Part I: Listing and Explaining Key KM Lessons Learned

List and explain the key common or shared lessons learned about KM from the Web site evaluations and Discussion area posting assignments in Weeks 13. List at least five common lessons learned about KM. If there are not at least five common lessons that are shared, complete the list of five lessons by using lessons discovered by individuals that are of greatest importance to each person. Explain why you believe each lesson is critical for the practice of KM in modern organizations.

Part II: Connecting Key Lessons Learned to Theories

1. Connect the five key lessons learned from Part I with the theories from the course text and readings or from outside Internet readings that most fully explain the principles that lie beneath the key lessons.
2. Explain how the lessons learned exemplify the application of the KM theories you have read about.
3. For example, you might have concluded that it was important to share what you learned from the various KM Web sites in the Discussion area as an example of what the KMCI Knowledge Life Cycle model terms knowledge integration. Explain how this lesson learned is an example of knowledge integration in practice.

Part III: Creating Generalized Principles

Every lesson learned is an example of a specific case of a more general principle. For each lesson learned, explain the more general principle about KM practice that it represents.

Once you have stated the principle, explain the implications of this principle for KM practice. For example, you may have discovered that the process of knowledge integration involves many complexities regarding how the meaning of the content you have shared with others is interpreted by them. The key lesson may be to keep things simple when sharing knowledge or to get feedback from those who are viewing the information to ensure that the way things are being interpreted is the way that was intended.

Your key principle may be to always follow up with those people who read your shared lessons learned in order to ascertain whether they understood them as they were meant to be understood. The implication for KM practice may be that it is critical to have a mechanism, tool, or process for ensuring that whatever is shared is interpreted with the proper perspective to meet the goal that what was intended to be shared was in fact received