Mark Gamble
Posts: 2
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| 29/05/2007 07:57 |
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Ours are still threatened by unplanned down-time and being able to trust their colleagues not to do something unfortunate. It takes a lot of effort to build trust and is probably harder over an interface rather than f-2-f.
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Anne Tierney
Posts: 8
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| 29/05/2007 09:18 |
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| My experience with wikis is mixed. I have tried them with students and also with colleagues, and they are never really taken up. I'm not sure why, but I think maybe it's an issue of trust? Wikis can be changed and maybe people don't like their work being messed with? I know I felt a whole lot more secure when I discovered the "history" button on Moodle. |
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Gwyneth Hughes
Posts: 1
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| 29/05/2007 09:29 |
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I haven't used a Wiki but have worked with a group edited document using Word and tracking changes. This also requires trust but did not seem to be a problem with a familiar technology.
Apart from a much larger potential audience are Wikis that different? |
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Bobby Elliott
Posts: 4
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| 29/05/2007 10:07 |
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Posted By Anne Tierney on 29/05/2007 09:18
My experience with wikis is mixed. I have tried them with students and also with colleagues, and they are never really taken up. I'm not sure why
My experience of online learning is that students will not engage with it unless it's assessed. So, simply asking students to contribute to a wiki will not succeed.
Then the question becomes, how do you assess their contributions to a wiki? In a purist sense, a wiki is no different from any piece of collaborative writing but, I believe, that you *must* take the technology into account - which means incorporating technical aspects of the wiki environment into the marking scheme.
Maybe we should create a wiki to collaborate on a wiki rubric? |
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sue tickner
Posts: 5
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| 29/05/2007 11:07 |
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Gwyneth, in some ways a word document is similar but in my experience there's a difference of magnitude with wikis, and the 'track changes' equivalent is at best a bit obscure...as Anne says you feel you need to 'discover' and become proficient in the use of the history feature, for one thing.
Much more significant though I think is the fact that a wiki can very easily spiral out into a hyperlinked cyber-spaghetti. You can't [easily?] link Word pages/documents/bits from other people's documents etc. in the same way. Giving students an initial structure seemed to help a bit - ie. 'contents, theories, analysis, references' etc.
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Nick Bunyan
Posts: 1
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| 29/05/2007 11:32 |
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We have a number of staff within the University who are using a wiki tool (Learning Objects - Teams LX) in Blackboard modules. They have been used successfuly to build knowldege around practical sessions, were student experinces are recorded and passed on to next years students, to collaborative assessed projects etc. One member of staff in particular, creates groups of students (about 7 0r 8 in each group) and gives them weekly discussion topics - he then monitors student discussions in each wiki and adapts his weekly lecture to support them with specific topics or issues that they are having difficulty with. Therefore, uses the wiki to get good feedback on were the students are with thier learning and be able to respond. This approach has been very successful and resulted in improving exam results etc. but is not assessed and only used by about 50% of the students.
I'm interested in others experinces of the benefits that wikis offer to staff - do they enable staff to gain more information and feedback about students level of understanding at any particualar point in a learning process, and does this enable more timely and focused feedback to be offered?
Typically, are wikis helping to manage this process more effectively - are there administrative gains for staff over other methods?
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Lesley Lawrence
Posts: 4
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| 29/05/2007 15:59 |
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Nick
One of the benefits through using the Wiki tool within BREO we've found as staff, is getting a better feel for the real working lives, competencies and knowledge of the students (many are full time members of staff) through looking around their sites. And there have been many e-mails about difficulties and successes. This has helped in trying to give better guidance and support - its been perhaps more easy to see the 'struggle' in cases, and thus respond. And it is possible to give everyone personalised feedback about their developing work, thus allowing the correction and refocusing of students where they may have misunderstood the task or where they are stuck. Several asked specifically for feedback on their developing pages and their response to previous comments.
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Lesley Lawrence
Posts: 4
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| 29/05/2007 16:07 |
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Its interesting Anne - some students have indicated they were concerned about the possibility of things they'd written being changed, but changing others work has not happened to the extent we predicted. Many will add a comment instead or suggest another link or to visit another student's site. So it perhaps hasn't worked out as collaborative as intended initially.
They were given guidance re. treating other's work with respect if amending others' pages, but most have chosen not to amend! It will be interesting to find out why this option was not really taken up, which we'll do when getting further feedback - they've been asked to produce a one page unassessed reflective piece on how they found developing the Wiki. |
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David Harrison
Posts: 1
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| 29/05/2007 17:26 |
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| Whilst I have not tried using a wiki as such I have tried stimulating discussions on Blackboard with the Discussion Forum. But just as in lessons/classes there are those who contribute and those who don't. It's difficult to maintain the interest of the few when faced with relative apathy from the majority. Have tried the Virtual Classroom which can be very stimulating, though it attracts the enthusiastic students only. But reading other's views at this conference suggest I should perhaps formalise the on-line discussions, make contribution mandatory, and "assess" simply by whether they contributed or not. I am thinking now of insisting that all students discuss on-line the content of each of my lectures (befere the next lecture) as a means of self-help which I can then use their discussion as a means of assessing how well I got ideas across in the lectures and deciding what I need to revisit next lesson. |
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Bobby Elliott
Posts: 4
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| 31/05/2007 10:14 |
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Posted By David Harrison on 29/05/2007 17:26
But reading other's views at this conference suggest I should perhaps formalise the on-line discussions, make contribution mandatory, and "assess" simply by whether they contributed or not. I am thinking now of insisting that all students discuss on-line the content of each of my lectures (befere the next lecture) as a means of self-help which I can then use their discussion as a means of assessing how well I got ideas across in the lectures and deciding what I need to revisit next lesson.
David - The evidence would certainly support this approach. Non-mandatory participation in online activities invariably fail.
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