Month: March 2010

Assignment:

• consider how the group collaboration and discussion within the wiki space differed from what you are accustomed to in an LMS standard threaded discussion space
• What advantages do you see in using wikis for group collaboration?
• What are some of the challenges of working with others in a collaborative wiki space?

Reflection: While I see great advantages in using wikis for group collaboration, I think the design of this wiki activity did not necessarily support such collaboration. This module activity was better suited to a blog or discussion forum format. The long threaded ‘sightings’, while interesting to read, would perhaps have garnered some strong conversation within the discussion forums that did not occur in the wiki.

Why is this so? I made my initial wiki posting early and then waited a couple of days to enter the discussion page to give others a chance to post. When I made my way into the discussion page, I found that, rather than beginning with some general discussion and emerging into some big ideas, the format selected by ‘the group’ was now very task specific and linear. I added a few ideas in, but didn’t feel that there was a forum now for some of my comments or reflections on the insights provided by my peers.

What sort of task would better suit the wiki space? I think a truly collaborative, group authorship task such as we entered into during 510, where we selected any wiki entry and edited (in some cases, two or three students would simultaneously edit the same space) that entry to help improve or clarify it. The sense that authorship was less important than the end result and content appeals to me and suits the wiki space well. Reflections, questions and feedback on the discussion page helped editors to further develop the exisiting pages and create new ones in concert with colleagues.

Advantages: true collaboration, co-authoring and knowledge-building (co-construction)

Challenges: People have a difficult time letting go of the sense of authorship i.e. signing names to entries when not really needed; being unwilling or unsure about changing or editing content that is posted… (I fell victim to this in this activity since most discussion entries were ‘signed’ I didn’t feel comfortable revising them and, in turn, added my own brief and signed entry instead!).

It is obviously important, then, to lay out the ground rules in advance of this form of collaborative activity and to make people aware that their entries are ‘understood’ or visible as theirs simply by checking the history.

Suggested Ground rules:

• Be respectful of the work of contributors – both the content and structure
• Revise/Reorganize for clarification or correction purposes (especially to address inaccurate information) but don’t simply delete or replace the whole work
• Do not sign your work other than to add your name to the list of authors or editors in the title bar –  the wiki history pane will record your specific additions/changes
• Be sure your information is verifiable
• Cite and link to sources

(some of above ‘rules’ derived from: GM Wiki)

Reflections on Communication Tools in Moodle.

My course site, Conservation Education, is intended as a resource for use by teachers and their students at the many schools throughout the lower mainland to whom I coordinate the delivery of free educational outreach programs.

The glossary activity is basically a wiki to which students will add during their exploration of the Marine Invertebrate Identification section of the module. Wiki building is a knowledge building activity that affords students the opportunity to participate in a community of learners (Kimmerle & Cress 2008). This field guide glossary is intended as an ongoing activity that can afford both formative and summative assessment for the teacher and an authentic learning activity for the students (Anderson, 2008)

Rather than simply relying on students factual knowledge and research, the criteria I am building includes having students forge connections by telling stories and providing notes and facts that connect to their own experience and prior learning. This is in keeping with the as yet unpublished draft B.C. Performance Standards for Science (I am helping to pilot and revise the document which should be available to teachers by the time the course site is ready).

Since the field guide will be available to (and created by) students from grades 2 through 7, it is important to use a tool that is intuitive for beginners yet one that would provide challenge and opportunity for more complexity for more advanced users.

I chose to set up a glossary rather than using the wiki function in Moodle for several reasons – from both a teaching and a student perspective:

• ease of use and formatting in the glossary vs. html in the wiki, yet it also affords more sophisticated functions and formatting in the visual editor
• sorting options – alphabetical, time and by contributor – entries are automatically added in alphabetical order and can be tagged so that they can be found under more than one letter heading; teachers can sort by contributor and time posted to track student participation;
• ability to comment on items within the glossary – I plan to allow both student comments and teacher comments to further encourage active participation and peer assessment. <i>(I’ve turned commenting on in the glossary, but don’t see the space for commenting yet…)</i>I’m also considering enabling the rating by students of the glossary items – not sure tho if i like the idea of a numeric rating by students – prefer the anecdotal comments as I can help develop this skill with some criteria for postings.
• ability of students to edit various entries thus encouraging knowledge building. <i>(this one is a bit tricky in the glossary – i haven’t figured out yet how to get a history of entries to help track just what an individual student has contributed)</i>
• upload of images and video <i>(I’m having a heck of a time with video upload still… as i’ve mentioned in a few posts… a work in progress!)</i>
• adding external and internal links – plus automatic linking within the glossary (<i>I haven’t fully figured this one out!</i>)
• ability of teachers to see averages and participation in the gradebook

I plan to employ a variety of communication tools in my course site. So far, I have experimented with synchronous chat, discussion forums, wikis and glossary. The nature of my site likely lends itself more to asynchronous interaction/communication as there will be no definite start date or enrollment. It is deliberately set up in a non-linear way to afford a variety of uses: from a prescribed course to be completed to a resource page to be accessed as needed. Having said this, I set up a live chat session that would involve the opportunity to “chat with a nat” (local naturalists and biologists) that many students and teachers would find motivating. I enabled archiving and the ability of guests to access previous chat sessions which might make for some asynchronous access… Perhaps I’ll work on making a dvd recording of a walk with a naturalist that can be uploaded to moodle and then have a discussion forum he moderates or simply an email link…

Problems I’m having: a couple mentioned in bulleted list above (in italics) plus, tried importing a ppt into a lesson to create a little ‘game’ of sorts called ‘Who Am I’ – no luck – doesn’t recognize the file etc etc. Lots to work on still. Thank goodness its spring break and I (unlike everyone else I know) am not heading to a lovely sandy beach anywhere!

Anderson, T. (2008). Teaching in an Online Learning Context. In: Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and Practice of Online Learning. Athabasca University.

Kimmerle, J. & Cress, U. (2008). A systematic and cognitive view on collaborative knowledge building and wikis. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, 3(2) pp 105-122. Retrieved from Springerlink DOI: 10.1007/s11412-007-9035-z