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In April 2007, Professor Maija-Leena Huotari and I presented a Knowledge Management (KM) course at the University of Oulu, Finland. Students were asked to submit a learning diary as part of the course assessment. To allow the lecturers to track the progress of the students’ learning diaries without having to e-mail documents back and forth, the students were asked to submit their diaries as web-hosted wikis. Our software of choice was PBwiki (http://pbwiki.com/), since it allows individuals to “make a free wiki as easily as a peanut butter sandwich”! Since wikis are geared towards collaborative editing and publishing, it further allowed the students easy access to one another’s work for peer-review purposes. The students were given a preparatory tutorial on the use of PBwiki, and were asked to use the naming convention NameSurname.pbwiki.com. Most of the students found PBwiki easy to use, but limited in functionality. Since the students used the free version, which allows for limited customization, this was to be expected. A useful feature of most wikis is the ability to track the editing history, which permits the lecturer to see when the final product is the result of an all-nighter. An example of a learning diary can be viewed at http://satusalmela.pbwiki.com/ Buoyed by the success of the ‘Oulu experiment’, I asked the SU honours students in Socio-Informatics and Value and Policy Studies to create a ‘rich information object’ on knowledge management. Since I knew that the eight students in this group are technologically savvy, creative and academically very strong, I was confident that they would handle whatever I threw at them. PBwiki was again chosen as the primary platform for their information object, but they were also required to integrate various other tools – primarily Web 2.0:
These tools were selected because: a) they are free; b) no programming or web-design skills are required to use and customize them; c) they facilitate improved personal information management practices – irrespective of subject area; and d) organizations are increasingly using Web 2.0 technologies to leverage information and knowledge. In addition, since these tools are housed on the web for free, the students retain access to them when they leave SU – it can become part of an electronic portfolio.* As expected the students rose to the challenge. The final product is only due mid-July, but as I’m tracking their progress I can see that they use the tools intelligently and creatively. They access one another’s wikis and share resources and tips. I encourage them to do so, because it allows them to discover for themselves the benefits of sharing information and knowledge – the key theme of this module. The next challenge: my group of 35 third-years … * “An electronic portfolio, also known as an e-portfolio, or digital portfolio, is a collection of electronic evidence (artifacts, including inputted text, electronic files such as Word and PDF files, images, multimedia, blog entries and Web links, etc.) assembled and managed by a user, usually online. E-portfolios are both demonstrations of the user’s abilities and platforms for self-expression, and, if they are online, they can be maintained dynamically over time ... An e-portfolio can be seen as a type of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_portfolio)
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