Abstract:

Researchers agree that team-based learning has a positive relationship with student’s performance. Collaboration allows giving and receiving help, exchanging information, feedback, and jointly reflecting on progress [1]. Team-based learning provides students with the opportunity to not only engage in discussion, but also become critical thinkers [2]. This study examined students’ learning process by implementing 'socialization, externalization, combination, internalization' (SECI) phases in the higher education. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Nonaka & Takeuchi’s SECI model of knowledge creation [3]. The model suggests that human knowledge is creative. Knowledge is expanded through social interaction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge are not separate but they interact with and interchange into each other in the creative activities of human being. [3]

According to Tammets’s (2012) [4] meta-analysis Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model is used for increasing the performance and achievements of organization but less for employees’ individual learning. As the result of his analysis two articles were found in which the purpose and context were educational. Conclusion of the first study was that the SECI model could enable teachers to describe how they learn from colleagues and make their knowledge explicit [5]. The second study proposes that the SECI framework can be applied not only in online education but also in face-to-face and traditional classes [6]. During the focal course in our study students are producing in teams articles about different project management perspectives. The articles are publish in essay collection. In this study, we describe Master students learning process in the Project Business course by using four phases of SECI model as a research framework as follows: Socialization – e.g. students team building; Externalization – e.g. students collective planning; Combination – e.g. students co-writing article; Internalization – final publishing and reading essay collection.

In our empirical paper, we present learning process of the students in higher education via the SECI model. Furthermore, we discuss the different learning phases on the writing process of the students’ articles. The main contribution of this study is to model team learning phenomena in educational settings based on the assumption that knowledge is creative through the interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge.

References:
[1] Johnson, D. W., Johnson, R. T., Ortiz, A. E., & Stanne, M. B. (1991). The impact of positive goal and resource interdependence on achievement, interaction, and attitudes. The Journal of General Psychology, 118, 341–347. Praeger.
[2] Totten, S., Sills, T., Digby, A., and Russ, P. (1991). Cooperative learning: A guide to research. New York: Garland.
[3] Nonaka, I., & Takeuchi, H. (1995). The knowledge-creating company. New York: Oxford University Press.
[4] Tammets, K. (2012). Meta-analysis of Nonaka & Takeuchi’s Knowledge Management Model in the Context of Lifelong Learning. Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Vol. 13, No. 4. December 2012
[5] Yeh, Y., Huang, L., Yeh, Y. (2011) Knowledge management in blended learning: Effects on professional development in creativity instruction, Computers & Education 56 (2011) 146–156
[6] Hosseini, S., M. (2011) The application of SECI model as a framework of knowledge creation in virtual learning. Case study of IUST Virtual Classes, Asia Pacific Education Review, 12 (2), 263-270

Keywords:

SECI, tacit knowledge, learning, team work, higher education.