In two words: group work. Faculty have been told for years that group work improves learner knowledge retention. We've also been told that knowing how to work in a group will be a critical skill for the employability of our learners. Most of us don't assign group work though because learners hate it, we hate it, and it's impossible to grade. Wikis are the tool that we've been looking for.First, the research:
Students learn best when they are actively involved in the process. Researchers report that, regardless of the subject matter, students working in small groups tend to learn more of what is taught and retain it longer than when the same content is presented in other instructional formats. Students who work in collaborative groups also appear more satisfied with their classes. (Sources: Beckman, 1990; Chickering and Gamson, 1991; Collier, 1980; Cooper and Associates, 1990; Goodsell, Maher, Tinto, and Associates, 1992; Johnson and Johnson, 1989; Johnson, Johnson, and Smith, 1991; Kohn, 1986; McKeachie, Pintrich, Lin, and Smith, 1986; Slavin, 1980, 1983; Whitman, 1988)Barbara Gross Davis “Tools for Teaching” Jossey-Bass, 1993
Wikis allow you and your learners to avoid some of the common problems with group work. First, wikis can be asynchronous. Learners do not all have to be in one location at one time to edit a paper. The paper can live on the wiki, learners can access the wiki to edit the paper at a time that is convenient for them. They no longer have to pass the paper back and forth in email, losing control of who changed what when and ending up with a confused mess of edits in twenty-three different files. Instead, the wiki keeps track of who edited the paper and what they changed. The graphic to the left shows a wiki in the open source software mediawiki. The tabs at the top of the page give your options. The article is in front now, but to edit it one only has to click on the edit tab. This particular wiki software also automatically builds in a discussion area for each article. So if learners want to discuss edits before making them that discussion is conveniently placed and archived for the faculty to see also.
The history page though is what makes group work possible from a grading perspective. That page archives every draft of the article along with who edited the article and what changes they made. Not only that Mediawiki has a nifty little compare button, so the instructor (grader) can truly see who added what information to the article. (See the graphic below.) There are several examples of classroom use of wikis. The 1001 Flat World Tales wiki was started several years ago and now has a significant amount of student writing posted there.
Some faculty have chosen to use a wiki for their entire course, such as the screen shot from a Drexel University chemistry course below: Wikis have the flexibility and tools needed for a variety of course projects, from traditional papers to learner-generated textbooks. Many wikis can also be password protected should your situation require that.
The simplest way to begin to use a wiki is to choose one that is hosted. www.wikispaces.com hosts wiki space at no cost to users. (To get rid of the ads you do need to pay a monthly or annual fee.) www.Siteground.com hosts mediawiki for less than $7.00/month and www.pbwiki.com hosts Peanut butter wikis.
Had an interesting juxtaposition of two emails today.
The first was from Stephen Downes of OLDaily. Stephen was considering the research and arguments around authentic learning or constructivist learning. Essentially the research seems to support direct or guided learning more strongly than it does minimally guided or constructivist learning as sometimes implemented. Here's the link to that blog post: http://halfanhour.blogspot.com/2007/11/kirschner-sweller-clark-2006-summary.html.
The flip side was a link to a YouTube video produced by a Cultural Anthropology course, which is perhaps an example of a minimally-guided, group project more or less panning the current educational system. This one was actually posted on this blog a couple of weeks ago, but I am slow and didn't watch it until now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGCJ46vyR9o
Blogs can be divided into the same three varieties as podcasts: faculty written, student written, and outside source. Both faculty written blogs and outside sources fed into a class via RSS feed can add a great deal to a class.
A faculty generated blog written specifically for learners can let your learners know that their instructor is still interested in and maybe even passionate about their field. And if the instructor is passionate about the field maybe the learner should be also.
A faculty blog also allows the faculty to take note of current events as they happen and comment on them relative the the course content. Then, when the class reaches the section of the course material that is relevant to the comment posted a month ago it's there to direct learners to.
Blogs written by other practitioners in the field bring their own strengths. In the past many disciplines didn't have much informal writing available to learners. Thanks to blogs there are many thousands of prominent individuals commenting more or less daily on various aspects of discipline knowledge. Many of these individuals are writing in an accessible style very different from formal, peer-reviewed journals and learners who would never consider reading a journal may find blogs fascinating and interesting.
Some blogs not only add currency to a course, they also may add what is essentially a lecture on a specific topic that is not covered well in the course textbook or perhaps adds a different (and important) perspective.Learner generated blogs bring another perspective also and can add to the writers' understanding of the course content.
Many of the learning management systems used today include a blogging tool. Those that do not have a specific blogging tool probably include a threaded discussion tool that could be adapted to a blog. So why not just use those tools? Why bother to set up a blog outside of the course? The primary reason I see is audience. When learners complete written assignments in the classroom they are writing for an audience of 1. Instructors can ask them to pretend there are others who will read the work, but everyone knows that's not reality. Knowing your audience and understanding your audience is critical to good, effective writing. Using a blogging service outside of the password protected course environment gives the learner many other potential audiences. It's sometimes possible to make the audience from the non-classroom world formal – for example, by inviting a local historical society to read learner history blog posts.
An equally important second reason to consider requiring learner blogs is that they are a tool to encourage learners to reflect in writing on the course content. Reflection is an important step in knowledge retention. Too many learners simply cram for exams rather than thoughtfully considering material and reflecting on how the course content might be important in their lives.
If you are going to use blogs in a course then it's important to learn about RSS feeds. Learners are more likely to read the blogs you are reading if you feed the posts directly into the course shell. Doing this requires you to do a little coding in java script on a page in your course shell. Fortunately (for me anyway) you don't have to write the code by yourself, there are script generators available online. I used http://www.rss-to-javascript.com/p/138.html to generate the code required to add an RSS feed to a course in Blackboard Vista.
The above example isn't particularly attractive. It would be good to at least put it into a single cell table to address margin issues or maybe just pull in headlines from several posts (next image). The point though, is that this entry will change every time the author of the Cafe Hayek blog adds a new post, which in this case is typically several times a day. The instructor of the course can then use the blog posts to generate discussion in the discussion area of the course without having to search for new and timely topics on a regular basis. So how do you get started with blogs? There are several free services available for hosting blogs such as www.blogger.com and www.WordPress.com. Before you dive into this it's also probably a good idea to read a few blogs. The top 100 education blogs can be linked to from this page – http://oedb.org/library/features/top-100-education-blogs.
