An online team exercise for online students: learning for KM, creativity and innovation, team skills and resource management

It is possibly easier to inform students the importance of knowledge management (KM) and intellectual capital (IC). It is, however, more difficult for students to make connections between what they have been taught in KM theory and what they need to practice. The application of KM and IC can lead to considerable improvements in organisational efficiency and effectiveness. Students, particularly online students, need to apply knowledge and skills in the KM contexts to demonstrate autonomy, well-developed judgement and responsibility that require self-directed work and learning. An online team exercise has been designed for an online course with a key focus on knowledge sharing, team skills, and resource management. In the exercise, online external students are divided into police and prisoner groups whereby they are required to use different resources (e.g. cars, buses and helicopters) to capture the prisoner groups or to escape from the police on a virtual map. The online capacity of the exercise allows online and distance education students from domestic and international, metropolitan and regional areas to engage and interact and thus learn and share knowledge from each other. The team exercise helps to create an innovative online learning environment that is active, cooperative and engaging to enhance the quality of student experiences. Quantitative and qualitative data collected from a KM course suggested that the students’ behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagement, as compared to the previous years, improved significantly. The exercise is particularly useful for teaching KM and IC but is also ideal for innovation, teamwork, individual and team learning, people management, resource and time management, interpersonal and negotiation skills, and strategic planning. A reflective report is used as an assessment with the objective of helping students to learn from their practical experience from the online team exercise