Student Affairs On-Line The on-line magazine about technology and Student Affairs Gary D. Malaney - Univ. of Massachusetts Amherst Editor Stuart Brown - StudentAffairs.com Executive Editor

Join our mailing list!    First Name        Last Name        School        Email            ©2007    StudentAffairs.com    All Rights Reserved	BOOK REVIEW Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management Ackerman, M., Pipek, V., & Wulf, V. (Eds.). (2003). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press Price $50.00, 401 pages www.booksontape.com/bookdetail.cfm/6038 Review by Ramon Dominguez Associate Professor New Mexico State University radoming@nmsu.edu Posted: July 26, 2003     Student Affairs Online, vol. 4 no. 3 - Summer 2003 Mark Ackerman, Volkmar Pipek and Volker Wulf provide an informative and thought provoking book that moves beyond the basic definition of knowledge management. Sharing Expertise: Beyond Knowledge Management considers an important element of knowledge management, enhancing the ability of organizations to increase their effectiveness through the exchange of knowledge between members of an organization and members of external organizations. The basic premise is to identify experts and share the valuable information embedded within these individuals. This initiative emphasizes the social component of knowledge management involving the identification of human experts, communities of practice and bringing people together to increase learning, organizational knowledge and communication. The editors accomplish the difficult task of providing a comprehensive view of expertise sharing by bringing together an array of experts and professionals in the field of expertise sharing. These thirty-one professionals provide a specific and thorough review of concepts and examples that cover a variety of perspectives of the sharing expertise experience: Sharing expertise within organizations is difficult and complicated due to individual cognitive and motivational limitations. Insight is given into knowledge sharing practices and organizational learning. Strategies for increasing the individual skills of novices and experts in organizations and communities of practice are presented. The manner in which expertise sharing can be facilitated through social and technical systems is reviewed. Interaction between the social and technical aspects of expertise sharing and the challenges presented in designing technical support systems are considered. The characteristics and technological design of expertise locator systems (people finder systems) are described. Expertise mapping can be utilized to determine the knowledge within an organization and the flow of that knowledge throughout the organization. Communities of practice allow groups of individuals to share their knowledge within and between organizations. Groupware systems can enhance collaborations and in turn encourage expertise sharing. Real time technological support for knowledge management is essential for organizations. Human interactive behavior is important in designing expert sharing systems. The development and implementation of expert finding tools are key to expert sharing systems. The application of desktop software for sharing expertise is discussed. The ideas and principles presented in the book have utility and applicability to the area of student services. Universities, colleges, and community colleges combine a number of functions to assist students. These functions can include admissions, registration, counseling, career exploration, testing, financial aid, student government, veteran’s affairs, recruitment, discipline and special programs. The concepts of identifying experts, expertise sharing, communities of practice, expertise locator, organizational learning, expertise networks, developing social capital, enhancing collaborative efforts and designing technological support systems can all be integrated into the student services functions. For example, applying expertise-sharing principles to three student services functions can illustrate the utilization of knowledge management in the field of student development: Financial Aid - every college, community college and university offers some type of financial assistance to students. Scholarships, loans, grants and work opportunities are common types of assistance awarded. In awarding the assistance, a variety of federal, state and local regulations guide the amounts of aid and conditions of eligibility. Interpreting regulations appropriately, specifically federal requirements, requires knowledgeable and informed experts. Through expertise locator systems, identifying and locating experts that can address difficult issues and answer complex questions regarding regulations, financial aid units and students can obtain reliable and valid information from experts. Testing - a majority of higher education institutions invest resources to assess the language, math and reading skills of students upon initial enrollment. Since institutions exercise their independence in selecting their assessment instruments, uniformity in testing instruments, procedures, scoring and assessment philosophy may vary dramatically across institutions. Expertise sharing and community of practice networks can help in building reliable, valid and realistic assessments and testing procedures that provide for true profiles of student skills. Admissions - acceptance into major universities/colleges or specialized programs requires adherence to specific selection criteria. For example, in some community college nursing programs, students may compete with 1,000 plus students for 60 seats. Through the utilization of expertise sharing, selection committees at different community colleges can technologically interface to converse and explore issues and complexities of selection criteria. Collaborative support systems can assist in sharing problems and delineating possible solutions. Lessons learned can be stored for later retrieval and discussion. The aforementioned examples illustrate the versatility of expertise sharing principles as applied to student services. The principles are applicable to many different higher education institutions as well as to a myriad of organizations. Ackerman, Pipek, and Wulf compiled an interesting, informative and useful book. They exhibit the complex and difficult nature of sharing expertise. Their comprehensive and serious approach makes for intense and focused reading. The book is not light reading. Ample time needs to be set aside to read and reflect on the principles, models, examples and case studies presented by the different authors. They have shared valuable and applicable expertise!