A Brief Overview of Wikis for Teaching, Learning, and Research

Jason Gorman

Instructional Designer, HGSE

Fall 2008

Wikis = low-threshold technology

Wikis are simple yet versatile

100+ wiki platforms listed at wikimatrix.org

Why wikis for education?

Editing function:• Facilitates collaborative learning

• Extends classroom’s social learning potential

• Driven by students, facilitated by faculty

History Function:• Makes students’ thinking visible

• Places importance on process, not outcomes

Five-minute Case Study

Faculty wants a place where students can:• Share and annotate resources

• Co-create a world-viewable website that provides research-based information and analysis of their subject matter

• Share their work with other students and observers outside their group

• Have an online space that reflects the group’s personality

Faculty tasks

Make expectations transparent to students• Set and share clear learning objectives

• Communicate to students what the faculty role is

• Create and share assessment criteria with students– Assessment of the group

– Assessment of the individual students

Tips for collaboration

Norms for CollaborationFor Note Takers: Please add your notes below the appropriate reading. Be sure to identify yourself. If you are adding your notes after others have left theirs, we encourage you to engage previous observations.

For Commenters: Please add your comments below the appropriate reading notes, and please use blue text. Again, be sure to identify yourself.

From HGSE Professor Meira Levinson’s course wiki

Assessment criteria for group work

• Student self-evaluations

• Peer evaluations

Faculty tasks

Provide guidance before and during assignment• Provide students with wiki training

• Present best practices and tips for collaboration

• Early in the assignment, model best practices

• Give iterative, low-stakes assessment and feedback

Student Tasks

Common to most group work• Understand the faculty person’s expectations

• Determine group roles and responsibilities

• Plan to meet various deliverable dates

Specific to using a wiki• Learn the technology

• View other group’s work and progress

Benefits of Collaboration

There is no reason to keep knowledge “private,” and no reason to duplicate effort. After all, it is in your collective interest to have everybody learn as much as possible—this will make for better class sessions, and for better colleagues as you find yourself teaching together in the future! And, since the class is graded on the basis of criterion-referenced demonstrations of mastery, rather than on a normed bell curve, you have no reason to compete with each other. Collaboration is in everyone’s interest. Furthermore, insofar as the readings will frequently function as background context for the activities we do in class, rather than be foregrounded through explicit text-based discussions, [your TF] and I will benefit if we can “see your thinking” about the readings on paper since you won’t always be able to share it verbally in class.

From HGSE Professor Meira Levinson’s course wiki