Evaluation of a Teaching Tool - Wiki - in Online Graduate Education

This study provides information on ways to enhance learning for students using online educational programs. Technologies that foster and engage students in the learning process are necessary in the online learning environment. Wiki is an online teaching strategy used to promote student interaction. A Wiki was introduced into three sections of a graduate level online health professions course. The use of the Wiki is evaluated using the Perception of Wiki Survey to determine students’ perceptions of the value of the technology. A student’s choice to pursue one career over another, and eventual success or lack of success in that career, may relate to their personal learning style and the learning demands of that discipline. In this study students’ learning style preference is determined using the Felder-Silverman Index of Learning Styles. The relationship between the students’ perceptions of the Wiki and their learning style preferences is examined in this mixed methods study. No firm conclusions can be reached from the findings but interesting possibilities are raised

Teaching and learning online with wikis

Wikis are fully editable websites; any user can read or add content to a wiki site. This functionality means that wikis are an excellent tool for collaboration in an online environment. This paper presents wikis as a useful tool for facilitating online education. Basic wiki functionality is outlined and different wikis are reviewed to highlight the features that make them a valuable technology for teaching and learning online. Finally, the paper discuses a wiki project underway at Deakin University. This project uses a wiki to host an icebreaker exercise which aims to facilitate ongoing interaction between members of online learning groups. Wiki projects undertaken in America are outlined and future wiki research plans are also discussed. These wiki projects illustrate how e-learning practitioners can and are moving beyond their comfort zone by using wikis to enhance the process of teaching and learning online.<br /

The use of wikis as alternatives to learning content management systems

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify whether a wiki can be used as an alternative to a popular learning content management system (LCMS) in an e-learning environment. The research attempts to identify what value each of these e-learning components added to the students learning experience. Design/methodology/approach – A quantitative approach in the form of a survey was used. The survey was conducted amongst a group of undergraduate students who were using both a LCMS and a wiki in their academic course, along with the attendance of lectures. Findings – From the response of the students, the wiki used could be considered as a useful alternative to a LCMS. The LCMS was favoured over the wiki on a number of aspects but features of the wiki made it ideal to enhance collaboration amongst learners. This makes it an ideal tool to support minimal invasive education (MIE), where learners get an opportunity to learn from their peers. Research limitations/implications – The comparison used between the wiki and the LCMS was not ideal in all aspects as the wiki was used for a particular role in the course and did not have the same features and functionalities of the LCMS. Originality/value – This paper focuses on a valuable alternative to a conventional LCMS in the form of a wiki, in an attempt to improve the learning experience of students

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

The investigation of using wiki technology to support self-regulated learning in the academic context at Princess Nora bint Abdul Rahman University, Saudi Arabia

Technology has become a major focal point in the modern learning environment. Web 2.0 is being increasingly widely employed in university education and has the potential to improve the quality of education. For optimum benefit to students’ learning practices, web 2.0 technology needs to actively foster regulation skills among students. Self-regulated learning skills (SRL skills) potentially offer a shift from traditional teacher-centred to learner-centred approaches. Wiki technology, as a form of web 2.0 technology, has the potential in education to foster such an approach to learning. The thesis investigates how a wiki can be utilised to enhance self-regulated learning among a cohort of female students attending higher education in Saudi Arabia.The study was primarily motivated by the lack of studies investigating SRL skill enhancement in wiki–assisted learning in higher education, in Saudi Arabia, where the education system largely relies upon teacher-centred learning. This study, therefore, was an effort to potentially improve SRL skills among students attending Princess Nora University (PNU) in Saudi Arabia, with a view to the results being applicable to teaching and learning in similar contexts. The first two objectives of this study were to explore the potential of a wiki as an enhancer of executive function and evaluation skills and to explore students’ attitude towards using wiki as a learning environment. The third objective was to explore students’ perceptions of wiki learning and its contribution to the enhancement of SRL skills. A single case study was administered before and after use of a purpose-designed wiki for an Education Technology module taken by a cohort of female students at PNU. Quantitative data was collected by a questionnaire triangulated with qualitative data gathered in interviews. The findings revealed that after using wiki, students felt that six of the eight SRL sub-skills listed under executive function and evaluation skills had, on the whole, improved significantly.Students generally reported extremely positive attitudes towards learning with wiki technology. They perceived that the reflective nature and the design of the wiki tasks, together with the pages and guidance given by the tutor, may have supported the development of SRL skills, increased their overall motivation to learn and improved their independent learning processes. Overall, this study sought to discover information on a relatively new area to Saudi higher education and acts as a stepping stone to further research into students’ perceptions of wiki technology and its effect on SRL skill enhancement. There is, of course, an opportunity in the future to measure actual SRL skill levels to corroborate the promising results which may, given the reader’s discretion, be viewed as transferable to similar cultural and study contexts

Wikis and Collaborative Learning / Yun-Ke Chang, Miguel Angel Morales-Arroyo, Hla Than... [et.al].

Wikis have been used as a supporting tool for students‘ learning and collaboration. Tasks such as collaborative writing, joined glossaries creation, document discussion and review, group projects, reflection journals and others have been tried out using wikis as a facilitating tool (Ben-Zvi, 2007). However, few studies have reported how students actually perceive some well-claimed benefits. This study investigated the perception of learning activities facilitated by wiki, and the effectiveness of several roles wiki might play in constructive and collaborative learning. This study tried to answer the following questions. How do students perceive a wiki as a learning tool? How does a wiki support constructive learning skills? How does a wiki support student‘s collaborative learning skills? How does collaboration in wiki facilitate students‘ content learning and project work? The study was conducted using a survey method to examine the perception of wiki usage and collaborative and constructive learning. In the reported study, a questionnaire was used to collect data from 92 students in higher education. The results suggest that using wikis were perceived to enhance collaborative knowledge building among students, but it did not contribute much to learning the subject matters although students were more involved in the learning process than with conventional teaching methods. In another word, it indicates that students may not obtain better return of investment on the time spent in using wiki as a learning tool. While wiki did contribute to enrich the learning experience, further study is needed to investigate how to link learning process with learning outcome using this type of collaboration tools

Empowering formative assessment using embedded Web Widgets in Wikis

The article can be viewed at: http://opensym.org/wsos2013/proceedings/p0901-notari.pdfIn this article we describe how we developed and how we use a tool for teachers enhancing inter-group collaboration of learners using wikis in project-based learning settings with over 100 participants, where different groups of students develop similar projects and each project has an own wiki page. To achieve our goal we extended typical wiki functionality by using web widgets, mini applications embedded anywhere in the wiki environment using the iframe tag. Two different evaluation widgets (rating widget and 'working progress' widget) are placed on each of the project pages. The project groups use the 'working progress' widget to declare the amount of work done. The teacher and the rest of the learning community use the 'rating' widget to rate the ongoing project work. A so called 'meta widget' showing a summary of the results of the 'rating' and 'working progress' widget can be displayed on the start page of the learning community or if a project is divided in different milestones, on the page describing the goals and timeline for the milestone. Evaluation widgets and meta widget, which easily can be embedded by the teacher potentially all over the wiki pages, enhances visibility of quality and termination degree of a project and enhance so the self, the tutor and the peer review opportunities in such large scale project based learning settings. The created evaluation widgets and meta widgets have been embedded in the wiki of a three months curriculum. The evaluation of utility and usability of the widgets is ongoing. The educational value of rating and reflecting about the working progress of a given task is discussed

Knowledge construction for wiki education applied in moodle 2.3

Wiki is a tool to support collaborative works between learners. Wiki also has proven to provide an efficient, flexible, user friendly and cost effective interface for collaboration, knowledge creation and archive, and learner interaction. Current research finding stated that wiki is an e-learning tool which is very less in terms of use among instructors and learners. Moreover, the learning community is not aware with the capability of wiki to support interactive learning environment as well as effective for their knowledge, skills and attitude. Therefore, this paper highlights the initiative to use wiki in Moodle 2.3 for knowledge construction. The analyses usage of wiki have been done by observing the wiki Moodle data log and survey of learners’ usage in Faculty of Computing, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. The result of analysis is able to determine the active and passive attitude among learners. In addition, to identify the effectiveness of knowledge construction by using wiki towards learners’ knowledge, skills and attitude. Finally, this result guides instructors to improve learning strategies on wiki and motivates learners to enhance their knowledge construction learning metho

Wikis supporting authentic, collaborative activities: lessons in usability

The Open University delivers distance learning to its students. Traditionally, its students work independently of each other. Looking to enhance their students learning, two postgraduate courses have introduced authentic, collaborative activities. This is easier to achieve now because of the availability of wikis: a lightweight, web-based collaborative authoring environment. This paper examines the effect of the wikis’ functionality on the students’ use of the tool, and the consequences for the students’ engagement with the activities and learning opportunities. This is a relatively large scale study involving 56 wikis produced by over 250 students. The data was drawn from the two courses using a variety of methods. A qualitative inductive analysis was used to look for emergent themes. These were validated by cross referencing, to match recorded comments with wiki content. We found that the limited functionality of wikis influenced how students engaged with the collaborative activities. While all groups were able to collaboratively author the documents required for assessment, they were not always produced in the way intended by the course teams. This meant the expected benefits of collaborative learning were not always realised. This paper will be of interest to academics aspiring to employ wikis on their courses and to practitioners who wish to realise the potential of wikis in facilitating information sharing and fostering collaboration within teams

Wikis supporting authentic, collaborative activities: lessons from distance education

The Open University delivers distance learning to its students. Traditionally, its students work independently of each other. Looking to enhance their students learning, two postgraduate courses have introduced authentic, collaborative activities. This is easier to achieve now because of the availability of wikis: a lightweight, web-based collaborative authoring environment. This paper examines the effect of the wikis’ functionality on the students’ use of the tool, and the consequences for the students’ engagement with the activities and learning opportunities. This is a relatively large scale study involving 56 wikis produced by over 250 students. The data was drawn from the two courses using a variety of methods. A qualitative inductive analysis was used to look for emergent themes. These were validated by cross referencing, to match recorded comments with wiki content. We found that the limited functionality of wikis influenced how students engaged with the collaborative activities. While all groups were able to collaboratively author the documents required for assessment, they were not always produced in the way intended by the course teams. This meant the expected benefits of collaborative learning were not always realised. This paper will be of interest to academics aspiring to employ wikis on their courses and to practitioners who wish to realise the potential of wikis in facilitating information sharing and fostering collaboration within teams