Reports

Monday October 20 2008

Wikis - Tools for Online Teamwork

Alain Farmer Researcher

The Issue
Practical Applications
Useful References
What's new?

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The Issue

In keeping with the basic philosophy of the wiki, this report is the product of a collective effort by a group of ten authors working within the college environment primarily as IT Representatives. At various times over a period of two months, the group came together to exchange information and ask questions pertaining to wikis under the leadership of Alain Farmer, who administered a wiki dedicated to the research of the group, and as well, did research himself to advance the project. This report is a synthesis of this work and focuses on the essential elements to consider in creating and administering a wiki for academic purposes. Before beginning the report, sincere thanks are due to André Beauregard, Luc Blain, Alain Farmer, Frank Fournier, Jonathan-Marc Lapointe, François Lizotte, Françoise Marceau, Nicole Perreault, Serge Roy, Denis Thibault and Michel Vincent for their contributions.

Networking software is becoming more and more of a necessity. Unlike Web 1.0, where information flowed one-way, Web 2.0 gives users a voice though blogs and wikis and transforms them into network authors according to the Actor-Network Theory, theorized by John Law and others.

In this new bi-directional media, wikis have become an important actor. In business, wikis are increasingly used for collaboration, case follow-up and creativity. What is their place in an educational context? Academic innovators have used them to facilitate student teamwork around specific questions. Given their inherent collaborative emphasis, wikis have proven useful for dealing with the collective development of frames of reference, problem-solving, thematic development, project follow-up, or other projects of similar complexity where students must work together to produce concrete results.

If you are interested in learning more about this tool or using it in class, this report is for you. This introductory section provides general information about wikis and the academic contexts where their use could be beneficial. The “Practical Applications” section gives a step-by-step approach to wiki creation and use. The last section gives useful references for those who wish to go beyond the overview presented in this report.

Without further ado, let us take a look at the nuts and bolts of wikis and how they can fit into an academic context.

A DESCRIPTION OF THE RESOURCE

Definition

Of Hawaiian origin, the term “wiki” means “rapidly and informally”. Designed to permit multiple contributors to easily and dynamically construct information, this category of software produces a website which can be consulted, modified or enlarged by multiple contributors, each according to their assigned access rights.

In an article appearing in the May 3, 2004 edition of the newspaper Le Devoir (in French) Technologie : Le Wiki, le tableau blanc de l'intelligence collective (Technology, The Wiki , a whiteboard for collective intelligience), Sylvain Carle defines a wiki as the warehouse of an immense collective brain, whereas in Wikipedia, the same term is defined as a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. The article emphasizes that wikis facilitate constructive collaboration, creating documents with a minimum of constraints.

A short History

Most references attribute the origin and broadcast of the wiki concept to Ward Cunningham in 1995. Online research will permit those interested in further historic detail to discover the people and groups that contributed to the development of the resource.

Wiki-related Software

Several programs are available to support wiki creation. An enlightened choice must take into account needs, technical knowledge, the reliability of the system used, the technical support available and the eventual publishing requirements. This report chose to use the software MédiaWiki as an example because it is technically supported by Profweb on Personal Space sites. A few other examples will be examined before delving into more technical information.

Two Examples

Almost everyone has heard of the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia which is the most popular wiki on the Web. Even though the veracity of its contents cannot be guaranteed, this site illustrates the simplicity of this tool and the value of teamwork.

Closer to home, one finds the wiki pédagogique de Danielle Duchesneau who teaches Nursing Technology at Cegep Saint Laurent. Her site enables students to create databases for current clinical situations within the profession of nursing.

If you are already convinced of the pedagogical value of wikis, you have a good idea of how you would like to use one in your discipline, and you are eager to get going, you can skip to the “Practical Applications” section. You can return to this section later and compare its more theoretical approach to what you have done and ultimately contribute to this report by sharing your experiences with our readers.

USING A WIKI IN AN ACADEMIC CONTEXT

Techno-pedagogic Characteristics of Wikis

Why use a wiki rather than another web resource? In order to answer this question we consulted another Profweb report comparing different communication tools. Although other resources have their advantages, the wiki offers the following possibilities:

Creation of an interactive multimedia site containing text, images and multimedia simply without technical support;

Collaborative consultation, contribution, modification and organization of knowledge;
Peer evaluation respecting site permissions;
Easily-mastered technology, especially when basic training is provided;
Priority is collaborative knowledge-building rather than site's appearance.

Concerns about on-line vandalism in a wiki are frequently overblown. Access must be authorized, and prior versions of content are automatically saved. This last feature offers users the possibility to track the order of modifications and offers teachers the possibility of canceling inappropriate modifications.

Challenges

The wiki presents several challenges to users. We mention some in the interests of helping you profit from the experiences of others rather than to discourage you from using this resource.

First, notwithstanding the simplicity of learning how to use a wiki, students must still come to grips with it. Each wiki has features whose use requires time to be understood, and therefore, a certain time for training should be set aside to introduce students to the wiki.

Second, planning your activity before beginning is essential for success. Without it, students will start working without seeing the larger picture. The teacher must encourage students to think before they leap, in order to reach consensus over goals, as well as the role that each participant is to play, the nature of the final product and the time frame of the activity.

Third, added to the technical training and activity planning, students must master effective cooperative techniques. Teachers cannot assume that these abilities have been acquired by all participants and must work to guide them to plan cooperative work without losing sight of the project’s objectives. Savvy teachers will consider the personality and potential of each student when assigning tasks in order to prevent chaos caused by a lack of cognitive, organizational or emotional maturity that cooperative projects of this nature require. Nonetheless, when such a situation arises, the teacher must react quickly because in the majority of wikis, it is difficult to reorganize information or to modify the structure.

The Teacher's Role

Whether for a wiki or for any other pedagogical resource, the teacher’s role is to plan, to interact with students and to evaluate their performances in relation to the pedagogical model and the competencies to develop. Although detailed instructions will be presented later in this report, the following is a look at the particularities of using wikis from an academic viewpoint:

When planning activities, the choice of wiki must take student collaboration and responsibilities as well as the objectives and pedagogic approach into account. Getting to know the application is therefore a must. The teacher must be familiar with the installation procedure, fine tune the lesson plan and determine the structure of the wiki that will be suggested to students unless, of course, this choice is left to the students themselves.
The teacher must be certain that students’ technical and cooperative abilities are equal to the task of constructing a wiki. The teacher must also foster student enthusiasm for the project, be vigilant with regard to the wiki under construction and available when required to guide the troops.
In the end, the evaluation process will enable a critical review of student learning in terms of both product and process. This is also the time to decide if the wiki will remain active and if so, who will administrate it.

Suggestions for Learning Activities

As we mentioned earlier, wikis work well in a socio-constructive approach. Here are several suggestions for their use in a college environment:

Present student work or other documents and then ask students for their comments according to certain criteria;
Create a virtual encyclopedia presenting concepts that are important to your course;
Check students prior knowledge of course content in order to adjust that content;
Present a problem and ask students to collectively react suggesting solutions and proposing questions to be answered by you;
Verify progress on team projects;
Create a multi-disciplinary project by structuring the wiki to take the various disciplines into account;
Model the material that you teach and then ask students to intervene by asking questions or making comments;
Create a course or program portfolio and ask students to post information about their learning process.

Experience being the mother of invention, we are counting on you to suggest other possibilities. Share your experiences with us in the suggestion feature in Profweb, if ever you decide to use wikis in your teaching. Your entries could inspire your colleagues to innovate in ways that later could be of use to you in return.

This report is a first look at wikis. We hope that this first section has inspired you to use them in your classes. We invite you to browse through the next section which gives concrete suggestions about the academic use of this resource. If you have questions, don’t hesitate to contact us using the response feature below. Your questions and our answers benefit all of our readers!

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