Knowledge Management & Process Management: Informatics Institute

I am going to evaluate the Informatics Institute of CTU about knowledge and process management perspectives. The importance of Knowledge Management for Informatics Institute Informatics Institute has a flow of knowledge inside the organization. As the source of this flow it includes information of all entities such as students, instructors, and personnel, given courses, conferences etc. All the information has to be conducted; new knowledge needed to be produced, and needed to be shared inside the organization. Informatics Institute considers the relation between People, Process and Technology and these components can be managed with knowledge management. People side consists of students, instructors and administrative personnel of institute and the biggest importance of people in terms of KM is that participating in knowledge sharing. Administrative personnel of Institute organize the students, instructors, and workers information. Seminars, conferences are arranged by institute, these kinds of activities are also contributed sharing of knowledge among people in inside and outside of the Institute. The Institute is related with KM in order to carry on process smoothly. Technology is used in Institute to make easy of sharing knowledge, managing of documentation, and exchanging information. II E-mail server system and NetClassR are basic examples to show the aim of institute of sharing knowledge. Case: How KM is applied in an activity of Game Technologies Program Game technologies (GT) is a brand new program which aims to detect proper methods for the game development industry and help students to become experts in game development. It includes many interactive courses which include simulations, Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality and 3D modeling activities. The activities conducted by an instructor and by a group of research assistants who are provided big amount of knowledge to serve students. GT activities were produced to introduce to students the advanced concepts of technology and make them be aware of game technology and development literature. For this reason, at the beginning of the creating GT activities, some researches were conducted to search for information to create concept of activities. After these researches were completed, team members discussed to decide onto the points to give students. The member of development team connected with each other via email to share knowledge. Then shared knowledge is validated by project manager who determined that the produced knowledge was useful or not. The final decision is given after the activities had been applied to the students with a pilot application. Then the knowledge was confirmed, research assistants were educated about the activities. And these activities have been broadcasted over the NetClassR to students and research assistants. By the feedback of the applications, knowledge corrections and new knowledge productions are done. If problems occur when producing and integrating this knowledge, the team can produce new approaches. As a result, procurement of GT activities is example of Knowledge Management.

The Process Management in the Institute In order to accomplish the goals, Informatics Institute applies the process management which helps the organization to coordinate task and activities with related people and equipment. Process management enables the institute to control its own inputs and outputs. There are many process management needed events such as process of student and special student registration, process of student discharge, process of course add drop, process of course acceptation, process of freeze registration, process of instructors severe, process of annual leave, etc. which have been applied in the institute since 2007. For those processes, the models are prepared by using ARIS software application. According to results of these process models, new arrangements can be made over the models to renew in the following years. Case: The Process of Student Acceptance to GT Program While considering the process of this field, we must indicate inputs, processes and outputs. Inputs are: Processes are: Outputs are: List and information of the students accepted to the related programs List of the students who arent accepted to any programs Email address and code for each accepted students Increase in the percentage of the qualified people in Turkey Information about the GT program and courses List of students making an application for GT Documentations of student achievements: bachelors degree diploma, exam result papers of TOEFL, ALES, UDS, KPSS ,ODTU-EPE Contact information Photocopy of ID Transcript Letter of intention

Gathering the commission Evaluate the students applications for GT Appoint the advisors for each accepted students Inform the related administrative offices and the applicants Give an entrance code and ID to each accepted students for registration

The flow of the process model can be illustrated like the figure 1.

Figure 1: The flow of the process model of student acceptance

This process is almost describes how is it going on the Institute. The continuous developments are being conducted by the time the feedbacks and the improvements. It should be pointed out that external factors are always effective in the processes as a positive or negative player. They are invisible hands in the internal flow. Such as, CC operates whole internet connection and if it collapses, the online registration cannot be fulfilled. As the conclusion, knowledge management and process management are inseparable parts of Informatics Institute. For example, creating of GT activities related with knowledge management, however, applying these activities to the students is related with process management. The knowledge management must be done properly in order to apply process management successfully. Knowledge management provides advantages to understand that whether the knowledge is useful, if it should be updated, and where it can be used. On the other side, the process management enables us to manage the knowledge in our organizations in a systematic proper manner.