Knowledge Development Through the Internet

Learning, especially in the context of higher education, means creating, storing, sharing and using knowledge in a complex way, both for personal and societal benefits. Therefore, knowledge management is at home in universities. It should be at the core of managerial practices, but also of educational processes. The literature in the field pays attention to both aspects. Some themes seem to be particularly important, especially those related with the challenges universities face. Special consideration is given to the role of the Internet in learning, while the strategies for increasing knowledge creation and knowledge acquisitions through the Internet are lesser discussed. Academic literature draws the attention on creatively using knowledge more than in creating it, stressing the high potential of the Internet in the context of higher education. Students tend to favour the Internet and to integrate it in their studies and research, in order to increase their knowledge, not just to communicate with peers. Studies regarding students all over the world suggest that the Internet facilitates learning and the spread of information, but at the present moment it is not efficiently used. In this context, the present paper investigates how effective knowledge management is in education and how the Internet could be used to create knowledge in the context of learning. The starting point of the investigation is given by the four activities of knowledge management presented by Watson (2003) – acquirement, analysis, preservation and use of knowledge. The present research identifies how these are applied in the context of learning. Special attention is given to how students use the acquired knowledge to create new knowledge. The paper argues in favour of a more complex use of the Internet both in education, leading not only to more efficient acquiring of knowledge but also to the creation of valuable knowledge