VIRTUAL SEMINARS

A virtual seminar (SM) is an economic and effective instructional tool for teaching students who are at a distance from their instructor. Li ke conventional class room teaching, a virtual seminar requires an ins tructor, a student, and a method of communication. Teleconferencing, v ideo conferencing, intranets and the Internet give learners in a Virtu al Seminar the ability to interact immediately with their mentors and receive real and relevant answers. This paper shows how industry and a cademia can benefit from using methods developed and experience gained in presenting the first virtual seminars to academic and petroleum in dustry participants in mid-1996. The information explosion in industry means that business or technical information is worthless until it is assimilated into a corporate knowledge management system. A search fo r specific information often turns into a filtering exercise or an att empt to find patterns and classify retrieved material. In the setting of an interactive corporate information system, virtual seminars meet the need for a productive new relationship between creative people and the Aux of corporate knowledge. Experience shows that it is more effi cient to circulate time-sensitive and confidential information electro nically through a virtual seminar. Automating the classification of in formation and removing that task from the usual work load creates an e lectronic corporate memory and enhances the value of the knowledge to both users and a corporation. Catalogued benchmarks, best-practice sta ndards, and Knowledge Maps (SM) of experience serve as key aids to com municating knowledge through virtual seminars and converting that know ledge into a profit-making asset. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.