Knowledge
Management: An Implementation Of K-Portal In Fiit, Unisel
Nur Razia Mohd Suradi, Hema Subramaniam,
Universiti Industri
Selangor, Malaysia
ABSTRACT:
The culture of knowledge
sharing in the organization play a vital role as to ensure the knowledge is
shared among the faculty staff. Knowledge sharing culture contributes to a
positive working environment. Currently, there is no platform for the Faculty
of Industrial Information Technology (FIIT), Unisel
academic staff to share knowledge among them. As it is done manually, the
sharing process is through common meeting or by any offline discussions. There is no repository for future retrieval. However, with open source solution the
development of knowledge based application may reduce the cost tremendously.
In this paper we discuss about the domain on which this knowledge portal is
being developed and also the deployment of open source tools such as JOOMLA,
PHP programming language and MySQL. This knowledge
portal is evidence that open source tools also reliable in developing knowledge
based portal. These recommendations will be useful to the open source community
to produce more open source products in future.
Keywords: Knowledge management, Portal, Content Management, JOOMLA (Barclay
& Murray, 1997)
1. Introduction
The need of knowledge
management in the organization is to create alternative way to access the
information from the staff (Barclay & Murray, 1997). The
aim of knowledge portal is to provide views onto domain specific
information on the World Wide Web, thus facilitating their users to find relevant, domain specific
information (Staab, 2001). Hence, to develop a portal, we need reliable software,
knowledge and technical skill. Purchase suitable software that suits our needs
will require money and time consuming. But not many organizations has
sufficient budget for it. Therefore, Faculty of Industrial Information
Technology (FIIT), University Industry Selangor have decided to develop
knowledge portal using open source tools. Open source software can be defined
as that is made available freely to all and many of them voluntarily contributes developing software for the organization (Hippel & Krogh, 2003). This portal can be accessed from any computer
clients connected to the internet. The
purpose of this knowledge portal is to be a catalyst centre of knowledge
information within the FIIT, UNISEL. It is hope that the portal will increase
the efficiency and productivity of the faculty by eliminating manual and
offline knowledge sharing.
1.1. Domain Analysis
A portal is a Web-based application that acts as a gateway between users and
a range of different high-level services. Before developing the knowledge portal, we need to understand the
domain or the boundary for the portal being developed. Here, the domain is
higher learning institute (HLI) and focusing on knowledge
sharing information in FIIT. The traditional ways of sharing information or
knowledge in FIIT are as listed below:-
Ř Faculty Meeting
Ř Informal discussion
Ř Faculty Activities
Ř Email
Ř Chatting – Yahoo Messenger, Skype
and others
Ř Mobile device – SMS
Ř Document Sharing
Ř Pen/Thumb drive, CD, external hard
disk
The entire communication
channel as said above did not have any repository for future retrieval. These
knowledge is only available at current time and may be lost or damage in
future. The proposed knowledge portal is been developed in web based
environment which can be accessed via internet or wireless connection. Figure 1
show the environment, where the knowledge portal resides.
Figure 1: Knowledge Portal
environment
2. Methodology
The system development life
cycle (SDLC) is the process of developing systems through investigation,
analysis, design, implementation, testing and deployment until the maintenance
of the system. The documented collection of
policies, processes and procedures used by a development team or organization
to practice software engineering is called its software development methodology
(SDM) or system development life cycle (SDLC) (Chapman, 2004). In developing a software, the
methodology used need to be defined and the best technique have to be selected.
Among the software methodology available are Agile Software Development,
Extreme Programming, Joint Application Development, Waterfall, Spiral, Rational
Unified Process (RUP) and etc (Chapman, 2004). Here, RUP have been chosen due to the
advantages by this technique. In RUP, we divide the features in iterative
approach. The most important features will be delivered first continued the
less importance features. Figure 2 below depicts the RUP process.
Figure 2: RUP Process (Rational Software Development Company, 1998)
3. Software Requirement
For any
development the tools and techniques selection for development is a challenging
task to complete. During the requirement phase, K-Portal team already decided
to use content management system to develop this portal based on 2 factors; Time constraint and resource allocation. The
time allocated to develop this K-Portal is very limited and we are lacking of
resources in terms of human and hardware. Content management system also enable
non technical user with no knowledge on computer programming, graphic imaging
tools, or markup language like HTML to add new
material to a website or modify the existing contents as and when required in
an intuitive and real-time fashion (Abaxi-Bexheti, 2008). All this factors need to be considered when
we choose to use content management system as our tools of development. These
factors can be illustrated as in figure 3.
Figure 3: Factors To
Choose Development Tools
After we
consider the above illustrated factors, we come across with many content
management systems that provide more or less functionality alike. The
comparison between open source CMS application that available in market as
listed down in Table 1.
Table 1:
Web Content Management System Comparison (
)
|
|
Programming
Language |
Database |
Web
Server |
FTP
Support |
UTF-8
Support |
|
Joomla |
PHP |
MySQL |
Apache |
Provided
as a free add-on |
Limited
support available |
|
Drupal |
PHP |
MySQL, PostgreSQL |
Apache,
IIS |
Limited
FTP support |
Available |
|
Mambo |
PHP |
MySQL |
Apache,
IIS, any PHP-enabled web server |
Not
available |
Available |
|
Open
CMS |
Java 1.4 |
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL |
Tomcat,
Apache |
Not
available |
Available |
|
PHP
Nuke |
PHP |
MySQL, PostgreSQL, mSQL, Interbase, Sybase |
Apache,
IIS |
Not
available |
Not
provided |
|
Plone |
Python |
Zope |
Apache,
IIS, Zope |
Available |
Available |
|
TYPO3 |
PHP |
MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL |
Apache,
IIS |
Available |
Available |
|
WordPress |
PHP |
MySQL |
Apache,
mod rewrite |
Available
as a free add-on |
Available |
|
Xoops |
PHP |
MySQL |
Apache,
IIS |
Available |
Limited
support available |
After considering the
differences between the open source web CMS, we have decided to use JOOMLA as
our development tools for knowledge portal. Availability of support and
stability of the tools itself become a reason for our decision. JOOMLA as open
source web CMS contain PHP as programming language, MySQL
as a database and Apache Tomcat as a web server.
4. System Architecture
Architecture of a system
always depends on development tools. JOOMLA architecture being utilize in
K-Portal development based on reason JOOMLA is main development tools for
K-Portal. JOOMLA architecture also known as 3-tier
architecture
(North, 2009). It does consist of 3 layers: Extension layer,
application layer and framework layers. Utilization of these 3 layers in
K-Portal will be discussed in the next section.
4.1. Extension Layer
Extension layer consist of
modules, components and templates. K-portal were developed using appropriate
modules and components. All this modules and components simplified in the
figure 4.
Figure 4: Components In K-Portal
4.2. Framework Layer
Framework
layer consists libraries and plugins.
Libraries are required by the Framework or are installed for use by third-party
developers. Meanwhile, plugins extend the functionality available in the
Framework. Remository component used in k-portal come
with plugin such as audio and video features. This plugins are disabled because of space unavailability issue.
4.3. Application Layer
The
middle application layer consists of applications that extend the Framework JApplication class. Currently there are four applications
included in the Joomla distribution. JInstallation, JAdministration, JSite and
XML-RPC. JInstallation is responsible for
installing Joomla on a web server and is deleted
after the installation procedure has been completed. JAdministrator
is responsible for the back-end Administrator. JSite is
responsible for the front-end of the website. Meanwhile, XML-RPC supports remote administration of
the JOOMLA website.
5. FIIT
K-portal Features
FIIT knowledge portal
developed with an intention to encourage knowledge sharing culture among
academic staff. At the same time this knowledge portal will help in academic
staff to discuss topics regarding the research interest group. This knowledge
portal can be a platform for them to communicate and share their ideas
regarding the subject they teach and also the research that they involve. The
arrangement of the menu item in portal shows the realization of the above said
objective.
The contents of portal are
shown in Table2.
Table 2: FIIT K-Portal Features
|
Features |
Description |
|
Registration |
- Faculty member will be registered
by web master. - Web master will deal with admin to
get details about staffs. |
|
Paper
Presented |
- Paper that already presented by
faculty member either internal or externally will be published here for
knowledge sharing and acknowledgement by others faculty member. |
|
Conference |
- Provided list of web links to
upcoming academic and research events either local or international events. |
|
General
Information |
- Other unregistered user can view
this page which contains UNISEL website and FIIT WEBSITE. - They can also retrieve some
information about FIIT K-portal itself. |
|
News/Announcement/Event |
- Latest information regarding any
faculty activities provided by Dean’s PA and will be upload by K-portal web
master. |
|
Collaboration |
- In this column, any information
that relates with Industrial Training and Industrial Collaboration Program
will be updated here by K-portal web master. - All info regards industrial
training and industrial collaboration program will be given by person in charge. |
|
Other
application |
- It contains link to other
application. - This link can be divided to four
types; Freeware, Shareware, Public domain and Open source. |
|
Download
Material |
- All FIIT internal forms template
can easily be uploaded here. |
|
Teaching
Material |
- Lecturer’s can retrieve a complete
lecture’s note, assignment, quizzes, exam questions and schemes, etc. - All information will be put
accordingly in a different folder by program, course subject and semester. |
|
Help |
- It contains guideline on how to
use the FIIT K- portal |
6. Result
Below in Figure 5, is the main page
of K-portal being developed using open source application. K-Portal is a
knowledge portal for faculty community which enable
the all the staff including dean, lecturer, HOP to meet, to interact and to
share the knowledge regardless time and place.
The portal is built based on the need of the faculty community and
provides a cost effective platform for the FIIT staff. It has been
tested through the pilot
implementation and shows
a good response
of how ICT
can be leveraged in improving
how we enable the knowledge sharing and it’s a timely as knowledge is becoming
important for our teaching, research activity and yet serves as knowledge
platform. It is hoped that K-portal will continue to grow and in the long run
it gives a positive impact. It could be
used to access updated information for better sharing culture.
Therefore, K-Portal would increase
knowledge capturing and retrieval skills and knowledge and would also narrow
the gasp among the faculty members either existing or new staff
Figure 5: Main Page Of K-Portal
7. References
Abaxi-Bexheti. (2008). Development of a learning
content management system. WSEAS Tran Information Science and Application
, 1001-1010.
Austin, B. (2010). Comparison With Other
Web Content Management Systems. Consulté le July 30, 2009, sur
InternetTIPS.com: http://www.internettips.com/departments/joomla-web-content-management-system/
Barclay, R. 0., & Murray, P. C. (1997). Knowledge
Praxis. Consulté le March 27, 2010, sur What is Knowledge Management:
http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html
Chapman, J. R. (2004). Software
Development Methodology. Consulté le March 2010, sur
http://www.hyperthot.com/pm_sdm.htm.
Hippel, E., & Krogh, G. (2003). Open
Source Software and the "Private Collective" Innovation Model: Issues
for Organization Science. Organization Science , 209-223.
North, B. (2009). Joomla 1.5: a User's
Guide: Building a Succesful Joomla Powered Website. Prentice Hall.
Rational Software Development Company.
(1998). Rational Software White Paper: Best Practices in Rational Unified
Process. Cupertino: Rational Software.
Staab, S. (2001). Knowledge Portals. In HLTKM '01 Proceedings of the workshop on Human Language Technology and Knowledge Management (Vol. Volume 200, pp. 1-1)
Contact the Authors:
Nur Razia Mohd Suradi, Lecturer, Faculty
of Industrial Information Technology, Universiti