Peripatetic electronic teachers in higher education

This paper explores the idea of information and communications technology providing a medium enabling higher education teachers to act as freelance agents. The notion of a ‘Peripatetic Electronic Teacher’ (PET) is introduced to encapsulate this idea. PETs would exist as multiple telepresences (pedagogical, professional, managerial and commercial) in PET‐worlds; global networked environments which support advanced multimedia features. The central defining rationale of a pedagogical presence is described in detail and some implications for the adoption of the PET‐world paradigm are discussed. The ideas described in this paper were developed by the author during a recently completed Short‐Term British Telecom Research Fellowship, based at the BT Adastral Park

Uses and Potentials of Wikis in the Classroom

As Prensky (2001) observes, "Our students have changed radically. Today's students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach " (1). Prensky sees today's students as digital natives while most of today's teachers remain digital immigrants. In particular, today's educators are acculturated to a print paradigm while students are increasingly products of a digitally-based secondary-oral paradigm. Happily for educators, electronic and cyber technologies can potentially combine the best aspects of both print and secondary-oral paradigms, allowing educators to move freely across the print-oral continuum. One cyber technology enabling this movement is the wiki, a unique interface where information is not fixed (as in a print model) but fluid and flexible to meet the needs of the community (as in the pre-literate age). In this article we describe how teaching and learning have changed across oral, print, and secondary-oral paradigms; in turn, after addressing some controversies over the use of wikis as scholarly and educational resources, we advocate the use of wikis as a teaching and learning tool. Technology and Learning Paradigms As technologies have changed through the millennia, so have teaching methods. From the one-to-one oral teaching style of the early agrarian age (pre-writing and pre-printing cultures) to the apprenticeship system and one-to-many lectures of the pre-industrial ages (writing and print cultures), teaching was predominantl

Student Wiki Pages: Online collaboration in a networked environment

This chapter is concerned with student collaboration and ‘peer-support’ pedagogy as facilitated by online learning environments. Specifically the chapter discusses the use of wiki tools as part of the e-learning strategy in a first year BA (Hons) Communication and Media unit at Bournemouth University. The pedagogical aim here is to assess students’ ability to work effectively in a computer-mediated environment by applying interpersonal communication skills taught in the unit, whilst fostering a professional engagement with the unit’s theoretical foundation and facilitating student-centred learning. The Student Wiki Pages is an educational strategy that encourages students to develop active learning, media literacy and scholarship at the start of their degree programmes, providing a solid underpinning for their future studies. Collaboratively producing a wiki means students have to be self-reflexive and critically evaluate their own notes from lectures and set readings on a weekly basis. Drawing on evidence from 2010/2011, the chapter will demonstrate how the Student Wiki Pages helped inspire students’ commitment to learning by analysing five core areas where student performance improved. Practical complexities of assessing collaborative learning will be evaluated, together with a discussion on how to manage student expectations in relation to grading and feedback

Whispers in the Classroom

Part of the Volume on Digital Young, Innovation, and the UnexpectedOnline backchannel chat rooms offer the potential to transform classroom learning in unexpected and powerful ways. However, the specific ways in which they can influence teaching pedagogy and learning opportunities are less well understood. Activities in a backchannel may include the dissemination of ideas, knowledge building, asking and answering questions, engaging in critical discourse, and sharing information and resources. This chapter describes a backchannel chat room that has taken place over multiple years in a large university student community. It explores unforeseen and exciting opportunities, as well as possible limitations, for designing teaching and learning practices to leverage this communication medium. With a deeper understanding of the opportunities and limitations of the backchannel, educators and instructional designers could transform the classroom experience from a passive lecture model to one of active, collaborative, and engaged knowledge production

Social navigation

In this chapter we present one of the pioneer approaches in supporting users in navigating the complex information spaces, social navigation support. Social navigation support is inspired by natural tendencies of individuals to follow traces of each other in exploring the world, especially when dealing with uncertainties. In this chapter, we cover details on various approaches in implementing social navigation support in the information space as we also connect the concept to supporting theories. The first part of this chapter reviews related theories and introduces the design space of social navigation support through a series of example applications. The second part of the chapter discusses the common challenges in design and implementation of social navigation support, demonstrates how these challenges have been addressed, and reviews more recent direction of social navigation support. Furthermore, as social navigation support has been an inspirational approach to various other social information access approaches we discuss how social navigation support can be integrated with those approaches. We conclude with a review of evaluation methods for social navigation support and remarks about its current state

Effectiveness of Wikis for Team Projects in Education

From its humble beginnings, wikis have evolved in both business organizations and educational institutions, catering to, among other uses, training and education. The current work examines wikis in the context of collaborative learning project teams and aims to address a visible gap in research. Much previous work is but prescriptive guidelines and self reflections. While attempts exist in dealing with some assessments of wiki-related teams, these works chiefly use shortterm teams and place their emphasis on merely outcomes. We advocate examination of mature teams as well as the interaction processes that happen while teams operate. The current study pays attention to four inputs highlighted as salient previously: learners’ prior wiki experience, instructor＇s support, age and gender. It offers in-depth understanding of wiki effectiveness in collaborative learning environments, operationalized using project teams. A theoretical model is developed using the lens of the functional perspective, proposing wikis to positively affect learning outcomes of academic achievement, self-reported learning, process satisfaction, positive social environment and a sense of community, through the processes of task-related and socioemotional activities. The model posits that the inputs will enhance these activities. Tested using two separate wikis (Mediawiki and Confluence) over a protracted period of one semester, our findings show strong support for wiki effectiveness, contributing to research areas including wikis and small groups. With sound basis, the paper puts forth a framework for conceptualizing the notion of levels in segregating wiki systems, permitting derivation of implications for wiki dedevelopment and instructional use. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol3/iss3/2

Wikis as collaborative learning tools for knowledge sharing: Shifting the education landscape

Wikis support collaborative learning in a classroom environment. Nevertheless, the argument of wikis as an unstructured medium for learning and issues concerning security and privacy matters are overshadowed by the full potential benefit it brings to education fields. Educational wikis are very different from the wiki that we know in the biggest online encyclopedia; wikipedia.org. The implementation of wikis in education relies on its pedagogy approach, hence known as wiki pedagogy. The study conducted in Malaysia schools provides the case study for educational wikis to be deployed in school. The approach taken in the study using design experiments managed to formulate a pedagogy for effective use of wikis in education. Findings of the study may provide a new perspective in understanding the current practice of teaching and learning in school. The essence of socialization of learning facilitate by using wikis lead to collaborative knowledge building among students that they are not learning the knowledge but they are involved in the learning process which makes them a distinguish learners

Weathering wikis: net-based learning meets political science in a South African university

This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Computers and Composition. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Computers and Composition, Volume 24, Issue 3, 2007. DOI: 10.1016/j.compcom.2007.06.001.Wikis represent flexible tools functioning as open-ended environments for collaboration while also offering process and group writing support. Here we focus on a project to innovate the use of wikis for collaborative writing within student groups in a final-year undergraduate political science course. The primary questions guiding our research were in what ways could wikis assist collaborative learning in an undergraduate course in political science and how we could support educators' in the effective use of wikis? Curiously, wikis may serve as a mediating artifact for collaborative writing even among students who are reluctant to post online drafts. The paper raises questions concerning the nature and limits of lecturer and tutor power to deliver transformative educational innovations in relation to the capacity of students to embrace, comply with, or resist such innovation. In analysing the negotiation of the use of wikis in the course by and among the lecturer, tutors, and students, we draw on two principles in activity theory, which Yrjo Engestrom argued are central to his model of expansive learning: multi-voicedness and contradictions [Engestrom, Yrjo. (1987). Learning by expanding: An activity-theoretical approach to developmental research. Helsinki: Orienta-Konsultit; Engestrom, Yrjo. (2001). Expansive learning at work: Toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work 14(1), 133–156.]. We add a third principle, transparency, to more fully capture what we observed