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03 - Wikis for Engagement

Page history last edited by Hypocaffeinic 11 years, 11 months ago

The saying goes, “Find a job that you love, and you will never work a day in your life”. In essence, work that you love isn’t work, it is not a grind, and any perceived effort and drain is lost in the much greater perception of enjoyment and gain. Extrapolating to the higher education setting, by making learning engaging, interesting, and relevant, students can learn without feeling that they are grinding away at the 'chore' of studying, and will naturally spend more time at and show greater ownership of their own learning. There are a few ways to make learning more engaging, including increasing transactional presence, using active learning tasks, creating more variety within courses and giving students greater control over their learning, and good old whizz-bang tricks, toys, and gadgets.

Strong transactional presence of both peers and lecturers is essential in reducing the psychological distance perceived by students; with external student attrition often attributed at least in part to student perceptions of isolation and lack of support when studying off-campus, it is crucial that educators ensure their courses provide every opportunity for interaction. (Shin, 2003). The greater informality of the wiki environment can provide a comfortable place for interaction to occur, and the various means by which students can use wikis to communicate and work provides students with many options in which to ‘break the ice’. Students can establish their own presence within the wiki, and develop interactions that are supportive within the context of the course as well as of students’ overall discipline of studies at university. Positive engagement with others in the learning environment translates to positive engagement with the learning, and within the wiki this could have a feedback loop effect, with the interactions enhancing the collaborative focus of the activities and the sense of enjoyment and gain, again leading on to further time on task and engagement. (Kop, 2010; Witney & Smallbone, 2011). 

Kearsley and Schneiderman’s Engagement Theory (1998) proposed that collaboration benefited student engagement and retention through not only increased interaction, but also the nature of the exercises they were undertaking. Active learning through collaboration was proposed to achieve most when structured to involve three components: relate, create, donate. Students relate to each other through teamwork, communication, and planning, to create a project that has genuine meaning and relevance to students’ learning and career goals. The project should have value to external parties, to whom it is donated, for example other student groups within the course, or the wider professional community of their discipline. Wikis are supremely suited to raising student engagement by facilitating such active learning tasks, and donation of the project to others is simply a matter of making the site public and spreading the word.

The ability for users to integrate other web 2.0 technologies within wiki pages infinitely broadens not only the scope of their application in e-learning, but also their reach in terms of engaging students and capturing their attention. By creating and sharing knowledge through myriad possible mediums, students are able to express themselves in far more ways than traditionally possible within the confines of written assignments. This will support those learners for whom articulate writing remains a challenge, and reflects also that within modern professional life, demonstration of skill and application of knowledge does not occur solely through extensive writings but also by use of other communication forms. Students may also be engaged by provision of regular quizzes within the wiki; for example, conceptests have been shown to improve student attendance, learning, and enjoyment, and these engaging tools are easily integrated within wiki pages. (McConnell et al, 2006).

Within this wiki are several pages demonstrating the integration of other web 2.0 and social networking tools, as well as utilities that make wiki life easier and assist in reducing cognitive load; these are linked to in the table below, along with some examples of possible uses:

Blog Posts

• Student or lecturer blog posts may be easily imported and displayed upon dedicated pages.
• Posts may be displayed in full or truncated with links to full posts.

File Sharing

• Not a web 2.0 tool but a necessary part of collaboration included in wikis, the ability to share files and references to unlimited recipients.

Polls & Surveys

• Students may create and integrate polls for many reasons; for example, to make a group decision on a collaborative project topic from a list of student submissions.
• Lecturers may create surveys to receive student feedback on such matters as course facilitation, choice of tutorial subject matter, preferred nature of tutorials, etc.
• Surveys are often free to create and easy to use, and permit customisation of poll appearance.
• Most online survey sites provide html code and instructions for instant integration into websites.

Quizzes

• Online quiz making sites allow creation of many various quizzes, including different question styles.
• Such sites permit customisation of survey appearance, and options regarding display of score and answers, and direct email notification to the lecturer of student submissions.
• Lecturers may post within their course wiki a weekly quiz to review each week’s material.

Rollback Function

• The ability of wikis to track changes also includes a rollback function. Should any unwanted or malicious changes occur, reverting back to an earlier version is a matter of selecting and clicking.

RSS Feeds

• RSS feeds of student blogs can be displayed upon a page, providing a one-stop place for students to check up on their peers’ latest publications.
• RSS feeds of student and lecturer twitter posts can displayed.
• RSS feeds from external websites of relevance may be displayed; for example, a combined feed of emergency medicine and paramedical news updates from the many medical news sites could be displayed upon a paramedic faculty wiki. This would promote awareness of the role of research and progress in informing both students’ education and daily paramedic practice.

Skype

• Lecturers can install widgets that students may click upon to instantly call their lecturer for a video or voice-only call.
• Students can put their own Skype buttons upon the site for easy video collaboration between group members. Calls may be made one-to-one, or as group videoconferences.
• The provision of Skype buttons allows easy access to video calls for students whilst working upon the site, and increases the transactional presence of both lecturer and student peers. Lecturers may conduct video lectures for students, and are able to share their desktop to present information or feedback.

YouTube

• YouTube video pages provide html code for users to embed video into web pages. These may be to share information found within YouTube, or to present or work upon class projects or group presentations.
• Videos can present course material, such as demonstrations of practical skills. Lecturers could present video feedback to groups on their wiki work.
• Another example may be uploading video recordings of student paramedics’ scenario performances for peer evaluation and review.


Next: Wikis for Lifelong Learning.




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Kearsley, D., & Schneiderman, B. (1998). Engagement theory: A framework for technology-based teaching and learning. Educational Technology, 38(5), 20-23.

Kop, R. (2010). Using social media to create a place that supports communication. In G. Veletsianos. (Ed.). Emerging Technologies in Distance Education. [e-Book Edition]. Edmonton, Alberta: AU Press.

McConnell, D., Steere, D., Owens, K., Knott, J., Van Horn, S., Borowski, W., … Heaney, P. (2006). Using conceptests to access and improve student conceptual understanding in introductory geoscience courses. Journal of Geoscience Education, 54(1), 61-68.

Shin, N. (2003). Transactional presence as a critical predictor of success in distance learning. Distance Education, 24(1), 69-86. doi: 10.1080/0158791032000066534.

Witney, D., & Smallbone, T. (2011). Wiki work: Can using wikis enhance student collaboration for group assignment tasks? Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 48(1), 101-110.

 

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