April'21
Welcome to the IUP Journal of Knowledge Management
Focus
Covid-19 pandemic situation has been ruling the whole world by impacting almost all systems for more than a year now. Education system is one important system that is facing major brunt with shutting down of academic premises and running virtual classrooms. To continue the system without any disruptions and benefit the students by engaging them effectively, the educational institutes have been struggling to find and adopt suitable teaching methods. There is a huge demand for suitable technology platforms and tools. In the paper, "A Practitioner's Note on Technology Intermediated Student Engagement: A Use-Case from the Trenches", the author, Praveen Bhasa Malla, attempts to present the shortcoming of the Indian pedagogical system. With the help of a use-case, the author attempts to explain the significant role of contemporary technology in making teaching and learning engagement fun and enriching. As a practitioner, the author describes the features and uses of one team communication platform, slack, for teaching engagement. The author highlights the benefits of slack in terms of ease of use, comfortability of both faculty members and students, availability of faculty members to the students round the clock, continuation of conversations and flexibility to respond to the queries of students beyond classrooms.
With the help of information and communications technology, electronic governance can be implemented to handle the informational and transactional exchanges effectively, transparently, and rapidly at various levels of government and public sector and authorize the citizens to access and use the information and services. Nations that implement effective e-governance can ensure democracy, transparency and accountability. The authors, Paschal U Chinedu, Wilson Nwankwo and Etebong B Isong, in their paper, "E-Readiness Dimensions for a Consolidated Strategic E-Governance Implementation: The MDA Perspective", attempt to highlight the role of important organizational strategies and e-readiness dimensions across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in implementing successful and consolidated e-governance in developing countries like Nigeria. They adopt a survey approach with a structured questionnaire to evaluate the MDAs and their e-governance strategies and also conduct a gap analysis to identify gray areas that need strategic and tactical attention. The authors report that infrastructure and human capacity development are the key indicators of e-readiness strategy and are useful in measuring the level of preparedness across all the MDAs.
Consulting Editor
The Role of AI/ML in Enhancing Knowledge Management Systems
Artificial Intelligence (AI)/Machine Learning (ML) can play a significant, meaningful, and considerable role in enriching and strengthening the Knowledge Management (KM) systems. A good number of studies have been done to explore the connection between AI/ML and KM systems. But these studies focused more on definitive techniques and the impact of a few AI/ML algorithms, neglecting the role of others and how it may impinge on the KM system in order to reach a set of organizational goals, which diminishes the KM adoption in some organizations. This study depicts the relationship between AI/ML and KM systems from a point of view that offers choices to apply AI/ML for organization-wide KM systems to mitigate implementation issues and improve the degree of overall KM systems acceptance in the organizations. The key conclusion of the study is that KM systems can be enhanced considerably with AI/ML; KM processes like knowledge acquisition and knowledge creation can leverage different types of AI/ML algorithms providing a competitive edge for the organizations. The study also finds that most of the previous studies concur on the positive correlation between AI/ML and KM, and discusses the pivotal role AI/ML plays in the overall improvement of the KM systems.
A Practitioner's Note on Technology Intermediated Student Engagement: A Use-Case from the Trenches
Covid-19 has disrupted the entire education ecosystem, globally. Newer learning contexts are being drawn, newer pedagogical methods are being designed, new learning outcomes are being sought and newer habits are getting formed. With classrooms migrating to virtual platforms, 'student stickiness' has emerged as a big challenge. Innovative pedagogical models are to be used to create enriching student engagement that in turn can ensure student stickiness. This paper is a practitioner's view from the trenches. It discusses the shortcomings of the Indian pedagogical framework and through a use-case explains how contemporary technology can be deployed to make the teaching-learning engagement fun and enriching. While the use-case is localized to the Indian context, its applicability is universal.
E-Readiness Dimensions for a Consolidated Strategic E-Governance Implementation: The MDA Perspective
E-Governance is an evolving paradigm intended to modernize the public sector by engendering transparency, accountability and good governance. Notably, some countries, including South Korea, USA, Singapore and Canada, have recorded appreciable milestones. In developing countries, the experience is quite different. This paper dwells on the e-readiness of e-governance as an economic and human development engine for effective governance in the 21st century and beyond. This paper articulates some crucial organizational strategies and e-readiness dimensions that would provide vital knowledge and direction towards consolidating e-governance implementation in Nigeria across the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs). A survey approach was adopted to evaluate the MDAs and their e-governance strategies as in the first quarter of 2020 vis-a-vis the National e-Governance Master Plan (NeGMP). A gap analysis was conducted on the level of the MDAs' preparedness in implementing the NeGMP. The e-readiness evaluation results showed some gray areas that need strategic and tactical attention. With these findings, the decision makers in the e-governance project can direct efforts to areas where external support is anticipated. The study further elucidated the various measurable pillars, criteria, performance indices and apt theoretical submission to guide the implementation of e-governance plan across the MDAs.