Chapter 5

Knowledge Capture Systems:

Systems that Preserve and
Formalize Knowledge

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 What are Knowledge
Capture Systems?

• Knowledge capture systems support process

of eliciting explicit or tacit knowledge from
people, artifacts, or organizational entities
• These systems can help capture knowledge existing
either within or outside organizational boundaries,
among employees, consultants, competitors, customers,
suppliers, and even prior employers of the
organization’s new employees
• Knowledge capture systems rely on mechanisms and
technologies that support externalization and
internalization.
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 Knowledge capture systems

• The development of models or prototypes, and

the articulation of stories are some examples of
mechanisms that enable externalization.
• Learning by observation and face-to-face
meetings are some of the mechanisms that
facilitate internalization

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 Using Stories for Capturing Tacit
Knowledge

Organizational stories:
 “a detailed narrative of past management actions,
employee interactions, or other intra- or extra-
organizational events that are communicated informally
within organizations”
• Stories play a significant role in organizations
characterized by a strong need for collaboration
• Stories are important to capture and transfer tacit
knowledge
• stories make information more vivid, engaging,
entertaining, and easily related to personal experience and
because of the rich contextual details encoded in stories,
they are the ideal mechanism to capture tacit knowledge Ch
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 Using Stories for Capturing
Organizational Knowledge

• Guidelines for organizational storytelling

• Stimulate the natural telling and writing of stories
 Rooted in anecdotal material reflective of the community
in question
 Should not represent idealized behavior
 An organizational program to support storytelling should
not depend on external experts for its nourishment
 Organizational stories are about achieving a purpose, not
entertainment
 Be cautious of over-generalizing and forgetting the
particulars
 Adhere to the highest ethical standards and rules
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 Eight steps to successful storytelling

1. Have a clear purpose.

2. Identify and example of successful change.
3. Tell the truth.
4. Say who, what, when.
5. Trim detail.
6. Underscore the cost of failure.
7. End on a positive note.
8. Invite your audience to dream.
• In story telling, it is not just what you say but how you
say it, that will determine its success.
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 Using Stories for Capturing
Organizational Knowledge
• Important considerations:
 Effective means of capturing and transferring tacit
organizational knowledge
 Identify people in the organization willing to share
how they learned from others
 Use metaphors to confront difficult organizational
issues e.g. time is money
• Storytelling provides a natural methodology for nurturing
communities because it:
 builds trust
 unlocks passion
 is non-hierarchical (told in the form of peer dicussion)
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 Other consideration for
effective story telling

• People must agree with the idea that this could

be an effective means of capturing and
transferring tacit organizational knowledge.
• Identify people in the organization willing to
share how they learned from others about how
to do their jobs.
• Metaphors are a way to confront difficult
organizational issues.
• Stories can only transfer knowledge if the
listener is interested in learning from them.
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 Where can storytelling
be effective?
• Igniting action in knowledge-era organizations
• Bridging the knowing-doing gap
• Capturing tacit knowledge
• To embody and transfer knowledge
• To foster innovation
• Enhancing technology e.g e-mail can connect people 24/7
• Individual growth – avoids competition, mutual benefit
• Launching/Nurturing communities of practice
 thematic groups (World Bank)
 learning communities or learning networks (HP)
 best practice teams (Chevron)
 family groups (Xerox)
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 Knowledge Representation
through the use of Concept Maps

• Knowledge engineer capture the knowledge by

interviewing domain experts with the goal of jointly
constructing an expertise model.
• Based on Ausubel’s learning psychology theory,
construct concept map as follows
 Concepts are enclosed in circles or boxes are
perceived regularities in events or objects designated
by a label
 Connect two concepts to form a proposition,
semantic unit or unit of meaning
 Vertical axis expresses a hierarchical
framework for
organizing the concepts
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 Knowledge representation

• The links between the concepts can be one-way,

two-way, or non-directional.
• The concepts may show temporal or causal
relationships between concepts
• Simple example of concept map

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Concept Map about
Concept Maps

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A Concept Map Segment from
Nuclear Cardiology Domain

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 Types of Concept Maps

• Hierarchical
 the vertical axis expresses a hierarchical framework
for organizing the concepts.
 More general, inclusive concepts are found at the top
of the map with progressively more specific, less
inclusive concepts arranged below them.
 Emphasize the most general concepts by linking them
to supporting ideas with propositions.
 E.g Animal-> domestic -> cow

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• Semantic networks,
 also called associative networks, are typically
represented as a directed graph connecting the
nodes (representing concepts) to show a relationship
or association between them.
 useful in describing, for example, traffic flow in that
the connections between concepts indicate direction,
but directed graphs do not connect concepts
through propositions.
 Does not indicate generalization from specific to
general
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 Knowledge Acquisition
methods for concept maps

• Interviewing
• Video recording
• Observation
• Codification – writing down what one knows
• Group discussion
• Collaborative software tools such as wikipedia
• Etc

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 Concept Map tools

• Concept or mind mapping software continues to

evolve and the latest generation is really good.
• Some examples of concept or mind mapping
software are:
• MindJet http://www.mindjet.com/
• Cmap http://cmap.ihmc.us/download/
• Cayra Mind Mapping http://www.cayra.net/

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 Knowledge Capture Systems:
CmapTools
• To capture and formalize knowledge resulting in context rich
knowledge representation models to be viewed and shared
through the Internet
• Alleviates navigation problem with concept maps
• Serve as the browsing interface to a domain of knowledge
• Icons below the concept nodes provide access to auxiliary
information
• Linked media resources and concept maps can be located
anywhere on the Internet
• Browser provides a window showing the hierarchical
ordering of maps
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 Segment from Nuclear
Cardiology using CmapTools

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Explanation Subsystem
using CmapTools

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 Knowledge representation
through context-based reasoning

• Tactical knowledge
 human ability that enables domain experts to assess
the situation at hand (therefore short-term)
 categorically different from classification knowledge
and from general problem solving knowledge
because it is inherently temporal.
 Verbs associated with tactical behavior included
respond, act, react, and do, among others.
 Tactical behavior implies some activity(ies) executed
over time.

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 Tactical knowledge

• Tactical knowledge can be defined as that

knowledge which permits an agent to act
intelligently and realistically in light of the
situation faced.
• tactical behavior includes tasks that
require
 1) assessment of the situation at hand,
 2) selection of a plan to most properly address the
present situation, and
 3) execution of that plan.
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 Tactical knowledge
…
• Tactical knowledge is a continual and dynamic process
of decision making by a performing agent (human or
otherwise) that interacts with its environment while
attempting to carry out a mission in the environment.
• Decisions are made at several levels during the
execution of the mission
• Situational Awareness undertaken at three levels:
• 1) perceiving the event or aspect of the environment,
• 2) understanding the implications of the event/aspect vis- à-
vis
the mission goals, and
• 3) being able to predict what will happen as a result
of these events/aspects of the environment. Ch
 Knowledge representation
through CxBR

• Context - set of actions and procedures that

properly address the current situation
• As mission evolves, transition to other context
may be required to address the new situation
 For example knowledge sharing between supervisor
and subordinate and between subordinate
 In hospital and academic institutions
• What is likely to happen in a context is limited
by the context itself
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 Knowledge representation
through CxBR (context based reasoning)

• Mission Context - defines the scope of the mission, its

goals, the plan, and the constraints imposed -- e.g drive
to work (high way and local road)
• Main Context - contains functions, rules and a list of
compatible subsequent main Contexts (e.g high
way driving)
• Sub-Contexts - abstractions of functions performed by
the Main Context which may be too complex for one
function (e.g traffic light action)
• Only one action (e.g red light) occur but changed by
events from the environment. The agent knows the events

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Knowledge representation
through CxBR

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 Knowledge Capture Systems
based on CxBR

• Context-based Intelligent Tactical Knowledge

Acquisition (CITKA)
 uses its own knowledge base to compose a set of
intelligent queries to elicit the tactical knowledge of
the expert
 composes questions and presents them to the
expert
 result is a nearly complete context base can be used
to control someone performing the mission of interest
in a typical environment

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 Knowledge Capture Systems
based on CxBR

• CITKA consists of four modules of independent

subsystems:
 Knowledge engineering database back-end (KEDB)
 Knowledge engineering interface (KEI)
 Query rule-base back-end (QRB)
 Subject matter expert interface (SMEI)

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 Barriers to the use of
knowledge capture systems
• Barriers to the deployment of knowledge capture
systems from two perspectives:
 the knowledge engineer who seeks to build such
systems
 the subject matter expert, who would interact with an
automated knowledge capture system to preserve his
knowledge
• Knowledge Engineer requires developing some idea
of the nature and structure of the knowledge very
early in the process
 must attempt to become versed in the subject matter,
or the nature of knowledge
• An automated system for knowledge capture, without
a-priori knowledge of the nature, is essentially not Ch
 Barriers to the use of
knowledge capture systems

• From the point-of-view of the expert:

 need to take the initiative of learning how to interact
with the system
 some people may be resistant to trying new things
 can be overcome, with adequate training and the
utilization of user-friendly interfaces

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 Using learning by observation
capture knowledge

• Research on how humans and animals learn

through observation has promise for
development of knowledge based systems
• Use of learning through observation to automate
the knowledge acquisition task
• Learning by observation shows promise as a
technique for automatic capture of expert’s
knowledge, and enable computers to
automatically “learn”
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