The Fires Within Us and the Rivers We Form

This paper is a creative, poetic and experimental intervention in the form of collective reflections and writings on Anthropology, as the discipline we have experienced and/or been a part of within the University. It is also a reflection on the process of how the authors came together to form the River and Fire Collective. As a collective we have studied, worked and taught in more than 15 universities, and the aspects we point to here are fragments of our experiences and observations of the emotionality of the discipline. These are experiences from different forms of Anthropology from Northern Europe and settler-colonial contexts including Great Turtle Island Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. In a metaphorical manner we invite the reader to our collective fireside dialogues and reflections, to be inspired, to disagree or agree and to continue a process of transformation. The paper sets out to provocatively question whether Anthropology is salvageable or whether one should ‘let it burn’ (Jobson, 2020). Exploring this question is done by way of discussing decolonial potentialities within the discipline(s), the classroom and exploring fire and water as a radical potential to think through the tensions between abolition and transformation. The reflections engage with concepts of decolonization, whiteness/white innocence, knowledge creation and -sharing, the anthropological self, ethics and accountability and language. The paper emphasizes Anthropology’s embeddedness in colonial narratives, structures and legacies and draws attention to how these colonial, able-bodied realities are being continuously reaffirmed through multiple educational practices and methodologies. It suggests that collectivity in writing, thinking and being is part of a healing process for those of us feeling our way through colonial continuities and prospective potentialities of Anthropology.

Analyzing learners' behavior and discourse within large online communities: a Social Learning Analytics Dashboard

Online Learning Communities (OLC) are nowadays one of the most important producers of Big Data in education. However, the investigation of such environments is underrepresented in educational research. There is a lack of methods and tools that characterize the massive learning associated with the student participation in large OLC. This paper presents a Social Learning Analytics Dashboard (SLAD) to analyze temporal trend models that outline the evolution of learners behavior over time. Such models suggest that ongoing collaboration and positive emotion have a fundamental role for knowledge creation and sharing in large scale social learning. These findings can be used to take actions in order to enhance and regulate social interaction within large OLC.

Knowledge Management and Social Media in Tourism Industry

The chapter aims to provide an overview of the role of social media for knowledge management in tourism industry. Respect than traditional tools, the social media penetration within such industry is growing thanks to opportunity for travelers and travel professionals to access critical tourism knowledge everywhere and every time. Prior research has mainly focused on how social media are changing the tourism industry, while it is lacking enough the contribution of these technologies to managing touristic knowledge. This chapter seeks to shed light on how social media support knowledge management, with particular attention to knowledge creation, sharing, and preservation processes, in tourism industry. In particular, while knowledge creation and sharing process have attracted the attention of scholars, knowledge preservation via social media seems be still in its infancy stage.

Development of Transferable Knowledge

Zimbabwe has adopted Education 5.0 which is an educational transformation typified by five missions of Teaching, Community Outreach, Research, Innovation and Industrialization. The Education 5.0 seeks to produce relevant and cost effective knowledge products that results in the production of new goods and services towards the modernization and industrialization of Zimbabwe. Electronic Thesis and Dissertations (ETDs) are at the core of knowledge production by universities in Zimbabwe. ETD's are important data sets for research and development and are critical in the knowledge creation and production that must lead to innovation and industrialization driven by academic institutions. The management of e-scholarship underpins the success of academic institutions to cause the industrialization and modernization of Zimbabwe under the new transformation. The chapter explores the opportunities in managing ETDs in Zimbabwe. The chapter explored how ETD's are transforming scholarly communication landscape through knowledge creation and sharing for industrialization and modernization. The chapter highlights new transformation by academic institutions in creating and developing ETD's to be linked with innovation hubs. Furthermore, the chapter explored the extent to which academic libraries are grappling with the emerging genres of ETD's for example the use of linked data to enhance discoverability. The chapter suggested strategies to enhance the ETD's culture.

An Approach for Assessing Large Online Communities in Informal Learning Environments

Online Learning Communities (OLC), supported by social web technologies, have proved to be beneficial for collaborative knowledge building, mainly in informal environments. There is an increasing interest in assessing online Social Learning (SL) in these communities. However, there is no agreement on how their performance can be measured. This paper presents an approach which combines structure and discourse analyses to assess large online communities used in SL. Its objective is to identify conditions and behavioral patterns associated to learning. The results point out a set of quantitative features which shows that participation and ongoing collaboration have a fundamental role for knowledge creation and sharing.

Knowledge Management in the Software Industry: Creating Value Through Knowledge Application

The software industry being highly knowledge-centric in terms of technology, process and people has been focusing on knowledge management strategically for the past two decades. Although the processes of knowledge creation and sharing are well researched, knowledge application is not well addressed. This study identifies project knowledge application and management support for knowledge application as the dimensions of knowledge application creating value to knowledge management in the software industry. Through a structural equation modelling approach, the relationships of management support for knowledge application, project knowledge application and effective knowledge management are tested. The findings show that the management support for knowledge application has an indirect effect—higher than a direct effect—on effective knowledge management through project knowledge application. The empirical study done on data collected from 540 software professionals of 170 National Association of Software and Services Companies-listed software companies proves the significance of knowledge application through management support and projects on effective knowledge management. But the role of management support is not as strong as project knowledge, and hence the organizations could enhance their culture of management support. The dimensions of knowledge application create value for people and process in software organizations by developing an environment of openness, collaboration and creativity, in addition to creating better response to changing environments which will help organizations to achieve the benefits of lean-agile software and system developments at scale.

Design Principles of Wiki System for Knowledge Transfer and Sharing in Organizational Education and Training

Due to rapid technological advancements, firms are paying more attention to the importance of knowledge creation and sharing. Effective knowledge management can be utilized to enhance employee performance, as well as an organization’s competitiveness. Staff training is crucial to the internal knowledge transfer within an organization. Through education and training, an organization can transfer its internal knowledge to its employees. Furthermore, the use of information systems to assist in training and management has been widely adopted by organizations. This study, through action research, attempted to understand how organizations can build a Wiki system to assist in the training of new staff. When employees can obtain work knowledge from more sources, it is easier for the knowledge to be shared and transferred during training. The results show that in the process of implementing Wiki system, providing support for Wiki software design, management skill, and a knowledge sharing environment can enable employees to create and exchange knowledge. The organization itself can rapidly accumulate knowledge capital and enhance the quality of staff through such system in order to enhance its competitiveness.