Knowledge Management can be defined as “the ability to harness and build upon an organisation’s intellectual capital” [10]. With the current economic climate, companies need to know what they know, and must use this knowledge effectively. The size and dispersion of global organisations make it especially difficult to locate existing knowledge and get it to where it is needed. According to Davenport and Prusak [13], the maximum size of an organisation, in which people know one another well enough to have a reliable grasp of collective organizational knowledge, is two hundred. The vast amount of knowledge found in a global enterprise which has offices and plants spread around the globe is enormous; taping in to that pool of knowledge is a problem due to the sheer size of it. Corporate knowledge only becomes of value if people in the organisation can gain access to it. If there isn’t a KM system available, employees would make do with what they already know or the knowledge that is most easily available. This knowledge could be of good quality, but in today’s market, sometimes good quality is not good enough [11, 12].
A lot of companies can argue that KM systems costs a lot of money and the effort to setup and maintain is labour intensive. However, knowledge can provide a sustainable advantage to a company. Eventually, competitors can almost always match the quality and price of the market leader’s current product or service. By the time this happens, the knowledge rich and good knowledge managing company will have moved on to a new level of quality, creativity and/or efficiency. The knowledge advantage is sustainable because it generates increased returns and continuing advancement [13]. Successfully embedded KM systems pay for themselves by creating new innovative ideas which are transformed into products, services and sales for the company.
The difficulty with tacit knowledge is that it is derived from a person’s lifetime of experience, practice, perception and learning [3]. This type of knowledge is highly abstract and closely relates to ‘know-how’ [14]. Thus, one may acquire tacit knowledge in one context and apply and stimulate this knowledge in another context [15, 16].
2.1 Learning Methods
Learning is divided into two categories: Active and Passive Learning [17]. Active learning emphasises on the intrinsic motivation and self-sponsored curiosity of the learner who fashions content and is actively involved in its formation. Active learning shifts the focus of content structuring from the teacher to the learner. By being actively involved in the shaping of content, the learner gains a greater understanding of the information. Active learning is normally achieved by methods which reinforce knowledge; this can be achieved through discussion of the subject matter with peers or supervisors, practicing the knowledge you have gained or by teaching it to others within a group or team. These methods allow a person to gain a better understanding of the subject matter and, from the interaction with others, new ideas on the subject can be developed.
The opposite of active learning is passive learning. Passive learning focuses on the instructor, not the student. The standard teaching method used is the traditional lecture, whereby students are in effect bench-bound listeners, passively consuming the content presented by the instructor, according to the structure that he or she created [17]. This approach is most effective to increase knowledge and skills that do not involve interaction with others [18]. However, as the name implies, ‘passive’ knowledge is one which is transferred to the student only if they are willing to learn. Figure 1 shows the learning pyramid which illustrates the order of the different learning mediums and their effectiveness.
As anticipated, passive techniques are not as effective as discussing a topic or teaching a topic to peers, because passive learning, for it to work, needs the student to engage with the material, otherwise he/she won’t gain anything from the lecture or the book which they are reading. While active learning, if the student needs to teach a topic to his/her peers, they will make extra effort to understand the subject matter in order for him/her to convey what they have learned.
An antidote for learning is to engage learners in active, constructive, intentional, complex, cooperative and reflective learning activities [20]. These are the main goals of having a constructive learning environment. Constructive learning emphasizes the learning process, and the learner’s thinking is encouraged and nurtured. The student’s acquisition of knowledge is an outcome of the process focused on thinking, discovery and reflection [21], making it a unique experience to each one of us.
Cooperative learning is a teaching method whereby students working in small groups to help one another learn academic materials. This methods provides a sense of individual accountability and interpersonal communications, which provides a deeper learning experience [21]. Research has shown that these small groups produce higher achievement and healthier achievements than with competitive or individual experiences [22]. Electronic learning, as a concept, is associated with consistently higher levels of student satisfaction but it is generally accepted that online learning works best when blended with more traditional learning techniques, rather than trying to replace them [23].
2.2 Advanced Web and Social Media Tools
Today, Web 2.0 and social media tools are widely used in our daily lives to share and communicate with each another, with tools such as Facebook and Twitter being readily available. These tools have emerged as main stream communication channels for people to communicate and share their daily experiences all over the world like never before. They have, however, changed the way our planet communicates. Macaskill and Owen [24] defined Web 2.0 as a ‘web-based platform which allows users to gain access, contribute, describe, harvest, tag, annotate and bookmark Web mediated contents in various formats, such as text, video, audio, pictures and graphs [24]. Stuart [26] provided a more precise definition of Web 2.0, stating that it is web sites which people can share content on. Web 2.0 is a vast improvement from Web 1.0 which only conveyed static information. With Web 1.0, only web programmers were able to modify and post contents. In contrast, with Web 2.0, anybody with minimal ICT skills can contribute and share their information [25].
According to Moron-Garcia [26], the use of web-based technologies can facilitate the creation of student-centred learning environments. Learning environments, designed with reference to constructivist theories of learning, will embed in students the critical and cognitive skills that higher education aims to develop [26, 27]. E-learning, as a concept, is associated with consistently higher levels of student satisfaction. However, it is generally accepted that online learning works best when it is blended with traditional learning techniques, rather than trying to replace them [23].
2.3 Video Sharing and Storytelling
It has previously been mentioned that tacit knowledge is difficult to capture and share, due to the personal understanding of the subject matter [28]. Only tacit knowledge that can be transformed into explicit knowledge can be successfully shared. As suggested by Hislop [30], tacit knowledge can be captured and shared by ‘direct communication among individuals’ by means of (1) stories, (2) observing others, and (3) learning by doing within a community.
Reamy [31] suggested that storytelling is the best way to transfer tacit knowledge, being that you are able to convey information and context in a form that is easy for other people to understand. According to LeBlanc and Hogg [29], stories make information meaningful, making tacit knowledge more explicit and allowing information to be organised into learnable chunks. This methodology was also suggested by Martin-Niemi [33] who utilised storytelling with new generation Web 2.0 technologies, providing an individualized and customizable user experience which included virtual social interactions, shared collaborative portals and communications tools, but it was not put into action.
One medium to capture and share storytelling, as part of a Web 2.0 environment, is video sharing. Balcikanli [34] concluded that YouTube, a video sharing website, can be integrated as an effective online tool for learning due to its ease of use and its connection to an abundance of video clips that not only teach, but also demonstrate the cultural context in which the material can be properly applied.