My reflections on the recent work on the collaborative wiki for this week’s module has left me pondering and wondering about the pedagogical and educational applications and implications for collaborative work spaces.
This activity was challenging since the only way to see if any changes had been made was to use the history and then compare versions for changes. This significantly changed the way I interacted with the information and with my classmates. Not necessarily easier or harder, just different. When you are used to seeing where and when additions or new information is posted, working with a wiki brings the word ‘collaborative’ to the forefront of my thinking.
Each page has the message “if you aren’t prepared to have your work ruthlessly modified, don’t post it here” as well as the warning ‘don’t post copyrighted material’. Both are reminders of the public nature of the writing environment.
The final product should be a piece of quality writing and a compilation of everyone’s thoughts on the topic, if everyone puts their ‘2 cents worth’ into the project. The fine-tuning and organization still takes a certain someone to take ownership of these tasks or the whole thing is left in a messy, disconnected collection of individual thoughts. In this writing environment, the individual contributor is always making some assumptions about the others involved – that they agree, that they are present, that they care about the topic, that they are participating (even if there is no record of their presence in the history), or that they are aiming for the best outcome for the project. These can be challenges but also strengths to this type of collaborative working space. If you have the right group of people working on the right task, these assumptions become irrelevant and a quality outcome is assured.