[ED257A] Week 5: Collaborative Learning with Digital Media

To Wiki or not to Wiki?

Source: http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/036/864/original/Internet-IPv6.jpg?1361298852

This week's reading is based off of:
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Ioannou, Brown, & Artino. "Wikis and forums for collaborative problem-based activity: A systematic comparison of learners' interactions" Internet and Higher Education 24 (2015) 35–45

Cacciamani, et al. "Influence of participation, facilitator styles, and metacognitive reflection on knowledge building in online university courses" Computers & Education 58 (2012) 874–884
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Technology has closed geographical, cultural, language distances and time with increased connectivity and in ubiquity of information. The complexity of the challenges we face as a society necessitates the ability to collaborate in a variety of settings. This week's discussion on using technology to facilitate collaboration in the students thus sets the stage for gaining that skill set. Of the technologies we discussed this week, I found wikis to be the most fascinating. Wikis are websites that allows its users to contribute to its content and structure, the most famous being Wikipedia.

Ioannou, et al found that wikis foster more collaborative (rather than cooperative) when compared to participants using MS Word attachments to accomplish the task. I found this to be an interesting result. Students discussed with each other parts of the wiki more so than that of the MS Word documents, which presumably entails exchange of ideas and feedback. However, as briefly discussed in class, the social dynamics of having to review a peer's work underly this kind of collaboration. For instance, for fear of offending or slighting the other, there is a tendency to not delete but rather to add or comment upon. Perhaps it is also a cultural thing- the generalization being that Americans tend to sugar coat things whereas foreigners do not. That is, collaboration is inherently a social activity. The major question is, do wikis facilitate easier collaboration and social interaction? Have you observed similarly or differently in your own experience when collaborating with others (e.g., using a wiki or other technology-based tool)?

This is indeed something I do myself. At times, I feel like the edits I make are easily interchangeable with the existing content, but is maybe more in line with how I interpreted the text; or that the wording the author chooses had a hidden intention not apparent to me as a reader; or the general habit that it's always good to keep previous versions of documents so that you can go back to them. I have personally been on both sides of the study that Ioannou, et al. use. In the course I am teaching this quarter, the structure of how my co-instructors and I have followed naturally lends itself to a wiki-like collaboration. All the material content we generate is hosted on Google drive. Each week we meet to discuss the following week's lecture, homework, and logistics so that at each step we exchange information and feedback. I have found this to be immensely useful as my co-instructors have varied experiences and insights. While there is not single aspect of the course that I could assign as being self-authored, I feel the style of wiki-like collaboration has been an extremely useful method towards forming a course.

At the same time, I have done the more cooperative-style of work in groups. I am currently organizing a conference symposium on diversity in STEM fields. One aspect of this organization was writing a blurb on what our symposium was about and why attendees to go to this symposium. My co-organizers and I first wrote blurbs independently and then merged the documents at the end. While there were sentences I wrote that I felt were well-written but left out, the final product overall was well polished and I was happy with it. This may be part of the negotiation, not only with your teammates but also with yourself, of what is presented as the final product and what is not. Perhaps the more wiki-styled collaboration would have done better, the same, or worse. Can you think of a situation in which both a collaboration and cooperative-style teamwork would do well?

Because you can track a wiki's history in detail, it lends itself to collaboration. Or maybe it doesn't, since everything you do is recorded, and so people may choose not to comment on certain things versus others.

Regardless, I think wikis have great potential, particularly in the STEM fields where the passing down of knowledge is critical (e.g., using wikis as an archive of techniques and useful knowledge in a lab group as students graduate from or join the research group). Wikis are also natural bridge between knowledge acquisition and knowledge building (see Cacciamani, et al.) in the summarization of knowledge from various sources into a digestible format. And because it can be published on the web, it has peer-review built in. Here, I am interested in the role of the teacher if one were to run a wiki-based project. I'm particularly interested in implementing this as a final project/review of sorts in my class MAT 188: Materials in Energy Technologies the next time it is offered. It's a direct application of what they have learned and it can benefit someone else interested in material science in energy technologies. How could instructor present themselves as supportive or oppositional in this context in your field? Through a guided formulation of the wiki? By constantly monitoring wiki activity and giving feedback? What are your thoughts?