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News and Background Information on the Conference | |||
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Wikis in Education: Public, Semi-Public, or Private - Which Is Best?
What differentiates social software tools from other forms of computer-mediated communication? They make communication possible between people beyond the classroom and provide new ways for publishing online for a worldwide community. Wikis are one of the social software tools that best represent the fact that the greater the user base, the greater the potential for real knowledge construction. Does it make sense, then, that in educational settings, wikis are often limited to the class or a small group of contributors? My presentation “Wikis in education: public, semi-public or private - which is best?” at this year’s Online Educa Berlin conference considers whether or not ‘closing’ a wiki does, in fact, limit the very potential of the collective authoring process and the authenticity of publishing online.  To investigate this topic, an action-research study was carried out at the University of Padua in Italy with 35 students. They contributed to a semi-public wiki in one semester and a public one in the semester that followed. The semi-public wiki was created by the course instructor for a tele-collaboration project between students of Italian at Tulane University, USA and students of English at the University of Padua. Anyone on the Web was able to read the wiki, but only students were permitted to edit it. The public EduTech Wiki was hosted at the University of Geneva and focused on educational technologies. The results show that students’ approaches to and performance on the two wikis were different. First and foremost, there is the issue of ownership. In the semi-public wiki, it was the students themselves who ‘built’ the wiki pages and so they saw the pages as theirs; this made collective editing of the pages a challenge for them. On the public wiki, students had to intervene in wiki pages that had been created by people they did not know. They inherently shared ownership with others outside the classroom and had a greater sense of collective authoring. A second issue clearly relates to the nature of the audience. When students contribute to wiki pages that have been created outside the context of their own personal learning experience, they take matters such as being authoritative, researching their contributions or citing their sources much more seriously. From a social point of view, there is also the issue of community. In the case of a semi-public wiki, this community is limited, whereas in the case of a public wiki, it is widespread or even global. Students feel much more responsibility, as well as gratification, when they are part of a global community of people constructing knowledge. From an affective point of view, students generally expressed a preference for the more protected environment of the semi-public wiki. However, not only did their performance improve on the public one, but they, too, came to understand the benefits of a large user-base and writing for a worldwide community of users. One student saw writing on the semi-public wiki as good preparation for EduTech: “It made me think of the driving lessons one takes before getting a driving license.” And another student was pleased that on EduTech, “… we are given the great opportunity to ‘tell the world’ what we’ve learned so far during the English course”. Current research is investigating whether similar conclusions can be made about the open or closed use of other social software tools such as blogs. If you want to learn more about the outcomes of the research, you are invited to the session WEB01 on Thursday, November 29. In cooperation with my colleague Prof. Susanna Sancassani from the Politecnico di Milano, I am also leading a half-day workshop on Wednesday, November 28. The seminar aims at educators at all levels and from all sectors who have an interest in Web 2.0. We will introduce participants to the numerous Web 2.0 tools freely available online and show how they have been and are being used in various academic settings. Participants will also have the opportunity to consider and discuss how the tools can be deployed in various educational contexts.
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Sarah Guth teaches English as a Foreign Language (EFL) at the University of Padua. Her interests in technology and learning currently involve computer-based language testing, online learning and academic writing and the application of social software in language-learning contexts. She has developed two EFL courses that involve the use of Web 2.0 tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, RSS feeds, flickr and YouTube in the classroom. In a tele-collaboration project between students of English in Italy and students of Italian in the United States, participants used a wiki to develop intercultural knowledge and Skype for oral exchanges. With colleagues at the University of Padua, Sarah organises workshops for the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom, blended courses and online courses.
