Supporting Knowledge Creation and Sharing in Communities Based on Mapping Implicit Knowledge

This paper discusses some implications of knowledge creation processes in informal social networks for the development of technologies to support them. The principal point of departure are social theories of learning and the theories of organisational knowledge creation. The focus is on models for the exchange and sharing of implicit knowledge. A model of personalised learning knowledge maps is presented as one possible way of addressing the problem of capturing, visualising and sharing implicit knowledge of a community of users. In particular, we discuss how this model resolves one critical shortcoming of the existing socialisation and externalisation approaches: the creation of a semantic representation of a shared understanding of the community which reflects implicit knowledge and incorporates personal views of individual users. Finally, we outline the application to a real-world interdisciplinary Internet platform netzspannung.org.