ABSTRACT

 This study titled, “Application of Elements of Knowledge Management to Evaluation of Students’ Performance in Colleges of Education in North-West Geopolitical Zone in Nigeria”, applied the four elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students’ performance in Colleges of Education in North West Geopolitical Zone, Nigeria. The study formulated four objectives, four research questions and four (4) null hypotheses. Related literatures were reviewed on application of knowledge creation and capture; knowledge sharing and enrichment; knowledge storage and retrieval; and knowledge dissemination in organizations. A descriptive survey design was used from a sample of 1916 obtained through cluster sampling. A self structured questionnaire was used as instrument for collecting data which was validated by experts and administered by the researcher. Frequency counts and simple parentages were used in analyzing respondents’ opinions while ANOVA and scheffe’s test were used in testing the hypotheses. Three hypotheses (1-3) were rejected while hypothesis four was retained. The findings of this work revealed that all the four elements of knowledge management were applied to evaluation of students’ performance in continuous assessment, final examination and teaching practice result. It was also found that knowledge creation and capture and knowledge sharing and retrieval were applied mostly while knowledge storage and retrieval and knowledge dissemination were least applied. Findings also revealed non applicability of the elements to moderation of marked scripts, observation of students’ results, students’ continuous assessment, teaching practice and final examinations. The study recommended that a three week programme be organized for newly employed or inexperienced lecturers at the beginning of each semester on how to apply the elements of knowledge management in evaluating students. All results be centralized for access by other departments. Central e-mail examination board be provided. Students and lecturers be made to open e-mail addresses. Website be created and made available for all, adequate facilities be provided for effective use of e-mails, data bases and website. Computer literacy be enforced on lecturers and other stakeholders.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

        Background to the Study

In any organization, members only become productive when the less experienced are mentored, instructed and guided by the experienced ones. Thus, the progress of organization requires competent and dedicated experienced hands who could impart the necessary knowledge, attitude and skills to others. This is not possible without knowledge, which is a basis for change process. Change brings about increase in work participation where fatigue could be reduced drastically. It offers an individual member of organization opportunity to reason and contribute greatly in all activities within the organization.

The progress of any organization cannot be possible without preserving, sharing and developing the organizational skills and knowledge. Skills and knowledge are the bases for change in any organization. It is, therefore, necessary for skills and knowledge to be shared for the sustenance of organizational values. This is attainable through group discussion, internal meetings, interaction with people within and outside the organization, seminars, workshops, conferences and community of practice. This calls for knowledge management, which entails identification, within the organization, who knows what is needed so that proper placement, training and use of knowledge could be made.

Knowledge management is all about knowledge identification, capture, application, sharing, storage, re-use and integration. Knowledge management is geared towards enhancing performance of members, competition, innovation, sharing of ideas, integration and sustainability in organizational performance. It is also aimed at improving

the quality of people‟s contributions to their organization and to make them responsible, cooperative, ready to share what they know and learn, effective in challenging, negotiating and learning from others. This provides avenues for critical issues to be examined for the survival and competence of the organization. Knowledge management is a process geared towards the achievement of organizational goals using the data and information processing capacity of information technologies, creative and innovative capacity of human beings. It can be seen as a mixture or combination of information technology and human innovation. This involves a range of strategies and practices used solely in an organization to identify, create, represent and distribute knowledge insights embodied in individuals or embedded in the organization as whole as a process or practice.

Knowledge management refers to the systematic management of process by which knowledge is identified, created, gathered, shared and applied (Benjamins, 2001). In addition, knowledge management is identified as comprising a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, present, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences that comprise knowledge which are embodied in individual or embedded in organizations as processes or practices. From the two definitions above, it could be concluded by the present study that the four elements of knowledge management that include: knowledge creation and capture; knowledge sharing and enrichment; information storage and retrieval; and knowledge dissemination as applied in business organizations could equally be applied in evaluation of students‟ performance. This may be possible since through innovations new ideas are created and acquired by students after which the captured ideas could be shared among themselves

through group discussions, tutorials or seminar presentations that could lead to adoption, application or presentation of such knowledge after graduation. It could equally improve on students‟ capability and ease assessment on the part of lecturers of Colleges of Education.

In essence, one of the most critical challenges to a knowledge society is to cultivate human capital with capacity to compete, innovate, create and share knowledge. This is one factor that motivated the current study, if these elements are applied to evaluation of students‟ performance, it could help in producing the caliber of students with above capacities who could be capable of competing with the outer world.

Knowledge management efforts focus on organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization (Addicott, McGivern and Ferlie, 2006). In addition, the objectives of knowledge management is to improve the quality of the contributions people make to their organizations by helping them to make sense of the context within which the organization exists, to take responsibility, to cooperate and share what they know and learn, and to effectively challenge, negotiate and learn from others. Organizations have potentials to learn and that new knowledge may be effectively incorporated into specific practices, so that knowledge is accessible when needed (Zhou, 2009).

A complete knowledge management system contains the four elements: thus, knowledge creation and capture; knowledge sharing and enrichment; information storage and retrieval; and knowledge dissemination. Knowledge is continually being created in any group, corporation or organizations since the very interaction among people is to

generate knowledge. Creation of new knowledge will not be possible without creativity and innovation because they are most important skills needed to make the organization highly productive and competitive. This could also be incorporated into education sector so that effective delivery in teaching and learning could be captured and maintained to enable proper evaluation of students‟ performance by teachers in Colleges of Education.

The NCE programme being a major sector of teacher education, generally aimed at producing teachers with high personal and professional discipline and integrity, teacher who are dedicated with appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes that would facilitate easy achievement of the national goals spelt out in the National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) minimum standard. This is however, stated in the NCCE (2008) that, by the end of NCE programme at Colleges of Education, students should be able to:

discuss intelligently the main ideas that have affected and still affect the development and practice of education generally and in Nigeria in particular; examine the main psychological, health and socioeconomic factors that may help or hinder a child‟s educational performance; study learners appropriately to determine the most effective ways of remaining to them to ensure their maximum achievement; professionally combine use of conventional and ICT or other innovational instructional/learning strategies in generating and imparting knowledge, attitudes and skills; among others.

In order to achieve the above therefore, the NCCE minimum standard stipulated facilities, instructional materials and methods, mode of training in terms of subject specifications and boundaries, mode of admission into the colleges, provision of evaluation strategies and human resources, for effective achievement of set educational goals. Despite all its efforts in uplifting the standard of colleges of education, there is still out-cry in the area of evaluation of students‟ performance and this constitutes a serious

problem in Colleges of Education unless something is done. This inspired the present

study to investigate on the application of element of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance in the study area.

By implication, this research is inspired by the benefits of application of elements of knowledge management in organizations (Colleges of Education). Thus, the study presents the application of the elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria. The present study seeks to find out whether the application of the elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance in the study area could enable the sustenance of knowledge through knowledge creation and capture, knowledge sharing and enrichment, information storage and retrieval and knowledge destination. This calls for a study to investigate the application of elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance.

Teaching is a systematic, rational and organized process of transmitting knowledge, attitudes and skills in accordance with professional principles and takes place in an organized structural environment, (Ejili & Anyanwu, 2006). It involves overall intention of getting students not only to acquire knowledge, skills and modes of conduct but also to acquire them in a manner which involves understanding and evaluation of the learners. In a similar assertion, Mkpa (2009), views teaching as a process of giving instruction to impart knowledge, facts, skills, attitudes, interests and aptitude to unknowledgeable and inexperienced individual. So, through the elements of knowledge management those knowledge, facts, skills e.t.c given to an in experience person could be evaluated to ascertain its effectiveness.

Learning on the other hand is acquiring new, or modifying existing knowledge, behavior, skills, values or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. Learning produces changes in an organism and the changes produced are relatively permanent. Going by this definition, it could be added that learners acquire and capture the new and modify the existing knowledge from the teaching they received. It is through effective teaching and learning given by lecturers that appropriate evaluation strategies could be employed.

Evaluation is the process of assessing an individual‟s understanding of what he/she was taught. It could be formative or summative. Evaluation could also be the process of administering test or examination for the learner. That is to say, the evaluation of learning should focus on important factors using a number of assessment methods or techniques to arrive at a score or judgement in respect of the learner‟s ability, attitudes and progress. It also stresses the use of multiple assessment techniques, peer and self assessment by the learners and assessment that is systematic continuous diagnostic and integrative.

Considering currency of knowledge management in the world, this work is inspired by the global need to achieve economic strength based on education as the fundamental of knowledge. Since knowledge is the backbone of any economy, there is the need to manage it well through the application of the four elements of knowledge management. General competitiveness of an organization and the renewal of knowledge become necessary in educational sector especially in the aspect of students‟ evaluation in Colleges of Education in the North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria. Therefore, the

present study would find out the possibility of applying the elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance in the study area.

Many research efforts concentrated on other organizations in respect of the application of knowledge management to issues that relates to production and distribution of products. For example, Uriarte (2008), studied knowledge management in business organizations. The conclusion of the study shows the possibility of applying those elements in the business organization. This, however, has motivated and inspired the present study to identify those elements and see how they could be applied to educational organization especially in evaluating students‟ performance in Colleges of Education. Evaluation is very central to teaching and learning. This means that knowledge management elements should gain ground from teaching and learning process. School like most organizations, should learn and gain knowledge so as to improve decision making and innovation process, especially in the area of evaluating students‟ performance. This is why Chu, Wang, Zhou and Yuen (2009), posit that schools knowledge management can facilitate acquisition, sharing and application of teacher‟s knowledge in school so as to better manage and apply schools‟ tangible and intangible knowledge assets, especially the professional knowledge, experiences and competencies of teachers. The elements of knowledge management could be used as a strategy by schools to improve competitive performance of both teachers and students. This could be done through giving effective evaluation. The present study seeks to apply, these elements to see how they could assist teachers in evaluating students‟ performance in Colleges of Education.

        Statement of the Problem

The global focus on knowledge as the basis of any economic, social and political development poses a serious concern for the management of knowledge across human phase of lives. With the use of knowledge management organization will enhance its production. Organizations that do not adopt principles of knowledge management are doomed to fail. Likewise in colleges of education evaluation of students‟ performance need to be enhanced to meet both the short and long term objectives of the educational policy enhanced. It is common to hear cases of missed results of students due to lack of proper storage of information. It is also common to hear of students not being evaluated properly due to lack of knowledge of proper way and processes of evaluating students by new and inexperienced lecturers. In addition, frequency of retrenchment and retirement and or sudden death of experienced employee constitute another problem if their knowledge and experience are not shared out. The present study therefore, seeks to examine way of applying knowledge creation, captured, shared and enrichment, storage, and retrieval and dissemination to solve this problem so that proper evaluation of performance could be improved.

Organizational brain drain is what every knowledgeable organization should work to avoid. Knowledge management is a major tool that most organizations utilize in today‟s global knowledge society for it to stay competitive and survive. This is because the most valuable asset to every organization is their skilled workforce. In this regard, capturing knowledge buried in people and in an organization is the fundamental building block of knowledge management implementation (Mezher, Malak, Ghosn and Ajam, 2005). This entails that it is no longer enough for knowledge to be possessed at an individual level.

If knowledge is so important as to form the basis of any positive development, how can the elements of knowledge management be applied to evaluation of students‟ performance evaluation? In a more general term, the present study shall address the applicability of the four (4) elements of knowledge management, viz: knowledge creation and capture; knowledge share and enrichment; information storage and retrieval; and knowledge dissemination to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria.

In most Colleges of Education in the North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria, lecturers are overloaded such that they cannot properly or adequately evaluate the performance of students. This poses problem of stagnation of some lecturers where the work load on them prevented them from furthering their studies, hardly make contributions in workshops and conferences to enrich their knowledge. Embarking on a study such as the current one in application of four elements of knowledge management may help enhance their knowledge on how to apply these elements in evaluating their study.

On the part of students, assessment and results are always tempered with in the area of missing result, alteration of students‟ scores, wrong scoring, wrong grading, improper students‟ record keeping and omission of students‟ names or numbers as well as missing files that give access to students‟ records constitute problem. Others include over population of students which led to shortage of facilities and access work load of teachers that makes it highly difficult for them to assess students effectively. This is because, the staff/student ratio of 1:25 as prescribed in the minimum standard is no longer a reality. These could bring in efficiency in entering scores, computation, storage and retrieval of

students performance in Colleges of Education in the North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria unless serious action is taken to stop or reduce that. This is why application of the four elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance is undertaken as a study in providing lasting solutions to problems that relate to students‟ evaluation.

Evaluation of Students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in the current complex and dynamic environment might requires the capability of teachers to create and capture knowledge, share and enrich knowledge, store and retrieve information and disseminate knowledge. Thus, in order to effectively teach, learn and assess students, teachers‟ understanding of application of elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance could help in the success of Colleges of Education which is determined by outputs of students.

  Objectives of the Study

The study aimed at applying elements of knowledge management to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education. It was out to set to achieve the following objectives:

1. determine the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on application of knowledge creation and capture to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria;
2. ascertain the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on application of knowledge sharing and enrichment to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria;
3. examine the opinions of respondents on Deans, HODs and Lecturers of knowledge storage and retrieval to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria; and
4. find out the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on application of knowledge dissemination to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria.

  Research Questions

The study finds answers to the following questions:

1. what is the level of opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on applicability of knowledge creation and capture to evaluate students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria?
2. what is the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers of knowledge sharing and enrichment be applied by lecturers to evaluate students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria?
3. what is the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on application knowledge storage and retrieval to evaluate students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria?
4. what is the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers of knowledge dissemination to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo- political zone in Nigeria?

  Hypotheses

The study formulated the following hypotheses:

H₀₁: there is no significant difference in the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on the application of knowledge creation and capture to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria.

H₀₂: there is no significant difference in the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on the application of knowledge share and enrichment evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in

Nigeria.

H₀₃: there is no significant difference in the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on the application of knowledge storage and retrieval to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria.

H₀₃: there is no significant difference in the opinions of Deans, HODs and Lecturers on the application of knowledge dissemination to evaluation of students‟ performance in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political zone in Nigeria.

  Basic Assumptions

The study assumes that:

1. application of knowledge creation and capture to evaluation of students‟ performance could enhance the performance of students in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political Zone in Nigeria.
   1. application of knowledge share and enrichment to evaluation of students‟ performance could enhance the performance of students in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political Zone in Nigeria.
   2. application of knowledge storage and retrieval to evaluation of students‟ performance could enhance the performance of students in Colleges of Education in North-West geo-political Zone in Nigeria.
      1. application of knowledge dissemination to evaluation of students‟ performance could enhance the performance of students in Colleges of Education in North- West geo-political Zone in Nigeria.

  Significance of the Study

The study will be significant because it will enable various colleges of education to be able to evaluate the students better through the application of basic elements of knowledge management. The application is in respect of knowledge creation and capture, knowledge share and enrichment, knowledge storage and retrieval and knowledge dissemination. The study will also enable those responsible for evaluation of students‟ performance to know the need for knowledge creation and capture; to know the importance of storage of information; to know the importance attached to knowledge sharing and how it could lead to the enrichment of individuals‟ knowledge. It will also enable them to know that unless and until knowledge is disseminated its creation, capture and storage are of no use.

Lecturers of Colleges of Education could benefit from the present study because an important aspect of managing knowledge shall be explored using the four elements of knowledge management. They could be sensitize on the importance of being creative  and innovative in teaching-learning processes. This could enhance knowledge capturing as the emphasis today is on continuity (life long learning) thereby making continuous training highly paramount. Knowledge captured and buried in the teachers could be used to enrich other members through knowledge sharing for the betterment of the school organization. It could also benefit lecturers of Colleges of Education in their choices of methods or strategies and emphasis on planning, organizing and presenting a lesson. It could also enhance effective selection of teaching/learning materials, methods and assessment strategy, appropriate to the need of these elements. Lecturers in other levels of education could also benefit from the present study. This is because aspect of

knowledge organization and presentation that involves innovation, sharing, information storage and retrieval and general students' assessment would require insights from studies such as the current one.

Curriculum planners and developers could find this study highly relevant as this could help in making decisions relating to content selection, teaching methods, instructional materials as well as evaluation strategies for development. It could also serve as a conduct pipe for informing and orientating the populace of government policies, programmes and evaluative strategies on education especially those upon which are designed to develop the society.

Government as the beneficiary could be helped by the present study in providing a blue print of quality of knowledge expected of a teacher trainee in Colleges of Education before their absorption for employment in the system. This could provide leading support from the above inputs to the proposed freedom of information presently billed before the national assembly on the need to be given speedy passage.

In the same vein, school administrators could benefit from the present study. Administrators are part and parcel of curriculum implementation at Colleges of Education. However, they are not always in school to interact with teachers. The study could have positive impact on the administrators' decision in planning and executing educational policies, support and evaluation strategies that gear toward the development of teachers' and students' innovative, creative and critical faculties for effective sharing and dissemination. It could also provide an opportunity for school administrators to support creativity of members organizing activities in the colleges for teaching through in-house workshops or team teaching across the board which could be between the

experienced ones and in experienced ones as well as new recruits. This ultimately could help in sharing knowledge for better enrichment and collective interest of all and could equally allow for free flow of information. This could only be achieved by incorporating the four (4) elements of knowledge management in the curriculum of Nigeria Colleges of Education thereby enriching teaching, learning and assessment of students in the study area.

In the area of examination and assessment, examination bodies could also benefit from the present study in the sense that examination norms could be directed toward the most effective strategies i.e the four elements of knowledge  management  that  could influence best teaching, learning and assessment of students' results. It could also enhance adequate storage of students' information (results) for onward retrieval that could lead to devising an effective means of assessing students level of knowledge comprehension (capture).

Through the present research, text book writers could also benefit in such away that they could be helped to sharpen their focus on producing text materials that enhance real teaching and learning. Materials that could boost teachers' ability to be creative and innovative to relate well with the learners and those authentic text materials that could help teachers develop students‟ thoughts and experiences for easy assessment.

        Scope of the Study

The study is on the application of the elements covered Colleges of Education in the North-West Geo-political zone. It also covers both Federal and State Colleges of Education. Thus the study in terms of substance covered only application of elements of