Overview

The Lumina Foundation for Education has funded ISKME to develop and facilitate a Knowledge Collaborative for state teams and other stakeholders who are working on their state’s agendas for increasing productivity and efficiency in higher education.

Our Approach

As part of the Making Opportunity Affordable (MOA) national initiative, ISKME has implemented and continues to facilitate an online collaborative environment for learning and knowledge exchange, called the Knowledge Collaborative (KC). Our ongoing role as connector and broker for knowledge sharing engages MOA state teams and other project participants in adapting learning processes that find, use, and apply research, expert knowledge, and cross-state strategies, challenges, and lessons learned to across a set of shared challenges. Our work enables emergent collaborative behaviors and fosters communication and synergy among the state teams and partners.

During the first year of the project, dubbed the “Learning Year”, we framed knowledge sharing activities around the evocative question, “How will we know what we’ve learned?” ISKME has been researching and measuring project learning by identifying how learning is transmitted and transformed through individual participants and groups. Recent developments on the KC and with cross-state team sharing have revealed new connections forming and new ways  of sharing deeper knowledge that benefits cross-team learning. Our preliminary analyses of KC usage data, resources, and the artifacts from participants, such as interviews, discussions, project reports, have produced thematic measures of what constitutes learning in this context, with a certain set of policy impact considerations in mind. These measures will continue to be explored as the MOA project progresses into the next phase.

Currently Underway

Now in a new phase of the project, ISKME will be deepening and extending its research-based role of intermediary in knowledge sharing by developing diagnostics that will be used to encapsulate a comprehensive process for facilitating knowledge sharing, learning, and change. For MOA, this work will be aimed to help states and others assess their abilities to share, develop useful sources of expert knowledge and data, map relevant research, and more rapidly develop prototype solutions. Ultimately, the tools and other resources developed would offer the potential to help position other teams and institutions to take advantage of opportunities in the changing educational landscape by stimulating and sustaining the capacity to act proactively, nimbly and effectively, across traditional silos and amid changing economic, cultural, and other conditions.

For details about the Making Opportunity Affordable initiative:

• Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan acknowledges the MOA Initiative during a video address at the MOA June Academy in 2009 - Watch the youtube video.
• Hear MOA state team members talk about Productivity - Watch the youtube video:
  Why Productivity? Why Now?
• Watch this speech by Jamie Merisotis, President of the Lumina Foundation For Education
  

To Learn More

Please contact info@iskme.org for additional information