Learning and knowledge sharing (2)

Seb’s Open Research: on Learning, sharing, and doing both:

… I wonder what connections exist between learning and teaching, or, in KM context, between learning and sharing. Are those who dare to share and eager to learn are the same people? Are these two sides of the same coin? May be it’s a coincidence in my case :-)

[Mathemagenic]

I believe that all sharers are learners. However from my experience there are perhaps five to ten times more people who can learn but won’t teach than there are people who’ll do both. The implication would be that you can only klog 10-20% of an organization. But watch the generation of kids who are going to grow up with the medium.

And Matt Mower follow-up in Can teach. Won’t teach.

I’d be interested in any conjecture about the, possibly many, reasons why those people won’t teach?

Teaching is a tricky term: it has too much to do with school and formal settings. I would look for something short with meaning intentional facilitation of learning instead of teaching. But so far I continue to use teaching…

So, why people don’t teach? I guess the main reason is the they can’t imagine themselves as school teachers.

Ok, why people don’t share? Some answers could be found in reasons for not sharing and BRINT discussion about knowledge sharing incentives. I would summarise it simply: people don’t see the fun and the value of sharing (for a variaty of reasons), or don’t have right skills and right environment to support knowledge sharing.

But I still have a feeling that the answers are not here yet… I hope we will get the topic of motivation for knowledge sharing in our research agenda.

Archived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2002/08/23.html#a152; comments are here.

• Knowledge management in instructional design
• Barriers for common language

Tagged as: KM & learning, knowledge sharing, learning