Streamline Training & Documentation: The CGIAR Knowledge Sharing Toolkit

Friday, December 04, 2009

The CGIAR Knowledge Sharing Toolkit

As with any wiki, the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit launched in March of last year by the Information and Communications Technology and Knowledge Management (ICT-KM) Program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) is a work in progress. Though there are still plenty of blanks waiting to be filled in, the wiki already is a valuable compilation of tools and methods for facilitating knowledge sharing (KS).

Examples of the tools for which the wiki currently has templated pages are blogs, intranets, language translation technologies, mobile phones, Skype, social media, tagging and social bookmarking, video, and, of course, wikis.

Examples of methods (processes) covered are after action review, appreciative inquiry, critical moments of reflection, impact pathways, mediation, mentoring, Samoan circle, storytelling, speed geeking, and the World Cafe.

The designers of the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit offer help to users in identifying tools and methods of particular relevance to their needs by making suggestions for a number of contexts (not mutually exclusive) in which knowledge sharing is important:

Planning, monitoring and evaluation

Listening, gathering input, stakeholder involvement

Supporting communities and networks

Working, researching and collaborating together

Meeting

Creating, publishing and sharing content

Advocacy

Learning and training

Improving impact through knowledge sharing in research

The page devoted to each of these contexts lists the sorts of questions that typically arise, and suggests tools, methods, and tags of likely relevance. (Each tool and method can be tagged by users. The list of tags is here.)

As an example, you might look at the page for people undertaking advocacy. You will see these four questions and the associated lists of tools, methods, and tags suggested as likely to lead to good answers:

How do we get input on our issues from key constituents?
Tools and Methods: The World Cafe, Listening
Tags: relationship, collaboration, alliances

How do we make our issues visible to the people we want to reach? Internally and externally?
Tools and Methods: Storytelling, Knowledge Fairs, Intranets, Blogs, Microblogging, Workplace Knowledge Sharing Tips, Rural Radio, Wikis
Tags: content, dissemination, information, offline

How do we use the web to inform our key publics on issues?
Tools and Methods: Blogs, Microblogging, Frequently Asked Questions, Language Translation Technologies, Ritual Dissent
Tags: content, dissemination, information, offline

How do we make it easy to get people to act on issues and spread the word themselves?
Tools and Methods: Blogs, Microblogging, Mobile Phones, Online Surveys, Rural Radio, Social Media, Social Networking Sites, Yellow Pages, Samoan Circle, Wikis, Peer Coaching, Peer Assists, Graphic Facilitation, Good Practices, Community Interactive Theater, Chat or Talk Shows
Tags: relationship, collaboration, online, offline

To polish off the guidance on sources of knowledge about how best to pursue advocacy, the page concludes with a list of additional tags with a decent probability of leading to useful pages in the wiki — namely, advocacy, alliances, collaboration, content, dissemination, information, networks, offline, online, relationship, and stakeholders.

For more of an overview of the thinking behind the Knowledge Sharing Toolkit, you can read a June 2008 report written by Gerry Toomey, who has worked as a consultant for CGIAR and the Knowledge Sharing Project.

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Labels: Knowledge management, Learning resources, Persuasion, Taxonomy and tagging

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