Knowledge Management framework for the supervision of IT postgraduate research in Sri Lanka

Abstract

The private sector higher education industry is increasingly attracting a knowledge-based community that depends critically on Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge Sharing (KS) activities to expand the quality of supervising postgraduate research students. Using the KM approach to share good research supervision knowledge will help junior research supervisors to conduct quality research with students and thereby help the supervision process to be more successful. The objective of this study is to suggest a conceptual framework that fits in the supervision process. This is conducted to investigate how KM and Information Technology (IT) can be used to develop a model for the supervision process. The framework highlights the critical KM activities in the research supervision process, and it is based on the Task/Technology Fit theory. Using this framework, the knowledge of the more experienced supervisors will be captured and used by junior supervisors in their supervision process.