Learning and Teaching with
Wikis
By
Annette Culley ©
31 October 2006
Masters
of Learning Science and Technology , University
of Sydney.
Home
instructionaldesign.com.au
Introducing the Wiki
Wikis are Web 2.0 software which allow people to collaborate and share information online. Web 2.0 software works through a web browser,
turning control and ownership of web content over to the user, offering
open participation and social networking.
These web publishing tools require little in the way of technical
skills, allowing the user to concentrate on the content and the collaborative
process (Boulos et al., 2006).
The wiki was first developed by Ward Cunningham
in 1994 and installed on his website in 1995 for the purpose of collaborative,
open-source software programming (Ebersbach et al., 2006).
A Wiki is a
freely expandable collection of interlinked Web “pages”, a hypertext
system for storing and modifying information – a database, where each
page is easily editable by any user with a forms-capable Web browser
client. (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001, p. 14)
A wiki allows anyone with a web connection and a web browser (such as
Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, etc.) to modify the content of
a page. This makes the wiki a simple, user friendly
platform for collaborative writing.
A Wiki page contains an Edit button/link
that will open a form where editing or comments can be made on the existing
page. Formatting text is done
with wiki markup (a simplified version of HTML) such as an extra blank
line for a new paragraph, _underlined_,
’’emphasized text’’, ’’’strong text’’’,
---- horizontal rule, etc. A word with embedded capitals (CamelStyle) saved in an existing wiki page will create a link to a form
for creating a new page. Adding
pictures, movies or sounds can be achieved by including the URL of the
file.
Wikis
offer open collaboration, on a simple cross platform tool, with people
who may be co-located or in distributed locations, working synchronously
or asynchronously.
Wikis
for the Construction of Knowledge
Ward called wikis “the simplest online
database that could possible work”.
The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia
demonstrates the potential for this innovative database technology. Currently there are more than 1.4 million articles
in the English-language version alone.
Each article has been created collaboratively. It has become a collective knowledge repository (Fountain, 2006), an open source of information, rivaling commercial
encyclopedias.
Wikipedia differs from commercial encyclopedias
by the use of the Neutral Point of View (NPOV). This means every article in Wikipedia is expected
to present both (or the many) sides of an argument. Commercial encyclopedia articles usually contain
the writing of just one informed writer. A Wikipedia article goes through
an evolutionary process towards the consensus view of the many writers. The construction of knowledge becomes a collaborative
effort to reach consensus.
This collaborative process of building
group wiki resources, reflects
the dynamic, ‘always improvable’ nature of knowledge which can help
to “prepare learners for successful participation in the new practices
of creating knowledge.” (As Lankshear et al. (2002:24) cited in Bruns
et al., 2005) A wiki enables activities that will involve
learners in the construction of personal and collective knowledge (Boulos
et al., 2006).
Learning
with wikis
In 1999 Jonassen et al 1999 introduced
the concept of computers as mind
tools.
Mind
tools are computer-based tools and learning environments that have been
adapted or developed to function as intellectual partners with the learner
in order to engage and facilitate critical thinking and higher order
learning. (Jonassen, 2000, p.9)
Jonassen Peck and Wilson (1999) argue
that technologies should be used as “knowledge construction tools that
amplify learner’s abilities to construct knowledge for themselves” (Jonassen
et al, 1999, p.152). The wiki
can be used as a semantic networking tool, a way to construct
meaningful connections between topics, ideas or concepts. A semantic network is composed of nodes (such
as wiki pages ) with meaningful links (hyperlinks) connecting them. A semantic network of wikis can help learners
to organize their ideas and to convey that organisation of ideas to
others (Jonassen et al, 1999, p.165).
They stress that it is important for teachers to allow students
to construct their own semantic network once they have taught the students
to use the semantic networking program. The wiki can be used as a networking
program allowing the students to actively
participate in the construction of a collective knowledge repository.
The move toward social constructivist
pedagogical models, initiated by researchers such as Piaget and Vygotsky,
makes the wiki a potentially useful educational tool.
The wiki can provide the medium by which learners communicate
and negotiate in their efforts to reach a shared understanding of a
problem (Bruns, 2005). Fostering
this form of collective cognition “can be conducive to solving problems
too complex or demanding for an individual” (
The asynchronous, public nature of wikis
generally leads to well considered writing in terms of content and structure
(Goodwin-Jones, 2003). Knowing
that there is an audience for their writing motivates students to attain
a higher quality of language and expression (Fountain, 2006).
The CoWeb Example
At Georgia Tech, Mark Guzdial has developed a cross
platform, open source wiki project that has been adopted by teachers
all over the world (Lund & Cunningham, 2001).
It has features such as editing the page, locking or unlocking
the page, or viewing the history of the page.
Changing the presentation is as simple as providing other templates
and graphics. It uses *any word or phrase* markup for creating new wiki pages (instead of CamelStyle). It is easily
adaptable to the needs of the school and has easy backup mechanisms
for recovery from malicious or more commonly, accidental damage. The present version of CoWeb allows access to
all previous versions should recovery be needed. It also tells users if they try to overwrite
a more recent version and prompts the user to merge the two versions.
Rick et al.
have found CoWeb to be a popular and useful tool for collaborative work
with low infrastructure costs (p.11).
Most significant are the cultural barriers to collaboration which
will be discussed later.
Building Social Capital
Cunningham’s primary motive in the development of the Wiki
software in 1994 was to create an open collaboration
space for a community of software developers. Brown & Campione had introduced the concept
of a community of learners
in 1990 and Lave & Wenger had used the term community of practice in 1991. By the 1990s Computer Supported Collaborative
Learning (CSCL) had emerged. Scardamalia and Bereiter had also developed
‘Knowledge Forum’ software as a database for knowledge building communities.
The introduction of these ideas and the potential for social
interaction made available by computer networks provided fertile ground
for Cunningham’s ideas.
Teaching
with any CSCL environment such as wikis, requires a cultural shift for
everyone involved. It is important
for the teacher to build trust in people and trust in the collaborative
process (Fountain, 2006). The formation of social networks and a sense
of connectedness comprise what has become known as
social capital.
It is necessary to build social
capital if wikis are going to work as a learning environment.
In order to develop social capital within a group the qualities
of tolerance,
reciprocity and trust need to be fostered so they become the normal
accepted standards. One needs
to be tolerant of the differing contributions each team member can make,
ensure communication is made in the same way we expect to be treated,
and believe in the kindness and competence of the other team members.
Making these standards explicit to students may help to build
social capital within a community of learners.
Toward a Pedagogy for Wikis
When
introducing wikis the launch activity should be motivating, easy and
quickly achievable, with little emphasis on the quality of the writing
(Notari, 2006). A good place to start is with Who’s Who page where students create their
own home-page within the course site to introduce themselves to their
peers (Guzdial et al., 2001, p. 22).
This can function as a non-threatening way to introduce the technology
and at the same time begin community building.
Requiring students to then make a comment on someone else’s
home-page can act as an icebreaker, encouraging social interaction (Augar
et al., 2004). Notari (2006)
stresses it is important to develop a communication and
comment culture right from the beginning.
This comment culture encourages active participation (
It
is important to create a well-defined and well-structured wiki site
if the collaborative process is to be successful (
In academic settings, scaffolding has proved important in guiding
student users in how to post material and what to post where. (Leuf
& Cunningham, 2001 p. 325)
The
least successful wiki site is one the teacher just tells the students
to make then never gets involved. Novices
need some guidance and structure to begin with.
The teacher must act as a designer of the learning activities
and the environment then guide the students in the use of wikis (
Haake
et al. (2005) point out that it is difficult for untrained users to
create good structure without guiding help and suggest the use of templates to define the structural elements within a wiki page.
A structure can be given by the teacher but later given over
to the students to continue or change as they see fit.
To
assist students with the collaborative process Notari (2006) suggests
the use of scripts. The script gives the phases of the collaborative
process and specifies how each student should collaborate to solve a
given problem. Each phase specifies the task that students
have to perform, the composition of the group, the way that the task
is distributed within and among groups, the mode of interaction and
the timing of the phases. (Dillenbourg, 2002)
Intervention
by the teacher should be withdrawn as students become more proficient
and confident with the technology and the collaborative process. James (2004) believes that “the participants
need to be in control of the content- you have to give it over fully”. Dillenbourg
(2002) also questions how much control the teacher can exert in the
collaborative process.
The collective tensions created by wikis – for those who dare
to risk living them – may radically alter pedagogical praxis. Wikis’ collective, open structure redistributes
the traditional (i.e. academic) knowledge-power nexus along non-authorative
lines. (Fountain, 2006)
The
success of collaborative work with wikis lies in the provision of a
safe environment the students can trust, where they “can assert meaningful
autonomy over the process” (Lamb, 2004).
There is a balancing act of providing the support, guidance,
and structure students initially need but giving students the autonomy
to make their own decisions and personal contribution to the wiki site.
Sweet spot of new technology,
Assemble guide and transform community,
Leave room for other’s innovation.
(Cunningham,
2006)
Applications
for Wikis
Wikis
can be used for:
student journaling to encourage meta-cognitive
reflection,
personal portfolios for the collection
of digital assets,
a collaborative knowledge repository for
everyone to share and edit,
research coordination, curricular and
cross-disciplinary coordination
collaboration towards a common goal,
discussion or debate in the attempt to
come to group consensus,
conference or colloquia Web Sites
collaborative writing of agendas or the minutes for meetings
multiple views of assets by means of syndication
and the aggregation of Web resources,
ongoing project management (Higdon, 2006),
writing a letter or statement presented
on behalf of the class or a community.
(Fountain, 2006),
collaborative story telling in Primary
School with children as young as in
grade 4 (Désilets & Paquet,
2005),
The possibilities
for using wikis as a platform for collaborative projects are limited
only by one’s imagination
and time (EDUCASE, 2005). Giving
the design of the collaborative space over to the users allows for the
discovery of new learning contexts that may never have been considered
by designers (Leuf & Cunningham 2001, p. 370).
Barriers to the Success of the Wiki
Leuf and Cunningham (2001) consider user fear to be the greatest
impediment to using wikis. This
is why developing trust is the first thing a teacher needs to address.
There is a long list of existing social teaching and learning
practices that could prevent the adoption of this innovation. These include a sense of competition that works
adversely to collaboration, the fear of being stigmatized as confused
or "stupid" by asking
for help (learned helplessness, Bruer, 1993, p. 19. cited in Rick et
al. 2006), conflicting attitudes towards independent capabilities as
opposed to collaborative skills, institutional
requirements of learning outcomes and assessment (Bruns et al., 2005),
temporal restraints made by the “compartmentalization of subjects
and their consecutively arranged slots in the school day and week”
(Lund, 2006), the availability of computers for classes in schools
or the technical competence and confidence of teachers.
The success of wikis involves an “epistemological shift, from
individually acquired to collectively created knowledge” (
The kind of “techno literacy” involved
is intimately linked with the social practice of teaching and less with
instrumental mastery of applications. This is very relevant when considering
the wiki’s deceptively simple user interface but its profound potential
for a collective epistemology. (Lund, 2006, p. 3)
Fountain (2006) even goes on to suggest that the trust building
necessary for the adoption of Wikis may be “too much of a challenge
to ask of educators who already lack time and resources”. Mattison (2003, cited in Schwartz, 2004) considers
it necessary to provide support staff with programming skills to maintain
the server, customize the software and create components.
Disadvantages
There
is no doubt that the potential for vandalism and mischief on wikis exists
but the “surprisingly robust nature of collaborative sites” such as
Wikipedia (EDUCASE, 2005) are evidence that they can and do work. There are two ways to prevent the action of
the “bad actors”: soft security and hard security.
Hard security requires centralised administration
of authentication to restrict access and provide backup of previous
versions. “Wiki enabled projects
can provide various levels of site access and control to team members,
offering a fine-tuning element that enhances the teaching and learning
experience.” (EDUCASE, 2005)
Soft security
relies on the community to enforce order rather than the technology
to impose restrictions (Lamb, 2004; Bruns et al., 2005). The wiki is “based on the idea that people really
can be polite and well mannered” (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001, p. 232)
The use of soft security makes it important to have monitors to remove
“inappropriate language, spam and incorrect
or inappropriate content” (EDUCASE, 2005) should it be detected.
Sociological
Implications of the Wiki.
The simplicity
and openness of Wikis encourage democratic
use (Leuf & Cunningham, 2001, p. 15).
They are potentially democratic because every user has the same
capabilities (Frenk, 2003). The
decentralized nature of wikis distribute
power out to the masses (Bruns et al, 2005). Ebersbach
et al, (2006) see wikis as a possible vehicle for social change. The wiki offers a way for people to share
information “without having to pass through a central authority.” (Ebersbach & Glaser, 2004) It makes
wikis “especially suited to be used by social movements.” They suggest
that wikis can be thought of as being emancipatory
(Ebersbach & Glaser, 2004).
A wiki affords users to be an active participant in a collaborative process. Wikis allow anyone
to become a collaborative creator
rather than only a consumer. This encourages “a new form of user who acts,
in collaboration with other peers, as an active producer of content
in the very act of consumption. “(Bruns et al, 2005)
Trends
A
hybrid between wikis and bogs is emerging. The bliki is a blog with wiki support.
They look more like a blog than a wiki because they display the
typical blog attribute of showing reverse-chronological order, date-labeled,
entries (Wikipedia, 29/10/06) but like a wiki, it allows editing by
anyone. Bliki technology has not yet matured so the potential for education
is yet to be explored and realized.
The
bliki is a novel integrative application
binding two different forms of Web-based collaboration software (Boulos
et al, 2006). It is this type
of innovation that Boulos et al., (2006) believe will eventually provide
“coherent wholesome learning experiences” (p. .
They suggest that the combined use of wiki, blogs and podcast
applications as mind tools may yield the most powerful
learning experiences (p. 3). The
characteristics of simplicity, empowered users and bottom up organizations
offered by wikis and weblogs (Lamb, 2004. p.48) have contributed to
their popularity. However, they
are not yet mainstream applications.
Conclusion
Many
people are skeptical about the value of collaborative, open source software
or encyclopedias such as Wikipedia.
However, as Rick et al. (2006) point out, “a new medium can play
a meaningful role in bringing about change” ( p.24 ). As
Web 2.0 applications become more common, the social climate will change. The combination of technological, epistemological,
pedagogical and sociological changes work together to eventually change
attitudes and practices.
Although
wikis and other Web 2.0 applications are becoming common place in Universities
they are rarely used in primary or secondary Australian schools. Schools will inevitably follow, but at their
own pace. Researchers and early
adopters of these emerging tools, need to adapt or develop them, in
the pursuit of to finding ways to enhance learning experiences in various
settings.
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