The Development of an E-learning System Prototype within the Integrated Knowledge Management Support System

Nowadays, we are witnessing a rapid change of the global economy. World’s economy is changing from postindustrial to knowledge era. Increased market dynamics supported by rapid technological development both in developed and transitional countries is bringing knowledge into the focus of the interest both on individual and on organizational level. Many authors argue that knowledge-related assets are the base of sustainable competitive advantage and that knowledge is (in addition to capital, land and work) the fourth basic economic resource (Wiig, 1997; Nonaka, 1995; Davenport et al., 1998; Srica, 2000, Xu, 2001). Several research studies showed that the quantity of knowledge incorporated into products, services and business processes is relevant or main source of the added value and that intellectual capital in successful companies is reconsidered as organizations’ most valuable resource (see referred studies at Warenham, 1999 and Rowley, 1999). Therefore, effective knowledge management is the issue that is being widely discussed in recent business literature. Peter Drucker (1993) claims that not only the knowledge is a center of a modern economy, but also is a center of the modern society1 and therefore modern society can be called the “knowledge society”. In the knowledge society life long learning is a must both for individuals and organizations. Recent approach to knowledge management is based on modern information and communication technology (ICT) that has to support key knowledge management activities such as: information retrieval, information distribution, storage of business data and documents, collaboration between team members and so on. There is no unified solution suitable for every organization and for each knowledge management activity. This paper will focus on the e-learning as a component of knowledge management support system. First, the framework of knowledge management and knowledge management support system will be described, than the definition and importance of the e-learning will be discussed, and finally, steps of an e-learning system prototype development will be given together with the scheduled evaluation procedures on the example of the course Information Technologies at Faculty of Economics and Business Zagreb.