Using wikis for student collaboration - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

Debbie Weaver and Craig Macintosh from
Swinburne University talk about how
they've used wiki's to facilitate
effective group work for face-to-face
and distance online students they also
discuss how they provided effective
technical support and how they
structured their assessment to cater for
the collaborative learning process a
wiki is a collaborative web page where
students have all have access to edit
and design and add content and add extra
pages too so it's a site that is
designed for group work but to be
presented in a web form at the class
were looking today is an online unit
taught through open universities
Australia will have up to about 600
students in your way on the Khan campus
we'll probably have a hundred students
we do a lot of training our students to
work in teams on campus we scaffold team
work but we four fully online students
they're often forgotten about so we we
were looking at how we could facilitate
online group work we've looked at a few
different technology technologies that
could help us with this and wiki's seem
to be the easiest way to do it when
students log into the blackboard site
and all of the wiki's are located in
their assessment area you can see these
students have used a variety of
different media text and images in here
including their sources at the bottom
and then down in the comments section we
get a snapshot of the discussion that's
taken place about that particular page
so this is where students are commenting
on the current version suggesting to
each other what changes can be made and
importantly complementing each other and
what they've done for students to edit
the wiki they just click on the Edit
link in the top and it opens up a very
very simple HTML editor so within their
wiki they can just insert the cursor in
an area and just start typing and they
can select that text and do the basic
formatting of making it bold changing
the color changing the side they can
easily insert
images insert links anchors etc they
have to make sure they save it to make
sure those changes are then available
for their fellow students to see as
Assessors we get a history and it gives
me a list of all the different versions
including who's made them and what time
then I can quickly view the difference
between two different versions here
we've got an example of a deletion and
addition and another deletion further on
so I can very quickly get an idea of
who's done the bulk of the work on this
site and what sort of work that's been
done if it's just been a minor word here
or there if it's a significant
contribution for all of the students
coming you have a groups page set up so
here they'll be able to find a list of
the people in their group together with
their tutors name they've got a
discussion board dedicated just to this
group of students they've also got what
we call a collaboration area where
they've got access to chat rooms so they
can have synchronous meetings email
where they can quickly send an email to
fellow group members to set up meetings
or to discuss what they're doing with
their project
students didn't have to spend a lot of
time learning how to use the technology
the feedback we were getting afterwards
was that the wiki that they produced as
a group was so much better than any
individual could have produced to have a
project where they're working with other
students together and transport each
other they loved the experience they
really enjoy that collegiality that they
gain from it the teaching team
collectively we're all very excited to
be using it because they've got such
positive response from the students
really happy to keep going with it as
Assessors we could see who was doing
what in the wiki's we could compare
reality of contributions by the
individual group members we could look
at who was contributing significant work
and who was being a free rider or a
passenger within the team
we didn't know what would work we hadn't
tried off-campus group work before but
other people had tried it before we did
consult the literature what we've we've
tried to do was build up a team and
maintain that team I'd have 10 12 tutors
who were involved in it we worked with
them quite a bit when we were assessing
the wiki's is especially the first
iteration none of us had assessed a wiki
before so we had developed our
assessment rubric but we wanted to do
this together so we met as a team and
went through all of the wiki's together
to work out how we were going to assess
the teamwork aspects of its effort in
collaboration of the the two key factors
that we reward in the individual mark
component of the wiki we allocated 15
marks of the total marks just towards
the teamwork processes to get a 15 we we
want to see the they've they've shown
evidence of collaboration with all of
the group members from 8 to 15 in a
student needs to show that they've
collaborated at some level if they're
getting an 8 they've done an individual
piece of work of some quality but
they've not engaged with the group so
they'll get a reasonable mark for what
they've done but they're not getting a
mark for the collaboration and that's
that's I suppose the key
there was a few support mechanisms in
place for students before they started a
manual with some screenshots some links
to some other group wiki's and we also
recorded a lecture demonstration how to
create a wiki page and how to edit a
wiki page and how to add links just the
really key functions that students want
it to do the context of the wiki can be
seductive from a technological point of
view those who have that facility can
produce a delightful piece of work
that's that sort of engaging and
dazzling but it may not be academically
sound we had to then try to help our
students understand that it wasn't the
glitz and glamour that we were really
looking for we make it clear that the
the academic content is the most
important that the research is important
that the referencing is important
because these are still basic skills
that we're trying to teach them
Multimedia as appropriate examples was
terrific but if they couldn't work out
how to embed in video well it didn't
really matter they could provide it and
link to it on another site and that was
perfectly okay too so we learn how to
manage expectations
most of them don't believe that they
could possibly do a piece of
collaborative work they could do a group
work online and most of them are
pleasantly surprised at the extent to
which they achieve a sense of success
but also a sense of relationship with
the people that work with using projects
such as wiki projects like this means
that we can now give our off-campus
students the same experience the same
feedback and the same opportunity to
develop these skills as their on-campus
students
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