The Effect of Information Structuring on Analytical Knowledge Acquisition

 
 
 
 

The Effect of Information Structuring on Analytical Knowledge Acquisition

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Title: The Effect of Information Structuring on Analytical Knowledge Acquisition
Author: Al-Gharaibeh, Rami Salah
Description: To address the growth in business environmental uncertainty, firms are increasingly adopting the practices of learning organizations. Two main organizational approaches to achieving this goal currently exist. The first approach advocates the creation of an organizational culture based on trust and cooperation among its members. The second approach promotes environmental data collection and analysis. Both approaches reflect a managerial perception of the driving forces of knowledge acquisition that gives only minimal attention to the role of information interpretation as a personal skill. Interpretations can vary significantly even among individuals working together and sharing the same technological support. Understanding a continuously changing environment benefits from a mode of knowledge acquisition largely based on analytical reasoning. According to Dreyfus’s Model of Skill Acquisition, a mode of analytical learning gradually replaces a mode of procedural or instructional learning as novice employees develop into experts. This dissertation poses the question: “Could information structuring support analytical acquisition of knowledge even among early-stage learners?” The answer to this question would have an impact on the successful creation of an analysis-based learning culture. Qualitative and quantitative mapping are the two principal categories of graphical information structuring techniques. Each of these has been shown to result in improved learning when compared to textual prose, but a cross-comparison between them has not been attempted. Novak’s Concept Mapping is being highly promoted in the literature as a qualitative mapping technique capable of enhancing the learning of early-stage learners. Acar’s Comprehensive Situation Mapping (CSM) is a mostly quantitative mapping technique beneficial for fostering analytical learning in strategic planning situations among management experts. This dissertation compares the performance of Novak’s and Acar’s techniques in fostering analytical acquisition of knowledge among early-stage learners. My experimental study led to the following findings. Process-wise, early-stage learners exhibit higher satisfaction when using graphically structured information. Content-wise: (i) the graphical structuring of information is superior to textual prose in fostering analytical reasoning among early-stage learners; (ii) CSM is superior to Concept Mapping when the harder questions in the assessment instrument are assigned higher weights.
Permanent Link: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1184780039
http://hdl.handle.net/2374.OX/17974
Date: 2007

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