International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 6, Issue 3, March-2015 699

ISSN 2229-5518

Knowledge Sharing in Higher Education- KMEduSoft

Prof. Ms. Ulka Toro (Gulavani) Dr. Milind J. Joshi. Asst. Professor, Bharati Vidyapeeth Systems Analyst, Institute of Management, Kolhapur. Computer Center, toroulka@yahoo.in, sg4906@gmail.com, Shivaji University,

Abstract— A portal is a personalized collection of information, content and services. Knowledge Management is used to create, share, store and apply knowledge effectively in the organization. The aim of design of portal is to facilitate knowledge sharing among teachers , students and researchers in higher learning institutions. The objective is to improve collaboration and communication among different departments in higher learning institutions . To ensure success in higher education, there is a need to identify the knowledge that each component contributes to the system and to develop appropriate methodology for knowledge sharing purpose so that available knowledge is used by the stakeholders as per requirement. The proposed KMEduSoft system is dynamic web content knowledge portal designed to share tacit and explicit knowledge among registered users .

Index Terms - knowledge, knowledge sharing, knowledge Management, web portal, higher learning institutions

1 INTRODUCTION

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In 21st century due to globalization and digitalization, higher education institutions(HEIs) are rapidly changing and demanding. HEIs is made up of a number of compo- nents like teachers, students and researchers. Teaching and learning are two mutually dependent elements of a learning process [2]. In HEIs knowledge is inherently cre- ated by teachers and researchers and is shared among dif- ferent stakeholders. Knowledge sharing culture contrib- utes to a positive working environment. To successfully share , store and disseminate knowledge among students, teachers and researchers, there is a need of centralized re- pository system in HEIs. By considering this, web portal KMEduSoft is designed to satisfy the need of students and teachers . The paper discusses about the concept of web portal, design of web portal –KMEduSoft, software specifications and system architecture of KMEduSoft and features of KMEduSoft [3] [5].

2. CONCEPT OF WEB PORTAL :

Web portal is a single , integrated, ubiquitous and useful point of access to information, applications and people(IBM, Global Education Industry, 2000). It is a gateway to network accessible resources and facili-
tates dynamic exchange of knowledge, data and in-

formation. Web Portal provide easy accessibility to both tacit and explicit knowledge and communities of practice and facilitate knowledge transfer through the inclusion of multiple communication channels like message boards and directories [2] . Web portal provide the facility to share, exchange and reuse knowledge and hence support Knowledge Manage- ment process. It provides quick access to different ac- ademic events and activities. It also facilitate com- munication and sharing of knowledge with virtual community [6]. Web portal technology allows educa- tional institutions to assimilate all information and services used by their communities and present these in a seamless, self-service web environment that ten- ders an exclusive experience to every user [5]. Web portals help to provide immediate access to the data in order to make short-term decisions and can in- crease the distribution of information and utilization of critical knowledge for institutional decision mak- ing. It also helps to store and retrieve documents as per requirement and provides synchronous as well as asynchronous modes of teaching and learning activi- ties [1] [4].

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3. SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONS AND SYS- TEM ARCHITECTURE OF KMEDUSOFT The aim of design of KMEdusoft is to integrate Knowledge Management practices and elearning to- gether to develop an effective knowledge sharing platform to exchange knowledge electronically among students and teachers. The model KMEduSoft is developed by determining the existing gap and identification of strategic needs of higher education institutions for knowledge creation and sharing pur- pose. It also aims to improve effective teaching- learning process between teachers and students and to develop collaborative learning system. In Profes- sional colleges, there is lack of qualified and trained teachers for technical subjects, hence the system pro- vides effective knowledge storage and knowledge sharing environment among students and teachers. The tacit knowledge which embeds in expert teachers mind is stored in the system and it is shared among other teachers and students as per the requirement. Also explicit knowledge which resides in books, journals, conference papers, audio tapes , multimedia clips is made available to develop KMEduSoft for bet- ter knowledge sharing purpose [3] . It provides the facility to share information and personal services like emails, chat rooms, messaging services related to academics and administrative activities in the college. It allow different departments or entities to give per- sonalized information regarding grades, classes, re- search details and other events.

For the design of KMEdusoft we select XAMP as web server which is a free open-source that consists of Apache and easy to install . Application is designed with PHP 5.0. which is a ‘Personal Home Page Pre- processor’ used to communicate with and manipu- late the database. RDBMS used is MySQL which is very fast, reliable and easy to use and its connectivity,
speed and security make it highly suitable for access-
ing database. Templates are used as web based pub- lishing features to create web content. HTML 5 is used to create hypertext documents and to format and display textual information.
Three-Tier architecture concept is used while design- ing KMEdusoft. Communication is considered as the most important element for collaborative learning procedures.
i) View Layer : It is the web portal design with
which user interacts. It consist of teachers, student, administrative staff and adminis- trator.
ii) Middle Layer : It lies between database
MySQL and view layer with PHP functionali- ties.
iii) Database Layer : It consist of RDBMS MySQL.

4. FEATURES OF KMEDUSOFT :

TABLE 1 : KMEDUSOFT FEATURES

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having more than five years experience in the subject. The result also shows that use of KMEduSoft motivates self- learning attitude among students and to improve their aca- demic performance. Immediate update is possible since appli- cation runs on the Server side. Also level of confidence of teachers is increased who are involved to develop academic content using ICT for the KMEduSoft. It is hoped that KMEduSoft will continue to grow and in long run it gives pos- itive impact. It shows that to provide better teaching-learning environment, educational institutions must initiate knowledge management practices in their capacity to acquire, utilize and share knowledge by using ICT.

i. Registration Details : Teachers and students should enter login name and password be- fore using the system.

ii. Teacher - Upload Details : Teachers can up- load two types of details like Academic Up- loads and Research Uploads. Teachers can upload the academic details like course de- tails, class time-table, examination time-table, class co-ordinator details, class room details , academic calendar, assignments in C Pro- gramming and assignments in HTML.

6. CONCLUSION

5. RESULT OF KMEDUSOFT

The portal is designed based on the need of teachers , students and researchers to interact and to share knowledge regardless time and place. The portal designed is tested with teachers and students of a management institute and shows a good response to store and share knowledge using ICT . The lecture notes prepared are screened by the appointed subject expert

The system designed KMEduSoft helps the educa- tional institution to share knowledge between teach- ers , students, researchers and administrative staff. It facilitates knowledge sharing among students and teachers in higher education institutions . It provides necessary information for students to improve their academic performance and excellence. It facilitate navigation, analytical and communication tools for members of higher learning institution to do their work in a collaborative manner. The system designed helps to support and enhance operational, evaluation
, research and planning functions within the institu-

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tions. The system designed also helps to increase effi- ciency and productivity of the teachers by eliminating manual knowledge sharing. Application is run com- pletely on the server side ensuring a high level of se- curity and minimal load on the client system and web browser. While using KMEduSoft the important fac- tors are student’s technology competency, attitude of teachers and researchers , attitude of administrative staff and security aspect. For the security purpose password and login facility is provided , so that only authorized person can access the system . The portal designed indicates that open source tools are also re- liable to develop knowledge based portal.

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