KNOWLEDGE @ NJC: A LITTLE LEARNING GOES A LONG WAY

How many times have teachers all over Singapore groaned and grit their teeth when it came to preparing a new academic year's syllabus? At National Junior College (NJC), there is now no need to reinvent the wheel - teachers can instead improve and add value to existing teaching material. All this, thanks to NJC's Knowledge Management Solution (known as Knowledge@NJC). The knowledge base for teachers is known as the Teacher's Centre.

Why the need for a Knowledge Management System?
The pace at school and in general is fast and knowledge needs to be transferred almost instantly. If a repository of knowledge is not available, teachers and other education stakeholders will probably be duplicating lecture notes, study material and student surveys etc. Having a central repository enables the knowledge to be accessible as soon as it is uploaded into the system. This is especially helpful when experienced teachers move on and new teachers take over their responsibilities, or when teachers have to perform multiple roles and therefore need a shorter learning curve in order to be able to contribute quickly and efficiently. NJC's principal, Mrs. Virginia Cheng, spells out the college's motivation for such a system:

"As a learning organisation we believe it is important for us to harness the organisation's information resources and information capabilities to enable us to learn and adapt quickly to our changing educational environment".

About Knowledge@NJC
Housed currently on the school's intranet, Knowledge@NJC has a powerful search engine that enables both teachers and students to locate what they need rapidly. All teachers in NJC have access to almost any kind of information they need through the Teacher's Centre. The Teacher's Centre is made up of 8 knowledge bases including the Administration Knowledge Base, the Projects Knowledge Base and the Co-Curricular Activities (CCA) Knowledge Base. Integrating the various knowledge bases allows teachers to update faculty data, review and approve syllabi or to set up a quick survey. The system provides easy-to-use instruments for teachers to achieve these tasks quickly without any special technical expertise. There is even a version control feature that allows the teacher to track the reviews and version controls to learn from the experience of the previous owners of that document.

Benefits of Knowledge@NJC
The system is designed to mirror institutional work processes, store and share the best practices in the profession to provide the catalyst for enhancing the culture of sharing and innovation at NJC. This will result in communities of practice whereby like-minded students and teachers will be able to collaborate online with regards to subject matter, CCAs, project teams and committees etc. Education stakeholders would also be able to share and capture critical tacit knowledge that will help in the subsequent teaching and learning cycles. Besides collaboration and information storage, the system will allow teachers to gather feedback from students and colleagues easily and hence they will be better able to review their pedagogical strategies and approaches. All in all, there will be better management of critical knowledge resources such as lecture notes, tutorials, examiner's reports, hyperlinks, presentations, instructional materials and resources.

What's next for Knowledge@NJC?
This system will eventually be extended to the internet where students will be able to chart their own learning paths using the integrated system to optimise and stretch their potential.

Although NJC is the first school in Singapore to embark on and implement Knowledge Management on 22 February 2003, it is only a matter of time before its own experience and knowledge will be transferred to the rest of the schools. When that happens, we can say goodbye to duplication and re-invention and welcome an era of creativity and innovation.