10.
	Knowledge Sharing

Develop policies, protocols, and infrastructures for knowledge asset management (KAM) and external knowledge sharing. Participate in internal and external e-knowledge sharing to acquire experience and to develop and hone these capabilities.

Identify the elements needed for your organization to recognize, digitize, and manage its knowledge assets and make better use of internal and external knowledge resources. Develop processes that enable you to monitor, meter, and exchange learning objects and other digitized content internally and with external parties and marketplaces. Key considerations include:

• Legal issues, digital rights management (DRM) policies and processes;
• Relationships with publishers, repositories, and marketplaces, and other digital rights management partners;
• Technical infrastructures and processes;
• Best practice business models from learning object trading exchanges;
• KAM and DRM specification progress from appropriate standards bodies; and
• Cost accounting capabilities to measure the cost of e-knowledge and drive progressive reduction in these costs.

To develop perspective on these issues, check what leading organizations or consortia are doing — IMS, MERLOT, OKI, ADL co-labs, COLIS, and national learning object exchanges, such as the Australian Learning Federation.

Knowledge asset management must also include knowledge embedded in communities of practice and accessible through interaction with them.

Plan for and develop the infrastructures, policies, and procedures that will enable your organization to participate in e-knowledge marketplaces. Work to find ways to leverage your organization’s existing disparate collections of digital knowledge (in learning management systems, CRM systems, and the many databases it depends upon, as well as within communities of practice) to develop capabilities in managing e-knowledge.

a. Early Adopters Have Developed Policies and Procedures. Few organizations have adequately developed the policies, procedures, and infrastructures necessary to participate in e-knowledge marketplaces. These need to deal with the elements of authentication, authorization, access, rights management, and financial transaction. Over time, standard policies, contracts, and terms will emerge. Digital rights management will be an increasingly important function for learning organizations of all kinds. Once again, a small working group can be utilized to assess the enterprise’s current state of development, future needs, and means of closing the gap.

b. Participate in the Development of Repositories and Marketplaces. Organizations should develop the necessary capacities and relationships to make their e-knowledge available to repositories, marketplaces, and other digital rights management partners. This will enable organizations to develop competencies in effective digital rights management. It will also expose them to emerging best practices. Moreover, it will hone their skills in digitizing content, context, pedagogical notes, insights, managing metadata, and all of the components of effective learning experiences.

Exemplary Resources:
Enterprise Policies, Procedures
and Infrastructures

See resources referenced in Chapter 5.