Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
where, and when one can fi nd and should use relevant information. Even experienced
users may lose the chance of accessing some of the latest available knowledge and
tools by just not knowing about existence of such resources. Practically different
methods of generating powerful taxonomies or categorized knowledge are methods
such as lists, trees, hierarchies, and system maps. Patrick Lambe in “Organizing
Knowledge: Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organizational Effectiveness” (Lambe
2007
) has a deep discussion about taxonomy in general and also methods of gener-
ating a powerful taxonomy.
Let me note here, and as I stated earlier since originally taxonomy was generated
for the categorization of the living species, using this word in some conditions may
create a noncompliant concept for our application. Therefore I will use categorized
knowledge in the rest of this topic instead of taxonomy, in order to ease some of the
attached concepts to taxonomy that I do not intend to emphasize here.
Clearly categorized knowledge is not only a very helpful tool for educational
purpose in colleges, but as it was stated earlier it also can be used effi ciently for
educating the younger group of professionals in the work place as well. Consider a
new young employee who is recently hired by a company. For him to learn how to
perform his duties at the new position, he usually and solely relies on the quality and
quantity of the transferred knowledge from his direct supervisor to get him familiar
with the new job and its requirements. If for any reason the direct supervisor is not
willing or not capable of quickly and effectively introducing the new employee to
the concepts, relations, and available tools, this new employee will have a very hard
early months and even years at this position, and it may even cost him the job as
well. This not only hurts the employee, but also hurts the employer, since this
implies continuous change of employees and as a result losing time, money, effort,
and even reputation. On the other hand, if the whole necessary body of knowledge,
tools, and information required to understand and perform the expected job is stored
in one location and this information is immediately accessible through a well-
designed categorized knowledge source, the new employee will be able to retrieve
and use it and make his transition to the new position as smooth as possible.
Benefi ts of a proper categorized knowledge document can also be realized when
a group of professionals or scholars that are working on a project, or writing a the-
sis, a topic or putting together a research document, specifi cally if they are working
from different locations. If these people create their own subject related categorized
knowledge resource before starting the actual work, and use and update that
throughout the project, it is obvious that the fi nal product will be more unifi ed and
consistent.
3.2
Community of Practice
Etienne Wenger in his topic “communities of Practice, Learning, Meaning and
Identity” (Wenger
1998
) has a fresh and in depth look to the process of learning.
According to him the process of learning neither should start only when the students
