Institutional Learning Opportunities and Resources Reuse Strategies: A Knowledge Management Approach

Objective : To develop a strategy of institutional learning opportunities and resources reuse for a team of more than 400 information experts targeted for increased professional development efforts.

Project Description : As part of yearly metrics goals, in July 2009, the knowledge management (KM) team was entrusted with managing institutional knowledge of professional development opportunities and supporting lifelong learning. Relying on welltested strategies, a team of professionals proceeded with creating a comprehensive, hierarchically organized ontology of skills capable of representing an overall existing and desirable list of needed skills for the 400 targeted information experts. This ontology was mapped by a semi-automated matrix tool to institutional courses and workshops, and library-held resources. This collection of mapped skills greatly increases the opportunities for learning for all the professionals targeted for growth. Furthermore, as the project evolved, KM techniques were employed to harvest team knowledge and to create a detailed skills profile of team experts, thus increasing the overall effectiveness of this effort.

Results/Conclusion : Through a series of interviews with team experts at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s (VUMC) Informatics Center (IC) and a survey of the relevant literature and job descriptions, the KM team developed an extensive ontology of 360 skills, organized into 43 broad hierarchical nodes. All hierarchically organized skills were then, in turn, mapped to 385 learning opportunities identified after surveying institutional offerings and meetings with area specialists. Throughout the project, a process was undertaken by the team to verify the course mapping accuracy. Five IC leadership workshops were selected to understand whether the original mapping derived from workshop descriptions correctly represented course material delivered by the speakers. Evaluation of the process showed that, out of 5 workshops attended, only a small percentage adjustment was needed from the original skill mapping, thus validating the overall project approach.