much information as possible about the other person before reaching a selection decision.
Different cultures place different weights and values on different personality traits in mate selection. Some traits such as earning potential, emotional stability, ability to bear children as are seen as more desirable, other traits such as lack of ambition, indecisiveness, and being self-centered are perceived as less desirable. Focusing on the Hispanic-American culture, Rehman argues that three variables play an important role in long-term partner selection. These variables are gender, age, and perceived relationship status. He concludes that even though most people get married, men and women do not look for the same traits in their partners. There might be some truth, after all, to the notion that men are from Mars and women are from Venus. However, creatures on both planets are desperately grappling for quality information, i.e., the need for knowledge management.
Section I
Section I
REHMAN - Knowledge Management
Knowledge management: Challenges in curriculum design amid knowledge explosion
Sharaf Rehman
"Information is knowledge." - Albert Einstein -
Abstract
This essay focuses on three areas. Firstly, it describes the changing role of universities and the faculty, secondly, it defines knowledge management within the academic context, and thirdly, it describes the application of knowledge management in curriculum design.
Keywords: Knowledge acquisition, Knowledge management, Changing role of a university, Curriculum design.
Academe in Transition
Among the numerous changes that have ensued in the process of transition from the agricultural age to the digital age, one is that of the function and role of the universities. The preliminary purpose of universities was to provide instruction in philosophy, logic, rhetoric, ethics, and religion. Young men (and some women) that attended these institutions came from affluent families and as such these young learners were not likely to seek gainful employment at the end of their university education. Universities were, in the true sense of the term, in knowledge management business. Universities saw themselves as beacons of enlightenment and insight, not suppliers of diplomas that serve as union cards for various professions.
The working classes that needed and sought jobs learned their trade or craft through the process of apprenticeship. Members of these lower classes did not attend universities. They went to trade schools or technical institutes. It is apparent that in our present time the initial purpose of the universities has become faded if not been forgotten.
As societies moved from aristocratic cultures to egalitarian and industrialized nations the need for formal training in professions such as medicine, law, engineering, and farming became necessary. Initially, the responsibility of preparing skilled professionals in these areas was assumed by trade schools. As late as 1920, universities in the United States taught poetry not pottery, ethics not electronics, and mathematics not mechanical engineering. Our institutions of higher education no longer have such luxury; today our universities' smorgasbord offers college credit for automotive repair, break dancing, surfing, French pastry, and managing small businesses.
The economic reality for most university students of today is such that they are going to need and look for jobs in specific trades. As a result, they seem to have no use, appetite, or patience for the arts, philosophy, and literature. Students come to the institutions of higher education, not for enlightenment but to prepare for trades.
"Institutions that can produce employable individuals are seen as the right schools to attend."
Henceforward, the universities have transformed into trade schools, and professors are dubbed as trainers, facilitators, and mentors. Focus is no longer Plato’s Republic or Homer's Iliad but the corporate cultures of Google and Microsoft; heroes of Greek mythology have been replaced by Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Paula Deen, and Donald Trump. The faculty members that can teach the “in-demand” skills are retained and rewarded.
The shift is neither good nor bad. It is what the global economy dictates. Species living in water learned to swim or they died out; species living on land learned to walk and run or got consumed by bigger and stronger creatures. Big business runs the global economies; the educational institutions produce the workforce for these corporations. Survival is still the name of the game.
Will the trend reverse? Unlikely. Will there be a time when knowledge for its own sake is viewed as valuable? It's doubtful. The current thinking of a typical university student is: How does any particular set of courses help me in obtaining and/or retaining a job? And this is the tail that has wagged the institutions of higher learning. The new mission of the universities is to produce employable individuals. Universities are ranked in terms of their graduation rates and average starting salaries of their graduates. Read as: an understanding of megapixels is valued more than appreciating the Mona Lisa.
Although the universities do not openly admit in their mission statements, more and more of the institutions are being run as businesses. Terms such as Total Quality Management, Lean Operations, Rightsizing, Outsourcing, and Meeting the Customers' Needs are no longer uncommon among university administrators. Students are seen as paying customers and efforts of recruiting students are beginning to resemble the battles for larger market shares fought by the likes of soft drink makers, automobile producers, cosmetic industry, insurance companies, and financial institutions. Businesses that cease to be profitable, are shut down. Many of the liberal arts universities in the United States are facing shutdowns.
Universities have begun to make claims that they are offering the best value for the investment (tuition dollars); the return on investment is promised in comparison tables and charts with starting salaries of their recent graduates. Faculty are hired, promoted, and retained using criteria that add value to campus. This is done either through research and publishing potential or a track record for attracting grants and external funding to an institution. Faculty's priorities have shifted from teaching to publishing and seeking outside funds. While these changes are taking place on campuses, the human knowledge base is increasing exponentially. It is estimated to double every five years.
Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management (KM) is a term that came into vogue in the 1990s. It was devised by consulting companies that offered to assist the business institutions in gathering, acquiring, disseminating, and protecting their corporate knowledge. The two decades, the 1970s and the 1980s were a testing time for corporate America. American auto industry, steel industry, earth-moving equipment manufacturing, and many other industries suffered great losses.
During the era of mergers and acquisitions, from 1975 to 1990, the businesses were not only concerned about losing market shares but were also worried about losing a vast body of knowledge and expertise that was likely to vanish with the disappearance of the baby boomers due to retirements and passing on. Corporations felt that since the older employees acquired their experience and knowledge while working for the company, the company had the right to it. The problem was extracting the knowledge from the older employees and passing it on to the next generation.
Knowledge management consultants offered solutions for the transfer of knowledge and plans for developing reward systems for older employees for sharing their know-how and experience.
An early definition by Davenport (1994) is still widely used: "Knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge."
Others have expanded and elaborated on the concept. One of the most frequently cited is by Duhon, (1998):
"Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers." – The Gartner Group –
"Knowledge management is the process of creating, organizing, storing, and sharing important information."
These and many other definitions share strong organizational / business orientation. Knowledge management has primarily been about managing the knowledge of and within organizations. Borrowing from and blending many definitions, this author proposes a definition that might be more suited to educational institutions.
This definition stresses two concepts - determining what is important and how to go about sharing it.
Importance. Within a formal learning-teaching environment, this is based on what our learners need to know, why would they need it, where might they find it, and how might they retrieve it. The importance of any set of knowledge can be determined by using a filtering process. Sometimes this is referred to as the selection process (O’Dell & Hubert, 2011) and can be reduced to a simple model - The 3-“W”s Model. The three “W”s stand for What, Why and When.
The “what” aspect of the model is used to determine the content of a syllabus for a course or the curriculum for an academic program. This is also referred to as the “Just the right stuff” approach. Since higher education and teaching have become synonymous with skills for performance at a job, the following questions may guide a knowledge planner in identifying such “right stuff”.
It is becoming increasingly important to prepare the learners for tomorrow, and for the developments that are on the horizon than telling them what used to be available in the past. This is not to undermine history; we cannot know ourselves unless we know our history. However, if pointed to the appropriate books and sources, the learners can carry out such self-discovery on their own.
What Why
When
Three ‘W’s Model. (Rehman, 2014)
- What skills/sets of knowledge do the learners need to perform their jobs?
- Do I need to teach them the information or will they acquire it over time On their own?
- Can I direct them to where they can learn these skills on their own?
The “why” aspect of the model focuses on making knowledge relevant to
Impressum
Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 26.02.2016
ISBN: 978-3-7396-3978-9
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