Teaching knowledge management by combining wikis and screen capture videos

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to report on the design and creation of a knowledge management course aimed at facilitating student creation and use of social interactive learning tools for enhanced learning.

Design/methodology/approach

The era of social media and web 2.0 has enabled a bottom‐up collaborative approach and new ways to publish work on the web, promoted by tools such as YouTube video service. In this spirit a knowledge management course was designed aiming to facilitate university students to compose videos on different difficult concepts in the theory part of the course by searching for explanations on the web and by creating a Windows Media Player video focusing on the self‐defined problems. The videos created by the students were published on a wiki (Wetpaint) and the students were encouraged to actively share knowledge and learn from one another by familiarising themselves with the videos of the other students. In order to utilise cognitive and social constructivism, as well as problem‐based learning, the principles of the Jigsaw method were used to enable different students to create videos on different themes.

Findings

Based on the authors' experiences it is suggested that curriculum and syllabus planning should be transformed toward a more student‐centred approach. This is the most natural in the context of knowledge management, which emphasizes the meaning of participation and knowledge sharing. The social constructivist learning theory emphasizes the meaning of interaction in successful learning. By publishing videos created by the students themselves, by commenting on videos created by other students and by reading comments expressed by others the approach proved to be beneficial for learning in many ways.

Research limitations/implications

The research limitation lies in the differences of quality, format and sizes of these videos produced and the efforts and time requirements for editing and use.

Practical implications

The present finding and report implies more of these resources could be generated by students in other courses in other study areas encouraging use of these types of resources, engaging students with the curriculum, and encouraging interaction amongst students promoting deeper understanding, more positive learning experiences and the generation of curriculum teaching materials by students for class work, making learning more student focused.

Originality/value

The paper focuses on a unique process that allows the use of social technology by students for the generation of materials for use in learning.

Citation

Makkonen, P., Siakas, K. and Vaidya, S. (2011), "Teaching knowledge management by combining wikis and screen capture videos", Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 28 No. 5, pp. 360-366. https://doi.org/10.1108/10650741111181625