Needles in the Haystack: Finding Content Worth Preparing for Workplace Learning with the KEP Model

Knowledge transfer between employees is a primary concern in organizations. Employees create or acquire content that partially represents knowledge. These knowledge elements are specific to the context in and for which they are created and rarely address the learning needs of other employees in other work situations. Organizations therefore need to support the preparation of knowledge elements to facilitate knowledge transfer, but often have limited resources to process a plethora of content. This paper presents the Knowledge Element Preparation (KEP) model that helps to structure the complex decision to select knowledge elements worthy of preparation out of ample available content and assign them to preparation tasks. The model combines the benefits of prepared knowledge elements in workplace learning, which we identified in an ethnographically informed study of a software development company, with efforts discussed in the literature. We implemented and reflected on the model in a case study of a research and development project. Our findings suggest that we can estimate the benefits of adaptively delivered content based on the importance of topics, types of knowledge elements, and preparation tasks. We also contribute personas, dimensions of knowledge elements, and knowledge work situations as instruments to facilitate the instantiation of the KEP model.