Mobile Phone Prototype For Research Knowledge Management at the National Museum of Kenya

Abstract

Knowledge is recognized as a key resource and a variety of perspectives suggest that the ability to marshal, deploy and share knowledge within an organization is important for organizational success. The National Museum of Kenya (NMK) was established with the purpose of enhancing knowledge and to provide a sustainable utilization of research information resources by stakeholders. However, as a result of diversification of knowledge sources; the process of creating, organizing, storing and dissemination of knowledge has become tedious. It has led to inefficiencies in the entire knowledge management process, leading to inadequate, disorganized knowledge for utilization and sharing. Despite the adoption of knowledge management systems, mobile phone technology has not been utilized in research activities. The aim of this study was to develop a mobile phone based prototype to enhance knowledge management and sharing at the NMK. The objectives of the study were to: examine the existing knowledge management systems at the museum; investigate challenges facing researchers while generating knowledge; suggest solutions to the challenges; and finally develop a mobile phone based prototype to enhance knowledge management processes at the NMK. This study was guided by the Knowledge management process theory. The research design adopted was qualitative case study with experimentation. The target population was 1180 staff at the NMK. Purposive sampling method was used to select a sample of 35 respondents who are the key informants. Data was collected using interviews as research instruments and analyzed qualitatively through narrative analysis. Three-tier architecture was adopted in the design of the prototype. Rapid Application Development methodology was used in the development stage, while Unified Modeling Language (UML) was used as a standard way to visualize the design of the application. Interfaces were created by using PHP for both mobile tools and web platforms. On the other hand, Java and C# programming languages were used to develop the core business logic while MySQL was used to develop the database. The findings showed that NMK had implemented web based systems that support knowledge management activities. However, mobile phone technology had not been adopted in any part of the museum as knowledge management support tool. It was also found out that researchers and staff still experienced challenges during specimen collection and general compilation of research knowledge. Consequently, a mobile phone application was designed and developed to bring solutions to the challenges relating to research knowledge management at NMK. This study concluded that though NMK is yet to embrace the use of mobile technology in their research activities, the technology has the potential to improve efficiency in its role of research knowledge management. The study recommended that NMK should consider adopting the developed mobile phone prototype for knowledge generation, sharing and management.