A framework for designing postgraduate research supervision knowledge management systems

The education industry is increasingly becoming a knowledge-based community that depends critically on knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing (KS) activities to improve the quality of supervising postgraduate research students. Using knowledge management systems (KMS) to share good research supervision knowledge in order to support junior research supervisor in supervision knowledge needs during the supervision process has become an important issue for postgraduate research supervisor. Hence, the objective of this research is to propose a conceptual framework that integrates supervision process, KM activities, and enabling information technology (IT) for designing such a research supervision KMS. The framework highlights the critical knowledge management activities in research supervision process and the KM Technology based on the Task / Technology Fit theory. With this framework, KMS developers can work with experience research supervisors to easily identify the suitable IT associated with the postgraduate research supervision process when developing a postgraduate research supervision KMS.