The very first course of my and my husband’s master’s degree program required us to design an informative Wiki page about a historical person, who had been influential in the development of adult education. My husband and I decided it would be a good idea to team up for the project. Big mistake!
Initially, I was content to research all of the material and let him post it to our page. That plan only lasted two days. For starters, I felt like I was doing the bulk of the work while he was getting all of the credit (tracked by user login activity). At night, he would drift off into peaceful sleep while I stayed awake stressing over how to accurately and eloquently present information I gleaned from my research. By day three, we came up with a new plan. He was to explore half of the remaining topics and I would explore the other half. We were both responsible for publishing the material and including other relevant links and videos. I was still responsible for grammatical structure.
Initially, I was content to research all of the material and let him post it to our page. That plan only lasted two days. For starters, I felt like I was doing the bulk of the work while he was getting all of the credit (tracked by user login activity). At night, he would drift off into peaceful sleep while I stayed awake stressing over how to accurately and eloquently present information I gleaned from my research. By day three, we came up with a new plan. He was to explore half of the remaining topics and I would explore the other half. We were both responsible for publishing the material and including other relevant links and videos. I was still responsible for grammatical structure.
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| Courtesy of The Creative Education Blog http://www.creativeeducation.co.uk/blog/index.php/2011/06/class-wiki/ |
This new plan caused me to overcome my fear of technology incompetence. As I soon discovered, editing a Wiki is quite easy and actually somewhat fun! My experience echoed West and West’s evaluation of Wikis as being interactive, promoting group collaboration, being easy to edit, being cost effective and enabling file sharing. Other pros that I did not personally encounter are the ability to restrict access by password and unlimited user numbers. I also agree with King and Cox’s notion of Wikis providing a greater chance of learning the material presented. I can still remember so many details about Septima Clark that I almost feel like I met her.
Conversely, there were some bumps in our Wiki development. These mostly dealt with what King and Cox term constructive modification. My husband and I had very different and very definite views about how the content should be presented. At one point he “accidentally” changed content I spent all night editing. I was almost ready to "accidentally" change the locks when I discovered the benefit of version archiving and revision. West and West point out the limitations in editing features and customizations, which were also areas of frustration for us. Other cons listed by the two pairs of authors include distracting advertisements, rare instances of span or graffiti messages, collective bias, and the hidden audience. Again, these were not relevant concerns during our Wiki project.
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| Adult Education Wiki |
The result of my and my husband’s collaborative effort is pretty good. If you like, you can view the Septima Clark Wiki. Looking at the final product, I’m inclined to believe that us working together was not a big mistake after all. In the end, this was a great tool to force us to develop democratic methods of completing and publishing our project.
Our current class is fortunate to have a mixture of blog activities for personal expression and Wiki activities for group participation. In my opinion, the utilization of combined technologies facilitates a better understanding of a subject and an internalization of information.
References:
References:
King, K. & Cox, T. (2011). The Professor’s Guide to Taming Technology. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. ISBN: 9781617353338 e-book ISBN: 9781617353352
West, J. and West, M. (2009). Using Wikis for Online Collaboration: The Power of the Read-Write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ISBN: 9780470343333
Tonya, I can totally relate to your first wiki experience. I had some pitfalls myself. I ended up doing more of the work on my wiki than my wiki partner. I came away from it understanding the wiki process but hating group projects.
ReplyDeleteI think that instructors of adult learners, that have students new to the wiki concept, have to be very clear that the instructor can see how often and how much time learners edit the wiki. Also instructors must stress that communication between the group members is key to a successful project.
Hi Katie!
DeleteI agree that instructors should inform students that their participation can be tracked from their end. That may motivate those learners who need a little extra incentive to contribute. Then again, Rich was on the page just as often as I was even though I did most of the content work. Haha!
Tonya,
DeleteYour story about working with your husband made me smile. The moral of the story is...save a marriage, don't work with your husband! :)
You made some great points about how collaborating on a Wiki does force all members to participate or perish. The edit tracking system provides a report of who worked on the page when so members can't get away with non-participation. Additionally, as Wiki does force those of us like myself who fear technology to jump in with both feet and start learning. A great feature with Wiki is nothing that is posted is permanent. Anything you include can be edited or changed. This provides the authors a chance to create, reflect, and edit!
Tonya,
ReplyDeleteI guess we have to get permission to visit your wiki site. :)
I have no idea what happened. I received a message that there had been "suspicious activity" from my account and I was locked off. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thanks for commenting!
DeleteHi Tonya,
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. The entertaining (and informative) narrative about your wiki-building experience with your spouse, especially the sentence about “accidentally” changing content and the locks, made me burst out laughing. Great stuff!
Your mention of version archiving and revision inspired me to go back and reread West and West’s (2009) paragraph about archiving and version control (pp. 15-16). I didn’t need to use this feature in my first go-around with wikis, but it sounds simple enough and I’m glad to be reminded about it.
I also very much agree with your conclusion about the benefit of using different technologies in a class, for example, blogging for personal reflections and wikis for collaborative work. It reminded me that West and West went so far as to recommend against building online courses entirely around wikis: “It can be much more powerful to combine the collaborative nature of the wiki with other online course tools” (p. 6).
KSU Cuz
Reference
West, J. A., & West, M. L. (2009). Using wikis for online collaboration: The power of the read-write Web. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Thanks for commenting!
DeleteTonya,
ReplyDeleteThis was a very entertaining and fun way to present some of the pro's and con's of wiki's through your own experience. This is how I generally approach my projects (not just Wiki's) as well. Storytelling can be a very powerful method of teaching adults.
You also mention that you approve of the combination of multiple types of technology in this course. I couldn't agree more. At first I was a bit upset because it forced me out of my comfort zone and honestly requires much more work than simply posting on a message board by a set day each week. Hazari, North, and Moreland (2009) also appear to echo our opinion when they say "it is important to note that no single technology by itself (including Wikis) can impact learning outcomes" (p. 195).
Reference
Hazari, s., North, A., Moreland, D. (2009). Investigating pedagogical value of Wiki technology. Journal of information systems education. 20(2). 187-198.
I agree that storytelling is a powerful paradigm for presenting information. For some reason, I think people better recal stories than they do disconnected information. Thanks for commenting!
Delete