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LAWRENCE -- Representatives from 21 countries are on the University of Kansas campus this week for an international forum to develop technical standards in the burgeoning field of knowledge management systems.
The International Organization for Standardization forum will address ways to promote sharing and reusability of knowledge management systems -- the practice of using databases, the Internet, intranets and Web technologies, among others, to store and share knowledge that is relevant to governments, businesses and education.
KU was chosen as the site for the conference through its collaboration with the Foundation for Institutional Development, a Leavenworth-based organization that has partnered with KU in the Heartland Knowledge Consortium. Next year, the forum will be held in Paris, France, and Shanghai, China.
U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback will speak to forum participants at a dinner on Friday hosted by KU's Information & Telecommunications Technology Center in Nichols Hall.
While visiting KU, the forum participants also will tour ITTC research projects, including the eLearning Design Lab, a project that uses the latest technologies to improve the quality of online education. The eLearning Design Lab is a joint effort between ITTC and the KU Center for Research on Learning.
Tony Monaco, secretariat of the ISO and president of the Foundation for Institutional Development, described the need for these technical standards by comparing them with the advent of electricity.
"When electricity was a new thing, some 100 years ago, America developed its standards and Europe developed their standards," he said. "So today when you go to Europe, your electric shaver doesn't work there. The same principle applies here with the sharing of knowledge that is necessary for education and training."
Monaco said the changing nature of global business made it all the more necessary to develop standards as soon as possible.
"Institutions rarely command 30 years of loyalty from workers anymore," he said. "Therefore, you need a system in place to capture the experiences and the insights of workers, so if you leave, someone else can come in and pick up where you left off, lessening that learning curve."
Ed Meyen, professor of special education at KU and co-director of the eLearning Design Lab, said the standards developed by the ISO would have an immediate impact on the research being conducted at KU.
"Such standards are essential to the future of e-learning at all levels in education," he said. "It makes the sharing of resources and collaboration in development more feasible and cost effective."
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