Comment

Comment by Genet Awlachew on January 18, 2011 at 9:50am

Thank you Barbara for your response and for the very useful link to PAL which is very similar to AAR. And also the link to the knowledge map. Very interesting stuff.

 

I also want to thank Nancy for your request for more info or clarification of my question.

 

We sometimes give names for products we produce after any KM related events happened. Of course they  have a generic name - knowledge products. For example, we call “Consolidated Reply” – a product we produce after an E-discussion. There are Knowledge Products produce as a result of KM or related events/activities or initiatives. These include Forum Brief, Best Practice, Success Stories, Lesson Learned etc. I like AAR because it’s short and sweet. I think (for me) it might help me and my org in identifying and validating best practices. In my working area, we are just exercising AAR as one of the KM tools/techniques and found it quiet useful. I just would like to give a name to the product we generate following AAR. Because we want to capture and document the various response for those basic AAR questions. I’ve learned from PAL that no need to produce a report format rather a visual representation which is a product. And in some AAR guidelines, it says that documents or reports are not forwarded. For me it doesn’t give sense if the knowledge, experience or best practice or lesson learned are captured/documented and shared. Anyways, I want to learn from you who have the experience in conducting AAR. What do you call the product/document you produce after the event? how do you prepare and share? what is the format and for what purpose you use it ? does it help or can the product be used as a background document to come up with the knowledge produces such as best practice or lesson learn?

 

Many thanks

Genet

Comment by Nancy White on January 17, 2011 at 4:56pm

This is an interesting question in many ways. We probably have lots of names. I'm curious though, Genet, why you want to know? This brings up the role of labels in our work! They are important, but sometimes just assumed. Tell us more please!

Comment by Barbara Fillip on January 14, 2011 at 3:45pm

 

We produce conversation maps (using tools like Inspiration or CmapTools) rather than documents and we specifically avoid calling them "reports."  Technically, they're not concept maps or mindmaps, but they're a visual representation of the conversation that took place.

Of course, we don't call the AARs by that name either.  We call them "Pause and Learn" or PaL.

More on the our NASA/GSFC/OCKO website.

I don't have a map I can share but I've talked about the mapping process last June at a conference.  See Mapping to Support Organizational Learning.