Monday, 24 September 2007
Final reflections on the ALT-C conference #2
Marion Miller, Manager, JISC Regional Support Centre for Yorkshire and Humber, University of Leeds, summed up the contributions to the theme: Learning technology for the social network generation.
She made an interesting suggestion that the VLE "has had its day". The focus is moving away from VLEs towards social networks - but we were talking at ALT-C as experimenters - and I doubt that Universities are really ready to junk their VLEs.
Once conclusion from the conference was that staff need to experience these technologies in order to use them effectively for their learners - to take small steps.
Another challenge is that of learners not being ready for Web 2.0 - not willing to reflect publicly in a blog, not comfortable with editing one another's texts, not even comfortable with technology at all in the case of the growing numbers of mature and work-based students.
Our own wiki-tivities workshop went really well. I made copious notes on other sessions about wikis, to see if their experiences supported our model, and indeed they did. Some examples:
Phil Cheeseman from Roehampton talked about the need to
* provide structure and scaffolding, and
* design activities that provide explicit opportunities for collaboration
Richard Walker and Wayne Britcliffe from York spoke about 6 projects - a major and helpful study. These included the points that:
* students made class presentations about their work on the wiki
* there was a need to acknowledge and summarise online contributions
* it was essential to make explicit the learning outcomes
Some of their case studies are available on the York VLESupport website
Attendees at our workshop had generally favourable opinions. More on the wiki-tivities model elsewhere (see, e.g, our presentation on the ALT-C website) and the abstract of the workshop
Some of the conclusions of our participant groups during the workshop:
* wikis can be used for icebreaker activities
* staff need to experience exemplary use of wikis in order to apply them for learning
* there needs to be a "gentle" introduction to having someone edit your text (perhaps a pairs exercise)
* when designing a wiki-tivity it is easy to "start big" and may help to redesign in a "smaller" way - perhaps a series of wiki-tivities in the same wiki rather than just one
* moderating/facilitation is just as important as in other online collaborative spaces
Comments:"I like something definite that students can work with."
"Although I hadn't come this afternoon intending to go back with anything, I have lots of ideas for the staff development course I run."
"The best session I've been to so far."
Oh, and Peter Norvig of Google in his keynote told us Google have partnered with Creative Commons to index all opencourseware which might be useful.Labels: ALT-C2007, altc2007, Google, wiki-tivities, wikis
posted by Helen Whitehead 11:11 AM
Tuesday, 28 August 2007
Wikis - advantages and disadvantages
A wiki is a universally-editable website with minimal formatting. The word comes from the Hawaiian wiki-wiki which means "quick".
Advantages of using wikis in learning and teaching
- No special software needed
- Immediate posting of content
- Low graphics content - fast loading
- Simple or complex hypertext structure as required
- Can have email notification of new content
- Can track changes
- Can have associated discussions
- Can easily link to other wikis and websites
- If students do not like what they see, such as the approach taken by others, they may be more inclined to participate in order to propose an alternative approach.
- Facilitates collaborative and constructivist approaches to learning
- Students can see what they are learning
Although it is "new" technology in learning, wikis could soon move into the "Pets' Corner" or familiar area of the Media Zoo.
Disdvantages of using wikis in learning and teaching
- Students reluctant to make public unfinished working documents
- Students reluctance to let others contribute changes.
- Students very competitive about changes
- All content modifiable including pages for instructions, handouts etc.
- Simultaneous edits are allowed but not successful
- No standardised markup/spellcheck - formatting is basic
- No equations or drawing
- Institutional wikis vs external wikis: using external wikis brings problems of copyright, ownership, continuity, etc.
- Institutional IT policies: still relies on an infrastructure that enables the permissions to be set appropriately (e.g., some universities allow wikis to be editable only by those with University accounts)
- The wiki is forever evolving.
- Not really appropriate for tracking contributions or discussion, following individual students
- When new to both tutors and students lack of familiarity causes problems: can cause confusion and lack of clarity
- Staff opposition to student collaboration
- Research shows that on moving to an online environment, even groups that already know one another well face-to-face have to go through the access and socialisation stages, albeit in a more abbreviated manner, to be able to work together collaboratively in an effective manner.
(For reference list see this post)
Labels: e-learning, elearning, HE, online learning, wiki, wiki bibliography, wiki-tivities, wikis, wikitivities
posted by Helen Whitehead 9:01 AM
Tuesday, 7 August 2007
Uses of wikis in education
Contrary to the usual practice on a blog, I am going to use this post to assemble links to published papers, resources, etc. on the subject of wikis. (This may in fact be more of a wiki-type activity itself, except that I am the only person contributing.)
This post will therefore change as links and resources are added.
McAlpine, M. (2007) The use of Wikis for Assessing Collaborative Learner Achievement Proceedings for 11th CAA Conference 2007
Phoebe Project. A practitioner-focused environment to support design for learning, Phoebe is a prototype online tool designed to encourage teachers in colleges and universities to explore new approaches and tools in their pedagogy. (A wiki based tool for designing a learning session.) From Oxford University
http://phoebe-app.conted.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/
Augar, N., Raitman, R. & Zhou, W. (2004). Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R. Atkinson, C. McBeath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 95-104). Perth, Australia. 5-8 December. Accessed August 2007 http://www.ascilite.org.au/.../augar.html
PDF READ
"In an attempt to remedy the lack of interaction noted in online discussion groups in previous years, a traditional icebreaker exercise used in classroom situated tutorials at Deakin University was adapted for use on a wiki"
Bergin, J. (2002) Teaching on the Wiki Web. In Proceedings of the 7th annual conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education (pp. 192-195). Aarhus, Denmark. 24-28 June 2002 ISBN:1-58113-499-1 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=637610.544473 (abstract only not full text)
Proceedings of the 2006 international symposium on Wikis, 2006, Odense, Denmark 21-23 August 2006 ISBN:1-59593-413-8 http://portal.acm.org/toc.cfm?...=88179999 (abstract only not full text)Hao-Chuan Wang, Chun-Hung Lu, Jun-Yi Yang, Hsin-Wen Hu, Guey-Fa Chiou, Yuch-Tzu Chiang, Wen-Lian Hsu : Inst. of Inf. Sci., Acad. Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan; An empirical exploration of using Wiki in an English as a second language course Advanced Learning Technologies, 2005. ICALT 2005. Fifth IEEE International Conference on
Publication Date: 5-8 July 2005, p 155- 157, ISBN: 0-7695-2338-2
Accessed August 2007 from http://iasl.iis.sinica.edu.tw/...Course.pdf
Their finding of a significant, but inverse, relation between students' editing usage and academic performance challenges some idealistic hypotheses that Wiki technology is "naturally beneficial" to learning. They believe that building an instructive or constructive instructional model with Wiki in a rigorous manner requires more empirical evidence.Desilets, A. and Paquet, S., Wiki as a tool for Webbased collaborative story telling in primary school: A case study.
Forte, A.; Bruckman, A. From Wikipedia to the classroom: exploring online publication and learning, Proceedings of the 7th international conference on Learning sciences, Bloomington, Indiana, p.182 - 188, June 27-July 1 2006, ISBN:0-8058-6174-2 http://portal.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?...27
In Proceedings of Ed-Media 2005, (Montreal, Canada, June 27-July 2, 2005). Retrieved August 2007 from https://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/...NRC-48234.pdf
Interesting look at how primary aged children can create a collaborative hypertext story, with enough detail for tech-savvy teachers to use for themselves. READ
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/papers/forte-bruckman-icls06.pdf
READ "suggest that collaborative publishing on a wiki offers an interesting model for creating authentic classroom writing activities and can be a powerful tool for constructing knowledge."
Parker, Kevin R., Chao, Joseph T., Wiki as a Teaching Tool,
Interdisciplinary Journal of Knowledge and Learning Objects, Volume 3, 2007, p. 57-72 Retrieved August 2007 from
http://ijklo.org/Volume3/IJKLOv3p057-072Parker284.pdf
READ "Reflective learning requires structured approaches that enable students to reflect upon their learning and to understand their own learning processes. An essential part of reflective learning is that learners should be encouraged to reflect on their knowledge and make it explicit. Wikis allow this reflection to be done collaboratively, moving closer to a fully social constructivist mode of learning."
Boulos, M.N.K., Maramba, I., & Wheeler, S. (2006). Wikis, blogs and podcasts: A new generation of Webbased tools for virtual collaborative clinical practice and education, BMC Medical Education, 6(41).
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1472-6920-6-41.pdf
"Wikis in particular actively involve learners in their own construction of knowledge" in a study of virtual collaborative clinical practice and education.
Schaffert, S., Bischof, D., Buerger, T., Gruber, A., Hilzensauer, W. & Schaffert, S. (2006). Learning with semantic wikis. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Semantic Wikis - From Wiki To Semantics (SemWiki2006), Budva, Montenegro: June 11-14, 109-123. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wastl.net/...SemWikiLearning.pdf
"The collaborative features of wikis make them particularly well suited for cooperative
learning environments"
Schwartz, L., Clark, S., Cossarin, M. & Rudolph, J. (2004). ISSN: 1492-3831 Technical Evaluation Report 27. Educational wikis: Features and selection criteria.
International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 5(1). Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/692 (PDF)
http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/163/244 (web) READ "wikis can provide an efficient, flexible, user friendly and cost-effective interface for collaboration, knowledge creation and archiving, and student interaction."
Leuf, B. and Cunningham, W. (2001), The Wiki Way: Quick collaboration on the web. Boston:
Addison Wesley.
creators of the original wiki concept
Godwin-Jones, R. (2003). Blogs and wikis: Environments for on-line collaboration. [Electronic
Version]. Language, Learning and Technology, 7(2), 12-16.
suggests that wikis may be ideal for building communities of practice by creating a collective repository of expertise in a subject area, which is refined over time by the contributions and problem-solving of interested individuals. It is this function that distinguishes communities of practice from other online communities, such as chat groups or bulletin boards. See also PROWE project
De Pedro, X., Rieradevall, M., Lopez, P., Sant, D., Pinol, J., Nunez, L., et al. (2006). Writing documents collaboratively in Higher education (I): Qualitative results from a 2-year project study. Congreso Internacional de Docencia Universitaria e Innovacion (International Congress of University Teaching and Innovation), Barcelona: July 5-7. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://uniwiki.ourproject.org/...Congressos
Wikis enhance asynchronous communication and cooperative learning among students, and promote cooperation rather than competition
Reinhold, S. (2006). WikiTrails: Augmenting wiki structure for collaborative, interdisciplinary learning. Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21-23, 47-58.
Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/proceedings/p47.pdf
Wikis will facilitate not only communication but also the collaborative finding, shaping, and sharing of knowledge, all of which are essential properties in an educational context.
Mader, S. (Ed.) (2006). Using wiki in education, a wiki-based book (some chapters free, some fee-based). Retrieved August 2007 at
http://www.wikiineducation.com
Mader, S. (2006). Ways to use wiki in education. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://www.wikiineducation.com/...education
Fountain, R. (2005). Wiki pedagogy. Dossiers technopedagogiques. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.profetic.org/dossiers/...110
Website with some interesting examples
Duffy, P. & Bruns, A. (2006). The use of blogs, wikis and RSS in education: A conversation of possibilities. Proceedings of the Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, Brisbane: September 26. Retrieved August 2007 from
https://olt.qut.edu.au/...Duffy_OLT2006_paper.pdf
READ Lists several possible educational uses of wikis:
• Students can use a wiki to develop research projects, with the wiki serving as ongoing
documentation of their work.
• Students can add summaries of their thoughts from the prescribed readings, building a
collaborative annotated bibliography on a wiki.
• A wiki can be used for publishing course resources like syllabi and handouts, and students
can edit and comment on these directly for all to see.
• Teachers can use wikis as a knowledge base, enabling them to share reflections and
thoughts regarding teaching practices, and allowing for versioning and documentation.
• Wikis can be used to map concepts. They are useful for brainstorming, and editing a
given wiki topic can produce a linked network of resources.
• A wiki can be used as a presentation tool in place of conventional software, and students
are able to directly comment on and revise the presentation content.
• Wikis are tools for group authoring. Often group members collaborate on a document by
emailing to each member of the group a file that each person edits on their computer, and
some attempt is then made to coordinate the edits so that everyone’s work is equally represented; using a wiki pulls the group members together and enables them to build and edit the document on a single, central wiki page.
Naish, R. (2006). Can wikis be useful for learning? e.learning Age. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.qiconcepts.co.uk/pdf/C...earning.pdf
Describes icebreakers
Lamb, Brian. (2004). Wide open spaces: Wikis, ready or not. EDUCAUSE Review, 39(5) (September/October), 36-48. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.educause.edu/....bhcp=1
Describes using wikis for writing instruction
Wikipedia (2007) School and University Projects Retrieved August 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....projects
Bruns, A. & Humphreys, S. (2005). Wikis in teaching and assessment: The M/Cyclopedia project. Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis, San Diego, CA, U.S.A.: October 16-18, 25-32. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://snurb.info/files...Assessment.pdf
In a new media technologies course, students developed the M/Cyclopedia (Media/Culture), a wiki-based encyclopedic collection of information on new media concepts and topics. The wiki was also used for student interactions, discussions and coordination outside the official tasks.
Lund, A. & Smordal, O. (2006). Is there a space for the teacher in a wiki? Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21-23, 37-46. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/.../p37.pdf
Discusses ideas of letting the learners co-construct subject entries in an encyclopedia.
Chen, H.L., Cannon, D., Gabrio, J. Leifer, L. Toye, G. & Bailey, T. (2005). Using wikis and weblogs to support reflective learning in an introductory engineering design course. Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland, Oregon: June 12-15. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://riee.stevens.edu/....._and_Weblogs.pdf
A pedagogical challenge common in project-based courses is that students see what they have produced but they do not see what they have learned. A wiki helps solve this.
Seitzinger, J. (2006). Be constructive: Blogs, podcasts, and wikis as constructivist learning tools. Learning Solutions e-Magazine. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.elearningguild.com/pdf/2/073106DES.pdf
provides a thorough discussion of the benefits of constructivist online learning environments
Hamer, J. (2006). Some experiences with the "contributing student approach". Proceedings of the 11th Annual SIGCSE Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE’06), Bologna, Italy: June 26-28, 68-72. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1140123.1140145 (abstract only not full text)
Betty Collis' contributing student approach
Chang, Y.-F. & Schallert, D.L. (2005). The design for a collaborative system of English as foreign language: Composition writing of senior high school students in Taiwan. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT’05), Kaohsiung, Taiwan: July 5-8, 774-775. Retrieved August 2007 from
http://portal.acm.org/cita...18 (abstract only not full text)
Honegger, B.D. (2005). Wikis – a rapidly growing phenomenon in the German-speaking school community. Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis, San Diego, CA, USA: October 16-18, 113-116. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2005/proceedings/paper-10.pdf
Notari, M. (2006). How to use a wiki in education: Wiki based effective constructive learning. Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium on Wikis, Odense, Denmark: August 21–23, 131-132. Retrieved August 2007 from http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/proceedings/p131.pdf READ
This paper asserts that collaboration is less likely to be a success without proper guidance,
such as a script.
Pearce, J. (2007). Using wiki in education. The science of spectroscopy. Retrieved August 2007, from http://www.scienceofspectroscopy.info/...wiki_in_education.
Interesting website READ
Jon Udell: Heavy metal umlaut: the movie an illustration of the growth of a wiki page over time
Ebner, M., Zechner, J., Holzinger, A. (2006) Why is Wikipedia so Successful? Experiences in Establishing the Principles in Higher Education, Proceedings of I-KNOW 06, 6th International Conference on Knowlegde Management, Graz, Austria, S. 527-535, ISSN 0948-695x Draft accessed August 2007 at http://lamp.tu-graz.ac.at/...iknow.pdf
READ Trying to use Wikipedia paradigm: Unsuccessful wiki in creating an encyclopedia of concrete due to lack of motivation (using "free time"), and community feeling and inertia (new technology and environment). "Learners usually consume the learning content and are generally not interested in creating it on a voluntary basis."Labels: e-learning, elearning, wiki-tivities, wikis, wikitivities
posted by Helen Whitehead 12:03 PM
