Wikis and collaboration: approaches to deploying wikis in educational settings

wikis and collaboration: approaches to deploying wikis in educational settings Steven Warburton King’s College London [email_address] http://del.icio.us/stevenw/wiki-workshop-2006-11

i) do wikis require a paradigm shift?

new or old technology? wiki Hawaiian word meaning ‘quick’ used by Ward Cunningham in 1994 to name the asynchronous collaborative tool he developed for use on the Internet wiki evolution can be interpreted as part of the long history of computer supported collaborative work ( CSCW ) examples: http://en.wikipedia.org http://en.wikibooks.org http://en. wikiversity .org (open course materials, started August 2006) perhaps the question is not: “why wiki?” but “why now?”

the tipping point social nature of learning social-constructivism situated learning dialogue and negotiated meaning collaboration, community and creativity socio-technical and cultural changes ambient technology, ubiquitous computing shift from community to networks web-natives, digital natives, net generation web 2.0 read/write web -> consumer becomes producer complexity, emergent behaviour and emergent classifications the rise of social software

social tools social bookmarks IRC blogs discussion fora social networks instant messaging wikis collaboration social recommendation & discovery

e-learning: dominant model? reusable learning objects standards (SCORM, LOM) digital repositories (silos) scripted learning activities content and assessment driven (the VLE) a classical hierarchical industrial model that can respond to increasing student numbers? how do wikis fit into the world described above?

closed and open systems, hierarchies vs. networks, nupedia to wikipedia Brooks Law (1975) As the number of programmers N rises, the work performed also scales as N , but the complexity and vulnerability to mistakes rises as N squared “ Conceptual integrity in turn dictates that design must proceed from one mind, or a very small number of agreeing resonant minds” Linus’ Law “ Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” (Linus Torvalds) or Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterised quickly and the fix obvious to someone.

ii) can wikis be put to effective educational use?

what are the main reported problems in introducing wikis? there seem to be two recurring themes: fear of loosing control by levelling the authority structures a lack of approved ways to administer [group] assessment and to rate individual performance source: various case studies and literature on wikis in use

wiki features Wikis maximize interplay . Wikis are democratic Wikis work in real time . Wiki technology is text-based Wikis permit public document construction ( distributed authorship ) Wikis complicate the evaluation of writing Wikis promote negotiation Wikis permit collaborative document editing, or open editing . Wikis make feedback intensely public and potentially durable. Wikis work on volunteer collaboration . [cooperative] Wikis endorse particular ways of writing . Wikis enable complete anonymity . From dossiers practiques by Renée Fountain

exploring pedagogical potential learning: students create content: knowledge production and synthesis ownership and autonomy linking patterns and contextualising sharing, collaboration and group work reflection dialogue through discussion pages activities: group project work building shared repositories conference style presentations critical peer review debating course topics, including assigned readings

so what does a wiki based educational activity look like? Set up a conference wiki space outlining the theme, topic, linking to relevant resources and detailing tasks/assessment/ethos. Tell learners that in 3 weeks time you'll be hosting an online conference Send out a 'Call [demand] for papers' with instructions e.g. On the day your paper is presented please post it to the wiki and create an appropriate link from the conference agenda. Please visit the site each day, read relevant papers and post questions and comments after the paper. You may update your paper throughout the week. In the week following the conference please submit your personal review of the conference. You will receive feedback on your review, paper and interaction with questions and comments. There will be a prize for the best paper. Keep everything rolling (pushing students for titles/abstracts). Do the first paper yourself as a model.

Advantages of co-operative and collaborative learning: mastery and retention of material quality in reasoning strategies process gains: for example the production of new ideas transference of learning Johnson and Johnson (1990, 2003) Factors influencing collaborative learning: student willingness to participate understanding of all stakeholders of the benefits an assessment system that supports collaboration distribution of power between teacher and student Hodgson and McConnell (1992)

supporting a strong collaborative culture accountability: the prerequisite for reputation focus and culture: a community charter trust and identity: personal profile pages collective memory: FAQs as efficient knowledge repositories membership criteria from: Managing Information Quality in Virtual Communities of Practice by Andreas Neus

networked collaborative e-learning*: assessing group work group mark individual contracts divided group mark peer-assessment of contributions viva project exam “… the most important single issue is often the tricky matter of establishing the levels of contribution of respective [team] members…” (Race, Brown & Smith, 2005) http://www. ukcle .ac. uk/resources/assessment/group .html *McConnell, D. 2006 E-Learning Groups and Communities . Open University Press

iii) what issues do we need to address?

tensions individual, group and community motives for collaboration and cooperation? what conditions support strong community formation? emergent behaviours (critical mass) content: consumers (students) becoming producers mass amateurisation, incoherence? open = chaos? or open = common purpose? common purpose gives rise to community based law enforcement (soft security)

refactoring deletion is a major source of contention and discomfort refactoring or (polite) editing the preferred method http://199.17.178.148/~morgan/cgi-bin/blogsAndWiki.pl? RefactoringPages signing off changes caveats: “this is experimental”

evaluating wikis introducing new tools does not change practice wikis conflict with traditional assumptions about authorship and intellectual property: why share?: receiving credit for contributions consent: contributions being revised or deleted content knowledge can be improved, but this takes time using new tools in place of other tools works, but it is not the best use of a wiki quality can be maintained if versions ready for quality assessment are identified students can be reluctant to contribute to wikis (invisible learner, competencies) open authoring does not necessarily lead to the destruction, modification or copying of others’ work visual and design options are limited - wikis are not presentation software source: a variety of case studies, see http://del.icio.us/stevenw/wiki-workshop-2006-11

key ideas appropriation: understanding the use of technologies as being locally situated and allowing for the negotiation of meaning at these sites context: a wiki used in an educational activity or context is not the same as a wiki used to collaborate and document a workshop

some conclusions scaffold users, lower barriers to participation and provide support encourage autonomy and ownership which leads to accountability and group cohesion succinct, accurate and gentle guide for new visitors - rituals and rules become codified within the community through shared practice personal space (user pages) as identity: reputation reward co-authorship is not a problem for the students if the guidelines for evaluation are clear trust your students: appropriation "The basic thing I think makes it work is turning from a model of permissions to a model of accountability" Jimmy Wales, co-founder, Wikipedia

iv) what do we see in the future?

in the words of Donald Rumsfeld Department of Defence news briefing, February 12, 2002 “ Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know.”

knowns and unknowns technological? cultural? unknown unknowns impact of Web 2.0 (quality and trust) direction of e-learning (VLE vs. PLE) globalisation: communities to networks next generation learners known unknowns institutional barriers pedagogy current student competencies staff competencies known knowns

Wikis and collaboration: approaches to deploying wikis in educational settings

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Wikis and collaboration: approaches to deploying wikis in educational settings (20)

More from University of Newcastle, NSW. (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Wikis and collaboration: approaches to deploying wikis in educational settings