Knowledge management implementation in the school context: case studies on knowledge leadership,storytelling, and taxonomy

Teachers and school administrators in Hong Kong have had to cope with more work and performance pressure as they strive to implement educational reforms aimed at deepening students’ life-long learning skills. Management systems, which save time and transfer ideas, experiences, and knowledge more efficiently could help schools meet reform goals and relieve the occupational stress that inevitably accompanies change and progress. This paper explores the effect of knowledge management (KM) for school development by reviewing three cases selected from a school improvement project entitled “Knowledge Management and Primary School Development”. The project was launched specifically to determine if KM practices can assist educators to cope with added pressures and rise to the challenges of education reforms. The case studies illustrate three separate approaches to incorporating KM systems. Problems faced by these case-schools included declining school competitiveness, time-consuming data storage and retrieval practices, and hierarchical communication structures that stunted feedback from the teachers who are on the front line of educational reform. Interviews were conducted with school principals, middle managers, and teachers. The results show that the core KM strategies of personalization and codification can be adopted to improve school development. Knowledge leadership, knowledge sharing culture, and knowledge management system support were identified as success factors for schools to implement KM.     

Motion Pictures

The American Film Institute Guide to College Courses in Film and Television (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis. Books, 1973—$5.95, paper)

Joseph McBride, Orson Welles (192 pp.)

Colin McArthur, Underworld USA (176 pp.)

Alan Lovell and Jim Hillier, Studies in Documentary (176 pp.)

Joel E. Siegel, Val Lewton: the Reality of Terror (176 pp.)

Arnold Gassan's A Chronology of Photography (Light Impressions, Box 3012, Rochester, N.Y. 14614, 1972—$10.50/ 7.95)     

Foreign and International

Isaiah Litvak and Christopher Maule's Cultural Sovereignty, The Time and Reader's Digest Case in Canada (New York: Praeger Special Studies, 1974---$13.50)

Survey of Public Attitudes Towards the Computer (Ottawa: Department of Communications, 1973---$1.00, paper)

Bernard Rubin's Propaganda and Public Opinion: Strategies of Persuasion (Middletown, Conn.: Xerox Educational Publications, 1973---copies on request, paper)

Jim Richstad, Michael McMillan, and Ralph Barney's The Pacific Islands Press: A Directory (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1973---no price given, paper)

Judith Tegger Kildow's Intelsat: Policy-Maker's Dilemma (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books/Heath, 1973---$12.50)     

Popular Illustration

Jim Kalett People and Crowds: A Photographic Album for Artists and Designers (New York: Dover Publications, 1978—$5.00, paper)

W.H. Hutchinson The World, The Work & the West of W.H.D. Koerner (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978—$35.00)

Philippe Garner, ed. The Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts: 1890-1940 (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1979—$35.00)

Colin Naylor and Genesis P-Orridge, eds. Contemporary Artists (London: St. James Press/New York: St. Martin's Press, 1977—E25.00/$50.00)     

Regulation

William E. Francois, MASS MEDIA LAW AND REGULATION (Columbus, Ohio: Grid Publishing, 1982—price not given)

R. Terry Ellmore, BROADCASTING LAW S REGULATION (Blue Ridge Summit, Pa.: TAB Books, 1982—$24.95)

Joseph J. Hemmer, Jr., COMMUNICATION UNDER LAW: VOLUME II: JOURNALISTIC FREEDOM (Met uc hen , N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1980—$20.00)

Carol E. Jenson, THE NETWORK OF CONTROL: STATE SUPREME COURTS AND STATE SECURITY STATUTES, 1920-1970 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982—$27.50)

CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS IN COPYRIGHT LAW 1982 Handbook 144, 1982, 894 pp.)

INFRINGEMENT OF COPYRIGHTS Handbook 134, 1981, 275 pp.)

MEDIA PLANNING: A QUICK AND EASY GUIDE by Jim Surmanek (1980—$9.95, paper)

ESSENTIALS OF MEDIA PLANNING: A MARKETING VIEWPOINT by Arnold Barban, et al. (1976(!)—$7.95, paper)

Huntley Baldwin, CREATING EFFECTIVE TV COMMERCIALS (1982—$22.95).

A MARKETING APPROACH TO BUILDING STORE TRAFFIC WITH BROADCAST ADVERTISING by William L. McGee and others (1978—$50.00, paper)     

Beyond Consultation: A New Model for Librarian's Office Hours

ABSTRACT

Given the many changes in our students and their study and research practices, libraries are finding it necessary to seek new ways to reach these students. The Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign created a new model to do so. Librarian's Office Hours are a hybrid of reference and instructional services that fulfill the dual purposes of meeting the needs of term paper research counseling and library workshops. This article discusses the strategies involved in the creation and implementation of this service and examines suggestions for the future of such a service.     

Scan Rate: A New Metric for the Analysis of Reading Behaviors in Asynchronous Computer Conferencing Environments

This article introduces a new computer conferencing metric called Scan Rate, which is a measure of students' and instructors' online reading speed. The term “scan” refers to the practice of either skimming through a message at an unusually rapid pace or reading a message partially and then stopping before the end is reached. It is proposed that the Scan Rate metric offers a useful way of monitoring how thoroughly students attend to the messages they read. Four analyses illustrate the utility of the metric. These reveal that (1) scan rates increase with message size, (2) students are more likely to scan the messages of their peers than messages written by their instructor, (3) students engage in scanning practices more frequently than instructors, and (4) scan rates are partially a function of class size and class configuration.     

Impacts of Student Categorization of Their Online Discussion Contributions

A case study examined the collaborative experiences of students in an online business writing classroom. The purpose was to examine the same groups of students working on collaborative writing assignments in both a synchronous (real-time) and an asynchronous (non-real-time) discussion forum. This study focused on examining the amount, pattern, and focus of interactions, as well as assessing students' attitudes toward communicating in the two different environments.