Wikis in Online Education

From WikEd

What is a WIKI

A wiki is a web application that allows users to read, contribute, delete, edit and reorganize information on any of its web pages. Wiki also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.

Wikis is one of the tools that more easily facilitates collaboration between members of a team who are geographically and temporaly disperse.

Video

(from Wikis in Plain English at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY)

How do Wikis work?

Search for a topic of your interest as you would do in a search engine
If the topic is there: you can expand it ; if not, you can create it
Then you leave it in Wiki for further contributions from you or others
You can always come back edit and enhance
You can always review and update

Sample of WikiActivities in Online Courses

Work on shared proposals or projects

Master List of CORE TOPICS: Create an empty glossary of words, phrases, jargon that pertains to your area to be completed by students as the semester progresses, at the same time that they learn them. [Example]

Organize writing on a topic: Provide guidelines to develop a topic, and have students do it in groups or individually. Students from the same class can contribute to it (geographically disperse), or students taking the course in different semesters (temporaly disperse). [Example]

Create a book: Share with your students some textbook writing. Create a textbook for using in this particular course. Have students from this semester and consecutive semesters contribute to it [Student's Book: Blended Learning in K-12]

Analyze, evaluate in groups

Promote group discussion: Have students read and discuss articles with their group. Then expand/modify the article within Wiki

Classroom Management

Use as your LMS: Prof. Joe Grohens(UIUC) is using Wikis as the Learning Management System for his technical writing course.

Co-create a syllabus: What are the students expectations for this seminar? Can they suggest topics that they would like to be included in the syllabus? [Example Co-create Syllabus ]

Accountability: How do I know what each one contributed? History, also you can compare and even recover previous versions.

Organizer, scheduler: Have students agree on times, food sign up and other assignments:

1.Example [Scheduler]

2.Example [Food signup]

3.Example [Adopt textbooks], or [Exchange Textbooks]

Wikis & Collaborative Learning

Collaborative Learning

Collaborative learning, rooted social constructivism, centers on the process of knowledge construction and promotes learning through group interaction and collaborative activities.

Through the use of wikis to create a paper, for example, the instructor promotes five fundamental elements of collaborative learning (Johnson and Johnson 1987; Johnson and Johnson 1991; Waggoner 1992):

1. Positive interdependence: group members share a common goal and resources;

2. Promotive interaction: group members must help each other to work efficiently and effective, and work together as individuals;

3. Individual accountability: group members must have individual accountability and personal responsibility;

4. Interpersonal and small group skills: group members must communicate with, support, and resolve conflicts with each other constructively;

5. Group processing: group members must maintain good working relationship and provide feedback to each other.

Role of the Instructor

The CL approach transforms the role of teachers from authoritative instructors into mediated facilitators. Consequently, the main purpose of teachers is to facilitate group discussion and provide guidelines when necessary. Lecturers, who generally are experts in the field, have to enable students to obtain some fundamental understanding of the subject they are studying by guiding, encouraging exploration, and participation.

The successfulness of collaborative learning in online courses depends upon these factors:

The effectiveness of the instructor in promoting group collaboration,

The instructor's role in creating the course conditions and climate to establish an online community.

The instructor's ability to engage students to be active participants and favor student-led activities

Challenges in the role of the instructor

Be ready to monitor behaviors, and prompt for participation

Adjust strategies to facilitate process

Be patient—give time to process information

Be responsive, but give feedback without being overwhelming

Do not use each intervention as an opportunity to lecture

Be clear about expectations and grading

Become a Non-intrusive facilitator

Role of the Student

As with instructors, the role of the student is affected by CL methodologies. Whereas traditional learning positions the student as a relatively passive recipient of instruction, CL requires students to be active participants in knowledge construction.

Student success in collaborative learning depends on the following factors:

Students as active participants. This requires that all participants contribute to the final piece of knowledge produced by their group. Responsibility for individual success is transferred away from single-source products to representations of the group. An individual student must contribute more actively in order to assist in the production of a the final product.

Students as engaged participants. Students must also become co-facilitators, along with their teammates. Whereas active participation requires quantity of product, engaged participation fosters quality. This often requires students to prompt others, and to assist in framing the path to an answer. Typically the role of the instructor, students are asked to be facilitators of in-depth analysis for each other. Successful CL is often the product of students who have challenged each other to find deeper meanings in the material presented.

Students as conflict managers. As a common result of divergent viewpoints in a small group, conflict may arise in several forms. CL instructors often guide students through conflict mediation, but students themselves are most successful when they can address issues before they affect the quality of the whole group.

Types of WIKIs

WikEd is an internet platform that enables all users to read and modify any of the webpages within it. It offers the technology to conveniently construct knowledge from a number of sources and serves as a platform for collecting, archiving and sharing "community" knowledge about many educational topics (Anderson, 2005)

Wikibooks Free textbooks and manuals

Wikipedia

Wikimedia

Wiktionary Dictionary and thesaurus

Wikiquote Collection of quotations

Wikisource The free library

Wikispecies Directory of species

Commons Shared media repository