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The Three R's and PKM: Personal Knowledge Management, A Foundation for Student Projects That Utilize Technology PKM Planning Group, Millikin University presented by Dr. Michael O'Conner "Today, all of us live and learn in a world that has been radically altered by the ready availability of vast stores of information encoded in a variety of formats. The learning process and the information process mirror each other as we seek to construct meaning from the sources we encounter and to create products that shape and communicate meaning effectively. Developing expertise in organizing and analyzing information is in fact the authentic learning that modern education must promote." (Norton and Sprague, Teaching with Technology, 103.) The framework of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is under development at Millikin University, a small private school of 2500 students in Decatur, Illinois, as a vehicle for dealing with the central problems of understanding how to properly use technology for researching, organizing, completing and presenting assignments in higher education and for developing a sense of personal responsibility in knowing and utilizing these skills effectively. The PKM framework emphasizes learning-to-learn information skills: retrieving information, evaluating information, organizing information, collaborating around information, analyzing information, securing information, and presenting information. This presentation hopes to explain and explicate the PKM framework and demonstrate how it may provide a valuable structure to students as they utilize technology more often to learn and complete assignments. An Introduction to PKM Two major issues in higher education today are information literacy and critical thinking. Further discussion focuses on our commitments to teaching both inquiry skills and problem solving. These are more than buzzwords making their way through our campuses, they are crucial skills required for successful knowledge work in the twenty-first century. The exponential increases in information available dictate that we must change our approaches to both the gathering and uses of information and the subsequent transformation of that information into knowledge. How does this relate to information literacy and critical thinking, and how does inquiry and problem solving fit into this equation? In The End of Patience David Shenk notes: "We must not confuse the thrill of acquiring or distributing information quickly with the more daunting task of converting it into knowledge and wisdom. Regardless of how advanced our computers become, we should never use them as a substitute for our own basic cognitive skills of awareness, perception, reasoning, and judgment." Technology has given us the ability to both access and retrieve volumes of information that would have been unthinkable just 10 years ago. Since 1992 the use of information in print formats has decreased between four and six percent, while at the same time the use of the Internet has grown 2050%. We need a framework that will help us effectively address these issues. Personal Knowledge Management provides us with that framework. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has grown from a series of discussions among a group of Millikin University faculty from diverse disciplines and backgrounds into a cross-disciplinary framework that integrates both critical thinking and information literacy. The initial framework for PKM was developed by Dr. Paul Dorsey and further defined and conceptualized through a Summer Seminar at Millikin University in summer 2000. This seminar group; which consisted of faculty from business, the humanities, and science, as well as a librarian; focused on the cross-disciplinary nature of inquiry and problem solving. Although not necessarily approached in the same manner in all disciplines, there are commonalities that do exist. PKM, which bridges both general education and the disciplines, provides us with both a common language and the processes necessary for the acquisition of information and its subsequent transformation into knowledge. Information literacy dictates that we produce students who, among other things: recognize the need for information, possess the ability to ask questions that will assist in the retrieval of information, evaluate information, integrate information into their knowledge base, and understand the role information plays in society as a whole. Many of our campuses are currently focusing on information literacy initiatives. Critical thinking must be interwoven into any successful information literacy initiative. Likewise, the focus must lie in the necessary cognitive skills, not in the technology itself. PKM enables us to link our technology tools with a set of information skills, thus providing an intentionality that moves the focus from the technology more directly to the information. The term knowledge management was first used by management guru Peter Drucker in the mid-1980s. This concept focused on measuring an organization's intellectual assets and adding value and meaning to its information by asking questions such as: What do we (the organization) need to know? Who knows it? Who needs to know it? How can the people who need this information access it? Knowledge management provides a framework for sharing information. Subsequently, in the mid-1990s the term Knowledge Management took on a new meaning through the development of computer applications that provide a means of organizing and accessing the information within an organization. In this paper the authors focus on similarities with Drucker's interpretation, rather than the more recent concept. PKM is a synthesis of many of the knowledge management concepts with those of information literacy. The role of technology in PKM is a means to an end, rather than the end itself. Utilizing PKM necessitates that we begin by defining both information and knowledge, as we do not view this terminology as being interchangeable. We agree with Peter Drucker's statement that information is "data endowed with relevance and purpose." At what point does information become knowledge? The authors believe that information must have focus and relatedness to become knowledge; it is the significance and value of information that makes it knowledge. Likewise, knowledge, to exist and be meaningful, must be constructed and shared. It is with these points in mind that we focus on the components of Personal Knowledge Management and how they serve to provide a framework for integration and partnership. Overview of Personal Knowledge Management Personal Knowledge Management should be viewed as a set a problem-solving skills that have both a logical or conceptual as well as physical or hands-on component. These are skills that will be required for successful knowledge work in the twenty-first century. Teaching PKM entails teaching both intelligent practices that guide the use of tools as well as intelligent and efficient use of the tools themselves. We have identified seven PKM skills are: (1) retrieving information; (2) evaluating/assessing information; (3) organizing information; (4) collaborating around information (5) analyzing information; (6) presenting information; and (7) securing information; and (7) collaborating around information. The significance of each of the seven is clarified below: (1) Retrieving information. Illustrating the PKM skill of retrieving information is range of capabilities from the low-tech skills of asking questions, listening, and following up to responses to the more structured skills of searching for information using Internet search engines, electronic library databases, and relational databases. Underlying effective practices of retrieval are communications skills as well as the problem-solving skills of the reference librarian. Concepts of widening and narrowing one's search, Boolean logic, and iterative search practices are an important part of the effective exercise of this PKM skill. (2) Evaluating information. This skill is closely related to skill in retrieving information. Strategies of retrieving information should be based on practices which select data and information that passes some evaluative tests. However, evaluation also takes place as the quality and relevance of various pieces of information is judged as they relate to the problem at hand. Though this has no necessary computer mechanism for implementation (though Internet search engines have crude relevance raters), the greater availability of information in the current information-rich environments makes this skills of far greater importance. (3) Organizing information. This entails using various tools to draw connections between items of information as part of some framework that helps to give meaning to those individual items of information. In the manual environment, we use file folders, drawers, and other mechanism for organizing information; in more high-tech environments, we use electronic folders, relational databases, and web pages. Effective organizational principles must underlie effective implementation of information organization regardless of the environment. (4) Collaborating Around Information. Increasingly information technology tools called groupware are being provided to support collaborative work. To use that technology effectively requires not just understanding how to use those tools, but understanding underlying principles of effective collaborative work. Principle of e-mail etiquette are an illustration of important knowledge underlying the effective exercise of this PKM skill. (5) Analyzing Information. This entails the challenge of "tweaking" meaning out of data. Integral to analyzing information is the development and application of models, often quantitative, to "educe" relationships out of the data. Tools such as electronic spreadsheets and statistical software provide the means to analyze information, but the human element is central in framing the models that are embodied in that software. (6) Presenting Information. The key aspect of presenting information is the centrality of audience. Presenting information-whether through PowerPoint presentation, web site, or text-builds on principles of chunking information to enable audiences to understand, remember, and connect. Web styles and monographs on designing web site usability provide concrete content for this PKM skill. (7) Securing Information. While securing information is a different kind of PKM skill than the other six, it is no less important. Securing information entails developing and implementing practices that assure the confidentiality, quality, and actual existence of information. Practices of password management, backup, archiving, and use of encryption are important elements of this effectively practiced PKM skill. It should be noted, however, that these are problem solving skills and not problem definition skills. The PKM information skills take for granted that either 1) the problem to be solved is already defined or (2) the person doing the problem solving has knowledge enough of the problem to adequately define it. "Once a problem is defined, each one of these skills can be seen as a step taken toward the solution of the problem. Although the skills have a natural linear flow from one to the next, these PKM skills do not necessarily have to be used in any particular order. Also, the PKM skills may be used in an iterative fashion (e.g., after the evaluation step you may find the need to retrieve more information). For the most part, the "solution of a problem" can be seen as an informed decision or series of informed decisions that remedy the problem." The Personal in PKM Why is this model called "personal" knowledge management? At a time when we become more aware of the value of the social mind-a network of collaborative, shared thinking-why is it necessary to be concerned with the personal? Models of cognitive development and creativity continually push us to consider social contexts. And certainly, our technology integration plan emphasizes as one of the seven key skills the ability to "collaborate" around information. So why do we call this "personal" knowledge management? What's personal about knowledge or the management of knowledge? Let us begin by discussing things we do not subscribe to as "personal" in this model. We do not see "personal" knowledge as private knowledge intended to learned and kept within the individual. We are not talking about "learning for its own sake." We are not assuming that learners must go through a withdrawal from community or social perspectives as a means of enhancing their "intrapersonal" communication. We do not have to withdraw from society in order to develop our "personal" knowledge or deep thinking capabilities. We are also not encouraging an artificial distinction between avocational versus professional knowledge. Nor are we defining "personal" as opposed to "public" knowledge, since our model emphases "presenting information" as one of the essential seven PKM skills. In fact, our concept of personal knowledge management assumes a strategic balancing of the private and the public, the citizen and the professional, the intrapersonal and interpersonal, the deep thinker and the active problem solver-a self-awareness of one's own abilities and expertise within a public sphere of action. So "personal" knowledge management assumes that the individual has developed a self-awareness of their limits and abilities-what they know and what they can do. The personal self-awareness is an understanding of how much they know, how to access the things they know, strategies for acquiring new knowledge and strategies for accessing new information as needed. In the vast amount of information available and many means of acquiring new information, each person has mapped out their own areas of expertise and their own methods of additional learning. There is an identity of expertise or confidence in one's knowledge that results from this personal self-understanding. Having worked through the oceans of information and having created roadmaps of those journeys through writings, filing systems, notes and other means, each person acquires a confidence in their own ability to know or to access knowledge they need. Whether this acquired knowledge is stored in the form of computer files, filing cabinets, book cases, piles or in memory, each person acquires and manages their own knowledge. The information and knowledge is rarely something that can be owned by the individual. But the organization of information and methods of accessing information is almost always personal. This is why you cannot copyright ideas, but you can copyright the publication of ideas in a book which places them into a specific order. It is the familiarity or the "internalization" of this knowledge (information and related information skills) that is ultimately the key element of the "personal" in PKM. Of course, the individual never truly develops that sense of confidence and expertise if he or she is not asked to use that knowledge in the service of others. The value of the knowledge and the personal management of that knowledge is evident as it is put to use in a social, public sphere of problem solving. This leads us to the necessary balance of the private and the public. To prepare the individual for self-responsibility-that sense of being able to make commitments to others and to fulfill promise contributions-each person needs effective access to their own knowledge. In this sense, self-responsibility is the ability to use one's expertise and abilities to help others. The ultimate goal of Personal Knowledge Management is not merely to possess knowledge and certain thinking abilities, but to value the use of that knowledge in the service of others. The public use of knowledge reaffirms the personal identity as a person who contributes, who has knowledge, who can organize information, who can be a part of a team or a community beyond the self. Using the PKM Framework as a Model for Technology Integration The seven steps of the Personal Knowledge Management information process provide a valuable framework to introduce and enhance technology integration into an institution's curriculum. One of the clarion calls we hear again and again today in higher education, and even in secondary education, is that we need to introduce students to information literacy skills. The PKM framework provides this introduction paired with critical thinking skills and a clear structured methodology for integrating technology into education efficiently and constructively. Let's take a moment to examine just a few of the individual PKM skills and consider how they could provide a more seamless integration of technology use across a curriculum. College librarians were some of the first members of the academic community who had to man the front lines of teaching information retrieval and evaluation skills to students. With the advent of online catalogues, electronic resource databases and the appearance of millions of web sites that students needed to cope with, those in the library had to, and still have to, scramble to keep ahead of the ever-changing and expanding technology curve in information access. Most librarians developed teaching modules to familiarize students with the proper methods of retrieving and evaluating information in the information age, covering PKM skills One and Two. These modules were sometimes developed in cooperation with faculty members in the disciplines and sometimes not. Sometimes those in other disciplines, like English or History ended up reinventing the wheel, coming up with their own approach to retrieving and evaluating online information. In those cases, the approaches may have been varied or contradictory. However, if PKM skills were adopted across the curriculum, though certainly tailored for each individual discipline and its unique needs, then a common approach, methodology and shared terminology would help integrate proper technology use and information literacy across the institution. Teaching resources could be shared across the campus and these skills would be reinforced as they were used in the varied courses the students are taking. In the same ways, PKM skills Three, Four and Five, organizing, analyzing and collaborating around information, can offer an overall structured process for intentionally managing information and turning it into useful knowledge. If these skills were taught, known and utilized in each discipline across the curriculum, students would come to understand how holistic information skills and critical thinking skills are in helping to process, interpret and synthesize information and in producing and contributing knowledge in any content area. If the skills sets are general enough, we've found that they tend to apply to typical educational tasks in almost every discipline. Though disciplines like English and Biology often concern themselves with different types of information and content, many of the skills associated with organizing, analyzing and collaborating around information, especially using the tools of technology, are much the same and could be shared or at least directly compared and contrasted between disciplines who are aware of a similar skills set. In covering technology skills themselves, one might as well forget the concept of disciplines altogether. Music majors and political science majors alike are all using technology today to store, arrange and manage information. When it comes to steps Six and Seven of the PKM Process, the skills and processes associated with presenting and securing information, every single student, staff member and faculty member in the institution needs a firm grasp and understanding of these skills. Whether it is backing up a hard drive, checking for viruses on a floppy disk or properly creating and projecting a Powerpoint presentation, each individual in an institute of higher education should have the knowledge and experience to perform these tasks. Shared PKM skills, as part of the general knowledge base of an institution, will put every member of that institution on a level playing field, making each individual responsible for her or his own information management, no matter where they fall in the institutional hierarchy. Then, everyone becomes empowered to locate, access, manipulate, shape, control, and secure the information they need to complete their varied duties, whether those duties are to keep a set of course grades, research a critical article for publication, or share information with peers over the internet. In the final analysis, we believe that if each and every student, staff and faculty member at an institution used the same underlying strategies and vocabularies for those strategies, to gather, evaluate, organize, analyze, collaborate around, safely store and present information, then teaching and learning in the age of technology would be just a little bit easier and a lot more efficient. Bibliography Buckholtz, Thomas J. Information Proficiency. New York:Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995. Davenport, Thomas H. and Laurence Prusak. Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998. Flaherty, John E. Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1999. Frand, Jason and Carol Hixon. "Personal Knowledge Management: Who, What, Why, When, Where, How?" working paper, 1 Dec. 1999, 11 April 2001 <http://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty/jason.frand/researcher/speeches/PKM.htm>.
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