Virtual Knowledge Space and Learning

Abstract

The growing importance of knowledge and innovations for modern organisations (Davenport, DeLong, & Breers, 1998; Drucker, 1998; Nonaka, 1998; Stewart, 1997), and increasing demands for new skills and capabilities suggest the need for improvement in the learning of future professional and managerial workers. This, in turn, requires an appropriate response from the education sector. So far, these demands have not been adequately addressed by management education (Seufert & Seufert, 1999). There are calls to base the learning more in reality, to make the learning and thought process visible in order to develop the learners’ metacognition (Joyce & Weil, 1986), and to achieve better balance between the imparting of knowledge to the learner and the learner’s own construction of it. It is also suggested that education should better nurture students’ qualities such as problem solving, decision making, and creativity through self-directed as well as collaborative creativity and learning. These are skills that students will require in order to be successful in their future roles as innovative professionals and business people.