Developing transferable digital literacy skills with wiki-based learning activities

Marija CubricUniversity of Hertfordshire

ProblemAxioms:

retention <= students’ satisfaction <=sense of community,employability,perception of increased learning …

What kind of skills should we foster in order to increase sense of community, employability, etc?How should we help students in developing the skills ?

Collaborative writing

• Collaborative development of one or more wiki pages concurrently i.e. at the same time (as for example in wikipedia)

• “Constructing a text” through a group work

Digital skills for collaborative writing (Jenkins, 2008*) • Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample

and remix media content• Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool

knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal

• Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms. *Jenkins at el. (2006) Confronting the Challenges of Participatory

Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. MacArthur.

ITMB* Degree Learning Outcomes •present, argument, explain

using different media•use knowledge to more effectively complete challenging business assignments•gain insight into the preferences, motivations, strengths and weaknesses of other people•influencing and persuading others constructively•develop self-reliance and ability to self-start•giving and receiving direct feedback constructively*ITMB (2006) Information Technology Management for Business Honours

Degree Learning Outcomes & Skills Requirements, e-skills UK

UH BS wikis: Overview (2006-2009*)

Level Lecturer Module Group size

Grade%

Engagement

PG M Cubric 5 ISPM modules 10-20 15-30% 80-100%

PG J Fletcher Corporate Finance 33 10% 88%

PG D Paterson Bus Problem Analysis 31 0 Low

L3 A Bond Project Management 182 0 Low

L3 M Catulli Sales Management 43 0 Low

L3 J Easter Practice of Auditing 75 0 Low

L3 J Hobson Bus Intelligence Online 21 29% 5%

L3 R Balawender System Development 73 10% 50%

L2 M Banks Retail Marketing 84 15% 77%

L2 S Luz 2 x Business Economics 60-106 30% 65%

L2 K Robins OR Models 70 15% 82%*Cubric M., Banks M., Fletcher J., Hobson J., Luz S., Robins K. (2008) Scaling up wiki-based blended learning environment. In: Subhi-Yamin, T. (Ed.). (2008). Excellence in Education 2008: Future Minds and Creativity. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Centre for Innovation in Education (ICIE) held in Paris-France (July 1-4, 2008)

Wiki learning activities

Benefits**Quotes from UH BS students• Through this piece of coursework, I have learnt that I do not know as much as

I thought I did regarding economics as a whole

• Looking at my input on Wiki made me feel quite good, because I could see my input to the whole course.

• I learnt a lot from other people's input, whenever I got stuck alone, I would hop onto Wiki page and get the answers I needed…

• I also learned how to reach to a single conclusion or decision….

• The Wiki page is a good part of learning because it encourages class members to integrate

• Knowledge and skill I gained from using Wi-ki page will be useful for me in the future because Wi-ki page can be used for business purpose

• It encouraged me to look into specific areas in greater depths and learn from the contribution of others and my own research

Importance of learning

*Cubric M,, Luz S. (2009) An econometric study on the benefits of using wikis as a tool for blended learning. Draft

Challenges**Quotes from UH BS students

• The most obvious difficulty was the non existence of communication within the group.

• I was faced with the difficulty with the members of my group do not contributing

• sometimes the work carried out does not flow like an essay, and this is due to some members not reading other people's parts…

• that a lot of information can get repeated easily

Conclusions Collaborative writing, is an important “digital literacy” skill, increasingly required by the new businesses models, where “collaboration is the expectation rather than exception” *Richardson W. Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other powerful web tools for the classroom. Corwin Press,, 2006)

Students report benefits that range from gaining deeper subject knowledge, and enhancing their learning to gaining non-cognitive skills such as leadership, team working, and others

The main issues are related to lack of sustainable and “spontaneous” engagement (“playful creation”*leading to the learning activities that are tied to formal assessment *Ebersbach A. et al Wiki : Web Collaboration, Springer, 2005

The main challenge is designing a fair assessment strategy that promotes and awards collaboration and provide “participatory incentives”