Wafa-Makky Nichols
Posts: 3
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| 25/05/2007 07:26 |
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Excellant, I've already learnt something new!
I had met Wikapedia of course but didnt now about Wikis or their potential use in education. Are Wikis widely used ? and what is others experience (positive and negative ) about them? (apologies for doubel posting but I thought this would be better as a separate thread!)
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Peter Kandlbinder
Posts: 4
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| 28/05/2007 06:57 |
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| The idea of online collaborative work spaces has been around for some time and wikis provide a simple solution to collaborative writing. They have been incorporated into large LMS like Blackboard and WebCT so in once sense they are widely used but I think it would be fair to say that there is still a large degree of experimentation to try and determine the best use of wikis for learning. |
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Bobby Elliott
Posts: 4
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| 28/05/2007 10:04 |
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| One of the major challenges (and barriers to adoption of wikis in assessment) is the lack of rubrics to appraise candidate's individual contributions. Assessing group work is always difficult but it is even more acute when it comes to collaborative writing. |
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Catherine Owen
Posts: 27
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| 28/05/2007 11:08 |
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| I agree with Bobby that applying summative assessment to collaborative writing activities is particularly challenging. I also think collaborative writing is a exceptionally valuable fomative activity that very often demands deep engagement with course materials and concepts. Moreover, the experience of collaboration, debate and negotiation towards a consensus is an authentic task replicated in many workplaces and thus also hits many of the employability targets courses are now required to demonstrate. I wonder whether summative assessment of collaborative writing should be seen as a barrier to adoption of technologies like WIKIs in course designs? Does every student activity demand a summative mark? Are there other ways in which student contributions to a WIKI can be 'counted'? |
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Wafa-Makky Nichols
Posts: 3
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| 28/05/2007 13:58 |
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| Is the problem of assessing an individuals contribution in a Wiki or online project really any different than if they were working on taditional "paper" project. ? (This is difficult enough!) |
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Bobby Elliott
Posts: 4
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| 28/05/2007 14:14 |
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Is the problem of assessing an individuals contribution in a Wiki or online project really any different than if they were working on taditional "paper" project. ? (This is difficult enough!)
That's a good question. I'm not sure of the answer. In some respects it might be easier since a wiki tracks individual contributions (via the "history" function). It would be great to see some "wiki rubrics" if anyone has developed one.
Maybe there is nothing special about assessing wikis and the only issue is that of assessing collaborative writing. So, how do you assess collaborative writing...?
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David Nicol
Posts: 18
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| 28/05/2007 18:28 |
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| one scenario for assessment of wiki contributions would be for students to decide themselves what a good contribution would be. You might expect wiki contributions to build on what is already there (on contributions that have gone befoe), to summarise an important idea, to be interesting or informative or scholarly or to be supported by evidence. The issue might not be having a rubric but the lack of precision in how you would award marks under its components, if that was your intention. I love the idea that students might build their own understanding of a course and their own representation of a topic in a discipline by creating an interlinked series of wikipaedia entries as the participate in the course. This would have to be structured but I am sure it is not beyond our imagination to do this. |
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Steve Draper
Posts: 25
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| 28/05/2007 19:51 |
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Conversely: what are (for the purposes of these case studies / great assessment designs) the important features of wikis? Baxter just uses a VLE; and the essential issues seem to be:
a) ability to set up large numbers of small groups of students, private from each other. This is in a way opposite of wikipedia or a wiki for a whole course together
b) The software keeps a complete record of inter-student interaction do you think there are any important differences, apart from scale, between your design and Baxter’s?, that can be used later if required: so both work without the teacher looming, and possible policing if required.
SteveD
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Rachel Byars
Posts: 2
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| 28/05/2007 23:47 |
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| I have found that students are still not very good and coming forward with discussion forums on Blackboard, especially if they are not assessed on the material. However, I am very interested in ways to building students understanding of a course, especially with an internship programme where they will be off campus but for many still need links to lecturers. This case has given me some inspiration and the feedback. |
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marija cubric
Posts: 25
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| 28/05/2007 23:56 |
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As mentioned by Bobby, wiki provides means for "recovering" individual contributions from the collective work (although in many wiki implementations that feature is very primitive and will need to be enhanced to really help with assessment), so in that way there is not much difference between wiki or paper-based assessment of individual parts of group work. However, the question might have been how to assess "collaboration" i.e. if a student simply re-iterate what has already been said in the answer as opposed to supplementing or enhancing the work that is already there...
I am not aware of any research on how to assess "collaboration" and would (possibly wrongly?) assume that this is the new (web2) topic to be addressed...
Regarding WebCT discussion form vs wiki - there are some differences and I would be happy to discuss that tomorrow (it is getting late:)
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marija cubric
Posts: 25
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| 29/05/2007 00:11 |
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Re: Baxter's case study and in general traditional VLE vs wiki here are some thoughts on benefits of wikis compared to traditional VLE (with enhancements such as version control mechanism)
- provides a look&feel of a real web page,
- facilitates "connected" writing (i.e. use of internal and external links)
- adds more flexibility w.r.t layout, selection of features (after all wikis are the ultimate content-management system)
- goes beyond institutional boundaries (potential to be used outside of institutional Intranet's and to involve "many,many teachers" (Will Richardson's excellent book on web2 classroom)
- provides single place for knowledge creation/testing/assessment/...
But, as already mentioned in a separate reply, for all this to make any difference to any L&T process, we need a method to "plan, shape and enforce" wiki activities (WikiSymp06 article on the role of teachers in wiki-based L&T). More to come...
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Lee Asher-Simpson
Posts: 9
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| 29/05/2007 00:54 |
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I have not used subject/content oriented collaborative Wikis. The reason for this is, I find it hard to imagine how to generate or create an authentic task. It is my thought that assessment of a Wiki would not really be a problem if the task was authentic. This authenticity naturally generates parameters against which the work can be evaluated .
I am planning to require that my students contribute some unique knowledge a to Wikipedia, as a part of their ICT course next Semester. To me the authenticity is generated from the reaction of the readers to the contribution.As my students are mostly International Students, my main focus is on providing a task which others not just the teacher will be reading. If the work is of a high enough standard, it will remain up on the Internet, if not they will observe editing or deletion of their work. My assessment will be concerned with the quality and quantity of their written communication in the English Language. |
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Rebecca Sisk
Posts: 5
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| 29/05/2007 01:31 |
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| I haven't tried Wikis in teaching but have experienced them as a seminar participant. I will be teaching an undergraduate nursing research course to RN-BSN students (already RNs, returning for baccalaureate) and hope to use Wikis to help students work in teams to find ways to participate in evidence-based practice activities in the hospitals where they work. Some will have had experience with this and some will not, since they will be from several different-sized hospitals in Central Illinois. I will use course objectives and module subobjectives as a basis for both formative and summative evaluation but can see the need for developing or using already-developed rubrics. My greatest concern about using Wikis is that students may be leary of the technology (will use Google Wiki), may resist group work, or may have difficulty determining the procedures they will use as examples. I suspect they may, at first, be unclear about how they would like to assess their work. However, perhaps that ability could be developed from course to course as students progress. |
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Kaye Cleary
Posts: 2
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| 29/05/2007 02:09 |
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As you suggest David, rubrics provide clarity but may not be the best approach in some circumstances. Steve nominated “a complete record of inter-student interaction” as one of the advantages of wiki work. Collaborative tasks generate a significant volume of dialogue (in addition to the final artifact) so my challenge was to develop a strategy to assist students recognise high quality contributions to the various facets of collaborative endeavours.
I provide criteria for each task that reflects these facets: knowledge building, a community or social presence, extension and questioning strategies used to develop collaborative understandings and so on. Students have this available at the outset as I believe that this helps to structure productive and professional communication. Students nominate a limited number of contributions and provide an explanation of why the particular contributions were nominated. I’m off to read Marija’s reference to the role of teachers in wiki-based L&T in her “post 4”.
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Margot McNeill
Posts: 2
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| 29/05/2007 04:59 |
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Hi Kaye,
I agree that students need scaffolding in order to develop skills in 'knowledge building' and 'collaborating' and your criteria would guide students during the process. Do you spend any time in your unit discussing these 'higher order skills' with your students?
Margot |
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Kaye Cleary
Posts: 2
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| 29/05/2007 05:54 |
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I would have to respond with 'yes and no' to your question of whether we discuss the meta structure of collaboration and skills development in the unit Margot. This is because I focus on professional conversations and emphasise the naturally occuring collaborative aspects of the discipline and the nexus between knowledge building and skill development. The first part of the unit has explicit discussion of the value of peer support and sharing perspectives, questions and solutions - at this stage, peer engagement is optional. Because students taking the unit are from a variety of courses/programs (education, information systems, science, nursing and editing/publishing) these higher order skills of collaboration are embedded in the process. I have found that exemplars from previous classes help illustrate 'good' examples of the criteria too.
Have you found some scaffolding techniques particularly effective? |
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Saretha Brussow
Posts: 4
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| 29/05/2007 07:35 |
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| I am very much into the scaffolding of students that are underprepared for higher education. I believe that these students will not be able to "function" optimaly in a wiki environment because of their dependance on facilitator support and guidance. However if introduced gradually outonomy can be developed in these students, especially those students that feel alienated by the Western culture of the academic world in which they experience facilitators as unaproachable. The Wiki thus provides a safe non-threatening environment and if done in collaboration peer support developes skills the underprepared student lack |
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marija cubric
Posts: 25
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| 29/05/2007 07:50 |
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| "safe non-threatening environment" is really a key - I have experienced this with my internetational students who are much more visible and vocal in their on-line work then in class |
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marija cubric
Posts: 25
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| 29/05/2007 07:53 |
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| Very useful for international students - since they can see examples of good (English) writing from (some of !) their native-English-speaking collegues |
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marija cubric
Posts: 25
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| 29/05/2007 07:56 |
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| At the beginning students are a bit puzzled with the purpose of wiki work, but as the time progresses they engage and in particular, if they do it again (e.g. in the second semester and with a different module) they act as role models for other less-experienced collegues |
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