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Wiki Research
Student Work Our Responses |
AnnotatedBibliographyAlexander, Bryan. (2002). Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning? EDUCAUSE Review, 41(2), 32-44.
In his article “Web 2.0: A New Wave of Innovation for Teaching and Learning,” Bryan Alexander claims that there is no clear definition of Web 2.0 applications. He argues, though, that the Web 2.0 label is “far less important than the concepts, projects and practices included in {the} scope” of these applications (33).
In his section titled “Concepts,” Alexander works to define the predominant characteristics of Web 2.0 applications. He claims that all of these applications are examples of social software—or social networking tools: these tools include, but are not limited to “blogs, wikis, trackback, podcasting, and videoblogs” (33). The author further develops our understanding of these applications by stating that their emphasis on user modification and collaborative development of microcontent, their use of reverse-chronological ordering of information (timeliness and/or kairos), and their implementation of hyperlinks and social bookmarks, “informs a way of making sharing, and consuming digital documents—a way that differs from what we have grown accustomed to” (34).
In his section “Projects and Practices,” Alexander narrows his scope, focusing on specific features of Web 2.0 applications and the implications of these features on higher education—pedagogy. He provides a detailed description of social bookmarks—the predominant feature of Web 2.0 applications—and claims that the “pedagogical applications of these bookmarks stem from their affordance of collaborative information discovery.” The author suggests that these social bookmarks: first, “act as ‘outboard memory,’ a location to store a multitude of web links”; second, create an environment where it is easier “to {find} people with related interests which can magnify one’s work by learning from others or by leading to new collaborations”; third, illuminate new perspectives on research “patterns” through “user-created tagging”; fourth, create “multi-authored bookmark pages” which are useful for team projects; and fifth, (the redundant point) that tracking bookmark sites can give students and teachers understandings of “patterns” of research and progress of research (36).
Perhaps one of the author’s most interesting ideas (at least for composition scholars) is that these applications promote social writing platforms—places that act as a space to “discover, publish and share” (37). He proceeds to acknowledge that these platforms might be useful for campus environments and can build on existing writing pedagogy.
Throughout the remainder of the article, the author develops many of the abovementioned issues more fully. He concludes by stating that these applications should be scrutinized more closely by the academic community, because they carry “powerful implications for education” (42). --Justin
Augar, N., Raitman, R. & Zhou, W. (2004). Teaching and learning online with wikis. In R. Atkinson, C. Mc Beath, D. Jonas-Dwyer & R. Phillips (Eds), Beyond the comfort zone: Proceedings of the 21st ASCILITE Conference (pp. 95-104). Retrived 22 December 2007, from http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/perth04/procs/augar.html
At Deakin U in Australia, students take both online and onsite classes. Researchers in the IT program surveyed students in online classes and learned that half of the students were unsatisfied with the classes because of technical issues and lack of interaction. At the start of classes, students would post just a brief bio and not interact with each other. This team decided to try using a wiki to copy an in-class ice breaker exercise in which students had to answer a list of about 20 questions (like who has a dog) by learning about their classmates. In this article, they include their review of different wikis, settling on one that included an editing toolbar for ease of use as well as tracking and authentication for security. The adapted ice breaker exercise seemed to work in that students engaged with it, making many posts over an extended period of time. They did not yet have the end of quarter survey results to see if it had any effect on students overall sense of the course. --Michelle
Barton, Matthew D. (2005). The Future of Rational-Critical Debate in Online Public Spheres. Computers and Composition, 22, 177-90.
Barton argues that blogs, discussion boards and wikis together offer the opportunity for a re-invigoration of the public sphere and a return to rational critical public discourse that is not compromised by the domination of commercial control, while also warning that these venues are at risk of being co-opted. He is utopian: "Perhaps an upcoming generation, finding subjectivity in blogs, developing rational-critical debating skills in online bulletin boards, and building a critical public sphere with the help of wikis will help 'remediate culture' and restore true democracy to the public (Bolter, 2001, p. 208)" (188). His goal is a return to the bourgeoisie public sphere described by Habermas as occurring in the late 18th century and destroyed by the eroding of the lines between public and private spheres, the commercialization of the media and the rise of mass rather than public communication. From Habermas, he takes three criteria for rational-critical debate that he locates in blogs, discussion boards, and wikis: they disregard status (or, more accurately award status on the basis of merit rather than social position); participants debate whatever topics they choose including what had previously been unquestioned; they are theoretically open to anyone. He equates blogs with 18th century letter writing, discussion boards with coffee shops and wikis with public documents like constitutions that maintain a record of revisions and annotations. He argues that at least for now these forums escape the stranglehold of mass media in a truly free, open and democratic public discourse. He then proposes that writing teachers introduce students to these ways to develop their skills of rationale-critical debate and participate in a critical public sphere. Interestingly, he asserts that students should be introduced to these tools in a pre-defined order, starting with blogs to develop their subjectivity and authority, moving to discussion boards to practice their skills in rational-critical debate and then finally using wikis to work at collaborative meaning making: "I feel it is unlikely that students will succeed at building wikis and also learn to speak with a community voice unless they have first developed a personal voice and sense of identity" (189). This assumption of students as blank slates and the necessity of stepping orderly through a linear process of development have not held up in actual practice both with younger as well as older students. -- Michelle
Beeghly. Dena. (2005). It's About Time: Using Electronic Literature Discussion Groups with Online Learners. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. 49(1), 12-21. Retrieved 30 Sept. 2007, from ERIC (EJ719837).
Another anecdotal piece, but Beeghly notes some important trends in her class. She gives a rubric about how and what to post for the online discussion groups. She also notes that the asynchronous nature of the discussion forum allowed for more thought, and thus likely more confidence, in discussions. Her students even started to engage in healthy competition, in that if someone was particularly pithy, another student had to match or outdo that student. She includes a lot of student comments and notes that the positive atmosphere of the f2f class likely contributed to the positive experience of the online discussion. -- Suzanne (9/30/07)
Brownstein, Erica, and Klein, Robert. (2006, May/June). Blogs: Applications in Science Education. Journal of College Science Teaching, 18-22.
This article explores blogging through related definitions, research and examples. According to these authors the use of blogs helps students become subject-matter experts and increases student interest and ownership in learning. They found a noticeable improvement in the quality and quantity of learning taking place in the (science) classroom with the introduction of blogs. There is a bit of useful, general info in this article but nothing particularly relevant. -- Peggy (8/30/07)
Carr, Tony, Morrison, Andrew, Cox, Glenda, & Deacon, Andrew. (2007). Weathering Wikis: Net-Based Learning Meets Political Science in a South African University. Computers and Composition, 24, 266-84.
This presents a relatively balanced look at wikis that includes some data gathering on how a wiki worked in an advanced political science course. Their research questions are quite similar to ours: “The primary questions guiding our research were in what ways could wikis assist collaborative learning in an undergraduate course in political science and how we could support educators’ in the effective use of wikis?”
They see wikis (with their minimal, flexible structure and invitation to ongoing revision by all) as a great tool for collaborative writing that involves students not simply in reciting but “critically reflecting” upon knowledge through negotiating questions of selection, validity and organization of knowledge (p. 267). They stress that the use of wikis depends a good deal on the context in which they are used, showing, for example, that teachers need to give students the opportunity to build knowledge and that students working with an enthusiastic and supportive tutor made better use of the wiki then those with a tutor who had not bought into the idea of using the wikis. They warn that resistance can come both from students and from teachers who are threatened by the ways in which the wiki, and the collaborative, student-directed learning it is being used to promote, disrupt normal power relations and ways of doing things.
Like many of the other articles I have read, these authors turn to theory to say what wikis should do, but not necessarily to theorize what they do and do not do. The difference here is that these authors move toward using the theory to think about resistance to the adoption and dissemination of wikis-–although what they have to say boils down to people (students and teachers) do not like to be pushed out of their comfort zone. They situate themselves as approaching learning from the socio-cultural approach that they see beginning with Vygotsky, and being developed by activity theorists who see meaning being negotiated in the context of activities. They argue that wikis are “mediating artifacts,” meaning they are not just tools for making meaning, they also mediate how meaning is made. They rely most heavily on a model of “expansive learning” developed by Yrjo Engestrom, identifying two of his five principles of expansive learning at play in wiks, multi-voicedness and contradictions, and adding a third property of wikis, transparency. Multi-voicedness draws upon Bakhtin and describes the collaborative meaning-making property of wikis. Contradictions seems similar to what we might also call conflicts, but draws attention to the dynamic nature of wikis in which changes in one place can produce changes elsewhere where these changes are not limited to the words in the wikis but also include the relations between those using it. Finally, they see transparency as both a characteristic of wikis and “a prerequisite for multi-voicedness and renders contradictions visible” (p. 270). “We suggest that the use of a wiki for collaborative writing can provide the transparency of process required to support the negotiation of meaning in shaping an emerging text. This transparency of group process also challenges well-established models of teaching and learning and may provoke uncertainties and anxieties for both educators” (p. 271).
The research project looks at the use of wikis for one module in a junior level political science class at a South African University that included 174 students. Students were to write their own papers, which they were to post to the wiki for group feedback and for the purposes of producing a collaboratively written introduction and conclusion to their group’s essays. They did this work over four weeks. The research included analysis of the number and nature of the postings, responses to a survey of students, and semi-structured interviews with some students, tutors and the lecturer. The authors valued wikis for their transparency, ability to help students learn how to work in collaborative groups and encouragement of process writing. They found change management and collaborative learning (group work) problems. While some students did use the wiki extensively, they reported that a number of students did not use it or used it only minimally. Student resistance and lack of engagement with the wiki they attributed to students being too focused on the short-term (turning in the assignment rather than learning a new way of learning), anxiety about exposure, last minute work habits, the uncomfortableness that comes with change and resistance to group work. Students who did better had tutors who had bought in to the wiki idea, encouraged them to use it and coached them on group dynamics and group management. Tutors expressed concern about how to assess student work, and the authors also attributed the reluctance of some tutors to resistance to being moved out of their comfort zone. The lecturer reported concern about the increased time. -- Michelle
Chase, Darren. (2007). Sharing with Instant Messaging, Wikis, Interactive Maps and Flickr. Computers in Libraries, 27(1), 7-8, 52-56. Retrieved 30 Sept. 2007, from ERIC (EJ750590).
This is another first-person narrative, but he brings up the ideas that students today do expect cutting-edge and easy technology, lending credence to our bliki idea. He also points out that wikis are cheap--can be no cost to the university. -- Suzanne (9/30/07)
Driscoll, Kelly. (2007, May/June). Collaboration in Today’s Classrooms: New Web Tools Change the Game. Multimedia and Internet@Schools, 9-12.
This article has good information and again, covers the use of Web 2.0. This one focuses more on the increasing impact it has on collaboration and communication in the classroom and its ease of use compared to earlier/other applications. Web 2.0 has benefits for students and teachers which include: presentation (simple sharing of ideas); interaction (receiving feedback); and collaboration (working together for creating, building and editing). These authors claim “Having the ability to publish their writing on a blog suddenly transforms students into authors and publishers.” The article also discusses the use of wikis for group based writing projects, collaborative note taking, or brainstorming. The article also mentions that students who may avoid live class participation are leveraging new communication forms to become more active and vocal in class. -- Peggy (8/28/07)
Engstrom, Mary E. and Dusty Jewett. (2005). Collaborative Learning the Wiki Way. TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, 49 (6), 12-68. Retrieved 28 Oct. 2007, from Academic Search Premier (19808718).
This is another case study but instead of simply extolling the virtues of wikis, it traces how wiki use can facilitate inquiry-based learning and collaborative skills. "This article describes (a) the rationale for using a wiki, (b) the organizational and managerial structure employed, and (c) the professional development program provided to teachers preceding and during project implementation. Finally, lessons learned are presented along with recommendations for using a wiki in a large, student-centered curriculum project." This case study went beyond a regular-sized classroom to include about 400 students and instructors. -- Suzanne (10-28-07)
Farabaugh, Robin. (2007). "The Isle Is Full of Noises": Using Wiki Software to Establish a Discourse Community in a Shakespeare Classroom. Language Awareness, 16 (1), 41-56.
Like others, this author finds a lot to love about wikis: "wiki software presents an ideal platform for generating reading and writing assignments that encourage language awareness in the literary domain. It provides an easy way to complete short (rather than long) writing assignments, extending group work outside the class by continuing it asynchronously on the wiki, and enabling students to structure their discussions on their own. In this last instance the wiki is unique: it provides a minimally structured platform so that the students may determine how what they read and talk about relates to itself" (41). The essay provides concrete examples showing how wikis can be used for the social construction of meaning (Vygotsky), dialogic building of meaning (Bakhtin), and writing to learn (Emig). At a school with a diverse, often first-generation student body, Farabaugh is one of a group of teachers who are turning to wikis to help build community through collaborative meaning making and to give students a chance to learn academic discourse. This teacher used wikis for four semesters to teach students associative thinking, brainstorming and analysis by having them analyze the re-occurring themes, images, language and symbols in Shakespeare's sonnets with students hyperlinking to each other's analyses of specific sonnets to trace associative webs. The assignments are intentionally scaffolded for writing to learn with students moving from directed analysis, to comparison of each other's ideas to writing their own papers. The teacher gives examples that demonstrate that this process lets students "think out loud," bounce ideas off of each other and make meaning. Students also hyperlinked movie comparisons. In the movie class, wikis provided a way to extend class discussion in a short inter-session class. Finally, Farabaugh used the wiki to put students in charge of their learning by having them generate ideas for mid-term and final exams. She does not just make claims about what wikis can do, she gives evidence that they are doing these things through examples from assignments and student posting. -- Michelle
Garza, Susan Loudermilk, and Tommy Hern. (2007). Using Wikis as Collaborative Writing Tools: Something Wiki This Way Comes--or Not! Kairos, 10 (1). Retrived 26 Sept. 2007, fromhttp://english.ttu.edu/Kairos/10.1/binder2.html?http://falcon.tamucc.edu/wiki/WikiArticle/Home
This wiki article is divided into four main sections: “a wiki story,” “what is wiki,” “wiki and composition theory,” and “wiki as a collaborative writing tool.”
The “wiki story” acts as a narrative introduction telling the story of administrators who threaten the use of wikis in composition classes because of concerns about maintaining order, safeguarding students and protecting the university (there had been a complaint about plagiarism on the wiki). The authors assert that wikis allow them to put into practice all of the ideas about good composition pedagogy the field has been preaching for years. They go so far as to call wikis an ideal: “wikis are an ideally designed, open-source space that takes advantage of the messy, dynamic nature of writing.”
“What is wiki” gives a brief overview of the history and a description of the nature of wikis. It then goes on to make a series of claims about what wikis can do for the composition classroom. These claims are supported by saying that the structure of wikis allows these things to happen, not by showing that they have happened or why they happen with wikis any more effectively or uniquely than they do with other things. These claims are that wikis let students control the technology, rather than being controlled by it, because their relative lack of structure and surplus of flexibility require that students shape the technology to their needs; wikis provide the flexibility necessary for the negotiating and compromising of collaboration; the need to negotiate structure "may" help students become more aware of power relations and the contexts (social, political, economic, etc) in which they are operating; the hypertext aspect of wikis allows students to practice composing multimodal, hyperlinked compositions that are more like what they may be doing in the workplace; wikis turn the spotlight on process rather than product because the focus is on writing rather than design and students need to make decisions right away about, for example, naming the wiki pages which the authors see as putting students right into the writing process by making decisions about focus and structure. Ultimately, the authors see wikis as democratizing and empowering--wikis put the laborers (students) in charge of the means and end of production, keeping the focus on process rather than product: "Wikis change the way knowledge circulates. The producers of the writing decide how the writing will circulate, and how the writing process will develop." Wikis let students experience writing as dynamic rather than static.
“Wiki and Composition Theory” starts out by asserting three beliefs that the authors hold (“writing is messy . . . a socially collaborative act” and wikis are the way to get into this mess and collaboration). They support the first two by referencing Donald Murray and Kenneth Bruffee respectively. The third claim they support by comparing wikis to open source programming, arguing that wikis, because of their stripped down nature and immediate inviting in of collaborators, foreground the messy and collaborative nature of writing. Their strongest supporting example is to point out how wikis open up the artificiality of discrete first, second and final drafts by instead creating an environment of constant revision and collaboration. They are less convincing in their claim that wikis change the process of writing through the need to name files and easy ability to hyperlink, primarily because this is also easy in other contexts. In fact, our students are naming their wiki pages with their first names (indicating perhaps a sense of ownership) not their topic.
The section on “Wikis As A Collaborative Writing Tool” begins by asking an important question it does not really answer. The question is how do wikis, as tools for collaboration, affect the collaborative process? Instead of exploring how the tool might affect the process by studying the collaborative writing process of people on wikis, the authors turn to theorists of collaborative learning for some of the challenges to effective collaboration (access, conflict and willingness to share) and then argue that wikis help address these challenges. They point out that wikis have a lower barrier to access than many other programs because they only require internet access, not any special software. They review research on the social constructivist nature of collaboration to get at the conflict inherent in collaboration. Borrowing from Burnett (1993) and Burnett, Hill and Duin (1997), they identify three types of conflict: affective, procedural and substantive, where the first two are negative, but the third is positive. They argue that wikis force users to deal with the affective (you flamed me) and procedural (how are we going to do this?) right away in order to set up the wiki, therefore letting them get this messiness out of the way so they can focus on the substantive debates about content. On the contrary, Polly and I have seen our students keep cycling back to deal with personality and procedural issues as they try to develop their content. They continue to debate how best to organize their work together, moving to split up in teams--a move that in part seems to be driven by frustration with those who did not do their work. These authors argue that the negotiations required for collaboration using wikis will give students a meta-awareness of social constructs. They also assert that wikis are radically democratizing or leveling, giving everyone an equal voice. In our experience, some barriers to access remain as not all students have easy access to the Internet, and students who feel more comfortable expressing themselves in writing or are less inhibited about publication can easily dominate the wiki. Finally, they find most students are willing to share their work on wikis. They did some surveys of their students to find that most (77%) did not care or were fine with sharing and that 61% did not choose to password protect their pages. -- Michelle
Harper, B. Vernon, Jr. (2005, Oct.). The New Student-Teacher Channel. T.H.E. Journal, 3+.
This article discusses blogging as a tool to generate self disclosure between educator and student. At first it seems unrelated to our research but there is some relevant info. The authors state “A blog extends the learning experience well beyond face-to-face classroom creating a more complete learning experience”. The author cites a study at a Virginia university where students participated for 8 weeks in a blog initiated by the professor. Seven blogs were written by the instructor, 73 total responses posted by 15 students. After the study one student said “I expressed more….you can even take the comments that people said in class and think about them in relation to your own life and them come out with something on the blog.” -- Peggy (8/28/07)
James, Heather. (2004, May 21). My Brilliant Failure: Wikis in Classrooms. Kairosnews: A Weblog for Discussing Rhetoric, Technology and Pedagogy, Retrieved 21 December 2007, from http://kairosnews.org/my-brilliant-failure-wikis-in-classrooms
James makes the point that the tool is only as good as the use to which one puts it. She loves the wiki because of its collaborative, social constructivist promise, but found that when she used a wiki it was just "pumped-up Power Point" because her teaching practices were still teacher-centric. While she speculates that she needed to give students more control over the content and knowledge generation in the class, she also wonders if time and access limits also prevented them from taking off with the wiki. She does see wikis as having the potential to facilitate progressive, constructivist, student-centered classes, yet despite the obvious attraction of this philosophy and her embrace of wikis, she did not make it happen. Why? Is she really so stuck in her old-school practices? She includes links to sites that explain wikis, wiki norms and some examples of wikis used in classes, including one for a writing course on wikis and blogs at Bemidji State U: http://ferret.bemidjistate.edu/~morgan/WeblogsAndWikis/wikka.php?wakka=HomePage -- Michelle
Lamb, Annette, and Johnson, Larry. (2006, May). Blogs and Blogging, Part II. School Library Media Activities Monthly, 40-44.
This article poses several questions to consider when using technology in the classroom (what is the purpose, what are expected learning outcomes, who is the audience, etc). Students using blogs may become involved in peer sharing, support, encouragement, mentoring and cognitive apprenticeships. The authors suggest that students become members of an online learning community and view writing and reading as cognitive tools for learning. The blog can become a catalyst for inquiry. -- Peggy (8/28/07)
Lamb, Annette, and Larry Johnson. (2007). An Information Skills Workout: Wikis and Collaborative Writing. Teacher Librarian, 34 (5), 57-59.
Written for librarians working with children, this article nevertheless gives a nice overview of how wikis are being used as teaching and learning tools and provides some support for our claims.
They take from Brian Lamb five characteristics of wikis: they are unique (as in creating original content), collaborative, have open editing and simple coding, and are evolving. They sum up wikis with this nice characterization: "Wikis are a specific type of social technology involving cooperation, interdependence, and synergy" (p. 57). They suggest introducing students to wikis by first showing them examples (they have some suggested wikis) to show how many wikis are created for specific audiences and topics and to look at Wikipedia to show how sources are cited, how it can be edited, how to find the history of the page and to explore the accuracy of information and look for opportunity to contribute knowledge.
They argue that what are often called "collaborative" writing assignments are more cooperative than collaborative, with students each doing a part that contributes to a whole. However, they assert that wikis allow for more truly collaborative writing through the editing process as well as through group idea generation and revising: "Although most educators have used collaborative writing activities in their classroom, these assignments are often more cooperative than collaborative. In other words, teams may work on different aspects of a topic and bring them together to create a final project. Wikis provide an opportunity to synthesize ideas and create a collaborative project that is broader, deeper, and more interconnected than that created in a traditional writing environment" (p. 58). Also helpful for supporting our assumption that using wikis will help students with their academic writing, in particular supporting claims, they assert that "Wiki creators learn to cite their work and provide supporting evidence for their statements, whereas wiki users get practice checking the accuracy of information found in sources such as Wikipedia" (p. 58).
They have some useful recommendations and ideas for setting up such collaborative writing projects. For content, they suggest wikis not only as critical or analytic sites devoted to books we might be studying, but also literature circles (a sort of book club, see http://www.literaturecircles.com/). They cover teaching students how to cite and get permission for sources and links, finding out about or creating school wikis use policies and recommend putting the wikis under Creative Commons license (see http://creativecommons.org/). They recommend talking with students about editing (collaborating with others rather than hijacking their work), modeling constructive revising, discussing "roles and responsibilities of each author" (p. 58) and having students use the comment/discussion area for students to provide rationales for their revisions/edits and to float revision ideas.
In addition to collaborative writing projects, they recommend wikis for collaborative problem solving ("to generate lists, narrow topics, outline options, debate issues, make suggestions, and even vote" (p. 58), collaborative research (including across classes and terms), dynamic journal or notebook, portfolio. as a portal, resource aggregator (like an annotated bibliography!), study guide and for virtual conferences (pp. 58-59).
Finally, they have some great quotes from kids who did a wiki on Hyde Park author Blue Balliett's book The Wright 3 that I can't resist sharing with you:
"Boy, I'm glad we didn't have to write!" "It is so cool to know that somebody might use what I wrote for their research!!" "I write a lot more carefully knowing the 'world' can read it." "I liked the fact that we could work together, help each other out, and link to stuff someone else wrote." "It is so cool to put something ON the Internet, rather than always taking stuff OFF."
The quotes demonstrate the power of "authentic" writing for "real" audiences. -- Michelle
Lamb, Brian. (2004). Wide Open Spaces: Wikis, Ready or Not. EDUCAUSE Review, 39 (5), 36-48.
Lamb is a learning technology guy who, perhaps in an excess of enthusiasm, sees wikis as a manifestation of the original intent of the web to be widely accessible, truly interactive, and flexibly evolving with the positive energy and freedom of bottom-up creation and to be a way of transforming pedagogy. He attempts to define wikis, address general and academic objections to them (security, privacy, unclear structure, aesthetics, control and attribution of work), and give an overview of the ways they are being used in academia. He reviews three intellectual property options, Community Copyright, Public Domain and Copy Left. He argues that wikis work best when they are part of a collaborative, constructivist pedagogy and argues for being willing to allow the creative chaos minimally structured wikis can let happen: "To truly empower students within collaborative or co-constructed activities requires the teacher to relinquish some degree of control over those activities. The instructor’s role shifts to that of establishing contexts or setting up problems to engage students. In a wiki, the instructor may set the stage or initiate interactions, but the medium works most effectively when students can assert meaningful autonomy over the process. It’s not that authority can’t be imposed on a wiki, but doing so undermines the effectiveness of the tool" (p. 45).
Lamb claims that in academia wikis are most commonly used for writing classes: "Perhaps the most common pedagogical application of wikis in education is to support writing instruction. At Teaching Wiki (http://teachingwiki.org), Joe Moxley, a professor of English at the University of South Florida, lists a number of the medium’s strengths for the teaching of writing skills: wikis invigorate writing (“fun” and “wiki” are often associated); wikis provide a low-cost but effective communication and collaboration tool (emphasizing text, not software); wikis promote the close reading, revision, and tracking of drafts; wikis discourage “product oriented writing” while facilitating “writing as a process”; and wikis ease students into writing for public consumption." (p. 44). Lamb argues that wikis can also teach students "the rhetoric of emergent technologies," in other words writing online, in hypertext and in various new and emerging mediums and genres including wikis and blogs that are collaborative and for "real" audiences as opposed to just the teacher. -- Michelle
Mader, Stewart. Using Wiki in Education. Retrieved 21 Dec 2007, from http://www.wikiineducation.com/display/ikiw/Home
This wiki book focuses on the use of wikis in education. It has ten case studies, some of which are available for free. It also includes links to wiki tools, links to courses and projects using wikis (including a few that are writing related), links to articles and papers (mostly popular press, newspapers) about wikis and suggestions for how to use wikis in education: to build websites, peer review, group authoring, project management, data collection, course and teacher reviews, for presentations, P&T dossier, directories. -- Michelle
Maloney, J. Edward. (2007, Jan. 5). What Web 2.0 Can Teach Us About Learning. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. B26-B27.
This article covers background information on the use of course management systems in teaching and learning. It was interesting for me because I learned what “web 2.0” and “RSS” means. One quote from the article: “And social networking sites such as My Space….have shown among other things that students will invest time and energy in building relationships around shared interests and knowledge communities”. It’s a stretch but an interesting observation. -- Peggy (8/28/07)
McGivney, Veronica. (2004). Understanding persistence in adult learning. Open Learning, 19 (1), 33-46. Retrieved on 28 April 2008, from EBSCO Host (12917192).
McGivney reviews recent studies of adult student persistence and sums up the factors that do and do not contribute to adults staying in school. Adults drop out because of life pressures, they took distance learning classes when not well matched for them, lack of support from family and/or from the school, inadequate initial information and guidance, dissatisfaction with classes, finances, and time management. Factors that contributed to persistence were motivation, support from family and/or school, financial support, good information and initial guidance, high-quality courses and teachers, and a supportive learning environment.
McKiernan, Gerry. (2008, March 13). Wikipedia: School and University Projects. Scholarship 2.0: An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Retrieved 24 April 2008, from http://scholarship20.blogspot.com/2008/03/wikipedia-writing.html
McKiernan presents many excellent ideas for writing assignments using Wikipedia. In other postings on his blog, he speculates on the value of wikis for open access, for preventing plagiarism, and alternative scholarship models. -- Michelle
Moxley, Joe, and Ryan T. Meehan. (2007, March 20). Collaboration and Teaching: Using Social Networking Tools to Engage the Wisdom of Teachers. Teaching Wiki.org. Retrieved 21 December 2007, from http://teachingwiki.org/default.aspx/TeachingWiki/CollaborationLiteracyAuthorship.html
This is interesting because it looks at the uses of wikis and collaborative writing not just in one class, but in a large writing program where they are being used for student and teacher collaborations. At USF, students compose wikis and blogs. However, these tools are also being used to build community and collaboration between teachers with spaces for developing curriculum, teaching materials and sharing ideas. They argue that although compositionists have been talking about collaborative learning and writing since Bruffee, the field is still largely focused on the solitary writer and solitary teacher model. They acknowledge collaborative developments like peer review, but point out the ways in which testing, curriculum and the long death of old habits have contributed to make collaboration more the exception than the rule. They find collaborative writing alive and well outside of the academy in public wikis and social networking spaces. They turn to these to provide models for the wikis they have developed (for a student authored rhetoric, for student writing, for teacher collaboration) and as publication venues for their students. These wikis are not limited to one class and include contributions from writers outside of the USF system. See Teaching Wiki, for their collaborative page for teachers: http://teachingwiki.org. -- Michelle
Penrod, Diane. (2007). Using Blogs to Enhance Literacy: The Next Powerful STep in 21st-Century Learning. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education.
This is a good though limited introduction to the uses of blogs (and by extension wikis) to promote writing and reading in the classroom; in particular, she asserts that blogs promote "fluency in writing,...cooperative learning,...critical thinking,...and performance-based learning" (pretty much the kitchen sink) (p. 22), but, as with many of the authors in this list, she doesn't give any evidence for her assertions. Penrod also argues that blog writing is a "new genre of writing" (pp. 35-48), but here again her reasoning seems to be based on anecdote and not data and she makes some fundamental mistakes. For instance, she never really discusses the issue of hyperlinked articles allowed in a blog, which is the distinguishing attribute of blogs and wikis versus hard-copy writing, and she seems to think that hypertext is different from a blog, which I would dispute. Blogs are unique insofar as they can be linear and non-linear, textual and visual at the same time. And it is this multiplicity of options that makes the blog and the wiki interesting, to my mind, to pedagogy. The author is also focussed on younger students, gendered differences, ethnicity and spends a number of chapters on bullying in cyberspace. --Polly (4/22/08)
Read, Brock. (2005, July 15). Romantic Poetry Meets 21st Century Technology. Chronicle of Higher Education, pp. A35-A36. Retrieved on 27 July 2007, from Academic Search Premier (17718660).
This is a case study of a professor from Bowdoin College, who used a wiki to promote discussion and community in his class on Romantic poetry. Benefits include the fact that wikis are user-friendly. Students need not know HTML or need multiple passwords and logins. Moreover, students can post more than just text. They can link to sources and even provide audio and visual elements. This may or may not be useful to us. It's a short, simple article that essentially is pro-wiki. --Suzanne
Richardson, Will. (2006, March). The Social Web: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Technology and Learning, 30-32.
The premise of this article is the use of the Internet to create social networks. According to this author the biggest, most sweeping change of our use of the Internet is not necessarily the ability to publish but rather the ability to share, connect and create with many others of like minds and interests; using blogs and wikis has the potential to create continuous conversations among many participants in a learning community. This article is fairly weak in its applicability to our research; perhaps a bit of useful background but nothing specific.-- Peggy (8/30/07)
Smith, Dorace F. (1999). A Study of Characteristics that Contribute to Persistence of Adult Commuter Students Who Earn 60 or More Hours of College Credit. (Doctoral dissertation. Ball State U, 1999). UMI, 9924372. Retrieved 9 Dec. 2006, from Pro Quest.
Among other findings, Smith found that for adult students early academic success was a crucial factor in their decision to remain in school.
Toolan, Michael. (2007). Trust and text, text as trust. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 12 (2), 269-288. Retrieved 28 Oct. 2007, from EBSCO Host (25536825).
This is a dense (and a bit pompous) article about how we interact and trust text. It may (or may not) be useful in discussing how students take ownership of blikis. -- Suzanne (10-28-07)
Warlick, David. (2006, Oct.) A Day in the Life of Web 2.0. Technology and Learning, pp. 2+.
This is an overview, written “daily diary” style, on how various middle school teachers use blogs and what they contain. It’s about the teachers’ experiences not about student experience or learning.-- Peggy
Witkowsky, Kathy. (2000). The City Colleges of Chicago: ‘Last Chance U’ is also the college of first choice for many citizens of Chicago. Cross Talk, 8 (2), 2+. Retrieved 27 Feb. 07, from http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/pdf/ct_spring00.pdf.
This is a profile of the Chicago City Colleges that includes retention data on the schools and arguments supporting and critiquing this urban community college system. -- Michelle
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