Wikis in the Adult Classroom
A wiki is a great spot for learning and collaboration for a group activity and can contribute a lot to the adult learning classroom. This week I plan to dig into the wiki and look at the pros and cons of the use of the wiki as an additional teaching and learning tool.The Pros of Using a Wiki
The pros of using a wiki in the classroom are plentiful. Wikis provide an open space for learners to contribute, similar to a whiteboard hanging in the traditional classroom setting. Students can enter the wiki, make their contribution to the class or project, enter comments and collaborate while being hundreds of miles away from their classmates. Wikis allow for an asynchronous environment so that the entire group does not have to be available at the same time. When work is done on the page, other members of the group can see who was there and when and the most recent copy is always saved to the page. Wikis can also limit access by appointing an administrator who can allow access to the site or limit visitors to settings such as editor, writer or comments only on some sites and also have the ability to limit or restrict public access to the site.
The Cons of Using a Wiki
Where there are pros, there are corresponding cons to the wiki use as well. Some wikis will only allow one member to make changes to the page at once, which is great for editing purposes, but can make collaboration difficult if two users are trying to edit at the same time. Furthermore, with some wikis, I can go on, see that another user was there and editing, but really have to dig in to find what changes were made by that user, so subtle changes may not be easily addressed.While the wiki allows for users to go into the site and make changes, users on the site can also delete others ideas or contributions (West & West, 2009).While an administrator is a great idea, it can also become difficult for one person to operate the entire site, as the administrator is in charge of adding or removing users from the site as well as monitoring comments. Even sites that allow the administrator to allow password protections for the users to limit outside use will need to spend extra time admitting access to the site (Lari, 2011). Finally, the most obvious con of wiki use would be on a public site, where anyone could come on the site and make changes or comments, and regular users on the site will not necessarily know who is visiting. With open sites, it is difficult to gauge whether everyone contributing to the site is doing so with good intentions and proper information or whether they are submitting intentional or unintentional misinformation.
Conclusion
In conclusion however, most of the wiki sites I have used have been favorable experiences. I have used them at work and in the classroom and they work well for collaboration, learning and information sharing. I haven't used a public site so it is hard for me to remark upon site strangers or unknown deletions. These sites do what they are supposed to do- provide editable information for shared use and I would recommend them for items that change frequently and will be shared by many.
Lari, P (2011). The use of wikis for collaboration in higher education. In K. King & T. Cox
(Eds.). The professor's guide to taming technology, (89-104). Charlotte, NC: Information Age
Publishing.
West, J., & West, M. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Ksu1msm, your last point about the public nature of open wiki sites leading to intentional or unintentional misinformation is a good one. Aside from Wikipedia and class projects associated with this program, have you ever used a wiki for academic or informational purposes? Personally, I haven’t. At its onset, I think Wikipedia was a leading example of this issue. However, as its popularity grew, users began to recognize this issue and police it internally with the use of citations and external references. Now, I feel that Wikipedia can be just as reliable as Britannica, as long as you double check the information and references cited. With that said, the only way to truly combat intentionally malicious users whose ultimate goal is misinformation is to password protect, version archive, and version control (West & West, 2009). However, in doing so, we add a level of privacy that limits it’s use as a learning tool for others. In today’s fast paced information age of social media and influence, misinformation can spread at an astounding pace, so there’s a delicate balance between collaborative knowledge building through the open editing process and content modification to ensure accuracy of information.
ReplyDeleteI have used a wiki for informational purposes, but we have that site on lock-down. There is one administrator who can make changes to the site and one editor (me) that can edit the site, but others have a read and comment only function so that the reader cannot make changes to the data.
DeleteAs an educator though, we still restrict Wikipedia as a source of information. If students want to use it and then follow those sources, that is one thing, but typically students at our school will automatically have their sources rejected if they cite it as it is not peer-reviewed.
Ksu1msm - you've spend more time evaluating the private vs. public implications when utilizing a wiki that I have to this point. You're focus on the audience is good one. Your post and J.Connor T-800's response gave me pause as to how I use wikis. Personally, I'm not a consume of public wikis. I'm not taking the time reading, collaborating, or correcting a public wiki. I don't think I would even be inclined to edit a wiki where I didn't know the author or wasn't asked to contribute. On the other hand, I'd be comfortable editing a private wiki where I was a participant in the course or on the team. Am I out of the norm here?
ReplyDeleteIm with you on this one. I am not opposed to turning to public wikis if I am looking for answers to trivia or have a general interest, but I dont have any interest in contributing to those sites either. Like you, I would also be willing to work on a private one, but then again, I know the sources I would use would be decent ones and would hope that others I work with on the site would use good info as well.
DeleteCarli and Ksu1msm, the public editing feature is a new skill for me. I mean I know how to physically edit something, what I don't know well, is how to handle that shifting terrain. As a learning space, wiki holds credit because all involved are academically involved in the input using reliable sources. However, this makes me question wiki spaces used in a passive learning manner.
ReplyDeleteI think that public sites do have their worth, believe me and I am grateful to those who are willing to contribute their expertise to add their knowledge and also who take the time to back up their claims with research. However, like Carli, I would be less comfortable contributing to something that I was not invited to. Furthermore as J.Connor T-800 pointed out, these public sites are getting more aware of people posting bad info and more vigilant about it, so I am more willing to turn to them for information, but would not be able to take the info at face value for a class assignment-I might investigate their sources, but cannot take what is posted on the wiki site directly as my main resource.
DeleteKsu1msm,
ReplyDeleteI liked the comparison of the wiki to the traditional "whiteboard," this made we think about how messy the two can become during the brainstorming process, the ability for anyone to walk into the room or log on to add, remove, and change the content, and the display for public accessibility to those thoughts and ideas.
My experience, with the wiki, from a student perspective, I see the point you made regarding the ability for one person at a time edits to be a great disadvantage. I find groups tend to use other technology such as Google docs to create, organize, and store the project and less experience navigating the tools within wiki itself. The final project will then be displayed on the wiki where some clean up may be necessary.
As a participant in a multiple user group wiki project all groups members were assigned a different color font to use when adding to the document to allow others to compare who and what new information has been added. If any edits were needed regarding grammar and/or spelling the user would again use their color to highlight those changes recommended versus just doing the edits.
ReplyDeleteYes Ksu1msm! I appreciate color coding and using a shared doc to have opportunity for editing and posting when all contributors feel ready. In my analogy, the shared doc acts as the whiteboard where collaboration, conversation, discussion, disagreement, and consensus can occur. Habermas’s communicative action establishes an awareness of the disorienting un-level terrain of technology know-how; constructs a safe environment generating the ideal speech situation; and leads to motivation of accomplished technology travel (1981). An ideal speech situation offers “equal access by all participants to the learning process, equal opportunity and unrestricted contribution to collaborative learning” (Cecez-Kecmanovic and Webb as cited in Hammond, 2015, p. 226). Using the shared doc instead of the wiki to prepare and plan collaborative posting, has a closed perimeter of safety. This is part of what I referred to when I confessed to Carli and Ksu1msm that the public editing feature is a new skill for me. In building a safe and equitable online community, an ideal speech situation must be cultivated so that a genuine consensus can be developed that tends to all members, including the hesitant technology user.
Habermas, J. (1981). The theory of communicative action [Kindle version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com.
Hammond, M. (2015). A Habermasian perspective on joint meaning making online: What does it offer and what are the difficulties? International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 10, 223-237.