Wikis in elearning and student projects

The paper presents a study which was based on the hypothesis that wikis that are initiated bottom up by students might be used more deliberately than wikis which are introduced top down by teachers. Therefore it examines the specific effects observed in nine different wiki projects at the university of Frankfurt ranging from student wiki projects up to wikis used in seminars and as information tool for institutions

Web 2.0 @ BU – Use of Wikis within the School of Health & Social Care

The aim of the Web 2.0 @ BU project is to investigate current good practice and to map the use of Web 2.0 technologies within Bournemouth University. This paper aims to communicate the findings from the School of Health & Social Care project team during the academic year 2007/2008 concerning the use of wikis in three distinct areas: Reviewing The Literature Wiki - A teaching session on reviewing the literature is included as a part of the Masters Research Unit - Principles of Enquiry Unit 1. This case study concerns using a wiki as a replacement for PowerPoint and as a separate study guide. LIMBIC Project Wiki - The aim of the LIMBIC project is to evaluate an inter-professional approach linking practice based learning with the principles and methods of healthcare improvement. This case study examines how an external project group wiki could be utilised to enable collaboration between non-technical healthcare users. Teamworking and Communication in Health and Social Care Unit Wiki - The purpose of this third year unit is to provide students with the opportunity to undertake interprofessional project work and, through this develop their skills of working collaboratively in teams and to communicate and function more effectively within their role. This case study looks at how effective small student group wikis are as a part of a long, thin unit where students sometimes find that they vary their contribution according to the time that they have. The paper hopes to share knowledge and experience of utilising wikis, enabling teachers and practitioners to be in a stronger position to respond and react to the changing demands of using innovative new learning technologies

Using a wiki to facilitate learning on a Requirements Engineering course

In this paper, we describe the introduction of a wiki for collaborative activities in a Requirements Engineering course offered at a distance to part-time learners. The paper describes the course and how wiki activities were incorporated. The paper then discusses the initial feedback from the students which shows that the wiki has been largely effective for developing students' understanding of the course concepts, the effectiveness of team working in Requirements Engineering and the use of wikis in practice. However, there are particular issues related to asynchronous working in distance education/eLearning that need to be better addressed. We conclude with a discussion of how we are tackling these issues and developing the use of the wiki on the course based on the students' feedba

The Making of a Social Librarian: How Blogs, Wikis and Facebook Have Changed One Librarian and Her Job

This paper explores the evolution of the author’s identity as a librarian, from a tech-ignorant/tech-phobic library school graduate to a librarian teaching faculty, staff, students, community members and administrators the value of collaborative software. According to Technorati, the blog search engine, there are 244 blogs that primarily concern themselves with libraries and so-called 2.0 technologies. The blogs range from the well known Tame the Web and Shifted Librarian to library students attempting to sort out the deluge of information on blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, social networking services and how these applications and services help, hinder, harm or haunt libraries and librarians. As libraries and librarians make decisions about how to reach out to patrons and communities, increasingly, the decisions we make involve social software applications. In 2006, the author graduated from library school with an under-used laptop and the ability to create static HTML documents, but with a strong aversion to all things “computer-y” and little interest in or understanding of technology and its relationship to libraries. A two-year residency at a community college, free range to explore any and all avenues of librarianship and the pressing need to create a final “project”, however, created the opportunity for her to explore social software in its many variations and applications. With an introduction to creating wiki research guides, free posting reign on the library blog and chances to create workshops on any subject of her choosing, the newly tech-dorked librarian jumped head-first into what has widely touted as Library 2.0. She now subscribes to technology blogs, teaches workshops on using wikis in the classroom, instructs colleagues on establishing del.icio.us accounts and has dozens of other social software projects going at once

A literature review of the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education

This review focuses on the use of Web 2.0 tools in Higher Education. It provides a synthesis of the research literature in the field and a series of illustrative examples of how these tools are being used in learning and teaching. It draws out the perceived benefits that these new technologies appear to offer, and highlights some of the challenges and issues surrounding their use. The review forms the basis for a HE Academy funded project, ‘Peals in the Cloud’, which is exploring how Web 2.0 tools can be used to support evidence-based practices in learning and teaching. The project has also produced two in-depth case studies, which are reported elsewhere (Galley et al., 2010, Alevizou et al., 2010). The case studies focus on evaluation of a recently developed site for learning and teaching, Cloudworks, which harnesses Web 2.0 functionality to facilitate the sharing and discussion of educational practice. The case studies aim to explore to what extent the Web 2.0 affordances of the site are successfully promoting the sharing of ideas, as well as scholarly reflections, on learning and teaching

Collaborative E-learning Methodologies: an Experience of Active Knowledge in ICT Classrooms

In the present study we highlight a specific environment that makes use of collaborative technological tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform. Both of these approaches convey a lot of responsibility from the teacher to the students and the hoping, as backed up by the literature, is to promote deeper learning and reasoning skills at a higher level. The general goal of this paper is to contribute for the theoretical discussion on how active and collaborative experiences in ICT classrooms play a role on the construction of knowledge in HEIs. Based on the pointed outlines, we intend to: (1) understand how collaborative e-learning environments get students actively involved in the learning process;(2) perspective the role of collaborative tools at the level of group work and (3) find out how students assess their performance within a working group. Data was collected through questionnaires available on the e-learning platform Moodle. Descriptive statistical techniques were used to analyze quantitative data. Within the research questions proposed, the study, points towards some understanding of how a collaborative learning environment seems to get students actively involved in the learning process mainly if the tasks to be perform have an empirical component. The study also has shown that students seem to identify themselves with the need to be involved in simulations of their future professional activity, as well as with the need to regulate their own learning and to promote discussion not only between peers but also with the teacher

Are digital natives a myth or reality?: Students’ use of technologies for learning

This paper outlines the findings of a study investigating the extent and nature of use of digital technologies by undergraduate students in Social Work and Engineering, in two British universities. The study involved a questionnaire survey of students (n=160) followed by in-depth interviews with students (n=8) and lecturers and support staff (n=8) in both institutions. Firstly, the findings suggest that students use a limited range of technologies for both learning and socialisation. For learning, mainly established ICTs are used- institutional VLE, Google and Wikipedia and mobile phones. Students make limited, recreational use of social technologies such as media sharing tools and social networking sites. Secondly, the findings point to a low level of use of and familiarity with collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, personal web publishing, and other emergent social technologies. Thirdly, the study did not find evidence to support the claims regarding students adopting radically different patterns of knowledge creation and sharing suggested by some previous studies. The study shows that students’ attitudes to learning appear to be influenced by the approaches adopted by their lecturers. Far from demanding lecturers change their practice, students appear to conform to fairly traditional pedagogies, albeit with minor uses of technology tools that deliver content. Despite both groups clearly using a rather limited range of technologies for learning, the results point to some age differences, with younger, engineering students making somewhat more active, albeit limited, use of tools than the older ones. The outcomes suggest that although the calls for radical transformations in educational approaches may be legitimate it would be misleading to ground the arguments for such change solely in students’ shifting expectations and patterns of learning and technology use

Fit for eLearning? Trainings for eLearning competencies

In: conference proceedings, edulearn 2010, Barcelona 5.-7.7.2010. In order to design and tutor online and blended learning courses, trainers and teachers need to obtain appropriate qualification. In this paper different competency models for online teaching which developed in Germany 2005 – 2008 will be addressed as well as different settings to qualify teachers and trainers appropriately. Finally the results of an evaluation of two different training settings will be presented in order to compare an in house versus a transorganisational training program

Teaching with wikis: addressing the digital divide

This paper addresses some aspects of the digital divide affecting teachers and learners in higher education. These relate to divisions arising from variable rates of technology adoption by teachers, which may be especially problematic when students’ uptake of technology is much more rapid than those who teach them, and also to divisions within the student body which teachers need to accommodate when they plan the design of learning. To address these divisions, we designed a pilot online workshop to prepare a small group of teaching staff at two Australian universities for using wikis in teaching and assessment. Participants were immersed in the experience of collaborating on a project in a wiki as learners, and then asked to reflect on this experience as teachers. We used a participatory action research approach with a view to developing a community of enquiry to investigate this experience for improving future offerings, and informing the participants’ teaching practice. This paper reports on the professional development effort, reflecting on the successes and limitations of the work, and lessons learned in relation to bridging the above aspects of the digital divide. We then comment on the potential for further development in the context of the evolution of learning technology as a research discipline

Constructing knowledge: an experience of active and collaborative learning in an ICT classroom

This paper reports on the impact of the implementation of active and collaborative practices in ICT (information and communication technologies) classrooms. Both of these approaches convey a lot of responsibility from the teacher to the students and the hoping, as backed up by the literature, is to promote deeper learning and reasoning skills at a higher level. The question is: how do you do all that? This research describes a specific environment that makes use of collaborative tools, like wikis and forums within an e-learning platform and of specific CRM (customer relationship management) software. In order to analyze how this learning environment gets learners actively involved in learning and working together in productive ways, students were surveyed by responding to questionnaires. Several cause-effect relations underlying the teaching-learning methodology and the students’ performance are discussed