Knowledge sharing : a case study among parents of special children

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the current practice of knowledge sharing among offline and online community of practice pertaining to the special children areas focusing on mental disabilities. The study focused on how knowledge sharing is carried specifically out among parents and generally among teachers and doctors of these children. The concept of knowledge sharing as one of the component in knowledge management was discussed thoroughly on the processes involved, the developed framework, and the factors that encourage and hinder people to or from participating and contributing to the knowledge sharing activity. From the author’s findings, knowledge sharing activities did occur actively in the online community of practice compared to offline community due to several factors; time and geographical boundaries, low income and low information technology literacy. The concept of community of practice was further analyzed through the practice of several e-groups. The knowledge sharing activities were evaluated based on the SECI model proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). The results of the study show that knowledge sharing activities did contribute towards the development of the special children in many ways. From the discourse analysis conducted in one e-group on two selected discussion topics, the results show that inquiry and storytelling are the common nature of discourse and the common type of discourse is experiential dialogue. The study found out that the leader in community of practice play a very important role to maintain the interest of the community to remain engaged in the dialogue and to sustain the existence of the community. The result of the study has led to the development of one e-group prototype where the features available in the prototype are based from the gathered users’ requirement and are coherence with the processes in the SECI model.