Knowledge

The Macquarie dictionary defines knowledge as. (1) To perceive or understand as fact or truth, or apprehend with clearness and certainty. (2) To have fixed in the mind or memory. Then what is knowledge in context to collaboration?

In an article “collaboration tools are anti knowledge sharing?” by James Robertson. He writes “collaboration tools can work against knowledge sharing. While collaboration tools work extremely well for the staff using them, they can lead to hundreds (or thousands) of information ‘silos’, making it harder for other staff to find required information.” Can Knowledge be shared?

In our own team we have divided work amongst the group depending on their knowledge. Each person has the knowledge or ability to do their desired tasks, but to access that knowledge of someone else, how does he/she access that information? The fact is, you can never access the needed knowledge from the “knowledge” holder with asking them to teach you or another way to attain that knowledge is to learn it yourself.

As a group we have a task to build an unbuilt building in a game environment. Most of us didn’t know this was possible. The task involves us using the UT3 modelling engine. The members of the group have individual tasks, that either involve using the UT3 editor or not. But does the person not using UT3 lose out in terms of they will not get the chance to learn and to expand their knowledge? Or does the person learning UT3 lose out in terms that they will spend more time learning a new tool while the other person refines their knowledge through more experience?

Sharing knowledge is not an easy task as members of the group will become “information silo” that others will not be able to access at any given time.

Collaborated knowledge has become more and more important. For example, architectural firms have a design brief that involves more than what they can handle so if a firm’s expertise is master planning, but the brief includes a nursing home and a hospital, you would need the knowledge of others to complete the plan. Sharing knowledge is important in our group task and will be closely managed to make sure we don’t became “information silo’s”