Building Learning Communities with WIKIs

In the process, we also developed a tool that instructors can use to determine whether or not a WIKI is the right match for their courses.. We believe that this practical tool will be ex

Building Learning Communities with WIKIs

Dan Gilbert, Helen Chen, Jeremy Sabol

Introduction

As more students have access to more tools and more wireless networks, opportuntieis to collaborate, participate, and define how knowledge is organized are opening up at a dramatic pace

What is a WIKI:

In the broadest terms, A WIKI is a software tool designed to encourage more people to share more information more easily than before Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia editable by anyone in the world, is perhaps the best known WIKI in the world and is often used as an example of how a WIKI can work While Wikipedia is obviously a powerful tool – and one of the authors’ favorite resources on the Internet – it is much more of an exception than the rule when thinking about WIKs

Wikipedia’s defines a WIKI (as of February, 2006) as

“ a type of website that allows users to easily add and edit content and

is especially suited for collaborative writing The name is based on the

Hawaiian term wiki, meaning "quick", "fast", or "to hasten"…In

essence, wiki is a simplification of the process of creating HTML web

pages combined with a system that records each individual change that

occurs over time, so that at any time, a page can be reverted to any of

its previous states”

At Stanford’s Center for Teaching and Learning (http://ctl.stanford.edu) WIKIs are introduced to faculty and instructors through faculty workshops on teaching and

technology and through one to one consultations CTL A wiki is a simple collaborative website that can be edited directly through a web browser (Internet Explorer, Netscape, etc.) It can be used to generate simple webpages, share documents, and support student groups working together

Background: How did we get to working with WIKIs

This article is an outgrowth of the work that the authors did to present this work at the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) Conference in January 2006 The authors reviewed multiple cases where WIKIs were used in a variety of courses taught at Stanford

University While most of these courses were ordinary Stanford courses with

undergraduates and graduate students led by Stanford faculty and instructional staff The authors analyzed these case studies, looking for patterns on how WIKIs were able to

support learning communities We set out to create a tool that would provide a

framework for analyzing how WIKIs actually worked in learning communities In the process, we also developed a tool that instructors can use to determine whether or not a WIKI is the right match for their courses We believe that this practical tool will be extremely useful as instructors will be able to decide within a few minutes whether or not

a WIKI makes sense for the specific learning aims of their courses

After identifying the elements of the WIKI that we wanted to highlight, we searched for a metaphor that would help explain how these different steps fit together Initially, we explored ideas around the life cycle of a WIKI and thought that cell biology or water cycles might help explain how WIKIs develop, thrive and die in academic settings

We moved beyond the life cycle metaphors and into board games by thinking that the steps to designing, implementing and sustaining a WIKI are carried out in some sort of sequence Each step represented a box on a game board – Start was developing and articulating learning goals Specifically we moved to the metaphor of the classic Hasbro board game “Chutes and Ladders”; within a course there were certain actions that could accelerate the adoption of a WIKI as a community of practice (ladders) and other actions that would restrict/retard the development of communities of practice (chutes) In each of the cases we studied, specific actions from instructors and learners were mapped as chutes and ladders as the entire group worked toward building a community

Poster from ELI Conference in January 2006 used to analyze the implementation of the WIKI and determine the utility of a WIKI in a university level course:

Designing the WIKI experience in class

Collaborative technologies are only as powerful as their users make them In the courses that we observed, learners had a wide range of abilities and technical confidence

To get the most value out of the experience the course leaders all went through some process of determining goals How the course leader set the tone distinguished these cases from one another Before embarking on the path of using any technologies for

learning, it is critical for the instructor to determine learning goals for their students

When those goals include collaboration, discovery, sharing, reflection, and a combination

of face-to-face and virtual activities, then a WIKI can be the right tool for accomplishing that kind of work If the instructor’s goals, however, focus more on individual research and writing, then a WIKI will almost certainly add no value to the course

A clear articulation of these goals should help decide the next step of developing

a technology plan Building a technology plan requires answering several key

questions:

• What are the kinds of activities that students should be doing as a part of this course? Collaborating, writing, researching, creating, etc

• What technologies are available, supported, or supportable at my institution?

• How much training will learners need to use the WIKI? While net gen learners are certainly more facile with technologies, that certainly doesn’t mean that they all pick it up within a few seconds

After developing a technology plan, the design phase moves from designing the activities that the WIKI will support to designing the interactions themselves To advance the

usage of the WIKI and encourage the participation, the instructor needs to make the expectations and rationale clear to learners As with any activity, especially those involving new technologies, learners must clearly see how they themselves will benefit

from using the tool Learners can benefit from WIKIS by:

• learning new processes and tools for collaboration

• creating team archives and electronic portfolios that can serve them for future courses

• developing a comprehensive view of their contributions to a project for evaluation during the current quarter

In each of our cases, making the rationale explicit to learners proved invaluable to just the basic use of the WIKI itself In the case of the SCIL Summer Institute, students were the most excited about using the WIKI when it became clear to them that the resources and reflections that the entire community was assembling would be valuable throughout the remainder of the course Their work on the WIKI on day 1 and day 2 would serve them

on days 4 and 5 so they did it One challenge however was that once the group separated

in person the perceived benefits disappeared

Before introducing the tool itself, the instructor needs to/should/can develop the first page

with a basic structure for organizing the content of the WIKI itself Creating a

framework for the WIKI not only seeds the community with some basic information, it

also helps to set expectations of the kinds of tasks that learners are going to use the WIKI

to support In one case, the framework was simply the titles of the pages that were found

in the WIKI: course schedule, participant bios, useful links, images, specific discussions

In another case, establishing the framework meant creating specific sections of the WIKI for individual, small group, and whole class activities and reflections

One of the more interesting things that we noticed in these cases was that there was not a single time when a learner changed the framework of the WIKI Obviously in a WIKI environment, any learner could change the navigation or rearrange the nature of the environment itself It never happened though, and while we don’t have any specific data

to make a claim, we can speculate as to why this was the case First, any tool that is introduced by an instructor is initially received as the property of the instructor and not necessarily a tool of the community Because learners didn’t feel like they owned the WIKI they may have been reluctant to edit the pieces that they saw as fundamental to the environment itself Another speculation is that users may have hard a harder time

understanding that any changes that they made could be undone There could very well have been a great fear in changing something that could impact every member of the community In general users were much more willing to add text rather than edit or

delete other text.

Even with the framework in place, the rationale clear, a technology plan in place and

learning goals clarified, the instructor will have a static webpage to show for this effort

In terms of efficiency, this is obviously not a result that benefits students nor instructor It

is important to emphasize though that a static webpage is not a failure In particular a static webpage can be valuable for students after the course is over as a resource for future learning

Implementing WIKIs to Build Learning Communities

The actual guts of the technologies differ only slightly between a WIKI and a static web page Both are accessed through a web browser from any computer in the world; neither require any kind of installation or technical knowledge about how to use the computer itself Instead the potential practices that surround the use of each of these tools are what differ greatly

A WIKI offers far more potential for multiple authors For these practices to even get off the ground though, we found that the instructor needed to dedicate specific meeting time

to introduce the WIKI in class Using class time sends a signal that participating in the

WIKI is a critical piece of the overall course During this first interaction with the WIKI, instructors can give students simple tasks to highlight the functionality of the WIKI Something like, find a useful site and post it to the WIKI Of course these kinds of activities are predicated on a healthy dose of computers in the room While it might not

be necessary to have a 1:1 computer to person ratio, it is important that students have the experience of posting to the WIKI in the presence of others in the virtual community In several cases, learners said things in class to each other like, “Just post it in the WIKI” or

“Did you put that link in the WIKI?” “Don’t email that to me, just put it in the WIKI” These comments compel the learners to interact with the WIKI right there in real time

Having students make their first posts in a community in real time gives them a chance to

connect with other learners in their community both physically and virtually In the

case of the Philosophical Stages course, the instructors invested a significant amount of

energy to build connections among learners face to face With a face to face relationship among learners and with expectations of that relationship communicated by the

instructors, the students had a solid foundation for getting in to the WIKI itself

The implementation of any new practice in a classroom benefits greatly from the ssupport

and validation from the instructor In the cases that we saw, the instructor modeled WIKI use in class to demonstrate the value that the practice would have in the bigger

context of the learning goals In classrooms where the instructor’s computer is projected large, the instructor can make both the process and the rationale for using the WIKI explicit to students In each of the cases we observed seeing the instructor use the tool set some baseline expectations of how they would use the WIKI throughout the quarter

Modeling the WIKI use in class is critical to motivating learners to adopt WIKI

practices as a regular part of their study practices Specifically, instructors need to

encourage posting, editing and commenting among their students In each of the cases that we observed, instructors were able to motivate students in a face-to-face setting to post to the WIKI In the case of Mechanical Engineering students, the professor kept the WIKI projected on one of the in-room computers so that it was a constant presence in the room itself This constant presence afforded the opportunity for the instructor to

comment on specific WIKI posts in a face-to-face setting We suspect that the

recognition of receiving feedback from the instructor during class motivated students to continue to post Likewise, in the Philosophical Stages class the instructors often

recognized and challenged student contributions during class time As with most courses regardless of the activity, recognition from the instructor can motivate higher levels of

participation (ARTICLE? CITATION?)

As the WIKI fills up with posts, reflections, and edits, it develops into a Knowledge Base

for the course and for the discipline As more learners post a diverse set of resources and reflections to the WIKI, the online space becomes the place to start for learners when thinking about the subject matter During the SCIL Summer Institute the course WIKI became the place to start when looking for information on designing learning spaces As soon as the institute ended, however, the WIKI lost its importance in the community as a the place to start for finding resources on learning spaces Without the face-to-face community to keep the practices alive, this WIKI slid backwards from an active and growing knowledge base to a static web resource that has only been used occasionally from former students in the class A follow-up email from the instructor that had the specific goal of motivating future posts generated only a few email replies, but no future posts In the instructor’s opinion, generating content on the WIKI would require bringing the learners back for a face-to-face meeting to create enough motivation to participate in

a virtual community

Sustaining Communities of Practice

In the best cases, a WIKI becomes a sustaining community In the case of a learning

community, learners must move from just adopting the practices to adapting the tools as

a first step to keeping the community sustained This stage can see the community moving from a centralized top-down structure where the instructor’s expectations

motivate behavior to a more organic community where learners, we get to decide what to include and how to organize it; and further, how do we modify the tool to meet our needs

Collaborate Actively

Foster Feedback

Evaluate WIKIs Usefulness: Is it worth it At any point

Chutes and Ladders: (how to9 include this? Do we need it?)

Takeaways:

The goals of the class have to

Case Studies:

Case Study and

Wiki Technology

Description Wiki Goals Key Learning Milestones

SCIL Summer

Institute on

Learning Space

Design

[Swiki-Wiki]

A one-week intensive workshop for architects, academics, non-profit staff, and graduate students

to integrate learning theory into the design of physical spaces.

To establish a web presence for individual reflection and to create a

knowledge base for attendees to reference after course

completion.

Dedicating time in class for the first wiki posts gave learners the chance to see that the instructor valued the virtual interactions; it also created an opportunity for learners to support each other (Box 6) The biggest hurdle was moving past the stage of a knowledge base and into a community This wiki was a tool that learners used for the week they were in class; after class ended, so did their close connections with fellow learners (Boxes 7 and 10)

ME013N:

Designing the

Human Experience

[Tiki-Wiki]

A project-based introductory freshman seminar

on design engineering research project experimenting with blogs and wiki

environments

To facilitate student integration and synthesis of learning through increasing student awareness of learning and articulating connections between learning and the design process.

Using templates and creating a structure for the wiki (Box 4) were extremely important in introducing the wiki to the students and getting them to use

it The templates included space for students to put in their IM names, availability for meetings, and space for meeting notes, team decisions, etc (Box 7) What was most challenging was developing strategies to model giving and receiving of quality feedback (Box 13).

Institute on

Engineering

Education (ISEE)

workshop

[WikiWikiWeb]

A weeklong workshop designed to build a community among twenty research fellows from five institutions.

To give participants a place to capture sources of learning and inspiration during the institute including links, documents, photos, insights, questions, and

A measure of success was identified when one of the scholars (a wiki novice) said to a colleague: “Don’t email me the reference, just put it in the wiki!”

To support active collaboration (Box 12), we find that an advocate is necessary – someone who continuously brings the wiki back into the forefront of the work as a place for emails, notes, resources and who emails the

reflections team links to new material in the

wiki plus password reminders.

Philosophical

Stages Summer

Program

[Project Forum

Wiki]

A three-week program for high school students that integrates ancient philosophy, drama, and interactive technologies.

To create a forum for individual reflection and to create a

knowledge base for attendees to reference after course

completion.

With younger students, creating the intellectual and organizational framework for the wiki was critical to getting quality comments; (Box 4) The instructors worked to build the face-to-face relationships among learners during the class and consequently, the wiki has continued to be very active and engaged around many of the topics raised during the course (Box 15) This is a great example

of how a wiki functions as a community of practice.