Knowledge Management and Distance Education
One of the key attributes of distance education programmes is their requirement to approach educational planning and implementation more systematically than their face-to-face counterparts. To compensate for separation in time and space between educators and learners, well-functioning distance education institutions make significant up-front investments in development of structured curricula and materials, creation of flexible learner support systems, and maintenance of carefully designed administrative systems to support learners studying at a distance.
Based on the introductory overview provided of what knowledge management is, it is relatively simple to identify various examples ways in which well-designed and effectively-functioning distance education systems already engage in practices of managing knowledge:
1) Typically, well-functioning distance education systems demand extensive investment of time and resources in rigorous processes of programme and course design and development. These investments usually involve diverse groups of experts, collaborating to produce programmes, courses, modules, and learning materials that enable independent study by learners. They can all justifiably be considered as investments in managing knowledge effectively. Importantly, they represent a process of taking knowledge that once was tacit (curriculum design, learning outcomes, teaching and learning strategies, and subject matter) and making it explicit by documenting it thoroughly. It is possible to leverage even more institutional value from these investments if the resulting materials are stored in a centrally accessible repository. In many cases, this value is not created because the resulting knowledge ‘products’ are not shared or made accessible beyond an individual department or faculty.
2) Cost-effective distance education systems require enrolments of large numbers of students on individual programmes in order to achieve the economies of scale needed to reduce the cost of learning per student. In order to be able to assure quality of delivery in such circumstances, well-functioning distance education programmes create standardized approaches to the way in which learners are supported (within learning materials, through student counselling and administrative systems, during tutorial support, and via feedback on assessment tasks). Again, providing this support typically requires processes of making tacit knowledge explicit, so that it can be documented and shared with often large, de-centralized networks of tutors and facilitators who constitute the primary point of reference between the student and the institution. Such systems are often very sophisticated in the way in which the structure and manage communication across the institution.
3) Provision of distance education and management of communication with large, dispersed groups of students across wide geographical areas also usually requires investments in very efficient administrative systems, which gather and store large volumes of data about learners and learning. In best-case scenarios, such systems will now harness the power of computers and databases to support student administration. Although these systems are not – in and of themselves – knowledge management systems, they are critical sources of data and information about what is happening within the distance education institution. Such systems are potentially enormously valuable building blocks within an overall knowledge management strategy, as they can feed reliable information reports on many critical aspects of the educational process into the institution, thus supporting the creation of learning organizations that are able to adjust how they operate based on knowledge of what is and is not working successfully.
4) Extensive literature has been produced about quality assurance in distance education, and robust, vibrant quality assurance systems are typically a feature of well-functioning distance education systems. Although quality assurance systems are by no means unique to distance education, the requirement to provide high quality learning experiences to large numbers of learners and the involvement of many employees in delivering such experiences has created a strong imperative for their development in such environments. The process of designing a quality assurance strategy is an important precursor to its successful implementation, and should involve a wide range of staff members at various phases. Developing quality assurance systems demands effective knowledge management across the organization.
As these illustrative examples show, distance education systems work hand in hand with knowledge management strategies. It is important to understand that many of the features of well-functioning distance education already constitute effective strategies of managing knowledge. Thus, knowledge management is not a new, ‘high technology’ concept that is beyond the reach of the average distance education institution. Nor is it a concept that should induce fear in distance educators, many of whom have for some time grasped its key principles intuitively in the way in which they have set up and manage distance education systems and programmes. However, many distance education institutions could benefit from approaching knowledge management more explicitly and working systematically to improve how knowledge is managed across the enterprise. The next section in this paper, thus, provides an introductory overview of how to tackle this task effectively. First, however, we provide a brief summary of key issues emerging from the above discussion.
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