Curious to know how others have done with wikis (wikies?). I created one for my introductory American government class and asked the students to use it to write mock court rulings. The students had a little over a week to do the assignment. They formed 4 groups, each responsible for the equivalent of 2 pages of text.
Two significant problems:
1) About 6 of the 27 students in the class didn't participate.
2) The hoped-for collaborative strength didn't materialize. The writings were choppy, and in a couple of the cases no one took the time to stitch together the various pieces that group members created. Punch-line: the entries read like a bunch of disjointed notes, not like a final document.
You can see the results for yourself (as if you have nothing else to do w/ your time) at iwu-americangovernment.wikispaces.com
open to suggestions --
Greg
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4 comments:
I wonder how many students in a traditional group project on paper would have failed to participate in a meaningful way. I'm not sure there is a way to measure that, but I know I have been in my share of groups with a "sandbagger".
I am using wiki for my E370-2 class. Last week students created part one of their wiki project. As of today, participation is 100%. First in class, students experience how to use the wiki. I gave them guidelines on what to do with the project and the expectations for this collaborative work. Firs they decide as a group how to distribute the work and make the necessary postings online. Everybody is expected to contribute. Next week we will be working on the second part of the project which includes more use of the wiki tools. I think having a short demo and hands on experience with wiki in class allow my students to learn the basics of the tool. Then the project guidelines and expectations were discussed in class. I make sure to answer their questions about the project before letting them proceed with the contributing online.
Greg,
Sonja Fritzsche and I will be presenting about our experience with Wikis for a Non-Org on October 29th. In Spanish we are using Wikis for close to 200 students and I must say it hasn't been easy. We have encounter some problems I didn't think about it. But I do agree with Rick that some of these problems might be the same ones they had in a traditional group project on paper. On the other hand, I think our students are more careful to have their Wikis done on time since everybody needs them to be ready so they could study from a specific Wiki for their quizzes.
In other words...it has been hard but I DO think it's worthed.
Thank you.
Jaime.
Thanks for the comments. The students knew this assignment was for a grade. Several contributed at the last minute and in prefunctory ways, suggesting minimal commitment to the project. That much didn't surprise me. When asked, the students agreed that a face-to-face meeting of their small group prior to working on the wiki would have helped cement the understanding that each is free to edit the others' work. Breaking through this hesitancy is important, and not facilitating this was a mistake on my part.
Greg
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