Enabling Learning through the Capture and Reuse of Organizational Expertise

The expertise of individuals within an organization is often its most valuable resource. However, it is a timeconsuming and difficult task for an individual, a group, or an organization to systematically express, organize, and distribute expertise so it can be accessed and used by the people who need it. Moreover, novices within an organization may not know anything about the resources available to them, or even which ones should be invoked when. In this paper, we describe the design of a prototype system called PACHYDERM, which attempts to address some of these issues. In this article, we offer two primary contributions: (1) an innovative design of an integrated knowledge management and performance support system that directly addresses the needs of its users and (2) the analysis of the user’s needs that led us to this design that will guide future design work for us and (hopefully) others.