What Is a Wiki?
Introduction
A wiki is a collaborative webpage that allows users to write, edit, and organize content pertaining to the wiki’s topic or subject. “Wiki pages can be interconnected and organized as required, and are not presented by default in a reverse-chronological, taxonomic-hierarchical, or any other predetermined order. This makes wikis a highly flexible knowledge management space” (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). These attributes clearly distinguish wikis from blogs or other web 2.0 tools. The distinct nature of wikis and their inherent departure from traditional publishing could be why wikis figure to be potentially transformational in learning and education.
The Wiki's Impact on Education
Wikis can be great vehicles for building collaborative knowledge amongst many parties in a rather direct, uninhibited, democratic fashion. The collaborative authoring process is one that appears to be futuristic but also quite practical in workplaces and community groups. The flexibility offered through wikis changes the time and place of traditional learning, as “A wiki also offers the ability to interact with an evolving document over time. It allows teachers and learners to see the evolution of a written task, and to continually comment on it, rather than offering comments only on the final draft. Considering students’ busy schedules, a wiki can also be very useful for tracking and streamlining group projects” (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). Such advantages to traditional school methods do come with challenges however, as the nature of knowledge is fundamentally changed from the fixed world of traditional publishing. “Wikis also present some further challenges for educational settings – around ownership and attribution of work, valuing and assessment of relational processes” (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005), which have real and immediate consequences for the way teachers do their jobs.
Issues and Implications of Wikis
A wiki’s collaborative nature is a departure from traditional authorship that some more traditionally-minded individuals may find challenging. This challenge has a rich complexity in implementation as noted, “wikis provide a space where knowledge becomes networked (situated, contextualized) but remains ephemeral: it changes, and can be changed and mediated by the community” (Duffy & Bruns, 2006). A paradigm shift of this sort needs to be recognized and properly supported in education to properly teach the use of wikis both as a writing form and learning resource with unique conventions. That said the lack of formal conventions governing a new and independent wiki might also prove to be one of the chief challenges for educators in employing the tool. Just this past week, I began what I considered to be a ‘simple’ first wiki with my grade nine media literacy class. For the sake of clarity, I randomly divided the class into five groups, each of which would initially build upon the five headings, with sub-headings and articles for our wiki. Despite what I considered a good overview and group-modeled process of organizing various subjects, when confronted with a stark empty wiki page, many of the students were stunned with where to start. The reality was that I needed to legitimately scaffold a more authentically social constructivist learning experience, than would easily fit in one period. And so pedagogically, wikis as learning tools can challenge or even be at odds with a teacher’s practice or even beliefs about linear thinking and education. As school largely, “Remains based on the idea that the teacher/lecturer will impart their knowledge to the student through a one-way communication system, such as lectures or text books. For reasons of convenience more than pedagogy, academic delivery is often structured in a linear fashion” and, “While some aspects of this linear structure are no doubt useful – such as beginning with an introduction – others may be counterproductive as they reduce the range of information and knowledge available in a given field” (Bruns & Humphreys, 2005). Such is the double-edged sword of technologies such as wikis, as their employment shapes the way in which thinking and learning are practiced, thus leading to perhaps question the relevancy of older methods and tools.
The Future of Wikis
At present time, some educators question whether “Wikis can be used to promote student engagement or create student-driven course content suitable for assessment” (Cole, 2008). This may be due in part to the unknown nature of emerging technologies and the need for greater understanding and adoption by students (and teachers alike), before such tools can be properly evaluated. For instance in her 2008 study, Cole concluded there may be many ‘yet to be determined factors’ effecting the rate of wiki adoption hypothesizing, “The perceptions of some students, who currently see little value in Wiki technology as a tool for learning, could change if class Wiki contributions had grown into a module-based repository of knowledge as originally intended. Another point to consider is the extent to which the structure of teaching and learning adopted in this experiment discouraged early student use.” Given the wild popularity of Wikipedia and the growing profile of other websites such as Wikileaks, I don’t expect the form of wikis to be disappearing anytime soon. That said, I also foresee a rapid evolution in the way they are viewed and used. Just as the Gutenberg press and the personal computer revolutionized authorship, publication, and the ownership of knowledge, so too will wikis likely change many rules in the game of learning.
Resources
Bruns, A. & Humphreys, S. (2005). Wikis in teaching and assessment: The m/cyclopedia project. In Proceedings International Wiki Symposium, Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/2289/1/2289.pdf
Cole, M. (2008). Using wiki technology to support student engagement: Lessons from the trenches. Computers & Education, Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/03601315
Duffy, P. & Bruns, A. (2006). The use of blogs, wikis and rss in education: A conversation of possibilities. Proceedings Online Learning and Teaching Conference 2006, Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/5398/1/5398.pdf
Richardson, W. (2006). Weblogs, wikis, podcasts and other powerful web tools that are transforming classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment