Pedagogical Uses of Wikis in Higher Education

J. Patrick Tiedemann GEORGIA GWINNETT COLLEGE

Welcome & Who Are We?

What are our areas of interest? Current experience with Wikis? What do you want to get out of the hour?

Overview
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What are wikis? Take a look at the research, theory, and practice Writer's Workshop approach to constructing Wikis: Whole Group Activity Your interests HERE

What are Wikis?

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A group of interlinked pages, each with a unique name Can support both individual and team work Each page editable by a number of people, often a team or the whole community, Use of a simple set of markup punctuation and other non-alphabet character patterns that can be translated into common web page elements. Easily edited through a web browser, with previous versions of a page saved and retrievable in the event of mistakes
Chen, Cannon, Gabrio, & Leifer (2005)

What are Wikis?

Wikis generally take two formats: document mode and thread mode. Document wikis: Designers create collaborative multimodal web pages. Participants share the development of the pages, adding to and editing the content. Eventually the wiki page becomes a representation of the shared knowledge and perspectives of the contributors. Thread wikis: Basically, participants use the wiki as a discussion board. Contributors participate in discussions through signed messages. (Augar, Raitman & Zhou, 2004) Image wikis

Theory and Practice

Vygotskys theory of development is based on the idea that human learning is a social process that requires activity and collaboration with knowledgeable others. TOOL MEDIATED (LANGUAGE, SIGNS, CHARTS, DIAGRAMS, MULTIMEDIA) GOAL DIRECTED

Social Constructivism
The goal and purpose of learning activities: Dewey & Vygotsky: learning as skills versus learning through active, relevant social engagement; writing must be relevant to life (Vygotsky,1978, p. 118) The production of knowledge for an authentic audience in an enduring form shifts the value and purpose of our paper writing assignments, projects, etc. from exchange value to use value.

Social Constructivism
Our students work within their Zone of Proximal Development - During the development of wikis, the students shared knowledge construction can exceed an individuals current capabilities.
Current Independent Knowledge and Practice

ZPD
Assisted K. & P.

Future Independent Knowledge and Practice

Growing Body of Research

Teaching and learning online with wikis
Augar, Raitman, & Zhou (2004)

Students can use wikis to create a set of documents that reflect the shared knowledge of the learning group. Wikis can also be used to facilitate the dissemination of information, to enable the exchange of ideas and to facilitate group interaction. (p. 95).

Establishing Interaction

Icebreaker: Establishing Interaction

Results

451 users actively participated in the icebreaker exercise. A total of 87 pictures were uploaded and displayed Virtually all students participated actively and introduced themselves to each other by answering the questions. 1000 pages. 1000-2000 page views daily. Edited approximately 150 times daily; Over 2000 wiki edits in total. Throughout the two weeks of the exercise there was no misuse or intentional deletion

Using Wikis and Weblogs to Support Reflective Learning in an Introductory Engineering Design Course
Keys to initiating and maintaining the students engagement  Expressed reflection as a core expectation: establishing the use of the environment as a central part of the course from the first day.  Concreteness: giving regular, clear, small assignments for reflection about specific class-related experiences, along with examples that represented to the students good reflective writing, photography, drawing, excerpting from things encountered, seen, or read, etc.  Feedback: regularly engaging with the students in conversations about lessons to be learned from what they were experiencing, and encouraging the students to browse, learn from, and respond to what other students were creating;  Robustness
Chen, Cannon, Gabrio, & Leifer, 2005, pg. 9

Georgia Principles for Accomplished Teaching

Teachers use technology to facilitate teaching, learning, community building, and resource acquisition. Technology includes any flexible teaching and learning tools that support learner-centered instructional strategies. Teachers use modern technologies as tools to achieve high academic standards by integrating them into their teaching and their own professional growth. Educational communities must provide teachers with access to resources and mentors, exposure to useful practices, and opportunities to learn new technologies and technology evaluation skills.

Writers Workshop Approach

Immersion Collecting Ideas Choosing a Topic Gathering Topic Info Drafting Revising Editing Publishing Celebrating Reflection

Immersion
Best Guess Gathering

Learning Theory Wiki: GGC

Wikipedia Wiki Search Engine

Condensed
Collecting Ideas Choosing a Topic Gathering Topic Info Drafting Revising Lets Try It

Social Scaffolding
Editing Add questions, ideas, info, edits

Questions & Discussion

The Floor is Open

References
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, 5-8 December. Retrieved 1/10/10 from:
http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html

Chen, H.L., Cannon, D.M., Gabrio, J., & Leifer, L. (2005). Using Wikis and Weblogs to Support Reflective Learning in an Introductory Engineering Design Course. Paper presented at the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition, Portland Oregon. Vygotsky, L. (1979). Mind in Society. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1935)