Pat Walsh

Mader, S. (2006). Using Wiki in Education. (Mader, & Stewart, pp. 62-67) Retrieved from University of Iowa:

In this book entitled “Using Wiki in Education”, the author has collected a number of studies which demonstrate how wikis are being adopted in the educational field.  Educators, academics, researchers and technologists have contibuted and shared their own experience of wikis in their repective fields to this book.

One particular case study deals with Seattle Pacific University’s entry into the use of wikis.  The author within this case study adopted a wiki in a course management system within his own teaching practice. He shares his experience of  introducing a wiki and the concerns, challenges and obstacles encountered along the way

This is an interesting and informative study as it shared an educator’s perspective and experience of introducing a wiki in an educational setting from its infancy stage to it being adopted in an elearning context. This forms part of the challenge for our project team , to develop learning resources from our initial brainstorming sessions to a practical working model to be hosted on a wiki. Wikis are a new elearning resource tool for me, hence my desire from the outset of this project to learn more about their funtionality and use

This paper addresses some of my concerns in relation to adopting a wiki as an educational tool. The author contends that wikis are excellent tools to support collaborative learning but one of my concerns regarding group project assignments is keeping track of and measuring members contributions.

As an end of module excercise, in some of our assignments,  we aim to promote group work within assignments.  How do we as tutors /trainers determine which members of the project groups are contributing towards the project and how much time they contribute?   Currently we have limited visibility to guage how much potential learners could contribute towards the wiki on an individual or group basis.

This concern propelled me to explore and investigate the functionality our wiki has to offer. After some initial testing I discovered that we had more control and management of the wiki than initially thought. We are able to view and track changes to the wiki, monitor who these changes were made by  and were able to view the posts that each member contributes.

A  criticism of this paper is that that author doesn’t sufficently  address the needs of  the I.T illiterate or novice user. From the outset we as a project group identified our audience as novice users .  With this in mind we plan to develope a module entitled “how to use this wiki”.

A further criticism is that the author’s solution is very student driven and tutor participation appears to be minimal on the part of the author. I envisage a wiki as a source of both student and tutor/teacher engagement and whilst I would seek to promote a student driven learning environment , as educators we  need to play an active role as facilitators and provide mentoring if required  and constructive feedback to our learners. My own thoughts on this are further supported by(Sheridan & Kelly, 2010) , who assert that one of the challenges faced by intructors is their level of engagement in their online courses. After developing the modules and course material some instructors may adopt a minimalist role whereby they do not particpate in online discussion with their students and do not review learning materials to make formative revisions.

(Sheridan & Kelly, 2010) summarise a questionnaire conducted with in excess of  65 students to capture what indicators of instructor presence do students consider  most important for their success in online courses? These findings identified indicators of instructor presense that were of most importance to students; these included

• Making course requirements clear
• Being responisve to students needs.

Overall , the author’s experience with introducing a wiki raised  some valuable questions for our own project team to consider particularly when monitorong member contribution but he failed to address other important aspects of adopting wikis mentioned above.

Studies had assessed the impact of wikis in the online space. One such study conducted in a large southeastern College of Education in the United States concluded that after some initial hesitation, students’ overall experience of using wikis was positive and they subsequenty viewed them as an excellent colloboration tool.(Deters, Cuthrell, & Stapleton, 2010)

If the learning resources are in place for the novice user such as a module on how to use a wiki and the course is designed to promote both student and tutor/instructor engagement, I believe that this will serve to create an all round enagaging and positve experience for both tutor and learner  in the utislisation of wikis.

Deters, F., Cuthrell, K., & Stapleton, J. (2010). Why Wikis? Student Perceptions of Using Wikis in Online Coursework. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching , 6 (1), 122.

Sheridan, K., & Kelly, M. A. (2010). The Indicators of Instructor Presence that are Important to Students. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching , 6 (4), 768.

Steen, H. L. (2008). Effective eLearning Design. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching , 4 (4), 526-532.

 In this paper the author examines effective eLearning design from an organisation’s perspective.  He stresses the need for organisations to have effective training in place and addresses the challenges faced by training designers in designing effective eLearning to meet requirements.

 The author contends that the process of developing effective eLearning “as part art and part science”. He elaborates on this further describing effective eLearning with the following characteristics. 

Adopting the appropriate learning theory

Adopting appropriate learning theory was critical in our project. We held a number of brainstorming sessions to determine how we would lay out our modules within the project and it transpires that our modules will initially conform to a behaviourist methodology and that use of our wiki will support a constructivist approach.

 Having an understanding of the technology tools

This is not a major concern for us as we  have the collective capabilities and technical competencies to overcome technical hitches. The learning curve will be steep and will no doubt present us with challenges as there are  endless  tools/applications to explore.  However,  I feel confident in this as I come from a technical background.

Knowledgeable on the subject content being taught

Each member of the team has a solid grasp of their subject area and our knowledge will increase as we develop these modules.

Utilising the correct digital media, style, colour that educates the learner without distracting them form the learner experience.

This is a key point raised by the author.  We do not want to bombard our audience with unnecessary or irrelevant text and graphics that might distract them from the ultimate goal of learning.

I found this paper to be a useful resource and guide during the Instructional Design Project.

The area of instructional design is new for me and the paper covered a lot of the basics involved in designing effective eLearning.

The author raises some interesting points throughout this article which were relevant to our own project.  Some of points I mentioned above but other issues raised included:

 How we learn…

 The author draws on the work carried out by William Glassner in terms of “how we learn”.

This is summarised as

10% of what we read

20% of what we hear

30% of what we see

50% of what we see and hear

70% of what we discuss with others

80% of what we experience

95% of what we teach someone else

Those statistics struck a cord with me, particularly that which states  “70% of what we discuss with others” and “95% of what we teach someone else”.Learning in groups can be an effective way of learning and we as a project group are keen to endorse this finding. As an end of module exercise we intend to set assignment whereby learners will have ot work with their peers.Group assignments provide an oppurtunity for cooperative learning. Group assignments can serve to improve student learning while also developing teamwork, leadership skills and communication. (Schmer, Carol;Ward-Smith Peggy;Peterson Jane, 2011, p. 349)

These findings support by my own experience of working in this I.D project to date as each member generates ideas, provides feedback to one another and constantly learns from each other.

The author raises other points in this article which strongly supports my view on effective eLearning.

The author asserts that activities and exercises serve to keep the student interested.  It is  imperative to keep an audience engaged and to address this we propose setting  up activities such as quizzes,  questionnaires and interaction throughout the modules. The authors findings here are futher supported by (Bajwa, Farooq, Khan, & Amna, 2010, p. 11) who asserts the simualted activities , games and exercises serve to enforce the interest  and particaption of the learner in the elearning environment..

The one critism of this article is that the author does not address feedback from a learner to an instructor/tutor. Feedback in this context should be two way - student to tutor and tutor to student. The author addresses the need to provide constructive feedback to the student but fails to highlight the importance of the student providing feedback to the teacher.  For me education and learning is a journey and I am constantly learning in my everyday practice and welcome any feedback as to where I can improve in my professional practice.

 Bajwa, I. S., Farooq, A., Khan, & Amna. (2010). An Effective eLearning System for Teaching the Fundamentals of Computing and Programming.INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY SCIENCES AND ENGINEERING , 1 (1), 11.

 Schmer, Carol;Ward-Smith Peggy;Peterson Jane. (2011). Learning Outcomes Associated with Group Assignments. MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching , 7 (3), 349.

McLoughlin, C., & Marshall, L. (2000).Scaffolding: A model for learner support in an online teaching environment. Retrieved Nov 2013, from Center for Lifelong Learning -Teaching and Learning Forum 2000:

http://www.c3l.uni-oldenburg.de/cde/support/readings/loughlin2.htm

In this article the authors addresses the issue of learning to learn in on online environment from a novice user’s perspective. The author contends that learners first need “learning how to learn skills” to be effective online learners.  It is imperative that such skills be supported and taught so that novice learners don’t feel a sense of isolation, disengagement or being disadvantaged when they are first introduced to the subject content.

She poses the question as to how we “support learners to develop these skills” and identifies scaffolding or assisted learning as a solution to address these problems. Scaffolding is essentially a form of guidance or assistance provided by a more capable peer or tutor to a learner to help them perform a task that they would struggle to accomplish by themselves.

This piece was very relevant to our project. From the outset we decided as a group that our modules on cloud computing were primarily going to be aimed at novice users.

One of the initial challenges we faced was to identify how we would provide learning support structures in our modules to assist our novice users. We wanted to make the transition to the online learning for our novice learners as seamless as possible. We incorporated some of the solutions in this article into our project that included....

• Providing a mentoring service through instant messenger, skype and online forums.

• Discussion forums/online communities.

• Provide prompt relevant feedback through online forums

• Creating an environment that enables reflection and self monitoring

• Provide links to external learning resources such as videos, tutorials, discussion forums and additional resource reading.

• Promoting peer review forums within our online communities, so that the more advanced student will be able to provide assistance to their online colleagues who require it.
  
  

 Grabinger, S., Aplin, C., & Ponnappa-Brenner, G. (2007, Oct). Instructional Design for Sociocultural Learning Environments. e-Journal of Instructional Science and Technology.

This paper analyses two approaches to instructional design .The author discourses two approaches namely traditional instructional design method and the sociocultural design method. He explores the sociocultutal approach and examines how it differs from the traditional approach to Instructional Design. The author highlights the failings of the traditional approach in favour of a more student focused approach based on the principles of social constructivism.

 He examines both of these approaches under four headings and describes the main characteristics of each

Instructional design views of learning

TID- Based on behaviourist learning theory. Learning takes place within a structured environment where successful learning occurs through precise arrangement of information, practice and testing.

SCID – Based on sociocultural and constructivist learning practices .Learners are considered members of a community of practice and operate within this community in a collaborate effort to develop greater skills, knowledge and understanding and solve problems. Learners think through problems rather than expect to receive the answer.

 Role of learners and teachers

TID – Learners operate within a controlled structure , The designer is responsible for the learning process and the learners  assumes the traditional practice of listening , reacting to the teacher and assignments.

SCID – Learners are collaborators in the learning process and are self directed. The teacher acts as a facilitator and guides the learners towards achieving their learning goals. The learners decide on what resources to use for study, how to study and what they feel they need to learn.

Instructional Environments

TID- Learners learn in the same way based on a strategy designed by the teacher. Goals and objectives are clearly defined and evaluation takes place at the end to determine if instruction has been successful.

SCID- Learning is very much student driven occurs through interaction with others .Learners participates in activities according to their needs, strengths or weaknesses. Evaluation is ongoing through observing learners participation and practice in the community.

Use of tools

TID – Teachers use tools to transmit information and demonstrate concepts.

SCID – Tools are seen as enablers that learners use an aid them contribute within their communities.

I found this paper to be very informative and served as an invaluable resource for our project.
This paper highlights the shortcomings of solely adopting a traditional instructional approach. If our project is to be successful in the long run then we need to incorporate some of the practices that underpin the sociocultural approach. The modules within our project will be initially delivered with a behaviourist approach but ultimately we want to empower our learners and promote self learning and self awareness. We want them to become self thinkers, problem solvers and formulate communities with common interests and goals .I believe the author summarises it best when he states we want our “learners think through problems rather than expect to receive the answer”. Therefore our project will promote forum participation, formulation of communities of practice and provision of tools to support collobaborative learning such as wikis, discussion forums, instant messenger and audio visual facilities.