Courses
KM 610. Theories of Knowledge Management (3)
This course introduces students to the basic principles of knowledge management; to the historical, political, cultural, and epistemological dynamics related to the production, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge; and to the specific characterization of knowledge in individual, organizational, and community-based contexts. It provides students with foundational notions and terminology; introduces IT-based approaches to knowledge in the KM field; and reviews technological concepts, such as the difference between data and information and between information and knowledge. Finally, by mapping out various forms of knowledge across indigenous, globalized, and situated domains—both in the Western and non-Western world—students in this course address major issues concerning the nature of knowledge as provisional and reconfigurable, individual and collective, codified and not codified.
KM 611. Legal and Ethical Aspects of Knowledge Management (3)
This course focuses on the legal and ethical implications inherent in the knowledge management field, providing a thorough analysis of intellectual property law; including trademark, copyright, patent, and trade secret law, with a focus on practical application. In addition to the exploration of these legal issues, the course addresses various ethical frameworks relevant to a knowledge management context, especially those contexts not currently governed by specific law or policy. Special emphasis is paid to the relationship between knowledge and power in the organizational context, with attention to the social and political implications of knowledge management technology at both an individual and organizational level.
KM 620. Information Organization and Knowledge Access (3)
The ease with which users navigate knowledge systems and resources is critical to an organization’s success. This course studies the interaction of people with information technologies, especially those through which organizational knowledge is accessed. Through the systematic testing of human-user interfaces (HUI), students will understand how to mitigate issues and barriers—both humanistic and technological—associated with finding and discovering resources. Through the application of metadata standards for non-traditional resource description, the course also addresses issues associated with finding organizational resources, assets, and records. Students in this course will exercise cultural competency when describing knowledge resources and particular attention is paid to accurately representing cultural domains and mitigating, remediating, and/or avoiding embedded biases and historical inaccuracies.
KM 625. Research Methods, Mapping and Modeling for Knowledge Workers (3)
This course reviews techniques and tools that support strategic development and decision making through all phases of knowledge discovery, knowledge capture, and knowledge analysis. It prepares students to build a relational database and apply machine learning to model organizational entities, consumer profiles, behaviors and preferences in support of knowledge needs analyses. Students will: learn to identify gaps in knowledge; explore the ethical issues surrounding the manipulation of data; learn to accurately and responsibly capture, represent, and disseminate new knowledge; review current research methods to gather and analyze data; and utilize these methods to generate and effectively communicate new knowledge across diverse communities of practice.
KM 631. Knowledge Leadership (3)
This course focuses on designing, determining, organizing, directing, facilitating, and monitoring the knowledge-related practices and activities that are required to achieve an organization’s desired business strategies and objectives. Adopting a management perspective on the KM field, this course will critically examine: team management and communication, especially cross-cultural communication; the promotion of a fair and supportive organizational climate; organizational effectiveness in identifying, designing, and implementing business strategies; supporting collaboration to meet an organization’s goals; and the consequences of these strategies for communities—especially communities of color—within and outside of the institutional context.
KM 633. Communication in the Knowledge Environment (3)
This course explores the fundamentals of communication theory, processes, and rhetoric in knowledge environments. Students review communication strategies with attention to cultural, political, social, and economic context and practice the transmission of information and knowledge in various modalities. Emphasis is placed on dynamics of power in intra- and inter-organizational communication (including issues of influence, authority, control, the digital divide, etc.) as well as on the semiotic and hermeneutic implications of communication strategies for various cultural communities.
KM 635. Knowledge Systems (3)
This course studies the basic technological and physical systems used to manage internal information, assets, records, and institutional memory. Students will analyze the needs of various organizational types and communities of knowledge, making recommendations regarding the mock deployment of knowledge systems in order to mediate organizational needs and knowledge flows. Special emphasis is placed on determining the types of systems that define an effective knowledge infrastructure for multiple communities of practice.
KM 642. Organizational Culture and Change Management (3)
This course focuses on the study of specific issues critical to knowledge management success. It examines the topics of organizational culture and climate, current research in organizational change management, as well as best practices to effectively and ethically lead innovation and change through proven strategic initiatives.
KM 643. Competitive Intelligence (3)
This course challenges students to design a practical research project that will responsibly utilize public and proprietary information assets to provide knowledge solutions applicable to complex business needs. It captures the latest techniques and technologies to conduct business analysis while using strategy development frameworks, with special attention paid to understanding an industry’s internal operating conditions; identifying its competitive landscape; and anticipating its external impacts, including social impacts on the regional community.
KM 645. Statistics and Data Analytics (3)
This course provides a comparative analysis of statistical methods and tools, demonstrating how different analytic methods can be used to address the critical data issues faced by organizations in a digital age. Students learn to apply those methods across various communities of practice in support of strategic initiatives. Students also analyze a range of issues in data ethics to ensure the responsible capture and use of data; to ensure cultural appropriateness and subject privacy; and to root analytics initiatives in a responsible and trustworthy regimen.
KM 650. Knowledge Management Technologies (3)
This course provides students with the theoretical and practical resources to enable knowledge production, representation, and communication, equipping students to analyze multiple datasets (Big Data) and textual corpuses that support organizational decision-making processes. The course thoroughly examines techniques of data visualization with an emphasis on ethical and faithful visual representations that avoid the distortion of actual data. Students will learn the benefits as well as the limitations of existing digital tools to the practice of knowledge acquisition and sharing throughout an organization.
KM 698. Graduate Project (3)
In this course, students create a major independent assignment or research project that demonstrates an advanced understanding of the knowledge management best practices relevant to their particular professional setting, including the historical, social, and political factors that inform and shape those practices. By offering a structured learning environment in which students can tailor their project to their own objectives and needs, students in this course will be able to address an individual developmental objective; apply the skills acquired over the course of the Knowledge Management program; integrate those skills with their own professional experience; and position their unique knowledge management capabilities in a real‑world context. As students progress through their research project, class discussions will center on areas of concern not yet governed by current knowledge management theory and best practice, with a view to advancing the field toward epistemic justice and socially responsible knowledge management strategies.