Knowledge Sharing

14 EDUCAUSE r e v i e w � September/October 2003

KNOWLEDGEBy Donald M. Norris, Jon Mason, Robby Robson, Paul Lefrere, and Geoff Collier SHARING

A REVOLUTION IN

The pressure to transform our institutions of learning continues. Virtu-

ally every enterprise and institution is grappling with the disruptions

and opportunities caused by Web-enabled infrastructures and prac-

tices. New best practices, business models, innovations, and strategies

are emerging, including new ways to acquire, assimilate, and share knowledge.

Using technologies that are already developed or that will be deployed over the

next five years, best practices in knowledge sharing not only are diffusing rap-

idly but will be substantially reinvented in all settings: educational institutions,

corporations, government organizations, associations, and nonprofits. But in-

stitutions of learning are in a unique position to benefit from an added oppor-

tunity: providing leadership in e-knowledge.

September/October 2003� EDUCAUSE r e v i e w 15© 2003 Dona ld M. No r r i s , Jon Mason , Robby Robson , Pau l Le f re re , and Geo f f Co l l i e r

Donald M. Norris is President, Strategic Initiatives, Inc. Jon Mason is Executive Consultant, education.au limited, and Assistant Director, Educa-tional Technology Standards Australia. Robby Robson is President and Senior Partner, Eduworks Corporation, and chair of the IEEE LearningTechnology Standards Committee. Paul Lefrere is Executive Director E-learning, Microsoft EMEA, and Professor of E-learning, University of Tam-pere, Finland. Geoff Collier is CFO and Senior Partner, Eduworks Corporation.

Photo by Garry Landsman, © 2003

E-knowledge finds expression in manyshapes and forms in a profoundly net-worked world. It is not just a digitized collection of knowledge. E-knowledgeconsists of knowledge objects and knowl-edge flows that combine content, context,and insights on application. E-knowledgealso emerges from interactivity within andamong communities of practice and from

the troves of tacit knowledge and trade-craft that can be understood only throughconversations with knowledgeable practi-tioners. E-knowing is the act of achievingunderstanding by interacting with indi-viduals, communities of practice, andknowledge in a networked world. E-knowledge commerce consists of the transac-tions based on the sharing of knowledge.These transactions can involve the ex-change of digital content/context and/ortacit knowledge through interactivity.Transactable e-knowledge can be ex-changed for free or for fee. E-knowledge isenabling not only the emergence of newbest practices but also the reinvention ofthe fundamental business models andstrategies that exist for e-learning andknowledge management.

E-knowledge is technologically real-ized by the fusion of e-learning andknowledge management and through thenetworking of knowledge workers. Trans-actable e-knowledge and knowledge net-working will become the lifeblood ofknowledge sharing. They will create a vi-brant market for e-knowledge commerceand will stimulate dramatic changes inthe knowledge ecologies of enterprises of

all kinds. They will support a “KnowledgeEconomy” based on creating, distribut-ing, and adding value to knowledge, thevery activities in which colleges and uni-versities are engaged. Yet few colleges anduniversities have taken sufficient accountof the need to use their knowledge assetsto achieve strategic differentiation.

In “IT Doesn’t Matter,” a recent articlein Harvard Business Review, Nicholas G.Carr endorsed corporate leaders’ grow-ing view that information technology of-fers only limited potential for strategicdifferentiation.1 Similar points are start-ing to be made about e-learning, andknowledge management has been underfire as ineffectual for some time. Thetruth is that IT, e-learning, and knowl-edge management can provide strategicdifferentiation only if they drive genuine

innovation and business practice changesthat yield greater value for learners. Carr’sarticle provoked a host of contrary re-sponses, including a letter from JohnSeely Brown and John Hagel III. Brown iswell-known for his insights into the waysin which knowledge sharing can provideorganizations with a solid basis for strate-gic differentiation.2 In this article, weargue that knowledge sharing—if itsparks innovation, changes in organiza-tional dynamics, and new sources ofvalue—can also make the difference inacademia and e-learning.3

Reflecting on the Nature of KnowledgeIt is remarkable how unreflective manyacademics and educators are about thenature of knowledge, outside of their im-mediate domains of interest. To be sure,they hold some types of knowledge inhigh regard, and they respect the highlypersonalized knowledge that academicsand practicing professionals have accu-mulated. But academic knowledge sub-stantially remains a “cottage industry,”with both tacit and explicit knowledgethe purview of isolated craftspeople and

professional guilds. True, there has al-ways been academic collaboration, butthere is little systematic sharing of learningcontent, context, and supporting materi-als. When asked about it, many faculty re-spond, “Why would I want to sharecourse materials and content with any-one?” Similarly, knowledge generated byresearch activities often stays within a lab-oratory or research team and rarelycrosses disciplinary boundaries. In mostacademic settings, knowledge resides inarchipelagos of individual knowledgeclusters, unavailable for systematic shar-ing. Yet such defiance of the networkedworld will soon be unsustainable.

It is the challenge of institutional lead-ership to get faculty and staff to reflect onthe nature of knowledge and on howknowledge can be understood and shared

in different ways. Knowledge can bemodeled as a “thing” and a “flow” at thesame time. It is a static resource—a snap-shot, if you will—and a dynamic flow be-tween the various states of the known andthe unknown. Knowledge flows betweentacit (subjective) and explicit (objective)states; it often exists in transition betweenthe two; and it also exists in symbiosis,combining these two dimensions. How-ever, much of the classic knowledge man-agement literature, in identifying thesetwo dimensions, still tends to treat knowl-edge more as a thing (knowledge-as-resource). Current thinking placesgreater emphasis on the emergent qualityof knowledge, as it is realized throughpractice and knowledge networking.4

There is no simple, linear hierarchyand progression from data to informationto knowledge. In reality, there is a com-plex intermeshing, such as a continuouschurning of insight, the meaning of whichchanges in different contexts and throughconversations with different participants.That’s not to say we don’t need to modeland understand the distinctions betweendata, information, and knowledge. Infor-mation is data that has been organized in


E-knowledge is technologically realized by the fusion of e-learning and knowledge management and throughthe networking of knowledge workers.

such a way that it achieves meaning in ageneralized way. Knowledge is informa-tion presented within a par ticular context, yielding insight on application in that context. But the progression from one to another is continuous rather than intermittent and discrete. AsThomas Davenport and Sirkka Jarvenpaanote, “Our distinction between data/information and knowledge conveys thatthe source of value does not arise frompossessing the information source, butfrom acting on it in a context of a specificmeaning at a specific time.”5

Brown and many before him have ar-gued that knowledge is a social construct.People can understand information indi-vidually and in isolation. However,knowledge—even the abstractions ofmathematics—can be understood only incontext, which means through interactiv-ity and communication with others. In-teractivity and knowledge sharing notonly are integral to “knowing” but are es-sential for continually evolving knowl-edge to new plateaus of meaning. As Al-fred Beerli asserts, “Knowledge can beregarded as the only unique resource thatgrows when shared, transferred, andmanaged skillfully.”6

People experience and act on knowl-edge in a host of different ways. Whenpreparing our book Transforming e-Knowledge, we referred to the “acquisition,assimilation, and sharing of knowledge.”This was a code for the range of knowl-edge skills that are needed to succeed inthe Knowledge Economy. But in practice,knowledge use is much more compli-cated than that and includes interpreting,reflecting, creating, applying, realizing,understanding, associating, recognizing,repurposing, and enhancing knowledge.

In a pervasively networked world, in-dividuals are part of intersecting net-works of interest and communities ofpractice. Knowledge becomes tangible asdigitized content, as context that can bedigitally shared, and through direct andindirect interactions. Knowledge can becreated by asking a question and watch-ing the responses provoke cascading con-versations, responses, and interactionsamong network participants. The net-worked world continuously refines, rein-vents, and reinterprets knowledge, oftenin an autonomic manner.

It is revealing to view knowledgethrough the different lenses of “knowwhat,” “know who,” “know how,” “knowwhy,” “know where,” “know when,” and“know if”:

■ Know What: knowledge manage-ment, knowledge management sys-tems, information structure, seman-tics, e-learning

■ Know Who: networks, authorities, in-dividuals, practitioners, collaboration

■ Know How: networking, consulting,collaborating, sharing, researching, re-flecting, developing, testing, maintain-ing, doing, learning, educating, train-ing, innovating, managing, navigating

■ Know Why: context, business plan-ning, strategy, reasons to learn

■ Know Where: where-to, where-from,strate gic p ositioning, planning,reflecting

■ Know When: timing, pacing, plan-ning, scheduling, context, just-in-time

■ Know If: scenarios, scenario develop-ment, foresight, contingency, just-in-case

Much of our traditional, explicitknowledge deals with “know what,”though training has expressed this moreoften as “know how.” But most Knowl-edge Economy enterprises are focusingmore attention on tacit knowledge andinsights revealed through interaction,collaboration, and innovation. Much ofthis tacit knowledge exists and is commu-nicated through conversations in com-munities of practice or networks of prac-tice. Such “know how,” “know who,”“know where” knowledge promises to beincreasingly important. The knowledgenetworks and communities of practicethat specialize in such tacit knowledgewill most certainly be the epicenters ofthe Knowledge Economy.

Higher education should considerthese lenses as it debates the scope ofknowledge needed to support learningand practice. Reflecting on the nature andfacets of knowledge initiates a progres-sion from the question “How have I cometo know X?” to “How do I share X?” An-swering these questions constitutes tak-ing steps toward understanding the roleof transactable e-knowledge and knowl-edge networks in knowledge sharing.

Understanding the Role ofTransactable E-Knowledge and Knowledge NetworksFrom the start, we have understood theimportance of interoperability as a prin-ciple that is fundamental to networkingand the development of learning objectand knowledge object marketplaces. In-teroperability is also key to shared under-standing. From a systems perspective,four points of enterprise interoperabilityare needed for colleges and universitiesto share knowledge objects and net-worked knowledge:

■ Description, discovery, and ex-change of content: Content must bedescribed and accessed in standard-ized and interoperable ways.

■ Interaction with and tracking ofcontent: When users interact withcontent—for example, when they takea course, complete a quiz, or annotatean article—the results must be trackedin ways that are independent of thetechnology platform being used.

■ Applications system interopera-b i l i t y : Te c h n o l o g i e s u s e d f o r e-knowledge must have standard-ized interfaces to enterprise systemssuch as human resources and regis-trar systems.

■ Infrastructure interoperability:Technologies used for e-knowledgemust use industry-standard methodsto interface with institutional IT infra-structures and with each other.

Observing emergent knowledge prac-tices has led us to rethink the nature oflearning and its supporting knowledgebase. Learning and the development anduse of knowledge are not separable,standalone activities. In the networkedworld, perpetual processes of learningare supported by vast, accessible, contin-uously changing resources of explicit andtacit knowledge. E-learning and knowl-edge management become fused in prac-tice. Both are essential to everyone in aneducational institution, not just to spe-cialists or technologists. Moreover, theirfusion remedies the inefficiencies of in-stitutional silos.

In higher education today, pioneeringefforts are under way to capture digital as-sets in shareable knowledge objects. Our

17September/October 2003� EDUCAUSE r e v i e w

perspective on the potential of theseknowledge objects is detailed in “Shareand Share Alike: The Knowledge Transfor-mation Comes to Campus.”7 Today’s trans-actable e-knowledge tools and practicesare essentially proof-of-concept efforts.They are a first step, not an accurate har-binger of things to come. Three to fiveyears from now, genuine e-knowledgecommerce will be developing. The natureof tomorrow’s knowledge objects and in-stitutional practices will likely not resem-ble today’s first generation of learning ob-jects (see Table 1).

Today’s proof-of-concept efforts willenable the development of more robustperspectives, tools, policies, and prac-tices. At the same time, new deploymentsof pervasive, ambient technology arelikely to accelerate and shape the futureof e-knowledge.

Changing the Knowledge ExperienceThe development of wireless communi-cations is enabling technology-rich envi-ronments in which individuals can carrynetworked digital devices like notebookcomputers, PDAs, cellular phones,pagers, and a myriad of converging toolsthat open new opportunities for commu-nication and knowledge sharing. More-over, pervasive computing is creatingenvironments in which ubiquitous com-puting devices are being embedded ineverything from automobiles to offices toclothing to appliances to whiteboardsand other displays. Coupled with emerg-ing voice-recognition and display tech-nologies, these developments have thepotential to turn every kind of public andprivate space into a venue for digitally en-abled knowledge sharing and learning.

Our team examined forecasts and fu-ture scenarios prepared by technologyfuturists in Europe, North America, andAustralia.8 These projections suggest thatby 2010, the patterns of interactivity andthe very manner in which we experienceknowledge will be enriched. At an accel-erated, turbulent pace, everything aboutthe knowledge experience will change,including the places in which we canexperience knowledge, the intensity ofour engagement with knowledge sources,the time sequence for accessing knowl-edge, our expectations about knowledgetimeliness, our reliance on intelligent


Table 1. E-Knowledge: Today and Tomorrow

TODAY: TOMORROW:

Proof-of-Concept of Developing Transactable E-Knowledge E-Knowledge Commerce

• Learning objects capture contentand context but are largely distinctfrom developing knowledgenetworks.

• Learning objects are oriented towardexplicit knowledge.

• Early-stage standards focused ondata exchanged among systems.

• Knowledge networks andcommunities of practice areinadequately recognized inorganizations.

• E-learning and knowledgemanagement resources evolveindependently and begin tointersect.

• Learning objects are relativelyexpensive to capture, create, andupdate. Learning objects arehandcrafted.

• Learning objects are drawn fromtraditional sources of academiccontent.

• Enterprise routines are not yetestablished for creating, updating,and repurposing learning objects.

• Digital rights management is aboutenforcing copyrights and licenses,thus protecting ownership and“building a moat” aroundintellectual property.

• Knowledge objects capture contentand context independently, plusnotes and automated updates, andwill align closely with knowledgenetworks.

• Knowledge objects and access toknowledge networks providechannels to both explicit and tacitknowledge.

• Standards, tools, and processes aresubstantially more sophisticated,pragmatic, and useful. Standardsfocus on information, not just data.

• Knowledge networks and commu-nities of practice are the epicentersof tacit knowledge creation andsharing.

• E-knowledge resources andnetworks are dynamic and churning.

• Automated capture and updateprotocols create knowledge objectsthat are substantially less expensive(order of magnitude). Knowledgeobjects are generated autonomically.

• Knowledge objects andconversation-born tacit knowledgeare assembled from a wide range ofsources, ranging from traditionalsources to individual blogs andcommunities of practice.

• Enterprise processes for accessingknowledge networks and forknowledge object creation, updating,and repurposing are routinized andhave achieved amenity.

• Digital rights management is aboutenabling people to both shareknowledge and share its control.

agents, our ability to multitask knowledgestreams, and the amenity of the knowledgeexperience. These changes will acceleratethe demand for e-knowledge and for re-liance on knowledge networks in a varietyof forms and formats. They will furtherboost the demand for e-knowledge com-merce of many kinds.

Examples of such smart environmentscan be seen today at Xerox’s PARC, at nu-merous corporate and academic sites, andin various demonstration settings. Themovie Minority Report provided a stun-ning dramatization of how individuals inthe mid-twenty-first century may be ableto use pervasive knowledge environ-ments to engage and manipulate a virtualavalanche of information and knowledgein pictorial, text, graphical, and audioforms. Most of the technologies neces-sary to implement such capabilities al-ready exist or are under development.

When pervasive knowledge sharingand perpetual learning do achieveamenity, they will become a fully inte-grated aspect of daily life. They will beabsorbed into our day-to-day routine.Educators and practitioners need to bemore reflective about the development

of pervasive, ambient technology envi-ronments and what these will mean forthe experiences of learners, faculty, staff,and other stakeholders, both on and offcampus. How will such environments af-fect the construction of new facilities?The retrofitting of existing facilities?Campus master planning? The relation-ship between campus environs andother settings?

These developments will both enableand require colleges and universities tochange their basic knowledge ecologies if theyare to remain attractive to learners. Thesetransformations will include not just in-frastructures for interactivity and knowl-edge sharing but also the basic processes,structures, competencies, and cultural be-liefs and practices relating to the use andsharing of knowledge. Our team con-cluded that evolving a knowledge ecologypoised for success in the KnowledgeEconomy is among the greatest challengesconfronting institutional leadership.

Transforming the Knowledge EcologyOver the past decade, higher educationinstitutions have undertaken major in-

vestments in their capabilities for pro-cessing knowledge through deploying enterprise resource planning (ERP) sys-tems, enterprise portals, data warehous-ing, course management systems, learn-ing management systems, and somecontent/knowledge management tools.In “The Afterlives of Courses on the Net-work: Information Management Issuesfor Learning Management Systems,” Clif-ford Lynch captures how learning man-agement systems are forcing institutionalleaders and technology vendors to con-front some of the issues relating to theafterlife of knowledge assets contained incourses.9

But there is more to knowledge re-sources than courses. Digital asset man-agement is receiving attention from manyinstitutions, encompassing the full rangeof institutional knowledge assets in learn-ing, research, practice, and public service.Leading institutions are creating infra-structure for knowledge repositoriesand/or “superarchives” (e.g., Ohio StateUniversity’s Knowledge Bank, MIT’sDSpace, the Fedora Project, and the Uni-versity of California system’s ScholarshipRepository). Cross-enterprise efforts are


Evolving a knowledge ecology poised for success in theKnowledge Economy is among the greatest challengesconfronting institutional leadership.

popping up all over the world (e.g., MER-LOT, the Learning Objects Network, TheLe@rning Federation in Australia, andeUniversity in the United Kingdom). Ini-tiatives such as the Open Knowledge Ini-tiative (OKI) and MIT’s OpenCourse-Ware (OCW) are tapping into latentsupport for an open-source approach toe-knowledge and e-learning and thesharing of knowledge assets. Taken to-gether, these approaches herald the de-velopment of genuine marketplaces fore-content and context and knowledgenetworks, supporting the exchange of e-knowledge, sometimes for free and some-times for fee.

Most institutions have been tinkeringwith aspects of their knowledge ecosys-tem, not truly transforming their capacityto share knowledge. Knowledge is stillprimarily embedded in individual facultyand researchers, texts and course materi-als, and traditional publications and jour-nals. Faculty, learners, staff, and practi-tioners do not substantially utilize thepotential of knowledge networks andcommunities of practice to interact. Overtime, e-knowledge can change all this. Itwill do more than merely improve the ef-ficiency of the existing channels and in-teractions for knowledge sharing. E-knowledge enables the unbundling,deconstruction, and reinvention of all ofthe knowledge elements and patterns ofinteractivity associated with learning, re-search, and other institutional functions.The capacity to deploy e-knowledge will beaccelerated over the next few years by newenterprise infrastructures, portals, Webservices, new kinds of knowledge manage-ment applications, and community-building technologies. Both academic andadministrative processes will be looselycoupled and deconstructed. New tech-nologies and practices will support theemergence of a seamless web of interoper-able applications for dealing with knowl-edge and knowledge-based interactivity.

The new knowledge-sharing ecologywill ground itself in collaboration, com-munities of practice, and knowledge net-works. These are starting to emerge in theform of user groups for major ERP andlearning management systems, imple-mentation teams for campus technologyprojects, institutional working groups inadministrative and academic support

areas, and special-interest groups in pro-fessional societies. Multi-institutionalconsortia also are part of the equation.The Boston Consortium, a group of thir-teen institutions in the Boston area, in-volves over four hundred administrativestaff in nearly twenty working groups thatdefine and solve issues using a commu-nity of practice model. Soon these nas-c e n t k n o w l e d ge n e t w o rk s c a n b eequipped with the next generation oftools, perspectives, and practices forknowledge sharing. When that happens,their performance will be poised to in-crease dramatically.

Our team studied examples of institu-tions and enterprises that are building to-morrow’s knowledge cultures based on“enter once, use (and trust) anywhere”principles for knowledge reuse and withthe goal of dramatically reducing the costsof digital knowledge. A few examples ofemerging or prospective e-knowledgecultures can be found at the University ofSouthern Queensland in Australia, eUni-versity in the United Kingdom, and theAmerican Society for Training and Devel-opment (ASTD) and the Advanced Dis-tributed Learning (ADL) initiative’s co-labs in the United States. Companies likeKnowledge Media Inc. (KMI) are utilizingautomated tagging and knowledge-objectcreation, in conjunction with activity-based costing, to drive down the cost ofdigital knowledge.

Where does value reside in collegesand universities? It is waiting to bereleased in the interstitial spaces betweenprocesses, programs, and people. In theKnowledge Economy, enterprises arefinding new ways to release value throughleveraging knowledge, reinventingprocess, collaboration, and communitybuilding, and developing staff capabilitiesand new kinds of leadership. Leading-edge practitioners are demonstrating that


the key to establishing competitive ad-vantage lies in changing their organiza-tional dynamics in a way that createsgreater value for customers, members,learners, and other stakeholders.

Our team used the concept of value oninvestment to explore the implications of

knowledge shar-ing for institu-tional competi-tive advantage.10

To be sure, thereis value in en-hancing produc-tivity of existingp r a c t i c e s b yusing knowledgesharing to sharetext, course-packmaterials, class

notes, and other existing collections ofcourse-support materials. Doing so trimscosts and may result in a better, more cur-rent selection of materials. It may improvethe learner’s experience. But the real pay-offs come from reinventing the processesand patterns of interactivity relating tolearning. We found new best practices,business models, and strategies for learn-ing and knowledge management emerg-ing around the globe. All used innovationto enhance their value proposition.

The University of Southern Queens-land, for example, has infused its courseofferings with knowledge managementcapabilities and has reshaped the patternsof interactivity in its courses. Students candial up and ask Professor Jones a ques-tion, to which they will receive an answerthat is a nuanced synthesis of the best an-swers to similar questions in the recentpast—with no indication that “ProfessorJones” is an intelligent agent. This freesfaculty to deal with course design andassessment of student progress, higher-level interactivity relating to critical tacitknowledge, and other activities. Learners

can also access a wider range of resources—from standard searchable course reposi-tories to question/answer capabilities tointeractivity with other students, withquestion/answer resources, and with in-dividual members of a faculty team.

Equally profound, changes in organi-zational dynamics and the knowledgeecology can reshape the basic relation-ship between learning providers andlearners. Consider the example ofNextEd and other learning enterprises at-tempting to serve the emerging learningmarket in Asia. NextEd is brokering offer-ings from learning providers, using itson-the-ground relationships maintainedthrough learning centers across China.With this model, lower-cost solutions arebeing found that can eventually spread tomarkets in Europe and the Americas.

Consider also the Creative Commons(http://www.creativecommons.org), amovement that facilitates the sharing ofknowledge by allowing authors to licensetheir works in ways that do not preventintended uses (such as free distributionfor noncommercial means) while protect-ing authors from unintended abuses(such as unsanctioned alterations).

K n o w l e d ge s ha r i n g c a n e n abl eknowledge producers to reach marketsthat have not been served in the past. Forexample, as is being done by the Ameri-can Association of Pharmaceutical Sci-entists and the American Health In-formation Management Association,knowledge objects from professional so-cieties and associations and professionalpractice repositories can be made avail-able to colleges and universities andto corporate markets for inclusionin learning and training experiences.Conversely, colleges and universities en-gaged in e-learning programs are in-creasingly repurposing existing materi-als for use by remote learners and forsale to the corporate world.

These examples only hint at the po-tential for changes in the learning experi-ence. When a vibrant marketplace ofknowledge networks and e-knowledgeexists, providing immediate access tocontinuously updated knowledge as anexpected amenity, learners will demandlearning experiences and supportingresources to be engaging, interactive, par-ticipatory, and immediate. The dynamicsof graduate and professional educationand the continuing, perpetual develop-ment of professionals will likely includemore and more cascading conversations,group problem-solving, and synthesis ofnew practice. These will be supported bycontinuously changing collections offresh insight. For example, the UrbanLand Institute has prototyped a model forpractitioner-driven problem-solving that

will revolution-ize the way urbanl a n d d e v e l o p -ment is taught ingraduate schooland in practice.Even undergrad-uate educationand introductoryb a c c a l a u r e a t ecourses need toacquire a differ-ent look and feel.In a world of ambient technologies, per-vasive knowledge networking, and multi-tasking learners, the dynamics of learningexperiences must change to providevalue to new generations of learners.

Defining a New Taxonomy of Knowledge Repositories and Resources Knowledge sharing is a new frontier oncampus. Consider the range of reposito-ries and resources that are emerging,which we term “vertical” to mean that acollection is in a particular discipline or


In a world of ambient technologies, pervasive knowledge networking, and multitasking learners, the dynamics of learning experiences must change to provide value to new generations of learners.

practice area and “horizontal” to meanthat it covers a range of disciplines ortypes of knowledge. Some of the follow-ing collections exist today, and others arepoised to emerge.

■ Institutional repositories capture theknowledge that lies within a particu-lar community, such as a college oruniversity, and that crosses over manyprofessional and discipline-basedcommunities of practice. Such reposi-tories are local and horizontal. (Exam-ples are Ohio State University ’sKnowledge Bank and the Universityof California system’s ScholarshipRepository.)

■ International, disciplinary repositories,such as the Digital Library for EarthSystem Education (DLESE), are digitallibraries that serve an international,discipline-based community of prac-tice. These are international and vertical.

■ Tradebook and academic publishers cap-ture knowledge from texts in digitalform and can combine this knowl-edge with other intellectual propertywithin their digital library. These silosare commercial, international, and horizon-tal. A good example is Emerald (http://www.emeraldinsight.com), the lead-ing publisher of academic and profes-sional literature in the fields of man-agement and library/informationmanagement.

■ Learning management systems includedigitized course content from facultymaterials on platforms such as Black-board and WebCT. These collectionsof digitized content are internationaland horizontal.

■ Academic content exchanges such as MER-LOT collect course materials, includ-ing validated peer reviews of the mate-rials. These are global and horizontal.

■ Communities of practice exist through-out academia, in academic and ad-ministrative support areas like enroll-ment services and human resources.Groups such as The Boston Consor-tium have formalized their communi-ties of practice and over time will digitize the formal and informal re-sources supporting the community.These are local and vertical.

■ Individual weblogs (blogs) and knowledgeweblogs (klogs) are created by individuals


in communities of practice. As thepower of communities of practicegrows, the contributions of individualmembers through blogs will be for-mally recognized as an importantknowledge asset. An exemplar blog ispublished by Stephen Downes (http://www.downes.ca).

The basic issue is to evolve an archi-tecture that enables this whole family ofrepositories, assets, proprietary hold-ings, and blogs/klogs to be intelligible toone another and that enables transac-tions under rules and protocols appro-priate to the particular setting. This willrequire persistent, dynamic digital rightsmanagement.

In addition, there is a need for ex-changes that will aggregate supply anddemand for digital content/context froma wide variety of sources and create sortsof über-marketplaces. These efforts couldintroduce protocols that would becomede facto standards and greatly reduce thecost and energy required to launch wide-spread knowledge sharing. In Transform-

ing e-Knowledge, we created a vignetteabout an e-knowledge marketplace calledthe “Knowledge Content Exchange.” Atthe January 2003 meeting of the EDU-CAUSE National Learning InfrastructureInitiative (NLII), Patrick McElroy pre-sented information on the efforts of theLearning Content eXchange (LCX) tolaunch such an effort. LCX is marshalingcorporate support and is developingits prototype in the higher educationmarket. Another effort, eKnowledge-Xchange, is focusing on knowledge-sharing support and services for K–14,public libraries, and other sources ofpublished materials. Other institutionaland national repositories and exchangeactivities around the world are poised togrow and become part of a network of ex-changes and über-marketplaces.

Achieving a Revolution in Knowledge SharingIn summary, leading-edge individualsand institutions are on the threshold ofmajor advances in their capacity to ac-quire, assimilate, utilize, reflect on, and

share knowledge. Between now and 2010,the elements of e-knowledge, e-knowing,and e-knowledge commerce will mature,using technologies that are largely devel-oped and that await deployment andwidespread use. Academia will need tobecome far more reflective about knowl-edge—the forms, uses, and sharing—if it isto be a vanguard participant. The knowl-edge ecology of colleges and universitieswill need to change if they are to movefrom a culture of knowledge hoarding toone of knowledge sharing. In institutionswhere this happens, learners, faculty,staff, and other stakeholders will derivegreater value from a set of genuinely newexperiences.

In “Rethinking the Knowledge-BasedOrganization,” Michael H. Zack assertsthat the degree to which an enterprise isknowledge-based depends not on the na-ture of its programs, products, and ser-vices but primarily on how it is organizedand how it functions.11 True knowledge-based enterprises leverage their knowl-edge assets in every aspect of their activi-ties, cultivate the process of knowledge


sharing and creation, extend knowledgeboundaries beyond the enterprise, anddevelop effective knowledge strategy.Stephen Denning, Michel Pommier, andLesley Schneier remind us that in thetwenty-first-century economy, innova-tion and competitive positioning dependon shared knowledge. E-Knowledge canbe both the instrument and the catalystenabling colleges and universities to re-orient their perspective on the power ofknowledge sharing.12

The new sources of value unleashedby e-knowledge will not be planned andstamped out by major technology com-panies. Nor will they be ordained by in-ternational standards bodies and othergroups developing standards and proto-cols for e-knowledge commerce. Instead,they will emerge in an expeditionarymanner, based on the continuous evalu-ation and feedback of the marketplace asit discovers the potential of e-knowledgeand responds to emerging prototype of-ferings. In order for the new sources ofvalue to be tapped, the following ele-ments must evolve:

■ Pragmatic, usable standards and tools to re-flect practice. In the absence of wide-spread practice, the standards emerg-ing from international standardsbodies have been based on visions ofwhat e-knowledge commerce shouldbe like. As prototype tools based onthese standards are developed and de-ployed, users acquire experience. Thisexperience must be used to modifythe standards and tools, leading tostandards that are pragmatic and sta-ble. This is what practitioners needand want.

■ Low-cost knowledge management tools forevery person. Individual faculty, students,staff, and other college/university citi-zens need access to simple, low-cost,interoperable knowledge manage-ment tools so that they can create andmanage content/context for personaluse and sharing. These knowledgemanagement tools should be multi-purpose and not limited to the con-struct of the course or to any particu-lar knowledge use. The knowledgeand content management tools associ-

ated with the current software appli-cations for higher education are notyet adequate to this task. The open-source movement continues to pro-vide a challenge to the establishedvendors, and better tools are likely toemerge.

■ Low-cost approaches to knowledge-objectcreation, repurposing, and reuse. Put sim-ply, the cost of digital content/contextneeds to drop by an order of magni-tude. Current handcrafted approachesto knowledge object creation need tobe succeeded by automated practices.Given historical development in theprice and performance characteristicsof new technology-based innovation,such improvements are likely.

■ Capacity to liberate knowledge objects forexchange. Many learning objects are de-veloped within existing repositoryarchitectures or applications architec-tures that do not allow for compre-hensive sharing. Learning manage-ment systems, enterprise portals, andknowledge management tools need toreexamine their architectures and


approaches to en-sure that they can bepart of an adequatemigration path forinstitutions seekingt o u n l e a s h v a l u et h r o u gh e - k n o w -ledge. The ADL co-lab s are trying tochange this and nowhost special events tos h o w c a s e l e a d i n gpractice in sharablecontent (http://www.scodays.org).

■ Dynamic sharing toolsand protocols to support knowledge net-works and communities of practice. Howcan communities of practice capturefresh insights for their members? Andcan they share insights with outsiders,for fee or for free, and under whatprotocols?

■ Exchanges that ag gregate supply anddemand and reduce the cost of exchange.Some form or combination of über-marketplaces will likely be needed toprovide the scale and low-cost prac-tices necessary to “make the market-place” for e-knowledge.

The bottom line? Dare to share!Taken separately, e-learning, knowl-

edge management, and IT have failed toprovide strategic differentiation forcolleges and universities. But by com-bining the three in higher education, e-knowledge can avoid suffering the samefate if it is used to change the dynamicsof institutional business practices and tocreate new knowledge-based experi-ences, unleashing enhanced value.Brown and Hagel point out that suchchanges come from rapidly imple-mented, incremental innovations, usingnew, loosely coupled applications tocontinuously test, refine, and reinventpractices. Brown’s phrase radical incre-mentalism captures the spirit of perpetualprocess reinvention, driven by transfor-mative ambitions.

Ambitions must betransformative in highereducation: they mustrevolutionize knowl-edge sharing and, in theprocess, substantiallychange the dynamics ofhigher education ande n h a n c e t h e v a l u epropositions providedby colleges and univer-sities. Yet the processmust be expeditionary,using prototype ap-proaches that will becontinuously adjusted.

Loosely coupled, flexible architecturesand applications will be developed to facil-itate this process of adaptation. Experi-ence with real-life e-knowledge will lead tonew iterations and to the discovery of new,unexpected migration paths. Five to sevenyears from now, the e-knowledge stan-dards, protocols, practices, and businessmodels that have emerged will be very dif-ferent from today’s and from our own pro-jections of what the future might become.E-knowledge is ready to be harnessed.Those who do harness it will be thedifferentiators.e

Notes1. Nicholas G. Carr, “IT Doesn’t Matter,” Harvard

Business Review, May 2003.2. John Seely Brown and John Hagel III, letter to

the editor, Harvard Business Review, June 2003,available online at <http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/files/misc/Web_Letters.pdf;jsessionid=5U355YCSKTCVMCTEQENB5VQKMSARWIPS>. Brown and Hagelargue that strategic differentiation based on IT isgrounded in three principles: (1) “extractingbusiness value from IT requires innovations inbusiness practices”; (2) “IT’s economic impactcomes from incremental innovations rather than‘big bang’ initiatives”; and (3) “the strategic im-pact of IT investments comes from the cumula-tive effect of sustained initiatives to innovatebusiness practices in the near term.” For Brown’sideas on knowledge sharing, see John SeelyBrown, “Rethinking Learning in the Digital Ageo f C h a n g e , C h a n g e , C h a n g e , ” E u r o p e a neLearning Conference, Edinburgh, Scotland,February 11, 2003, available for downloading at<http://www.elearninternational.co.uk/docs/presentations/speaker/johnseelybrown.zip> (ac-cessed July 10, 2003).

3. Two years ago, an international team of practition-ers, academics, and consultants assembled tofocus on the issue of how individuals and organi-zations needed dramatically to enhance their ca-pacity to acquire, assimilate, and share knowl-edge, given the constant pressure of disruptivechange. A three-person writing team was sup-ported by an advisory group drawn from leadingauthorities in standards, knowledge management,and e-learning movements in Australia, China,India, Japan, North America, Central America,and Europe: Judy Brown, United States; Dr.Richard Hames, Australia; Maria Teresa Martinez,Mexico; Professor Toshio Okamoto, Japan; Dr.Madanmohan Rao, India; Dr. Robby Robson,United States; Professor James C. Taylor, Aus-tralia; and Professor Zhu Zhiting, China. The workof this team was supported by sponsorship fromSCT, WebCT, education.au, Knowledge MediaInc., and the MOBIlearn Project. The result, afterfourteen months, was the following book: DonaldNorris, Jon Mason, and Paul Lefrere, Transforminge-Knowledge: A Revolution in the Sharing of Knowledge(Ann Arbor, Mich.: Society for College andUniversity Planning, 2003). See <http://www.transformingeknowledge.info/>. This article ex-tends on the themes of the book, capturing ourteam’s latest insights on e-knowledge.

4. Alfred J. Beerli, Svenja Falk, and Daniel Diemers,eds., Knowledge Management and Networked Environ-ments: Leveraging Intellectual Capital in Virtual BusinessCommunities (New York: AMACOM Books, 2003).

5. Thomas Davenport and Sirkka Jarvenpaa quotedin ibid., 43.

6. Beerli in ibid., 3.7. Robby Robson, Donald M. Norris, Paul Lefrere,

Geoff Collier, and Jon Mason, “Share and ShareAlike: The E-Knowledge Transformation Comes toCampus,” EDUCAUSE Review 38, no. 5 (September/October 2003), online version: <http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm03/erm035.asp>.

8. N o r r i s , M a s o n , a n d L e f r e r e , T r a n s f o r m i n ge-Knowledge, 18–27, deals with the many aspects ofthe changing knowledge experience in words andpictures. See page 128 for resources on time-frames for ambient technology environments.

9. Clifford Lynch, “The Afterlives of Courses on theNetwork: Information Management Issues forLearning Management Systems,” ECAR ResearchBulletin, vol. 2002, no. 23 (November 26, 2002).

10. The notion of value on investment is more fully ex-plored in two sources: Donald M. Norris, “Valueon Investment in Higher Education,” ECAR Re-search Bulletin, vol. 2003, no. 18 (September 2,2003); and Donald M. Norris and Mark A. Olson,The Business Value Web: Resourcing Business Processesand Solutions in Higher Education (Washington, D.C.:NACUBO, July 2003).

11. Michael H. Zack, “Rethinking the Knowledge-Based Organization,” MIT Sloan Management Review44, no. 4 (summer 2003): 67–71.

12. Stephen Denning, Michel Pommier, and LesleySchneier, “Are There Laws of Knowledge Manage-ment?” (February 14, 2002), paper presented at“Connecting the Future: Global Summit of OnlineKnowledge Networks,” Adelaide, March 4–5, 2002,<http://www.educationau.edu.au/globalsummit/papers/denning.htm> (accessed July 21, 2003).


Experience with real-life e-knowledge will lead to newiterations and to the discovery of new, unexpectedmigration paths.