Important Note
The following application may not be fully accessibility-compliant
or bug-free because it is an emerging technology prototype or proof
of concept currently under development in IBM research and
development labs. |
What is IBM Pass It Along?
IBM® Pass It Along is a peer-to-peer knowledge exchange network whose basic premise is that everyone has expertise to share. Anyone can package his expertise into bite-sized nuggets of knowledge called topics, which can be "passed on" to others. Over time, an informal community of contributors, experts, and learners develops around these nuggets of knowledge.
Pass It Along facilitates cost-effective and targeted learning and is created and delivered by the experts: your peers.
Pass It Along can facilitate informal learning in several settings:
- enterprise: orientation of new hires; retention of knowledge from a maturing workforce; training of sales force; project "on-boarding" and role transitions; training of global resources; aid to mentorship programs; extension of longevity of conferences and peer-led sessions, cross-organization training collaboration (such as between clients, vendors, and business partners)
- non-profit: volunteer-to-volunteer transfer of skills; community outreach for education- and training-based initiatives; transfer of knowledge to developing countries in order to bridge the "digital divide"
- academic: knowledge exchange among network of researchers; alternative mode of delivery for teaching assistants and instructors; training in student-run organizations
- public: public access to informal training offered by corporations; grass-roots training on specific tasks (such as perfecting a golf swing), matching of teachers and students (such as for basic Spanish grammar).
Contact us if you would like to purchase IBM Pass It Along.
How does it work?
Pass It Along uses many popular features of existing collaborative tools such as wikis, knowledge repositories, content management systems, and social bookmarking with a structure geared towards training and knowledge exchange.
Pass It Along empowers anyone to be a trainer in the same way that video-sharing networks are enabling anyone to become a broadcaster. Any member of a community can contribute topics and allow other members to add their own contributions and sign up as experts. Learners can search for these topics and discuss them with experts and other learners.
Community members can keep current with developments in their sphere of learning through personalized feeds sent through e-mail or RSS, and they can earn virtual dollars as their topic contributions are learned by others.
Pass It Along Tutorials
- Pass It Along Tutorial - Overview
- Pass It Along Tutorial - Learning
- Pass It Along Tutorial - Sharing
- Pass It Along Tutorial - ModifyingOverview
- Pass It Along Tutorial - Incentives
| About the technology authors |
Jamie Alexander is the inventor and chief designer of Pass It Along. He received a B.A. in electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo, he holds one patent, and he has recently filed another patent based on certain aspects of Pass It Along. Mr. Alexander formerly worked at the IBM Toronto Laboratory developing e-commerce solutions and, for the last seven years, has been working as a business analyst within IBM Global Services in Toronto. He has always worked on collaborative projects on the side, including a grass-roots language exchange network and a network for allowing recent immigrants to share their cuisine and culture with other members of their community.
Mr. Alexander came up with the idea for Pass It Along while working on a complex, globally-resourced program with training challenges. He wanted to explore ways to better use the knowledge and expertise from all members of the team and find a way to connect people to experts. He was also inspired by his volunteer work teaching basic computer literacy to a marginalized community in Bolivia for six months in 2004. Mr. Alexander feels that the application of Pass It Along can be just as effective in non-profit training-based initiatives (such as bridging the "digital divide"), as it can be in facilitating informal training in a corporate environment.
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Date Posted: June 3, 2008
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