SOLSTICE 2007 Conference, Edge Hill University 1

Using the Wiki the Wrong Way: a case study in plantsciences

Fran Tracy

†

, Katy Jordan, Keith Johnstone

Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge

†

fet21@cam.ac.ukABSTRACT

The Plant Sciences Pedagogy Project began in the autumn of 2005 as part of theCambridge-MIT Institute (CMI) Education Programme. The project objectives within theDepartment of Plant Sciences at Cambridge were two-fold: to conduct research intoteaching and learning of undergraduates within the department and to developsupportive on-line learning resources.Research focused on the second year undergraduate course called ‘Plant & MicrobialSciences’ (IB PMS). Technical support for use of the University’s instance of the SakaiVirtual Research Environment (VRE) platform, known as CamTools, was providedwithin the university from the Centre for Applied Research in Educational Technologies(CARET). CamTools provides a number of optional tools for implementation within anycourse or work site.Wikis have been heralded as one of a number of new and powerful forms of softwarecapable of supporting a range of collaborative ventures and learning activities. TheSakai wiki tool, implemented by CARET, was originally designed to support participantsin collaborative research projects. We immediately saw an opportunity to use the wikitool to structure the content of the IB PMS course site within our Sakai based VirtualLearning Environment (VLE). This enabled the site to contain searchable wiki formattedlecture notes with links to glossary pages and to a wide range of other learningresources. However, we initially restricted the access and editing rights of the sitemembers so that lecturers have edit but not administration rights and students areunable to edit any pages. Are we breaking the rules? We put across our case that thewiki is a more versatile tool than the developers originally envisaged, and that it is notnecessary to allow full editing rights to all members of a VLE in order to support theteaching and learning of students in higher education.

KEYWORDS

Case study, e-Learning, Higher Education, VLE, Wiki

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INTRODUCTION

The Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge uses a range ofteaching and learning environments including lectures, practical laboratories and smallgroup tutorials. The Plant Sciences Pedagogy Project - a two-year research anddevelopment project concerned with small-group teaching - was funded as part of theCambridge-MIT Institute's Education Programme. The research element of this projectwas designed to illuminate current practice and to identify areas in which evidence-based development might take place. It is a multi-method study including a series ofstudent surveys, focus groups of students, semi-structured interviews with staffmembers, and the collection of videos of small group teaching. The information we havegained from this research has served to provide a sound educational warrant to drivedevelopment and improvement of the course online resources.We were introduced to a Sakai ‘online collaboration and learning environment’ [1] by theCentre for Applied Research in Educational Technology (CARET) at the University ofCambridge, known as ‘CamTools’. Sakai is based on ‘community source’ software,which is maintained, upgraded and developed by a community of partner universities, ofwhich the University of Cambridge is a member. CamTools was launched in 2005, andwe were one of the first users. Prior to this project, some online teaching resources hadbeen implemented by the department, including a ‘CourseWork’ website, in whichlecture handouts and powerpoint slides were organised in a windows explorer style filestore (shown in Figure 1); in addition, a number of course tutors had developed theirown tutorial resources hosted in the University CamCommunity site. Using theinformation derived from our research into small-group teaching at the time theUniversity moved its VLE from CourseWork to CamTools provided a good opportunityreview the online resources, as well as to develop additional resources and support thatthe students would find genuinely useful.From early 2006, work began to explore the capabilities of CamTools to support the IBPMS course, and to establish a logical design framework in advance of the approachingacademic year. We were therefore developing ideas about how to teach online at thesame time as learning to use the VLE. We experimented with utilising the software andour own resources in different ways, whilst keeping in mind some clear research basedgoals.The IB PMS course is an option undertaken by undergraduate students in the secondyear of the Natural Sciences Tripos (NST) degree course at the University ofCambridge. It is not a distance learning or part-time course. Teaching is largely carriedout through lectures, laboratory-based practical classes and small-group tutorials.

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Figure 1

: CourseWork, the online learning environment previously used at the University ofCambridge, which has now been superceded by the Sakai-based CamTools VLE.

Our primary focus was to be able to house all the lecture materials which previouslyconsisted of lecture handouts and slides in pdf format. Whilst using the resources tool tostore all the relevant files, we opted also to use the wiki tool to present the material tostudents in a more intuitive, dynamic and engaging way (Figure 2).Despite having little experience of web authoring, and a lack of other examples to follow(as Sakai had not been previously used for this type of VLE application), the potential ofthe wiki was quickly realised. This paper reviews the ways in which we have utilised thewiki within a virtual learning environment, whether ‘rightly’ or ‘wrongly’ according to theconventionally accepted spirit of a wiki.

What is a wiki?

A wiki is a web-based area where visitors can view and edit content. Wikis are thebrainchild of Ward Cunningham, and the wiki ethos fits in with the inventor of theinternet Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a read-write web [2]. The name wiki is derivedfrom ‘wikiwiki’, the Hawaiian term for ‘quick’ [3], as networks of interlinked pages can bedeveloped in very little time, mainly due to the ease in which hyperlinks can be assignedto particular words, generating a new webpage which can then be populated with theinformation relating to the word in question.