I had the privilege if being invited to present at the EDO 2010 International Congress in Barcelona at the Centre for Legal Studies and Specialized Training on 12, 13, 14 May 2010. The conference theme was “New training strategies for oganisations†and I did a session on ‘Cultivating Knowledge Through Communities of Practiceâ€. The slides I used are available for download from Slideshare and embedded in this post.
My sincere thanks to Jesús Martinez Marin and the organiser for the exceptional hospitality I received.
The following is taken from the EDO website and has been translated from Spanish to English.
More than 350 experts and specialists in the subject mostly from Spain and America have actively participated in the five international conferences, the ten symposia and four tables of communications, analyzing and discussing the more than 75 selected contributions. The general conclusions:
- The current society considers the knowledge and training of workers as strategic elements of organizations. Thus, intellectual capital has become one of the main resources that are available to institutions to achieve their ends.
- The organization is an association of persons, governed by a set of rules, to be able to create, develop and disseminate new knowledge to increase its innovative capacity and competitive. Therefore, knowledge management should focus its attention on the possibility that members of the organization share the greatest number of sources of information and collaborate in the creation of new knowledge.
- Knowledge management promotes organizations create intelligent, able to transform information into knowledge through collective learning processes. Included in this connection to distinguish between “managing” and “stacking” the knowledge of the organization between the various technological supports.
- Organizations need to understand and manage the existing knowledge or which may be created from an impulsive reflective practice of co-construction of knowledge. The co-construction of knowledge involves not only a dynamic work that is scheduled and help to move from the informal knowledge to formal knowledge, but also requires experience in which you want to work.
- The organizations have expressed new forms of living on the virtual network, which becomes an essential tool for the exchange of information, knowledge and experiences. The virtual communities of practice are considered in this connection, a good practice that encourages learning and promotes the integration of informal learning, in line with a change of training model.
- Collaborative work is successful when it occurs among peers, there is a mutual commitment, the organization is flexible and e-moderator exercises its role effectively. It’s about the content and learning processes that take place in virtual communities of practice, being the Information Technology and Communication (ICT) are just a tool that helps make communication more effective.
- Organizational learning theories agree on the existence of certain internal and external factors that facilitate or hinder learning. Such factors include, among others, collaborative culture, leadership, collaborative and / or the existence of a flexible structure. Change does not preclude the assumption of error, nor problem-solving and competent incompetence.
- The self has a high attitude component. Thus, self-learning experiences and networking are built among all participating members with the community and in the context of uncertainty. Is stressed in this connection the words of M. Benedetti: “When we thought we had all the answers, they changed the questions.”
- The importance of identifying informal learning has increased in recent years. In fact, there are already systems and methodologies, European and Spanish level, certifying skills acquired on the job. It is envisaged, therefore, other ways to access traditional knowledge related to the formal processes established.
- The creation and management of knowledge in the educational system implies a paradigm shift which includes the participation and experimentation of new scenarios by inducing agents of change. In this regard, there is talk of optimal conditions for their development as transformational leadership and sparse, teamwork, collaborative culture and flexible structure, if and when they occur simultaneously and seamlessly.
- It stresses the need to create models in the education system, combining knowledge management and quality management, address the objectives of the education system and teacher not only in itself.
- Managing knowledge is synonymous with a continuous cyclical process of identification, modification, use and evaluation of that knowledge. The EFQM model or similar can help this by emphasizing its usefulness as a tool for self-evaluation. Barcelona, June 2010 contributions and specific conclusions can be analyzed in the book of Acts of Congress to which reference is: GairÃn, J. (Ed.) (2010): New training strategies for the organizations. Madrid: Wolters Kluwer Education. Ã Review available in: http://edo.uab.es/PDF/FichasActividades/Formacion/Pub_CIEDO.pdf
Conclusions: http://edo.uab.cat/JornadasEDO2010/
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