Knowledge Sharing

The concept behind the creation of MECCA Communities of Knowledge and Knowledge Sharing relies on the fact that all stakeholders of an activity, whether this is academic, social, or commercial, contribute to the development of collective knowledge of the community.

Collective knowledge includes intellectual capital of all stakeholders, and is higher than the knowledge of any individual.

A wide variety of users can contribute to the development of collective knowledge repositories. Some of these categories of users are obvious, for example experts in a specific field, but others may not at first sight be so. For example, end users of information, i.e. information consumers, also can provide valuable input from a different point of view. End users can share experiences on their novice use of equipment and advice each other on best practices, i.e. practices that worked well, in specific situations.

The following user groups are some are foreseen as contributors of information. It should be noted that the list is not all inclusive and can be expanded with additional groups, since this is the nature of collective knowledge:

• Experts in the use of video conferencing
• Instructors, who will improve their distance teaching practices through advanced knowledge transfer methodologies for distance teaching
• Trainer trainers, who can advice each other on knowledge transfer techniques
• The VET school community, who stands to benefit from improved educational practices
• News and the media, that can contribute through the publication of advances, both technical and pedagogical, and the dissemination of best practices
• Formal publishers, for example book publishers, who can distribute structured content
• Professionals, who are the ultimate beneficiaries of the proposed activities
• SMEs that will benefit from improved collective expertise of their staff as a result of advanced training practices
• The general public that will be the beneficiaries of quality assurance processes in industrial production.