In recent years, web sites featuring user-created content have become some of the most popular sources of information for the general population. Users consult Angie's List and Yelp! to locate vendors and services, DIY Network to learn how to fix or create something, Wikipedia for information on more than four million topics and numerous LinkedIn communities of practice to enhance their professional skills and networks. Fourteen of the twenty top web sites are populated in part or entirely by content created by users. By contrast, the collaborative support networks for warfighters are often fragmented, difficult to access and navigate and limited in useful content. And when experienced warfighters report lessons learned in the field, it can take two years or more for these lessons to be reflected in formal training. This often results in gaps between official training and best practice.
Under the Army Research Laboratory's Soldier-Centered Army Learning Environment (SCALE) program, a social media test bed was developed to identify crowd-sourcing strategies that can be adopted to ignite a similar revolution in military knowledge management. Our research has identified technologies, affordances, incentives and user attitudes that have helped to create the wealth of accessible user-generated knowledge available on the World Wide Web. In this paper, we will discuss our research and propose changes to Army technology and organizational culture that could improve the speed and effectiveness of managing and disseminating crowd-vetted knowledge for performance support.
Creating a Learning Infrastructure Where Every Soldier Can Be an Instructor
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