Pokeshot GmbH

Who is familiar with that situation: there are loads and loads of files that gather dust on our file servers, our Sharepoint and on our laptops. “Where do I have that..?” and “How do I find out how to…?”  are questions we ask ourselves several times during the day.

 

 

If there just was a way to take existing files and the content we have already created and bring them back to life, we could give them new value instead of reinventing the wheel everytime we face a new task or challenge, creating more and more content even though some of it might already exist.

And how do we make sure that our colleagues also know about them and share their valuable content, knowledge and expertise? What can we do to have an effective knowledge management strategy within our organisation instead of many – how one of our visitors at Learntec2018 recently called them – “head monopolists” wandering around?

 

“How can we bring existing content back to life instead of reinventing the wheel again and again?”

 

I really liked the conversations I had at Learntec this year, we had visitors from various organisations like BASF, dm-drogerie, Ernst&Young, Daimler and many more. Thanks to all of you who stopped by! The situation of having many “head monopolists” in our organisations is one of the topics that came up repeatedly. Getting employees to share their knowledge and dusting off content that lies somewhere in our Sharepoint environment or on our file servers actually go hand in hand: we need a tool that lets us take existing presentations, videos and texts and put them into a presentable form. This is where SmarterPath comes in.

 

“The challenge of having many head monopolists wandering around in our organisations came up repeatedly during our conversations at Learntec2018.”

 

SmarterPath is an add-on for Office 365 that lets you take existing content (e.g. PowerPoint presentations from Sharepoint or videos from Stream or YouTube) and integrate it into a knowledge path to present it to your colleagues – and all of that just with a few clicks.

Would you like to train your employees but you do not have the time or resourses to develop a concept and produce an all-around e-learning that is out-of-date by the time you have published it? Or maybe you don’t have the energy or access to deal with an existing LMS but you want to focus on what is really important: making information accessible to the employees who need it for their day-to-day work? This is why we work with SmarterPath: we can take existing content, recycle or upcycle it into knowledge paths and share them with our colleagues. This way, employees learn on the job and get support when they need it.

 

“This way, employees learn on the job and get support when they need it.”

 

We strongly believe in the philosophy of “Learner as Creator” and user-generated content: every employee is an expert on a certain topic. We need to get these experts to share their knowledge and make it available to everybody within the company, to – again – move away from “head-monopolists” to supporting each other with our expertise and knowledge and taking the collective strength and intelligence of a team to reach common goals. To put this philosophy into practice, we enable more and more colleagues to use SmarterPath as creators themselves. Here is a video on how everybody with creator rights can create a new path in 5 easy steps:

 

 

Now this is how you can bring your content back to life: fill your knowledge path with it and share it with your colleagues who might work on similar topics and face similar challenges. This way, the effort you have once put into creating your content will be appreciated again. Here is a video on how to fill your SmarterPath with content:

 

 

So, what content is gathering dust on your Sharepoint or file servers? It’s kind of sad, if you think about it, so have a look at how you can give new value to it, how you can dust off your Sharepoint content and make it look bright and shiny again within your new knowledge paths that your colleagues are interested to have a look at. We tried it ourselves – and found out there was a lot we did not know about each other’s work and expertise. Our skills were made visible and our work got new appreciation which brought us closer together as a team.

 

 

Would you like to try it, too? We are curious how it works out for you. Drop us a line and let us know. Thanks for sharing! Make your content shine again!

 

 

About the author

Kerstin Schachinger supports the Pokeshot team as a Workplace Learning Consultant. Combining experiences in adult education in Vienna and Berlin with her enthusiasm for training and her love of creating great content, she found instructional design, facilitating workshops and conducting webinars to be her favorite areas to work in. Kerstin’s linguistic background allows her to break down information and communicate complexity in an easy way, an essential skill when creating learning experiences for a wide variety of target groups.

 

 

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