e-learning 2.0

As I am considering using a wiki in my teaching next semseter it was useful to find, quite by accident, a discussion about using a wiki in an article called “My Brilliant Failure: Wikis In Classrooms” part of the Kairos news site which might be useful to look at further.

In the article the following is said:

“It seems clear to me now that you cannot just change the tool- you need to look at your practice as well. Being so open, a wiki does not have any inherent properties that will instantly make a knowledge-building community. It depends not only on the software configuration– for example whether certain areas are locked or whether you make templates for layout—but also on the social norms and practices around the wiki. In a classroom setting, this means the practice of the teacher, and the interactions of the students.”

Clearly, like other forms of collaborative on-line work e.g. discussions and blogs it is necessary to build a community so that students have both the technical skills and the confidence to use the wiki in a productive way. Of the two it is the confidence that is the most difficult to promote.

Thanks to James Farmer’s article in “Incorporated Subversion - The Book” which alerted me to this post and a number of others about wikis.

The article “Simple software, complex interactions?” has some really useful links to ideas about the building a social community on-line and quotes extensively from a book by Jenny Preece [Online communities: designing usability, supporting sociability Publisher: Chichester : John Wiley, Date: c2000] and also cites the paper by Jenny, Etiquette online: from nice to necessary; Communications of the ACM Vol. 47, Iss. 4 (April 2004). Can’t say I have come across either of these before.

There is also a useful translation of Preece’s on-line roles to the wiki environment

Role identified by Preece	Implemented in wiki
Moderators	The entire group acts as a moderator of content. If things are off-topic, inappropriate or even just poorly formatted- the fellow members guide the new user through the process. Corrections are made and explained, advice is given on how to use the wiki, on an as-needed basis.
Role models	- Many wiki software tools allow for contributers and editors to add comments explaining why they made changes. These explanations help members derive an understanding of what is appropriate activity. - Members of a community develop and edit their own rules about wiki; and encourage discussion and revisiting the WikiMission.
Mentors	As people join a wiki, they are greeted by the members, WelcomeToWiki process. New members are not inundated with too many rules all at once.
Citizen regulation	roll-back and ‘diffs’ allow for deletion of vandalism

These may prove to be useful when I start to use a wiki with students. Not sure about the concept of mentors in my context as we all start at the same time. Perhaps we might modify it a bit to encourage everybody to post to the wiki. Next step is to edit the group wiki to set up a few starter pages to incorporate these ideas and others about community building.