New Jersey Institute of Technology

From Mind to Material: Developing a Framework to Measure Knowledge in Blog Community

This research proposal is concerned with evaluating the success of a web-based program assessment knowledge community that generates and maintains the collaborative environment using a blog. Fundamentally, this study is about measuring the success of a forum designed to tap into the resources of tacit and discursive knowledge that exist among the collective individuals that comprise a community of practice. Beginning with a review of existing literature and several relevant theoretical approaches to knowledge communities, the study seeks to develop a framework for determining the success of the CPTSC collaborative research blog, the CPTSC Community Assessment Blog. In particular, organizational communication theory is used to support a model that hinges success on the ability of the community to sustain conversation (contained in the text of postings) that generates a continuous loop of tacit and discursive knowledge exchange. This will be accomplished through an examination of the constructs sense of community, satisfaction, knowledge exchange, leadership, usability, usage, and participant demographics and causal relationships between them and the ability of the community to achieve its goals. Analyzing activity levels and postings will yield productivity data and help achieve internal validity of results. Although this particular study must reflect an understanding of the program assessment discipline and specific goals of this community, a generalized model may develop which can be useful for understanding how communication success of other blog-based research forums.