One of the advantages of group wikis is the opportunity to jump right in and extend other’s ideas. In an LMS forum, you may extend someone’s idea but there is no pressing incentive to find a mutually negotiated understanding. Often these extensions are educational but may not become acclimated into our view of the world. In a wiki there has to be some negotiation of meaning and corroboration before the final product can be produced often leading to discourse and deeper understanding.
Another advantage that I enjoy is corroboration. When someone agrees with and extends my ideas, I feel validated. I believe this validation comes from the corroboration of one’s understanding of the world. Von Glasersfeld (1988) believes that our knowledge of the world or others is not a true representation, but rather a basis for thinking, a viable model of elements of our experiential world which is strengthened by other’s corroboration. Von Glasersfeld (1988) merges the constructivist theories by stating that learning occurs through perturbation and subsequent viable reorganization of knowledge based on activities, prior knowledge, goals and social interactions of the learner. Although I did not experience it in this wiki, I have experienced perturbation through discourse of differing perspectives and ideas leading to increased understanding in other wiki activities. Interestingly, this assignment did not seem to inspire a lot of disagreement or challenging views, most of the decisions seemed to be based on consensus rather than discourse. Although educational, I am not sure that I achieved a deeper understanding of social media.
The challenge of working with others in a collaborative space is the lack of accountability and incentive to negotiate meaning (agree just to agree so you can minimize the workload). One of the things that may have increased this discourse in this particular wiki would have been more marks assigned to the final product. In the past, when my group was worried that our grade may suffer if the product wasn’t comprehensive or ‘top notch’, there was more interaction and impassioned discussions. Another idea might have been to make the group wiki smaller, dividing the class up into 2 or three groups to increase member accountability and participation. Although both of these ideas do not match the theory behind Wikipedia, I believe this would have resulted in a much more comprehensive and corroborated final product.
References:
Von Glasersfeld, E. (1988) The reluctance to change a way of thinking. Irish Journal of Psychology, 9, 83–90. Retrieved July 10, 2011 from http://www.univie.ac.at/constructivism/EvG/cgi-bin/index.cgi?browse=journal