Week 8: Wikis, Wikipedia, Wikibooks, and Collaborative Writing

Week 8: March 1, 2010

Wikis are a tool for social construction of knowledge (Dr. Curt Bonk). I have heard of wikis, wikipedia and wikibooks but have not ever used any personally nor with students. I am an inexperienced wikian. So I learned a lot from the articles and interactions this week.

Several articles for the week describe the use of wikis in education:

Sajjapanroj, Bonk, Lee, and Lin in the article, “ The Window on Wikibookians: Surveying their Statuses, Successes, Satisfactions and Sociocultural Experiences ” (2005) state -

“For instance, one participant argued for, ‘A way for people to communicate with each other, a way to track the contributions of each person, a way to make the information accessible to newcomers, a simple interface that an average person can learn very quickly or even use intuitively.’ Another participant emphasized the importance of a voting system; ‘I think for revisions, a voting system might be instituted. This eliminates power struggles over points of view, etc.’ Clearly, there remain many wikibook components and tools that require additional refinements and enhancements to facilitate online collaboration and coordination among Wikibookians” (p. 50).

Interesting 'stats' that the article points out include:
• Wikibokian Demographics - majority less than 35 years old, male, 50% less than bachelors education, about 75% employeed in education and business, 77% had experience working/learning in a collaborative onnline environment outside of Wikibook.
• Wikibook processes - 78% felt that contributing to a learning/sharing of knowledge effort was most important reason to participate, personal growth and enrichment was rated second highest (58%), 94% found tools and resources fun to use, 75% found wikibook projects challenging, 70% indicated they did not personally own the project suggesting a strong community spirit of ownership (not unlike tribal social relationships, I think), even though book completion was slow, 90% felt their most recent project was personally rewarding
• Wikibook environments and tools - tool features were satisfactory (88%- tools, 68% discussion tools, 64% user-friendly website - % indicating OK)
• Wikibooks and Sociocultural - 82% considered indepenent learning was encouraged, 100% believed wikibooks promoted online collaboration.

Another article called: “Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom” by Ferris and Wilder points out:

Ownership or self-control of learning is an important principle. Educators "must allow students complete control of the content in order for a wiki to work effectively as a teaching and learning tool." It is suggested that educations should be less concerned about editing untrustworthy information out but helping students know how to "make their own judgments regarding the accuracy of information."

Uses for wikis in this research learning environment included:
• collaborative activities - collaborative writing, problem-solving, creating and sharing of information sources, i.e would our R685 forum fit this activity?
• information sources,
• submission of student assignments
• project spaces.

A final article by O’Shea, Baker, Allen, Curry-Corcoran, & Allen, (2007, Winter), New Levels of Student Participatory Learning: A WikiText for the Introductory Course in Education, Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 6(3), http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/issues/PDF/6.3.5.pdf states:

“students find the Wikitext process credible and value the experience and the next step is to determine if professionals validate the student perceptions of credibility. This WikiText experiment is a major effort to integrate content, pedagogy, and technology. Each of these three course dimensions interact and support the others in learning online.”


Interesting links / tidbits for the week:

http://www.wikimatrix.org/ compares side by side different wikis (advantages and disadvantages)

http://wikimania2009.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:309 A conference video as a quick overview of how a class might collaborate to write their own textbook.

http://www.wikihow.com/Main-Page a ‘how to’ wiki page

http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7026.pdf seven things you should know about Wikipedia from Educause, (2007, June)

I will try to be brave and attempt the use of wikis in teaching my future online nursing courses.

deb